Privacy policy
The short version: Qwikiverse keeps only what it needs to run, and nothing is for sale.
What we store
When you sign in with GitHub or Google, we receive your name, email address, and avatar from that provider, and we generate a handle you can change in settings. Your connections, comments, and image attachments are public under your handle. You can edit or delete your comments; moderators can remove comments. Votes and agree/disagree assessments are associated with your account; aggregate counts are public. Reports, reporter identity, and retained report evidence are private to moderators. Universe subscriptions are stored with your account to build your personal navigation; follower totals are public, but the list of universes you follow is not published to other members. Item follows and see-less preferences are private account settings used to rank your personalized feed. You can change or clear them in Feed preferences. Your profile library is public and contains only items you explicitly add. Adding an item does not indicate that you have read, watched, played, or owned it. You can remove items or unpin favorites at any time. Cover images you contribute are shared catalog content and may remain available after you remove an item from your library. Cover searches send the title you enter to Open Library or Wikipedia. Preview images load from those providers; selecting a cover imports it into our image storage with its source and credit information. Catalog edits publish with your handle, edit summary, and revision history. Earlier page versions remain available after later edits or restoration. Edited connections start a new assessment revision; previous assessments remain stored. Evidence URLs are public. First-appearance credit keeps the handle used when a reference was added, even if that handle later changes. Evidence verification is recorded per revision. While you’re signed in, we record your visits: when each one starts and ends, and which pages you view (without search terms or other query text). Moderators use this to see how the site is used; it isn’t shown to other members or shared. Visits are deleted after 180 days. While you’re signed out, we count visits anonymously and without cookies: your IP address and browser are combined with a random value that changes every day and turned into a one-way code. We never store your IP address, and one day’s visits can’t be linked to another’s. Browsers that send Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track aren’t counted.
Cookies
A session cookie keeps you signed in. Two small preference cookies remember that you’ve seen the welcome banner and whether you opened its examples. There are no advertising cookies and no third-party trackers. Vercel’s page-view counts and our signed-out visit counts use no cookies and don’t identify you; the only visit history tied to you is the signed-in record described above.
How we use your data
We do not sell or rent your personal information. We use Vercel for hosting and image storage and Neon for database storage. Uploaded images are resized and re-encoded to strip embedded location metadata. Reported images may be retained privately as moderation evidence even after removal from a connection. Sign-in is handled entirely by GitHub or Google; we never see your passwords.
Deleting your account
To delete your account and its data, email ryanstone.nyc@gmail.com from the address you signed in with. References may remain after account deletion, including their original public first-appearance handle. Contact us to discuss removing identifying information from retained contributions.
Last updated September 2026.