Privacy Notice

1. Who operates Pilcrow

Pilcrow is an independent educational and literary project. In this Notice, “Pilcrow,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the Pilcrow project.

This Notice describes the information used by the free pilot, including accounts created through an invitation or direct signup.

2. Information Pilcrow collects

Pilcrow may collect the following limited categories of information:

• Account and invitation information: email address, display name, account status, role, invitation status, and authentication identifiers;
• Adult eligibility information: an age-band attestation that the account holder is 18 or older and the time and version of that attestation; Pilcrow does not need a full date of birth;
• Writer information: biography if provided, submitted literary Works, source files, normalized versions, summaries, publication history, rights statements, restrictions, and communications about review;
• Educator information: display name, optional professional description or institution type, private collections, planned-use dates, broad instructional context, and classroom-use confirmations;
• Contact and issue information: the description of a concern, an optional reply address, and whether the person permits follow-up;
• Legal and operational records: the versions of terms and permissions accepted, timestamps, Work/version identifiers, review decisions, publication records, and privacy-minimized audit events; and
• Technical information: essential session data and limited request, error, security, and email delivery records. Hosting and security systems may temporarily process an IP address, browser or device information, and request metadata. Pilcrow does not use IP address or location to create a remembered-device profile.

The pilot does not ask for or maintain student accounts, student names, class rosters, grades, or student-level activity.

3. How Pilcrow uses information

Pilcrow uses information to:

• authenticate users and provide the appropriate Writer, Educator, or Admin workspace;
• receive, secure, scan, normalize, review, and, when approved, publish literary Works;
• review authorship, publication history, permissions, content notes, and classroom-use scope;
• prepare and human-review metadata, summaries, teaching materials, and search, matching, or recommendation signals without changing the literary Work;
• maintain private Educator collections and classroom plans without student records;
• send operational messages about invitations, accounts, review, rights, publication, security, and optional classroom-use reminders;
• respond to privacy, copyright, accuracy, safety, and support concerns;
• protect the service and preserve reliable records of permissions and important decisions; and
• evaluate the pilot using privacy-minimized information rather than student-level data.

4. AI-assisted review

Authorized Pilcrow administrators may use AI-assisted tools privately to prepare internal summaries, descriptive metadata, first drafts of teaching materials, and signals that support search, matching, and recommendations among Pilcrow Works. AI does not edit, rewrite, translate, abridge, expand, or replace the submitted literary Work, and it does not make final editorial, rights, publication, content-note, or classroom-suitability decisions. The Work remains unchanged unless the Writer separately confirms a new human-reviewed content version.

A private submitted Work may be sent to an AI service provider only when:

• the Writer has affirmatively granted the current AI-assisted support permission for that submitted version;
• the provider and selected service configuration do not use the Work to train a general-purpose model;
• provider retention is disabled or limited to no more than 30 days;
• access is limited to authorized Pilcrow administrators; and
• Pilcrow does not place the Work or raw AI request and response in ordinary application logs.

Pilcrow keeps only AI-assisted output that an authorized person needs for the review record or chooses to develop into a human-reviewed Pilcrow resource.

5. When information is shared

Pilcrow does not sell personal information and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Information may be processed by service providers that help Pilcrow operate, including:

• Amazon Web Services for hosting, account authentication, private file storage, database, malware scanning, logs, queues, backups, and transactional email;
• an AI service provider meeting Section 4, but only if AI-assisted review is enabled; and
• professional advisers or authorities when reasonably necessary to address a legal obligation, protect a person or the service, or resolve a rights dispute.

Service providers receive only the information needed for their task. Pilcrow does not authorize them to use submitted Works for their own advertising or general-purpose AI training.

An approved Work, its byline, approved biography, reviewed metadata, content notes, and teaching materials may be made available according to the Work’s recorded publication and visibility settings. A private or merely submitted Work is not made public.

6. Cookies, analytics, and Do Not Track

Pilcrow uses only cookies or similar storage needed for authentication, security, and essential service operation. The pilot does not use third-party advertising trackers or cross-site behavioral profiles.

Because Pilcrow does not perform cross-site behavioral tracking, browser “Do Not Track” signals do not change the service’s behavior. Third parties are not permitted to collect personal information on Pilcrow over time and across unrelated services for advertising.

7. Retention

Pilcrow follows the retention schedule summarized below. A record may be kept longer when reasonably necessary for an active security incident, legal request, or rights dispute; that is an exception, not routine indefinite retention.

When a Work body is deleted, Pilcrow may retain a content hash, Work identifier, status history, permission version, and decision timestamps without retaining the literary text itself. Information removed from active systems may remain in encrypted rolling backups until those backups expire.

8. Security

Pilcrow uses access controls, encrypted connections and storage, private source-file storage, malware checks, role-based review, and audit records designed for the limited pilot. No service can promise perfect security. Please use the Contact page if you believe private information or an account may have been exposed.

9. Your choices and requests

You may use the Contact page to ask Pilcrow to:

• explain what account information is associated with you;
• correct inaccurate account, profile, or rights information;
• close your account;
• withdraw or remove a Work, subject to the Writer License and copies already lawfully provided for a current class; or
• delete information that Pilcrow no longer needs to keep.

Pilcrow may need to verify that the requester controls the relevant account or rights. Some narrow permission, publication, security, and audit records may be retained under Section 7 after an account closes or a Work is removed.

10. Adults only and student information

Pilcrow accounts are limited to people who are 18 or older. The pilot is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information directly from children. Educators must not enter student information into Pilcrow. If Pilcrow learns that it received student or child personal information, it will restrict access and delete it when reasonably possible.

11. Changes to this Notice

The current version and effective date appear on this page. Pilcrow will give clear notice before a materially different use of private submissions or personal information. A new use that reasonably requires consent will not be applied retroactively without that consent.

12. Contact

Privacy questions and access, correction, deletion, or account-closure requests may be submitted through the Pilcrow Contact page.