Privacy Policy

Learn how Spyglass handles accounts, saved news, cookies and website analytics, and how to contact us about your privacy.

Spyglass (國際望遠鏡) is a news discovery website. This page explains what information the site handles, why, who else touches it, and what you can do about it. You can read all the news without an account.

1. Who we are

Spyglass is run by an individual (the "Operator", "we"). Contact: contact@spyglassnews.com.

2. What we collect

  • Reading the news does not require an account. When analytics is configured, Google Analytics 4 loads only after you allow analytics cookies. It measures page views and basic usage information such as device, language, approximate region and referring website. We do not send account emails, passwords, reset tokens or saved-news contents to Analytics. We do not use advertising trackers.
  • Account (only if you sign up): your email address, your password (kept only as a salted hash, never in clear text), whether the email is confirmed, and timestamps.
  • Your My Spyglass settings: the places, industries, companies and outlets you follow, the news you saved (a copy of the story as we published it), and your language and theme. Without an account these stay in your own browser; with an account they are also saved to it.
  • Security data: your IP address and counts of recent sign-in or email requests, kept for a short time (normally a few days) to stop abuse. Our hosting provider (Cloudflare) also handles your IP address to deliver the site and may keep standard server logs.
  • Emails we send you: the confirmation and password-reset messages, which go through our email provider.
  • Bot check: when Cloudflare Turnstile is switched on for sign-up, Cloudflare receives technical signals (such as your IP address and browser details) to tell people from bots.

3. Cookies and browser storage

  • A sign-in cookie (sg_session, not readable by scripts) exists only while you are signed in, for up to 30 days, so the site remembers you. Signing out deletes it.
  • Browser storage keeps your language, theme, your follows and saved news (when not signed in), and cached pages so the site can open offline.
  • We do not use advertising cookies. Optional Google Analytics cookies are used only after you choose Allow analytics. You can decline without losing any site features, and change your choice using Analytics cookie settings in the footer. Your choice is stored in your browser; withdrawing consent removes the Analytics cookies set on this domain.

4. How we use it

  • To run the site and keep you signed in; to save your settings; to send the account emails you ask for; to protect the site from abuse.
  • We do not sell your information and we do not use it to build advertising profiles.

5. Other companies that handle data

These providers process data for us or when your browser loads their content. Some are outside Taiwan (for example in the United States), so your data may be processed abroad.

  • Cloudflare: hosting, the account database, DNS, security and the bot check.
  • Resend: delivery of the confirmation and password-reset emails (it receives your email address and the message).
  • Google Fonts: your browser loads fonts from Google, which therefore sees your IP address and browser details. Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (only with your consent): Tag Manager delivers the configured tags. Google processes usage and technical data to provide aggregate website reports. Advertising personalization and Google signals are disabled in our tag.
  • News publishers: most news photos are loaded straight from the publisher's servers, which therefore see your IP address. Headlines link to the original articles on the publisher's site, which has its own privacy policy.
  • DeepSeek: writes the summaries from public headlines. No account or visitor data is sent to it.
  • GitHub: stores the site's code and the daily news files. No account data is stored there.

6. News and AI summaries

The site shows headlines, links to the original articles, tags, and short summaries written by an AI system from those headlines. They may contain mistakes; always check the original source. We do not copy the full text of publishers' articles.

7. How long we keep it

  • Account and settings: until you delete the account.
  • Sign-in sessions: up to 30 days. Confirmation links: 24 hours. Password-reset links: 1 hour. Sign-ups never confirmed: deleted after 7 days.
  • Security counters: a few days.
  • Emails already delivered stay with the email provider for the period in its own policy.

8. Your choices and rights

  • You may ask to see, correct or delete your data, or object to its use.
  • Delete your account yourself at any time: My Spyglass, then "Delete account". It removes the account, its sessions and its saved settings.
  • Data kept only in your browser can be removed from your browser settings (clear this site's data) or with "Clear all" on My Spyglass.
  • If you do not sign up, you can still read everything; an account only adds saving your settings across devices.
  • For anything else, write to contact@spyglassnews.com.

9. Security

The site uses HTTPS, stores passwords only as salted hashes, stores sign-in and email links only as hashes, and limits repeated attempts. No system is perfectly secure; if you notice a problem, please tell us.

10. Children

The site is not aimed at children under 13. Please do not create an account if you are under 13.

11. Advertising

There are no ads today.

12. Changes

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows the latest version. Material changes will be announced on the site.