Privacy Policy

As you use Belletristica, you're completely invisible to other users - just like a ghost or ninja. Others can't see whether you're online, or when you were online. You only ever leave a trace, when you knowingly and intentionally post something (like a text, a comment, a message or applause...).

Which texts you've read or liked is not visible for others. The same goes for subscriptions, bookmarks and your favorites. On the other hand, you can't see who liked or favorited your texts, or who subscribed to you either.

Nobody can see you when you enter a chatroom. Other never see something like "is writing..." and nobody knows whether or not you've already read a message. This applies to private messages as well.

Don't worry that your achievements will give away too much about yourself. Other users can only see the achievements that you've put into your showcase on your profile.

Every group has a member list, but this list is only available for other group members. Like everywhere else, there is no online status.

It is your right as a Belletristican to have multiple pseudonyms, and play different roles. Be creative! Here, you can be whoever or whatever you want to be, as long as you don't abuse this freedom to deceive others, to spy on people or to gain unfair advantages.

Many communities are not very fond of lurkers (users who silently read but don't actively participate themselves). Here, this is different. We know that stealthy users and unregistered visitors are an invaluable part of our community, and we welcome that. That's why we do our best to make Belletristica as comfortable as possible for visitors. The majority of our contents can be enjoyed without an account, and we never use those irritating pup-ups to pressure you into signing up.

We offer the option to share some private data like name, age and gender on your profile. This serves merely to individualize your profile, and is totally voluntary - please never share anything you're not comfortable sharing. We don't further process this information, we do not sell it to anyone, and we don't use them for targeted ads. You can completely erase all this data yourself at any time.

We only ever ask for your address, if you explicitly want us to mail something to you. After that, we forget we even have your address, and we only mail you again when you ask us to. We won't bother you with unsolicited advertisements just because you kindly ordered some flyers once.

Like pretty much every other website, we use cookies (small data files that are stored on your device). We need them for many important functions like the "remember me" option on login, the autosave feature, in case you lose your internet connection while writing, and for smart "back" links, that need to temporarily remember where you came from.

We automatically generate a few anonymous statistics (like how many users have been online on a given day) but we don't include any data that could identify a single person.

Although you can easily delete all your personal data and close your account by yourself in your profile and account settings and we don't collect any personal data for marketing purposes or such, you can still also request deletion of your account and/or all personal data simply via email to [email protected].

We don't claim any possession of the texts you upload. All your works stay your own intellectual property and you fully keep all rights. We also automatically add a copyright note to your texts, which says that it belongs to you. In case of a dispute with a third party, we'll gladly comfirm the exact time when you first uploaded your text on Belletristica.

We keep deleted texts locked away in our archive (unless you insist on them being deleted for good). Texts in our archive are not accessible to the public, and are usually never seen again by anyone.

Why do we do this? For copyright reasons. Imagine the following situation:

Let's say you puplish a poem on Belletristica in spring. Then, in summer, someone steals it and publishes it on another platform. You delete your poem in autumn. Then, winter comes, and you discover the stolen text on the other platform. Now we can check the archive and say: "Hold on, this text has already been uploaded on Belletristica this march!" and do what we can to help you enforce your copyright.

You can of course demand the complete deletion of your texts from the archive, and we will take care of it quickly. However, if you choose do that, we can't help you with any copyright disputes over this text in the future.

To have your texts deleted from the archive, just request deletion via email to [email protected].

We consistently use SSL encryption to ensure a secure connection between your device and Belletristica. Also, we have taken further precautions against data theft, but for security reasons, we won't elaborate this.

We make daily backups of our database, so that we can minimize data loss in worst case scenarios. These backups however, are never stored for longer than a month.

We use Amazon AWS. All data, including our database as well as user uploads, are located in Frankfurt, Germany. Amazon AWS itself is GDPR conform: pricacy policy of Amazon.

Belletristica is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.de

These policies might be expanded or changed in the future. When this happens, we will inform our users per email in time. The philosophy behind our policies will stay the same though.

Just write an email to [email protected] or directly talk to one or our fairies or admins. We'll respond as quickly as possible.