nicheless

Privacy Policy

Questions? Write to hello@nicheless.blog.

When you use www.nicheless.blog (Nicheless), some personal information is collected from you. However, this site has been designed so that the information collected is minimal. This privacy policy sets out the details of the information collected, the manner in which it is collected, and the purposes for which it is used. It may be revised from time to time, and you will be informed of the same. Your continued use of Nicheless signifies your acceptance of the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Information collected

  1. When you register, Nicheless only collects from you a valid email address that you control. You sign in with a link sent to that address, so Nicheless never asks for or stores a password. You can, at your sole discretion, optionally provide a name, a few sentences in description, a link to your bio and any other information you choose to provide to embellish your profile.

  2. When you create content on Nicheless you do so of your own volition. Nicheless does not require you to submit any personal data nor will it process the personal data that might be contained in your posts, other than to check them for spam as described below. Your drafts are visible only to you until you publish them.

  3. When you interact with other users, Nicheless will have access to information that is generated in the course of these interactions: the posts you like, the private replies you send to writers, your private messages, the writers you follow, and the writers whose posts you subscribe to by email. Likes and private replies can be seen only by you and the writer of the post, and private messages only by the people in the conversation. Writers can see who follows them and the email addresses of their email subscribers. If you reply to a post without signing in, you may choose to include contact details, which only the writer can see.

  4. To keep Nicheless free of spam, every post is checked automatically before it is published, again whenever it is edited, and before it is emailed to subscribers. Posts published before these checks began are checked too. The checks use OpenAI's Decisions API: the post's title, words, topics, web address, image and image caption are sent to OpenAI, which estimates how likely the post is to be spam. Drafts are never sent. If a post is held for a closer review, that review also sends your display name, profile description, website, when you joined, how many posts you published in the past week and the titles of your recent posts. OpenAI processes this information on Nicheless's behalf to provide the check, and under its terms for API customers does not use it to train its models. Nicheless keeps a record of each check and its result. A post judged likely to be spam is held for a closer review or removed, and its writer is told by email and on their dashboard. A writer who thinks a decision is a mistake can write to hello@nicheless.blog, and a person will look at it.

  5. Nicheless does not currently offer paid plans and does not collect payment information.

  6. For delivering emails, Nicheless uses Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES). Your email address is shared with Amazon SES so that emails can reach you. Sign-in links and notices about your posts are sent from login@nicheless.blog, and posts from writers you subscribe to are sent from posts@nicheless.blog. Nicheless keeps a record of email addresses that bounce permanently or report its emails as spam, so that it stops emailing them. Before moving to Amazon SES, Nicheless delivered email through Postmark (www.postmark.com); historical delivery records from that period were imported into Nicheless.

  7. When you subscribe to a writer by email, Nicheless first sends you an email to confirm, and you receive their posts only after you confirm. Every post email includes a link to unsubscribe. Once you unsubscribe, Nicheless keeps a record of it so that you are not emailed again. Writers can also remove a subscriber from their list.

  8. Nicheless sets cookies only for signing in and to enable essential functionalities of the platform: cookies that keep you signed in, set through its authentication provider, Supabase, and a short-lived cookie that returns you to the page you were reading after you sign in from an emailed link. Nicheless does not use analytics or advertising cookies, and does not use a third-party analytics service. To count post views and to prevent abuse, Nicheless stores a one-way, keyed hash derived from your IP address rather than the address itself.

  9. Nicheless relies on a small number of service providers to run the platform: Vercel hosts the website; Supabase provides the database, sign-in, and storage for uploaded images; Amazon SES delivers email; OpenAI checks posts for spam; and Google Workspace receives email sent to Nicheless's contact addresses. These providers process information on Nicheless's behalf to provide these services.

Use of Information

The personal information collected will only be used to provide you the services that you have subscribed to receive from Nicheless, to keep Nicheless free of spam, and to continually enhance your experience on Nicheless.

Data Retention, Deletion, and Export

  1. All information collected will be retained only for as long as your account remains in existence. Records of email addresses that have unsubscribed, bounced, or reported Nicheless's emails as spam are kept after that, so that those addresses are not emailed again.

  2. You can delete your account at any time from your Account page. This removes your profile and your writing, including drafts, together with your likes, follows, the replies and messages you sent, and your email subscriptions. Images you uploaded and your sign-in record are removed shortly afterwards. You can also write to hello@nicheless.blog and request for your account to be deleted. Your request will be completed within 30 days of the confirmation of its receipt.

  3. You can export your writing, including drafts, as a JSON file from your Account page, and your list of email subscribers as a CSV file from your Audience page.

  4. If you would like to receive any other data related to your account, please write to hello@nicheless.blog requesting the same. Your request will be completed within 30 days of the confirmation of its receipt, provided the data requested does not infringe on the privacy of other users.

Grievances or Questions

If you have any concerns or questions in relation to this Privacy Policy, you may address them by writing to hello@nicheless.blog.