We know your privacy on the internet is extremely important to you. Since GS Poetry gathers certain personal information about registered users, we want to ensure that you fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the use of the information collected. GS Poetry reserves the right to revise this policy at any time without notification to you, so please read it often in connection with your use of the GS Poetry web site.
We know that you care how information about you is used and shared. GS Poetry will not share your e-mail address or other identifiable information with any third-party company (no external spam). GS Poetry will protect your information through the use of secure, encrypted databases.
GS Poetry collects the personally identifiable information that you submit on the registration and user profile forms to permit you access to certain content on the site.
Generally, the information GS Poetry collects help us to communicate with you regarding the status of your poetry submissions, any issues that may need to be resolved or to answer any other types of questions. For instance, we use your e-mail address to provide you with an e-mail confirmation of your registration or poetry submission.
We will not share your personally-identifiable information with any entity, except with the proper local, state or federal authorities when necessary to comply with local, state and federal laws (i.e. answering subpoenas).
We do require that all users who register on the platform enter their date of birth. This is solely for legal reasons and compliance. We do not allow anyone under the age of 13 to become a registered user of the site. By default, date of birth information is not publicly displayed. If a user chooses to publicly display their birthday, only the month and day will display, not the year of birth. We do not knowingly collect information from minors under the age of 13.
We may also automatically collect certain non-personal information, such as your IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited, and time spent on the site, typically through cookies and analytics tools.
We use the information we collect to:
We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. We may share information with trusted service providers who help us operate the site (e.g., email platforms, hosting providers), who are obligated to keep it confidential.
Governments, courts, regulators, and law-enforcement agencies sometimes ask online services to disclose information about their users. This section explains how GS Poetry handles those requests. It expands on our statement above that we will share personally-identifiable information with the proper authorities when necessary to comply with the law.
We recommend that you choose a password that will not be easily guessed by others. It is recommended that you use a separate password for every site to which you are a member. This is a form of damage control. In case the security of one site is compromised, your other accounts are still protected. If you forget your password, you can reset it.
Our site may use cookies to enhance your experience. You can adjust your browser settings to refuse cookies, though some features may not function properly.
Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer's hard drive through your web browser to enable GS Poetry to recognize your browser and to provide features that recognize your account as logged on and other site features. Further, to help us tailor the site to the needs and interests of users, or for other purposes, we may gather aggregate, non-personally identifiable information via cookies. Examples include the type of Internet browser visitors are using, the frequency of visits to GS Poetry and which pages visitors viewed. GS Poetry also uses cookies for voting in the polls and the poetry rating system. The use of cookies is standard on the Internet and many major web sites use them. Cookies stored on your computer that are designated for gspoetry.com use cannot be retrieved by other web sites.
Children under thirteen (13) years of age are not allowed to register on the site. We do strive to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If you are the parent of a child under the age of thirteen (13) who has created an account using a false birth date, please notify our support center and we will immediately cancel your child's account and delete all materials associated with your child's account from the site and our database. Anyone legally under the age of thirteen (13) who registers on the site is violating our Terms of Use. GS Poetry is not liable for any actions taken by a violator of our age requirement. For more information about COPPA, visit the Federal Trade Commission's web site.
Closing your account removes your access from the website and its features. Closing your account does not remove your poems from our website or database. If you would like your poems scrubbed from our databases, please contact our support team. All requests will be processed within 45 days. For step-by-step instructions, see our Data Deletion page.
Depending on where you live (for example, if you are a California resident under the CCPA/CPRA), you have rights over the personal information we hold about you. We honor these requests regardless of your location:
You can exercise most of these rights yourself in Settings → Account, which lets you close your account and export your data (both protected by a security check). To make any other request, or if you prefer we handle it for you, email us at support@gspoetry.com or contact our support team. We will respond within the timeframe the law requires and will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. You may authorize someone to make a request on your behalf.
We use trusted third-party providers to operate parts of the service. These providers process limited personal data on our behalf and are contractually obligated to protect it:
Phone numbers and SMS. Adding a phone number is optional and is used only as a second factor at sign-in if you turn on SMS two-factor. Your email address, not your phone, is your primary login. SMS two-factor is available in the United States and Canada. Standard message and data rates from your carrier may apply. See our Terms of Service for SMS consent details.
We understand that many people are concerned about security on the Internet. The security of the information that you provide to us is also very important to us. To prevent unauthorized disclosure, maintain data accuracy and ensure the correct use of information, we have in place reasonable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure any information we collect online. Purchases are processed by Stripe; your payment details are entered on Stripe-hosted forms and are subject to Stripe's terms of use and privacy policy. In the event that the security system is breached, we will attempt to notify members as soon as possible.
We do not have any control over the privacy practices of any external websites linked from GS Poetry (including links posted by other members). Therefore, you should review those sites' privacy policies separately from GS Poetry's before providing them any information.
We use Umami, a privacy-friendly self-hosted analytics tool, to understand how visitors use the site. Umami does not use cookies or any client-side storage. Visitor identity is computed server-side as an anonymized hash of IP address, user agent, and a daily-rotating salt, meaning the same visitor cannot be re-identified across days, and the underlying IP is never stored as personal data.
We collect aggregate, non-personally-identifying metrics like pages visited, referring sites, browser type, country (no city-level), screen size, and time on page. Because Umami is self-hosted, this data lives only in our own database, it is never shared with Google, Meta, or any third-party analytics provider.
Because no cookies or device storage are involved and no personal data is retained, this analytics is treated as exempt from cookie/ePrivacy consent requirements under most reasonable EU/UK readings. You will still see a usage notice via our cookie banner, which covers other site features.
We reserve the right to change our privacy policies at any time, except as may be prohibited by law. Use of our websites or services or the purchase of products after posted changes means that you consent to the privacy policies as changed.