Privacy Policy

byline.pub is an AT Protocol based directory for independent authors and books. It gives authors a way to publish author profiles and book metadata from their own repositories, while making those public records easier for readers to browse and discover.

The goal is to support portable book metadata, author-controlled records, and practical discovery across independent tools.

byline.pub stores the minimum information needed to operate the service, authenticate signed-in authors, and maintain the public directory.

This may include:

• Account and session information needed to let signed-in authors manage their profiles and books
• OAuth session state, which may be stored in Redis
• Public directory index data stored in Postgres
• Public author DIDs, handles, at:// URIs, book records, profile records, cover references, links, genres, timestamps, and other metadata needed to display, search, sort, and maintain the directory

byline.pub does not sell personal data.

Profiles, books, covers, links, handles, DIDs, genres, descriptions, and other record content you publish through byline.pub are intended to be public.

Because these records are published to your AT Protocol repository, they may be visible beyond byline.pub. Other AT Protocol services may read, index, cache, display, or reference those public records.

Deleting or changing a record on your PDS may update what byline.pub displays, but it may not remove copies, caches, screenshots, exports, references, or indexed versions held by other services.

byline.pub may use cookies or similar session mechanisms after you begin a login session. These are used to keep you signed in, complete OAuth authentication, protect the service, and allow you to manage your author profile and book records.

byline.pub does not use cookies for advertising or cross-site behavioural tracking.

Like most web services, byline.pub may receive routine technical data from hosting, database, cache, logging, monitoring, or security providers.

This may include:

• IP address
• Browser and device information
• Request logs
• Error details
• Referring pages
• Timestamps
• Basic usage and performance data

This information is used to operate the service, debug problems, prevent abuse, improve reliability, and protect byline.pub and its users.

byline.pub keeps simple counts so authors can see how their work is doing here. It counts page views and buy-link clicks, in aggregate, by day. A buy link records a click when a reader follows it through byline.pub on the way to the retailer.

These counts are aggregate only. byline.pub stores a daily total per book, per buy link, and per author profile. It does not keep a per-reader log, so an author can see how many views a book got, not who viewed it.

Bot, crawler, and prerender requests are filtered out before counting, and an author's own visits to their own books and profile are not counted.

Authors see counts for their own books and profile only, never another author's records, and never individual readers.

For overall site traffic, byline.pub also uses Vercel Web Analytics. It records page views, referrers, and anonymized details such as approximate country, device type, operating system, and browser. It is aggregate and cookieless. It does not set cookies, does not store information that identifies an individual reader, and does not track readers across other sites.

The only cookie byline.pub sets is the session id that keeps a signed-in author logged in. Readers are not given a tracking cookie, and there are no cross-site trackers or advertising trackers.

byline.pub uses information to:

• Authenticate authors
• Write AT Protocol records when requested by the signed-in author
• Display author profiles and book records
• Maintain and update the public directory index
• Search, sort, and organize public book and author records
• Prevent spam, abuse, and misuse
• Debug errors and improve the service
• Understand basic service performance and reliability

byline.pub does not sell personal data and does not use author or book records for advertising profiling.

Your PDS, handle provider, OAuth provider, Bluesky client, and other AT Protocol services may have their own privacy policies and terms.

byline.pub cannot control how independent AT Protocol services process, store, cache, or display public records once they are published.

You should review the privacy terms of the services you use to host your AT Protocol identity and data.

You can update or delete your byline.pub author profile and book records from the source by using byline.pub or another compatible AT Protocol tool that can manage those records in your repository.

If you delete or update records on your PDS, byline.pub may update its index after the change is detected or after the directory is refreshed. Some cached or logged information may remain for a limited time for operational, security, backup, or debugging purposes.

You may request removal of information held directly by byline.pub, such as cached public data or account/session information, by using the feedback form.

Please note that byline.pub can only remove information it controls. It cannot remove public records, caches, or copies held by other AT Protocol services, search engines, archives, or third-party tools.

byline.pub is not directed to children under 16. byline.pub does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16.

If you believe a child has provided personal information to byline.pub, contact us so we can review and remove information where appropriate.

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time as byline.pub develops, adds features, or changes how it operates.

When the policy changes, the "Last updated" date will be revised. Continued use of byline.pub after a policy update means you accept the updated policy.