Privacy

Who we are

Aristocles Pty Ltd, based in Victoria, Australia, operates Rhyter Times and is responsible for the information described on this page. Privacy questions and requests go to [email protected].

Account basics

Email address, and name/avatar if you sign in with Google or GitHub. Used to sign you in and manage your account, to connect your subscription if you subscribe, and to reply when you contact us.

Followed topics

The topics you explicitly choose to follow in account settings. Used to order your homepage.

Clicks and reading activity

When you click through to an article, we record the article URL, its source, and which section it came from. Most of what we show is headlines and short excerpts that link out to the original publisher; we also host our own AI-assisted write-ups and comparisons (Reporting, Perspectives, Deep Dives) and a short excerpt page for some articles. Viewing those pages is counted in the aggregate analytics below, not in your reading history; the reading history above is built only from links you click. To apply the monthly free-view limits on Reporting, Perspectives, Deep Dives and Videos, we set a first-party cookie in your browser that lists the slugs of the items you have opened this month. It is not sent to advertisers and is cleared by clearing your cookies. For links to publishers, your click is the only signal we have about what you read. We have no visibility into what you do on the publisher's site after you leave ours.

Aggregate site analytics

Separately from the account-linked activity above, we also record anonymous, aggregate traffic and engagement for every visitor, signed in or not: which pages get viewed, how far people scroll, how long a page stays open, rough device type, and the referring site's domain. These events carry no cookie, account, or other identifier linking them to you or to each other; we can't tell that two pageviews came from the same visitor, only that they happened. We use this to see which stories and sections are actually working, not to track anyone individually.

We also use Google Analytics, which does use its own cookies to measure visitor counts and traffic sources; see Google's privacy policy for how it handles that data.

Age range

Optional, set in account settings. We only offer adult brackets (18-24 and up). There is no option for a minor to select an age bracket on this site, by design. You can change it or set it back to “prefer not to say” at any time.

How this is used

All of the above feeds directly into what you see on this site: which topics your homepage prioritizes, and in what order. We don't sell this data, and we don't share it with the publishers we link to or with advertisers.

Payments

If you subscribe, you pay on a page hosted by Stripe; we never see or store your card number. Stripe shares with us the email you used, your Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, your plan and its status, and your billing-period dates, which we store to give you the access you paid for. Stripe also holds the billing details you enter at checkout, under Stripe's privacy policy.

Services we use

We use other companies to run the site: hosting (Vercel), our database (Neon), payments (Stripe), sign-in (Google and GitHub, if you choose them) and, with your consent, Google Analytics. We also use AI services to write summaries; they receive the text of public news articles, not your account or reading information. These providers handle information on our behalf or as described in their own policies.

Advertising and cookies

Some story pages may show advertising provided by Google AdSense. Ads appear only for readers on the free plan, only on stories we have reviewed ourselves, only after you accept cookies, and not for readers in the EEA, UK or Switzerland. If you do not accept cookies, no advertising code is loaded. When ads are shown, Google and its advertising partners may use cookies to show and measure them; see how Google uses information from sites that use its services. You can change your cookie choice at any time from “Cookie preferences” in the footer.

Where information is processed

Several of the providers above operate internationally, so your information may be processed outside Australia.

Developer API

If you register for the developer API (see For Developers), we also store your name and email, your Stripe customer identifier if you subscribe, a hash of your API key, per-request usage records (the endpoint, response status and time), and the IP addresses of registration attempts, which we use to limit abuse.

Deleting your data

Deleting your account removes your account record, followed topics, saved articles, click history, and page-engagement records. Email [email protected] to request this. Payment and invoice records held by Stripe, and any billing records we are required to keep for tax and accounting purposes, may be retained after your account is deleted.