Privacy Policy
# Privacy Policy
Last updated: 30 June 2026
## Overview
Branch Press is a public reading website for essays, books, connected reading, and related authorial projects. At this stage, the site is designed to be read without creating an account.
This policy explains, in plain language, what information is and is not processed when you visit Branch Press, and what principles will guide any future account-based features.
This policy is written for the current public stage of the site and should be revised before Branch Press launches accounts, newsletters, submissions, comments, payments, saved reader data, or any feature that collects personal information directly from readers.
## Who operates Branch Press
Branch Press is an independent publishing project operated by Soulaiman B. Mershed, also writing as S. B. Mershed.
In this policy, “Branch Press,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to this publishing project. “You” refers to any visitor to the site.
## Information you provide directly
Branch Press does not currently ask readers to submit personal information through the website.
At this stage, the site does not provide public reader accounts, comments, newsletters, contact forms, paid memberships, submissions, uploads, or reader profiles. Because these features do not exist yet, Branch Press does not collect names, account details, payment details, profile details, private notes, highlights, bookmarks, or similar reader data through the website.
If you contact Branch Press directly by email, we may receive your email address, name if you provide one, message content, and ordinary email metadata. That information is used to read, manage, and respond to your message. It is not used for advertising or behavioral profiling.
If any account, contact, newsletter, submission, payment, or saved-reader-data feature is introduced later, this policy should be updated before that feature is made public.
## Information stored in your browser
Branch Press may save a small amount of information directly in your browser to make the reading experience more consistent across visits.
This may include your selected site theme, graph display preferences, immersive reading-mode settings, reading position within an article, and preferred column layout on listing pages.
This information is stored locally on your device using browser storage. It stays on your device, is not transmitted to a Branch Press account, and is not used to identify you personally. No Branch Press account system exists at this stage.
You can remove this local information at any time by clearing site data or browsing data in your browser settings. Clearing it simply resets these preferences to their defaults.
## Information processed automatically when you visit
Like most websites, Branch Press relies on hosting, security, and content-delivery infrastructure to serve its pages.
When you load the site, that infrastructure may automatically process limited technical information as a normal part of delivering the website, protecting it from abuse, and diagnosing technical problems.
This technical information may include your IP address, browser and device type, requested page, date and time of the request, referring page, basic security logs, and error logs.
Branch Press does not use this information to build advertising profiles or behavioral profiles of readers.
## Third-party services and local-first principle
Branch Press aims to keep public site assets local whenever legally and technically practical. This means that public fonts, public images, and Branch Press-owned files should preferably be served from the site itself rather than embedded from unnecessary external providers.
At the current stage, Branch Press may still rely on a limited set of third-party services for hosting, deployment, security, fonts, or media delivery. These services may process technical information, such as your IP address, as part of delivering their part of the site.
Cloudflare Pages is used to serve the website and provide hosting, security, and content delivery.
GitHub is used to store and deploy the project source code. GitHub is mainly part of the publishing workflow rather than a reader-facing feature.
Some fonts or media may still be requested from external providers during development or transition. This may include Google Fonts, Cloudinary, or legacy image references such as Imgur until those assets are replaced or self-hosted where legally and technically appropriate.
Branch Press does not intend to rely on Imgur as a long-term source for embedded public images. Public Branch Press images should be moved to local site assets or another intentional long-term storage method when practical.
Future user-uploaded files, if such features are ever introduced, may need separate storage and privacy treatment so that reader files are not mixed with the static public website.
## No advertising and no behavioral tracking
Branch Press does not display advertising.
Branch Press does not use advertising pixels, cross-site trackers, or behavioral advertising systems.
Branch Press does not sell, rent, or trade information about readers.
If analytics are ever introduced, they should be limited, privacy-respecting, and explained here before being used. The policy should state what is measured, why it is measured, whether it is aggregated, and what choices readers have.
## Legal bases and reader rights
Where data-protection laws such as the EU or UK GDPR apply, the limited automatic processing described above rests on the legitimate interest of operating, securing, and maintaining a functional website, and on the technical necessity of delivering content requested by the reader.
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to certain processing of personal data, or to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
Because the current public site does not hold account data about you, most such requests would relate either to local browser storage on your own device or to technical logs held by infrastructure providers. Branch Press will assist with valid requests as far as reasonably possible and may direct you to the relevant provider where the data is held by that provider.
## International visitors
Branch Press can be read from many countries. Its infrastructure providers may operate globally.
By using the site, you understand that the limited technical information needed to deliver it may be processed in countries other than your own, including through global content-delivery networks.
## Children’s privacy
Branch Press is intended for a general adult readership interested in essays and long-form ideas.
The site is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Because the current site has no account, comment, submission, upload, or payment features, it does not solicit personal information from any visitor, including children. If account or submission features are introduced later, age-appropriate handling should be addressed in this policy before those features are launched.
## Future accounts and personal reading features
Branch Press may later introduce optional accounts and personal reading features.
Future features could include sign-in, saved reading position across devices, saved reading preferences, highlights, strikethrough, private notes, bookmarks, profile settings, comments, submissions, or other reader tools.
Before any such feature is launched, this policy should be expanded to explain what data is collected, the legal basis for collecting it, where it is stored, how long it is kept, who can access it, whether it can be exported, and how readers can request correction or deletion.
The guiding principle is that public reading should remain available without an account. Accounts should enhance the experience, not block the reader from the core press.
## Data retention
For the current public site, Branch Press does not retain personal information that readers provide through the website, because the website does not collect such information.
Email messages sent directly to Branch Press may be retained as long as reasonably necessary to handle the inquiry, protect legal interests, maintain records, or manage the project.
Technical logs processed by infrastructure providers are retained for limited periods under those providers’ own policies, generally for security, abuse prevention, diagnostics, and operational purposes.
Local browser preferences remain on your own device until you clear them or your browser removes them.
## Security
Branch Press takes reasonable measures to operate the site securely, relying in part on established hosting, delivery, and security providers.
No website or method of transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure. Branch Press cannot promise absolute security, but it aims to limit the data involved in running the public site and to avoid collecting unnecessary reader information.
## Reader choices
You can read the public site without creating an account.
You can clear local Branch Press preferences by clearing site data in your browser.
You can avoid sending direct personal information by not emailing or otherwise contacting Branch Press.
You can contact Branch Press if you have a privacy question or a rights request.
## Changes to this policy
This policy may be revised as Branch Press develops.
Material changes, especially the introduction of features that collect personal information directly from readers, should be reflected on this page before those features are made public.
The “Last updated” date above indicates when this policy was most recently revised.
## Contact
For privacy questions, rights requests, copyright concerns, takedown requests, or general Branch Press inquiries, contact:
[email protected]
This contact address should be enabled before the legal pages are treated as final public notices. More specialized addresses may be introduced later, such as privacy, legal, submissions, or support addresses, if the project expands.