Privacy Policy

An anonymous visitor ID

When you visit, we set a first-party cookie with a random, anonymous visitor ID. It is not tied to your name or email unless you separately sign in. It powers the "catch-up" feature (roughly when you last visited, so we can show what's new) and remembers which topics you follow and your quiz results. With analytics cookies on, it also records which topics you read. If a share card or a weekly brief brought you here, we record which channel it was (WhatsApp, Facebook or email) against that same ID — never the specific link or message.

Account information

If you sign in, we use Google, GitHub, Facebook or X (formerly Twitter). We receive your name, email address and profile photo from the provider you choose and store them to identify your account. We never receive your password.

Comments and votes

Comments can carry a nickname you choose; we never require your real name. Votes and comments are tied to the anonymous ID in your browser. To apply rate limits and stop abuse we keep a one-way hash of your IP address, never the address itself; the hash cannot be turned back into it.

Fact checks (“এটা কি সত্যি?”) and the Telegram bot

When you ask whether a claim is true, on the site or by messaging our Telegram bot, we store the claim's text (or link), its language, the answer we gave, and how many times it has been asked — not who asked it. To answer, the claim is sent to the AI providers and to Google Fact Check Tools listed below. Claims asked by several people may appear, without anything about who asked, on the public "rumour radar"; moderators can keep any claim off it. Please don't put personal details about yourself or others into a claim.

Feedback on AI summaries

When you tell us whether a summary was helpful, we store your answer, the reason you pick, and any words you add, tied to a one-way hash of your browser's anonymous ID (so one browser counts once) — not to your identity. Moderators read the words to fix summaries.

Problem reports

A report you send from the contact page stores your message, the page you came from, your browser type, a hashed IP address and, only if you give one, your email address. Screenshots you attach (signed-in readers) are re-encoded, stripped of location and other hidden data, kept in our database, and seen only by moderators.

Daily quiz and leagues

We store your answers, score and time with your anonymous ID or account. If you choose a district for the district league we store it with your results. Private leagues need an account: if you create or join one we store its name and members, and anyone with the league's link can see its members' names and scores.

Following topics and notifications

We store the topics you follow. If you are signed in and turn on notifications, your browser gives us a push subscription (an address at your browser maker's push service and its keys), stored with your account and used only to send you updates; turning notifications off deletes it. Signed-in readers can also get email updates, sent through Resend.

Weekly brief subscription

If you sign up for the Friday weekly brief we store the email address or phone number you give, the channel and your delivery preferences. We confirm before sending anything (double opt-in), and every message has a one-click way to stop.

Analytics and advertising

We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used (including whether it was opened from the installed app) and Google AdSense to show ads. In the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, neither sets cookies or requests ads until you accept them in the banner shown on your first visit. Everywhere else, including Bangladesh, they are on by default and you can turn them off at any time under "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page. We never pass your email, phone number or visitor ID to Google; analytics events only say things like which page loaded, which button was pressed or which topic was involved.

Kept only on your device

Your language, layout and theme, your votes and your answers to summaries, your quiz progress and your cookie choice are kept in your browser (local storage or cookies). They stay there, except where this policy says they are sent to us.

• To show you what's changed since your last visit and run the catch-up reader.
• To answer fact-check questions, and to show which claims are circulating on the rumour radar.
• To let you comment, vote, follow topics, play the quiz and join leagues.
• To improve AI summaries and fix problems you report.
• To send the notifications and weekly brief you asked for.
• To detect and limit abuse (spam, scraping, excessive requests).
• To understand, in aggregate, which features and share channels are used, and to serve ads — as described above.

We don't sell your information. We use these services to run the site, each for a specific purpose:

• Google Analytics & AdSense — usage analytics and ads, as described above.
• AI providers (Google Gemini, Groq, Z.AI, Mistral, Cloudflare Workers AI) — they receive news headlines and excerpts to group and summarise stories, and the claims you ask to have checked. They receive no account details or visitor IDs.
• Google Fact Check Tools — the claims you ask about, to find published fact-checks.
• Microsoft Azure — reads news summaries aloud for the audio bulletin and videos (public news text only).
• Google, GitHub, Facebook, X — identity providers, only if you sign in with them.
• Telegram — if you message our fact-check bot, Telegram carries the messages.
• Resend — sends email: the weekly brief and follow updates.
• WhatsApp (Meta) — sends the weekly brief and its confirmation, if you subscribed by WhatsApp.
• Upstash — short-lived caching and rate limiting.
• Vercel (hosting), Supabase (database) and Cloudflare (network, and storage for audio and video files) — they store and serve the data above on our behalf.

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety or property of Kimisskorlam, our users or the public.

Some cookies are essential and are set regardless of consent: the anonymous visitor ID, a per-article marker (valid for 24 hours) that stops one reader's repeat visits from inflating view counts, your quiz progress, your language and layout, a one-hour marker of whether your country needs a cookie banner (from your country, not your location), and your cookie choice itself. Analytics and advertising cookies follow the rules in "Analytics and advertising" above. You can change your choice at any time from "Cookie settings", as easily as you made it.

The anonymous visitor cookie is valid for one year. Account, comment, follow, quiz and subscription data is kept for as long as your account, subscription or the feature is in use. If you unsubscribe from the weekly brief we stop immediately and keep only enough to honor that choice. Fact-check questions, summary feedback and problem reports are kept while they help us answer repeated questions and fix mistakes; we don't delete them automatically yet. You can ask us to delete any of your data at any time — see "Contact us" below.

• Turn analytics and advertising cookies on or off at any time under "Cookie settings".
• Turn notifications off in the app or your browser; unsubscribe from the weekly brief with one click or by replying STOP on WhatsApp.
• Leave a private league, or stop following a topic, at any time.
• Ask us what information we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it, by contacting us below.
• Ask us to delete your account — there is no self-service deletion yet, so this is handled by request.

Kimisskorlam is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we'll remove it.

Kimisskorlam is built for readers in Bangladesh, and the services above may process and store data outside Bangladesh. By using the service, you understand your information may be transferred to and processed in other countries, which may have different data-protection rules than where you live.

We update this policy as the service changes, and change the date at the top of this page when we do; significant changes will be highlighted on the site.

Questions about this policy, or requests about your data: privacy@kimisskorlam.com.