Legal
Privacy
We collect the minimum needed to run an account and a forum, and we do not sell any of it. There are no advertising trackers, no analytics scripts, and no third-party pixels on this site.
This page describes what exists today. It is written in plain language on purpose.
What we collect
Two categories, and nothing else worth calling a category.
- Account data: your email address, a hashed password, your username, and anything optional you choose to add to your profile such as a display name, a bio, a field of research, and an avatar.
- Content data: the threads, replies, votes, reports, and reference desk conversations you create, along with their timestamps.
What we do not collect
We do not run analytics. There is no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no session recorder, and no advertising identifier anywhere in the codebase.
We do not ask for your real name, your date of birth, your phone number, or your location, and there is nowhere to enter them.
Cookies
The site sets session cookies so that you stay signed in. That is the entire cookie set. They are strictly necessary, they are not shared, and clearing them signs you out.
Because there are no tracking cookies, there is no consent banner. A banner that asks permission to do nothing is theatre.
Who your data is shared with
Three processors, each doing one job:
- Supabase hosts the database, authentication, and file storage. Your account and your posts live there.
- A third-party language model provider processes reference desk conversations. The question you type is sent to that provider so it can be understood and answered. Your email address and your account identifier are not sent with it.
- The Internet Archive and OpenAlex receive catalogue search strings derived from your question. They receive the search terms, not your identity.
What is public
Your username, your profile, and everything you post in the forum are public and visible to anyone, signed in or not. Search engines can index them.
Your email address is never shown to other users. Your reference desk conversations are private to your account and are not published anywhere.
How long we keep it
Account and content data are kept until you delete them. Rate limiting keeps a short-lived counter against your account, measured in hours.
Deleting your account removes your profile and your account record immediately. Posts that other people have replied to are anonymised rather than removed, because deleting one side of a conversation destroys the other person's contribution too.
Your rights
You can see everything we hold about you from your settings page and your profile, correct it there, and delete your account there without asking anyone.
If you want a copy of your data in a file, or you want something removed that you cannot remove yourself, write to contact@centuriesuntold.com.
Security
Passwords are hashed by Supabase and never stored in readable form. Access to your rows is enforced by database-level row security rather than by application checks, so a bug in a page cannot expose another account's data.
Uploaded images are re-encoded on the server, which strips EXIF metadata including any GPS coordinates your camera recorded.
Children
This site is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly hold data belonging to one.
This is a plain-language description of how the site works, written by the people who built it. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer and is not a substitute for legal advice.