Your data and how it is handled
Privacy policy
1. Who is responsible
Hamsterra (hamsterra.com) is a free platform for advance review copies (“ARCs”). It is operated by Cat and box LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales, number OC458074, registered office 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom (“we”, “us”). We are registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under number ZC005311.
We are the controller of the personal data described in this policy. When you apply to or take part in an author's campaign, the author receives the information listed in section 4, decides about your application and uses that information to run their campaign. For the information they receive, the author is a separate controller, responsible under data protection law for their own use of it, including any copy they export. Our Terms of use and acceptable use rules limit what authors may do with it.
Hamsterra sends every email on the platform, including ARC invitations, which we send on an author's behalf. For an author's contact list and the invitations sent to it, we act on the author's instructions: the author decides which campaigns to invite their contacts to and when. We remain responsible ourselves, as the sender and operator of the platform, for security, preventing abuse and spam, honouring unsubscribes, sending limits and approving authors before they can send invitations. If you choose to join an author's reader list, the author may export your name and email address and email you from their own email service; for that mailing the author is a separate controller, responsible for having your consent, for their own sending and for honouring your unsubscribe.
We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer. For any privacy question or request, email privacy@hamsterra.com with “Privacy request” in the subject line, or write to us at the address above.
2. Data we collect
Account
- Your email address and, if you give one, your display name.
- If you upload one, your profile photo. It appears in your own account menu and, if you also have an author profile, as the public picture on your author page.
- If you set a password, a salted one-way hash of it (never the password itself). Sign-in codes, password-reset links and session tokens are stored only as hashes. When you set a password, we check it against known data breaches using Have I Been Pwned. Only the first 5 characters of a one-way hash of the password leave our servers.
- If you use “Continue with Google”: the Google account identifier, the email address Google returns and whether Google verified it, and your name from Google as the display name for a new account. We do not receive your Google password or contacts.
- Session records (when they were created, last used and how you signed in) the version of the Terms of use you accepted and of this Privacy policy you were shown when you created the account.
- Whether you chose to receive the Hamsterra newsletter: each time you subscribe or unsubscribe, when it happened, where (the sign-up form or Account settings) and the version of the wording you saw.
Applications and participation
- Your name and email address, your answers to the author's application form, the review platforms you list, and the agreements you accept, with their versions and time. You can apply as a guest without an account; we then confirm your email with a one-time code.
- Your choices in the two optional boxes on the application form: whether you want invitations to the author's future ARC campaigns, and whether you want to join the author's reader list. We record a choice only after your email address is confirmed (with a code or a verified account), together with the version of the wording you saw, the time and the application it came from, and we record when you withdraw it.
- Your participation status, the dates you get access, which personalised copies were prepared for you and when you downloaded them.
- Results you report: review links, optional review text, whether you finished the book, and private feedback for the author, with the history of changes.
Author mailing lists
- When you join an author's mailing list with Join mailing list on their author page: your email address (and, with an account, your name), the version of the wording you saw, the time, and whether a one-time code confirmed your address (as a guest). We record when you leave the list.
Authors' blocked readers
- An author can keep a private list of email addresses and whole domains whose requests to that author are declined. If your address is on it: the address, when it was added and how (typed in, imported, from one of their campaigns or from their contacts). Only that author sees the list. We use it only to decline your requests to that author and to keep you off their contacts and mailing list. An author who writes under several pen names keeps a list for each of them, and can choose to add an address to the lists of all their pen names at once.
Free books
- When you request an author's free book: your email address, your first name if you give one, the choices you ticked, when you requested the book, when you confirmed your address and when you last downloaded it, and which personalised copies were prepared for you.
- The versions of the Terms of use, the acceptable use rules and this Privacy policy you accepted with your latest request, and when.
- The free book page has the same two optional boxes as an application form. We record a choice only after you open the link we email you, which confirms your address, together with the version of the wording you saw, the time and the request it came from.
- If you choose a book in a group giveaway: the giveaway, the book you chose and, if you arrived through an author's tracking link, which link. We keep this with your email address so that each address chooses one book per giveaway. We also keep a matching key made from your address, so that spellings that reach the same inbox (for example a Gmail address with dots or a "+" tag) count as one reader, and a keyed hash of your IP address, used only to limit how many choices from one network count towards authors' giveaway ratings. Authors see neither.
Authors
- Your public author profile (pen name, biography, website and links, picture), books, covers, campaign settings and texts, application forms, email templates and schedules. If you write under several pen names, we keep this for each of them, and which pen names belong to your account and which one you are working as. Readers and other authors are not shown which pen names share an account.
- Your answer to the AI use question for each book and the date you gave it, shown on the book page, and a record of your earlier answers.
- Book files you upload. Original files are kept privately and are never given to readers.
- An excerpt you add to a book: its text and label, whether it is published, and when you confirmed you hold the rights to publish it, with the Terms version then in force. A published excerpt is public. If you import it from an EPUB or PDF, the file is read on your device and never sent to us; only the text you save is.
- Your contact list: the readers who chose, on one of your application forms or your free book page, to receive your ARC invitations, or who joined your reader list from your author page, with the record of their choice and, for a free book, a tag with its title. Authors cannot upload or type in contacts; the list is built only from readers who opt in on Hamsterra.
- Copy checks you run and their results.
- Book details and covers you import. When you import a book, we look up its details and cover on Open Library and Hardcover using the book's ISBN, ASIN or Goodreads ID. We do not send your Hamsterra account details with these lookups.
- For each pen name that takes part in group giveaways: the result of every ended giveaway (readers brought, choices of your book, visitors and points) and the giveaway rating and level they give. Other signed-in authors see the level and points.
Following authors
Which authors you follow while signed in.
Your book tags
The tags you create in My ARCs and the books you put them on. Only you can see them: authors, other readers and visitors never do, and they do not change your participation.
Paid plans
If you buy a paid plan: your plan, billing period, subscription status and renewal date; the amounts paid, refunded or disputed and their dates; the customer, subscription, invoice, refund and dispute identifiers that Stripe gives us, with the dispute reason code where Stripe supplies one; the versions of the terms you accepted at checkout and the time you asked for the plan to start straight away. We do not receive or store your card details. Link, which takes the payment, collects your name, email address, billing address, payment details and any tax ID itself (see section 7).
Records of the emails we send to you (type, time, the details filled into the message and the delivery status reported by our email provider, such as delivered, bounced or complained) and your email preferences, including unsubscribes.
Support messages
Messages you send through the help form or as a support request from your account, with your email address, and any images or PDF files you attach. We remove location and other metadata from attached images.
Security data
We check email addresses against a list of temporary and disposable email domains and do not accept such addresses for new accounts, guest applications or free book requests, or send invitations to them.
To limit abuse we count requests per email address and per IP address over short time windows. These counters store only a keyed hash, not the address itself, and are deleted after one day. The same counters let us count views of a free book page: the page sends one request after it loads, and we count at most one view per IP address every 30 minutes. Group giveaway pages are counted the same way when the page is shown. Public book, ARC campaign and author pages send one request after they are shown, with the page and where the visit came from (the address of the site you came from, without the rest of its link, and whether the link carried a sharing tag). To count each visitor once per page and day, we keep a keyed hash of your IP address, made with a key that changes every day; the hashes and keys are deleted after 48 hours, and an ARC request made the same or the next day is counted under the same source. We do not count the page's own author while signed in, link previews or known automated visitors. Forms protected by Cloudflare Turnstile send your IP address to Cloudflare for the check. Our hosting provider processes IP addresses and request details to deliver and secure the service.
Our application logs record technical events, such as the page requested, the outcome of a background job or an error, and security events, such as sign-ins, sign-outs and refused or blocked requests, with internal identifiers and the country a request came from. They never contain passwords, codes, tokens, full email addresses, application answers or feedback; for a sign-in, the email address is replaced by a one-way code that lets us spot repeated attempts on one address. Cloudflare keeps these logs for up to 7 days, and a copy goes to our own monitoring server, rented from Hetzner in Germany, which also keeps it for up to 7 days.
Free book and group giveaway pages keep only anonymous hourly counts for authors (see section 4). For author statistics we keep only anonymous daily totals for each pen name: visits by source, ARC requests, confirmations, approvals, first downloads and first reviews, free book requests and downloads, and new opt-ins. They hold no address, name or IP address, and no reader can be picked out from them. We do not use third-party analytics, advertising or tracking tools, and no cookie or browser storage is used to count views or visits. See the Cookie policy.
3. Why we use it and on what legal basis
| Purpose | Legal basis (UK GDPR) |
|---|---|
| Creating and running your account, signing you in, handling applications, issuing copies, recording results and sending the emails a campaign needs (codes, application decisions, access, reminders, file updates) | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): providing the service you asked for |
| Showing the public pages an author publishes (profile, books, excerpts, campaigns) and keeping the author's confirmation that they hold the rights to publish an excerpt | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): providing the service the author asked for |
| Delivering a free book you requested: preparing your copy and emailing your download link | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): providing the service you asked for |
| Paid plans: starting, renewing, changing and cancelling your plan, applying its limits, and dealing with refunds and payment questions | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): providing the plan you bought |
| Keeping billing records for tax and accounting | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
| Matching payments and refunds to plans, preventing refund fraud and dealing with payment disputes and legal claims | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): ours, in being paid correctly and defending claims |
| Personalising each copy with your name and a copy ID, and letting the author check a copy found elsewhere | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): ours and the rights holder's, in checking the issuance of copies and protecting authors' unpublished work and copyright. You are told about this before you apply and before you download. |
| Personalising each free copy with your email address and a copy ID, and letting the author check a copy found elsewhere | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): ours and the rights holder's, in checking the issuance of copies and protecting the author's work and copyright. You are told about this before you download. |
| Sending you invitations to an author's future ARC campaigns, on the author's behalf, when you asked for them on an application form or a free book page | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), as the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (regulation 22) require. The box is optional and unticked, and you can apply or get the book without it. You can unsubscribe at any time |
| Letting an author export your name and email address for their own reader list, when you asked to join it on an application form, a free book page or the author's page (Join mailing list) | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). The box is optional and unticked, and you can apply or get the book without it. On the author's page you confirm in a separate step, and a guest confirms their address with a code first. You can withdraw at any time on your email preferences page or the author's page |
| Applying an author's blocked readers list: declining your applications and free book requests to that author with their usual email, and keeping you off their contacts and mailing list | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): the author's interest in choosing who receives their unpublished books and who is on their lists, and preventing abuse of their campaigns |
| Recording your choice to receive the Hamsterra newsletter | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), as the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (regulation 22) require for marketing email. The box is optional and unticked; you can withdraw at any time in Account settings |
| Security, preventing abuse and spam, rate limits, bounce and complaint handling, and anonymous counts for an author's free book page and for group giveaways | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Anonymous daily statistics for authors about visits to their book, ARC campaign and author pages, where visits came from, ARC requests, downloads and opt-ins, so they can see what brings readers; this includes the short-lived keyed hash of your IP address used to count a visitor once a day | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): helping authors understand interest in their books, with only daily totals kept. You can object through Support |
| Working out authors' giveaway ratings and the number of group giveaways an account can be in, and stopping those ratings from being inflated | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): fair giveaways for the authors taking part |
| Answering support requests and complaints | Legitimate interests, or contract where it concerns your use of the service |
| Keeping records of consents, accepted terms and audit events | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) and legitimate interests (showing what was agreed) |
We do not sell your data or use it for advertising, and we do not build profiles about readers. For authors, the giveaway rating evaluates the results of their group giveaways by the formula published in Help, and on Stash and Hoard it sets how many giveaways an account can be in at a time. It is worked out automatically; you can ask us through Support to review it, and a person will look at it. No decision with legal or similarly significant effects is made about you by automated means alone. Some email protections are automatic (for example, an address that hard-bounced is not emailed again), and a spam complaint can pause an author's invitations until a person reviews it.
4. What authors can see
When you apply to or take part in a campaign, its author can see:
- your name, email address, application answers, review platforms and the agreements you accepted;
- your participation and access status, and whether your copy was downloaded;
- your reported results, review links and private feedback for that campaign;
- problem reports you send about your copy, which are also emailed to the author;
- whether you asked to follow them when you applied;
- whether you asked to receive their ARC invitations or to join their reader list;
- if they run a copy check on a file found elsewhere, whether its copy ID belongs to a copy issued to you in any of their campaigns.
Authors see your name and email address so they can run the campaign: decide on your application, deliver your personalised copy, follow up on your review and handle problem reports. They can export participants (with your answers) and results (including your email address and private feedback) of their own campaigns as CSV files. They cannot see your password, your participation in other authors' campaigns, or which other authors you follow. One author may write under several pen names; they see your details in the campaigns of each of their pen names, and each pen name keeps its own contacts. Apart from requests made when applying, authors see only how many people follow them, not who.
If you request an author's free book, the author sees you only if you tick one of the two boxes, or if a copy check matches your copy (section 5). If you tick a box, your first name (if you gave one), email address and choice appear in their contacts, tagged with the free book's title. Otherwise the author sees only anonymous hourly counts for the page: views, requests, confirmed addresses, downloads and how many people ticked each box. If the author deletes the free book, its page, readers' requests and links, personal copies and counts are deleted; contacts and consent records created from it stay with the author. If the author ends the free book, your link keeps working.
In a group giveaway, your request goes only to the author of the book you choose, as above, and their contacts tag also names the giveaway. The other authors in the giveaway see only anonymous hourly counts for each author's tracking link: visitors, books chosen, confirmed addresses and how many people ticked each box. If your free book request is deleted, your choice in the giveaway is erased with it.
An author must use the details of a campaign only to run that campaign, and must not add you to a mailing list unless you chose to join their reader list: by ticking the box on a form, or with Join mailing list on their author page. If you asked only for ARC invitations, the author can have them sent to you through Hamsterra and cannot use your address for anything else. An author may use the result of a copy check only to protect their rights in that book. If you joined their reader list, the author can export your name and email address and email you from their own email service, for example with book news; they are then responsible for that mailing, including its unsubscribe link. We may suspend an author who breaks these rules (see the acceptable use rules).
5. Personalised copies
Every EPUB and PDF issued to you in a campaign carries a visible line with the name you gave and a random copy ID, for example “Advance review copy • Issued to: your name • Copy ID: … • Not for redistribution”. The copy ID is also stored in the file's metadata. Your email address is not printed. Only our servers keep the link between a copy ID and you.
A copy of an author's free book carries a visible line with your email address and a random copy ID: “Free copy • Made for: your email address • Copy ID: … • Not for redistribution”. The copy ID is also stored in the file's metadata.
An author can upload a file found outside Hamsterra to check its marks against our retained issuance records. The check is limited to copies issued through that author's own campaigns or free book offers. For an ARC, it may show the Copy ID and the associated participant record, including the participant's name while that information remains available. For a free book, it may show the recipient's email address unless the request has been erased.
After the relevant reader data has been deleted, an ARC check may return a limited record labelled “Deleted reader”, as described in sections 8 and 9. This record does not provide the deleted reader's name, email address or a link to their former profile.
We rely on our and the rights holder's legitimate interests under Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR in checking the issuance of copies and protecting copyright, subject to necessity and a balancing of the reader's rights.
A matching Copy ID indicates a match with an issuance record. It does not establish that the entire submitted file is authentic, that the recipient received the complete file, or who distributed it. The download date a check shows is when our server first sent the whole file; it does not show that the reader saved or opened it. Nobody is banned automatically because of a match. The uploaded file is deleted after the check.
You may object to this processing on grounds relating to your particular situation by contacting privacy@hamsterra.com.
6. Email and unsubscribing
Hamsterra sends all email on the platform, except Link's payment emails (see below). We send email you need for the service: sign-in and security codes, password resets, application and access updates, reminders an author scheduled for their campaign and notices of updated files. We also send ARC invitations on an author's behalf, only to readers who asked for that author's invitations on an application form or a free book page. Every email names Hamsterra, Cat and box LLP and our postal address, and every invitation says that Hamsterra sends it on the author's behalf.
If you have a paid plan, we also email you about it: when it starts, changes or ends, when a payment fails, and before a yearly renewal. Link sends payment receipts, invoices and refund notices itself, and may send its own payment and renewal notices.
Invitations and campaign reminders include a one-click unsubscribe link and the standard unsubscribe header, which work without signing in. On your email preferences page you can stop invitations from one author, turn off campaign reminders, stop invitations from all authors on Hamsterra, or leave an author's reader list. You can also leave a list on the author's page with the same confirmation you joined it with. After you leave a reader list, the author's future exports no longer include you and the author must honour your choice in their own email service; if they already exported your address, also use the unsubscribe link in their emails. We keep a minimal record of your email address and your choice, even after a contact is deleted, so you are not emailed again. Sign-in codes and security messages you request are still sent.
When you request a free book, we email you a personal download link. You asked for this email, so we send it even if you unsubscribed from other Hamsterra emails, unless your address hard-bounced. It includes a link to your email preferences. The download link does not expire; it stops working when the author deletes the free book or your data is erased, and does not work while we have suspended the author.
Emails an author sends to their reader list from their own email service are not sent by Hamsterra. The author is responsible for them.
The Hamsterra newsletter is optional. You get it only if you tick its box when you create an account or subscribe in Account settings, and you can unsubscribe there at any time in one step. Unsubscribing does not stop the emails about your account, applications and campaigns.
Following an author does not subscribe you to any email.
7. Service providers and international transfers
We use these providers to run Hamsterra. They process data on our instructions:
| Provider | What for | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Hosting (Workers), database (D1), file storage (R2), job queues (Queues), network security and the Turnstile check | All the data in this policy; IP address and request details |
| Amazon Web Services, Inc. (Amazon SES), United States (US East, N. Virginia) | Sending email and reporting delivery, bounces and complaints | Email address, name and the content of the email |
| Hetzner Online GmbH, Germany (data processing agreement) | The servers that run our own media processing service and our monitoring of application logs | Book files; the name (or, for a free copy, the email address) and copy ID printed in a personalised copy; profile photos, author pictures and covers, to make display sizes; public page text, for site search; application logs (see section 2) |
| Zoho Corporation (Zoho Mail), United States | Our mailboxes: messages you send to support@, security@ and other hamsterra.com addresses, and notifications of support requests | Email address, name and what you write to us |
Book files are personalised by our own processing service, which runs on a server we rent from Hetzner in Germany. It reads the original file, the name you gave (or, for a free copy, your email address) and the copy ID from our Cloudflare storage, writes the personalised copy back there and keeps no copy of the files afterwards. The same service makes the display sizes of profile photos, author pictures and covers, and builds the site search index from public page text, in the same way. Its logs never contain names, email addresses, copy IDs or file contents. Hetzner processes this data for us under its data processing agreement (Article 28 UK GDPR), within the European Economic Area. Transfers from the United Kingdom to the EEA are covered by the UK's adequacy regulations for the EEA.
If you choose “Continue with Google”, Google LLC acts as an independent identity provider under its own privacy policy; we receive only the details listed in section 2. For the Turnstile check, Cloudflare also uses the signals it collects, as a separate controller, to improve its bot detection, as its Turnstile privacy addendum explains.
Paid plans are paid through Link (called Onelink in the UK), a Stripe service. For its payment and buyer services Stripe acts as a controller independently of us; for buyers in the UK and the European Economic Area, Stripe Technology Company Limited in Ireland is primarily responsible. Stripe processes your data internationally, including in the United States, under the safeguards its privacy policy describes, such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension and standard contractual clauses. Stripe sends us the payment records listed in section 2.
Your data is processed outside the UK in these cases, each covered by a safeguard recognised by UK data protection law:
- Cloudflare runs a global network, and Amazon SES sends our email from the United States. Both Cloudflare, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc. are certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which the UK recognises as adequate under the Data Protection (Adequacy) (United States of America) Regulations 2023. Their data processing terms with us also include the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, which applies if that certification stops covering a transfer.
- Germany is in the European Economic Area, which UK law treats as providing adequate protection.
- If EU or EEA data protection law applies to your data, transfers to Cloudflare and Amazon in the United States rely on the European Commission's adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework of 10 July 2023 and, as a fallback, the EU standard contractual clauses; transfers to the UK rely on the Commission's adequacy decision for the United Kingdom.
You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards at any time.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, to protect people's rights and safety, or to a buyer of the service, who would have to respect this policy.
8. How long we keep data
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Sign-in codes, reset links and expired sessions | 1 day after they expire or are used |
| Rate-limit counters (hashed) | 1 day |
| Keyed hashes of IP addresses for counting page visits, and their daily keys | 48 hours |
| Guest applications whose email was never confirmed | 7 days |
| Paid plan and billing records (section 2) | 6 years after the end of the financial year they relate to, also after you delete your account, for tax and accounting and to deal with legal claims |
| Personalised copy files | Files are kept for 7 days after access ends, subject to the deletion rules in section 9. Issuance records are retained only while necessary for the stated purposes. After account or participation-data deletion, the limited ARC record is subject to the six-month maximum described below. |
| Limited ARC issuance records remaining after account or participation-data deletion | Up to six calendar months from that deletion, or less if no longer necessary or an earlier erasure request is granted. Copy checks do not extend this period. Necessary material for a specific legal claim or applicable legal obligation is handled separately under section 9. |
| Free book requests and download links, and your choice in a group giveaway | Until the author deletes the free book, you delete the request or your data is erased; the record left after erasure, without your address, is deleted six calendar months later |
| Free copy files | 7 days after your last download (or after the copy was prepared, if you never downloaded it), and made again when you open your link; when the free book is deleted or your data is erased, they can no longer be downloaded and are deleted from storage shortly after |
| Anonymous counts for a free book page | Until the author deletes the free book |
| Anonymous counts for a group giveaway | Kept with the giveaway |
| Anonymous daily statistics for a pen name | 60 days on the Free plan, 12 months on Stash and Hoard; deleted with the pen name or the account |
| The keyed hash of your IP address with a group giveaway choice | 30 days after the giveaway ends or is cancelled |
| Giveaway results and ratings of an author's pen name | Until the pen name or your account is deleted |
| Files uploaded for a copy check | Deleted after the check |
| Your book tags | Until you delete them or your account; a book’s tags go when it leaves My ARCs |
| Support messages from the help form | 180 days |
| Support requests from your account, with their messages and attachments | 180 days after the request is closed |
| Unsubscribe, complaint and bounce records, withdrawals of invitation and reader-list choices, and the addresses counted against an author's limits | Kept, so we do not email you again |
| An entry on an author's blocked readers list | Until the author removes it or deletes their account, also after you delete your own account, so the author's choice still applies |
| Your choice to receive an author's invitations or join their reader list, including one made on a free book page or the author's page | While you are on the author's contact list; a withdrawal is kept as above |
| Deleted accounts | Personal data erased at deletion; see section 9 for the limited records that remain |
| Book excerpts and the record of your rights confirmation | Until you delete the excerpt, the book or your account; unpublishing removes the public page at once |
| Accounts, author profiles, campaigns, applications, participation, results and audit records | While the account or campaign exists; see below |
| Records of the emails we sent you (your address and the email's content) | 30 days for sign-in codes and reset links, 90 days for other emails; after that we keep only the delivery status, without your address |
| Application logs | Up to 7 days |
We keep records of campaigns, applications, participation, results, downloads and audit events while the author's account and the campaign exist, because authors and readers rely on them to run a campaign and to check copies, and because they show what was agreed and done. We keep them after that only for as long as we need them to deal with a complaint, a dispute or a legal claim. You can ask us to delete or anonymise your records earlier; we will do so unless the law or a dispute requires us to keep them, and we will tell you if that is the case.
If an author removes you from their contacts, we delete that contact record, its consents and automatic tags 30 days later. We keep a note that you opted out, so you are not contacted again.
9. Deleting your account
You can delete your account in Settings. Deletion takes effect at once and cannot be undone. We erase your email address, display name, password, Google sign-in link, sessions, follows, book tags, sign-in and reset links, support messages and requests with their attachments, and queued emails, and your email address becomes free for a new, unrelated account.
When you delete your account or erase your participation data, we remove your name, email address, application answers, review-platform handles, private feedback, problem reports, review text and review links from the affected participation records. Your access ends and your personalised copy files are deleted as described in this policy. Deleting your account covers your applications and participations in your own name and as a guest with the same address. Your free book requests are erased too: your download links stop working and your free copies are deleted.
If you have a paid plan, deleting your account ends it, as the Paid plans terms describe. Your billing records stay for the period in section 8, and Link keeps its own records under its privacy policy.
For an ARC, we may retain a limited issuance record containing the Copy ID, book and campaign identifiers, the recorded issuance date and, if our server sent the whole file, the date it first did. We also retain the administrative dates needed to apply its deletion deadline. The record does not retain your name, email address, review URL or a link to your former profile or identifying participation record. An author's check may display it as “Deleted reader”.
We retain this limited record for no longer than six calendar months after the account or relevant participation data is deleted, solely to check whether a mark on a subsequently found file matches an ARC issuance record. A later copy check does not restart this period. The record contains no recipient identifier and no internal link to the recipient.
We do not assume that a record is anonymous merely because it is labelled “Deleted reader”. Where it remains personal data, it remains subject to applicable data protection rights.
These rules apply equally to registered readers and guests. Erased free book requests are covered at the end of this section.
If you have an author profile, deleting the account also takes it down: the author, book and campaign pages and your free book page are removed from the site and search, running campaigns are stopped, scheduled emails and invitations are cancelled, readers lose access, and your book files, personalised copies, free book requests, contact list, the consent records attached to it, blocked readers list and avatar are deleted or erased. Copies readers already downloaded stay on their own devices; we cannot recall them. Book and campaign titles stay, under "Deleted author", in readers' participation history.
Deleting one pen name does the same for that pen name only: its pages, books, files, campaigns, contact list and blocked readers list go, and readers' follows of it are removed. Your account and your other pen names stay.
We keep only what we need to prove what happened or to protect you and others: the record that the account existed and was deleted, which version of these terms and this policy it accepted and when, unsubscribe, complaint and bounce records (so we never email the address again), and entries on authors' blocked readers lists (so their choice still applies). Deleting your account also removes your address from every author's contact list and withdraws your opt-ins. This covers the addresses you used before an email change too, unless another account uses that address now. To leave one author's invitations or reader list without deleting your account, use your email preferences page or ask us. If an author already exported your address for their reader list, that copy is theirs: use the unsubscribe link in their emails or ask them to remove you.
If you applied as a guest without an account, you can delete your data for a campaign yourself: open the personal link from your Hamsterra email and choose "Delete my data" under "Your data". This erases the same data as above for that campaign, also deletes the review links you submitted there, withdraws the choices you ticked on that application to hear from the author (your address leaves their contact list unless another choice keeps it there), stops downloads and ends your guest links at once. As above, the participation record stays without your details, the limited ARC issuance record remains, and we keep unsubscribe and bounce records. You can also ask us to do it by email.
You can delete a free book request yourself, whether or not you have an account: open the download page from the link we emailed you and choose "Delete my data". This erases the request, your name and email address, the download link, which stops working at once, and your free copies, which are deleted from storage shortly after. It also withdraws the choices you made with that request to receive the author's invitations or join their reader list, and removes the free book's tag from your entry in the author's contacts. The entry itself is deleted unless you gave the author another choice that is still active, for example on an application form. We keep only a record without your address of the copy IDs issued and the versions of our terms you accepted, and delete it six calendar months after the erasure; we keep unsubscribe and bounce records. You can also ask us to do it by email.
Where particular information is necessary to establish, exercise or defend a specific legal claim, or to comply with an applicable legal obligation, we may preserve only the necessary material separately for as long as that ground continues to apply. A hypothetical future complaint does not justify indefinite retention.
You may request earlier erasure or object to processing based on legitimate interests. We assess requests under Articles 17 and 21 UK GDPR and explain any refusal. The six-month period is a maximum routine period, not an automatic reason to reject an erasure request.
10. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy;
- have inaccurate data corrected (you can change your name and email address in Settings);
- have your data erased, or its use restricted, in the cases the law provides (you can delete a free book request yourself, see section 9);
- object to our use of your data based on legitimate interests;
- receive data you gave us in a portable format;
- withdraw consent where we rely on it, unsubscribe from invitations and leave an author's reader list at any time.
Email privacy@hamsterra.com. We may ask you to confirm your email address. We answer within one month, which the law lets us extend in some cases. For data an author holds about you, you can also contact the author.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first. You also have the right to complain to the UK supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113. If you live in the EU or EEA you can also complain to your local data protection authority.
11. Children
Hamsterra is not intended for children. You must be at least 18 to create an account or apply to a campaign, including campaigns for young adult books. If we learn that someone under 18 has given us data, we will close their account or application and delete the data.
12. Security
Traffic is encrypted with HTTPS. Book files and copies are stored privately and every download is checked against your access. Passwords and tokens are stored as hashes, and session cookies cannot be read by scripts. To report a vulnerability, see the vulnerability disclosure policy.
13. Changes to this policy
Each version of this policy has a version number and effective date at the top. We record which version was in force when you created your account, applied to a campaign or requested a free book. If we make a significant change, we will tell account holders by email or on the site at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless it is needed sooner for legal or security reasons.
Where a significant change affects guests whose personal data we still lawfully hold, we notify those affected guests as well as account holders. We do not restore erased contact details for this purpose. Changes do not automatically extend an existing retention period or authorise previously undisclosed processing.