Privacy policy

Effective date: 21 October 2026

Who is responsible

Chip-in, at chipin.com, is published by ChipIn, 38 Goldsmiths Row, London E2 8QA, United Kingdom. We are the controller responsible for the personal data described here. Contact us through our contact page.

Our service providers run the site, reader accounts, and newsletter on our behalf. This policy covers readers of Chip-in.

What we collect and why

Your account and reading features

When you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, email-verification status, profile picture URL, and Google's identifier for your account. We also store the login provider, authentication tokens and expiry information, account timestamps, and a terms-version field. The requested Google permissions cover identity, email, and basic profile information. They do not give us access to your Gmail messages, contacts, calendar, or Drive files.

We use this information to create and secure the account you request. We store the stories you save and when you saved them, and the authors, tags and categories you follow and when you followed them, so you can find them on another device. While you are signed in and read an article, we store how far you have read in it, the language version, the section you reached, and when you last read or finished it, so you can resume where you stopped. This processing is necessary to provide the account service under our contract with you. Without the required sign-in information, we cannot provide an account. You can read public articles without one.

Creating an account does not subscribe you to a newsletter.

Your account belongs to Chip-in. Signing in does not create an account anywhere else.

Site operation and security

Our delivery infrastructure receives your IP address, browser request information, requested URLs, and request times to serve the site. We use IP addresses for abuse prevention and request limits. Reader session records do not store your IP address or browser user agent. Persistent reader rate-limit records use hashed identifiers.

We process this information for our legitimate interests in delivering a reliable site, preventing abuse, and protecting accounts. Search terms you submit are processed to return results. If you contact us, we use your contact details and message to respond, based on our legitimate interest in handling enquiries. We process rights requests where necessary to meet our legal obligations.

When available, you can choose to subscribe to Chip-in's newsletter. We store your email address, subscription and withdrawal times, an unsubscribe identifier, and delivery information. An email service sends the newsletter on our behalf.

Newsletter delivery is based on your consent. Use the unsubscribe link in an email and confirm your choice, or contact us. Withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal. Unsubscribing stops future newsletter sends but does not immediately delete the subscription record.

Audience measurement

We measure page visits, referring websites, and article use to understand readership and improve the publication. Measurements include article and language, visit times, active reading time, scroll depth, navigation between articles, and use of share controls. A random identifier distinguishes each article visit. Short-lived state can connect article visits in the same tab for up to 30 minutes.

This measurement does not include your account identity, saved stories, follows or reading progress. Referral records exclude IP addresses, browser user agents, and full referring URLs. We also use available search-engine reports about search performance.

Our basis for proportionate audience measurement is our legitimate interest in understanding how the publication is used, subject to any consent required by applicable law. The article-reading collector stops when your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. Those signals do not stop the separate server-side count of page visits and referring websites.

Outside the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, an analytics service also counts page visits. It sets first-party cookies that distinguish visits for up to two years and receives page addresses, referring pages, and browser and device information. It does not receive your account identity, and its advertising features are off. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland it sets no cookies.

Cookies and browser storage

We use the following storage on the Chip-in site.

__Secure-reader.session_token keeps you signed in. It is a secure, HttpOnly cookie with a 30-day lifetime that renews during use.
reader_hint tells the interface to check whether you are signed in. It contains no account identifier and lasts up to 30 days.
__Secure-reader.state protects Google sign-in and lasts up to five minutes.
reader-save:chipin in localStorage remembers a requested save or removal while you sign in. It is removed after the action completes or when you sign out, and expires after 15 minutes.
reader-follow:chipin in sessionStorage remembers a requested follow while you sign in. It is removed after the action completes or when you sign out, and otherwise lasts for the tab session.
audience-navigation:chipin:<locale> in sessionStorage supports same-tab article measurement. It lasts for the tab session, but entries older than 30 minutes are not used to link visits.
theme in localStorage remembers a light or dark appearance if the site offers that choice. It remains until changed or cleared.

Editorial preview links can also set content-preview-token for five minutes and the session-lived __prerender_bypass cookie. Ordinary public reading does not require these preview cookies.

You can block or clear cookies and site storage in your browser. Blocking account cookies prevents sign-in from working. Third-party services described below may use their own cookies or storage when loaded.

Comments, media, and other recipients

Where Disqus comments are offered, opening a conversation loads Disqus and sends it the article identifier, title, and URL, along with normal browser connection information. Enabled comment counts can contact Disqus before you open the conversation. Disqus handles information you submit through its service. Deleting your Chip-in account does not delete your Disqus account or comments.

YouTube and Spotify players load when you activate them. Their services then receive connection information and may use their own cookies or storage. External images or other media can also contact their delivery hosts. See the privacy information provided by Google and YouTube, Spotify, and Disqus for their own processing.

Service providers deliver, secure, host and back up the site, and send newsletter email when you subscribe. They process only the information needed to provide these services. Google processes sign-in information under its own policy.

Chip-in launches with publisher advertising disabled. If we introduce advertising, we will update this policy to describe the providers, data use, and applicable choices before that processing begins.

Displayed AI summaries are generated from editorial content. Reading a summary does not send your account information or a prompt from you to an AI provider.

International transfers

Service providers may process information outside the country where you live, including outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. Where personal data leaves the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we rely on adequacy regulations or decisions, or on the standard contractual clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum that our service providers offer.

How long we keep information

Account, saved-story and follow data remain until you delete the account, remove saved stories or unfollow. Reading progress for an article is deleted 180 days after you last read it. Sessions are valid for up to 30 days and renew during use. Signing out ends the current session. Deleting the account removes its profile, linked login records, sessions, saved stories, follows and reading progress from the active account database.

Temporary Google sign-in state expires after 10 minutes. Expired sign-in state and rate-limit records are cleaned up during subsequent processing. Expiry does not mean every stored record is erased at that instant.

Newsletter records are separate from account records. Unsubscribing marks a subscription inactive. Deleting a reader account does not unsubscribe or erase newsletter data. Contact us for those requests. Backup copies may remain after active data is deleted.

Server, delivery and security logs are kept only as long as needed to run and protect the site, and are then deleted or overwritten on our service providers' schedules.

Your rights and choices

Depending on the law that applies, you can request access, correction, deletion, restriction, or a portable copy of your personal data. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests and withdraw consent where we rely on it. Some rights have legal exceptions.

For a self-service copy of your account data, open the account menu, choose Account, then Export account data. The JSON download includes profile information, linked login identifiers, session dates, saved stories, follows and reading progress. It excludes authentication secrets. To remove the account and its data, choose Delete account and confirm.

These controls cover your Chip-in account, not newsletter records or data held independently by Google, Disqus, or media providers. Use our contact page for other requests, corrections, or help if you cannot sign in. We may need information to verify your identity. Under the GDPR and UK GDPR, we normally respond within one month and explain any lawful extension.

You can complain to the supervisory authority where you live or work, or where you believe an infringement occurred. Our relevant authority is the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

Children

Reader accounts are intended for people aged 16 or over. We do not request your date of birth. If you believe a child has provided personal data contrary to this age requirement, contact us through our contact page so we can investigate and arrange appropriate deletion.

Changes

We will publish changes on this page and update the effective date. If a change requires new consent, we will seek it before using your information for that purpose.