Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

1. Introduction

LibreTimes ("we," "our," or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our service.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Personal Information

We may collect personal information that you voluntarily provide:

Name and email address
Profile information (bio, affiliation, interests)
CV and professional history
Content you publish (articles, comments)
Contact information you choose to share

2.2 Automatically Collected Information

When you use our Service, we automatically collect:

Device and browser information
IP address and approximate location
Usage patterns and preferences
Cookies and similar technologies

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

Provide, maintain, and improve our Service
Create and manage your account
Send you updates and notifications
Respond to your comments and questions
Detect and prevent fraud or abuse
Comply with legal obligations
Personalize your experience

We may share your information with:

Service providers who assist in our operations
Law enforcement when required by law
Other users (for public profile information)
Research partners (anonymized, aggregated data only)

We do not sell your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

5. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information:

Encryption in transit and at rest
Regular security audits
Access controls and authentication
Secure data storage

However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure.

6. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the right to:

Access your personal information
Correct inaccurate data
Delete your personal information
Export your data in a portable format
Opt out of certain processing
Withdraw consent for optional processing

7. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as:

Your account is active
Needed to provide services
Required by legal obligations
Necessary for legitimate business purposes

You may request deletion of your account at any time.

8. Content Moderation and Automated Screening

We may use automated tools to help flag reported or reported-adjacent content for review faster than a manual queue would (for example, a toxicity classifier over comment text). These tools only ever prioritize what a human moderator sees — no automated system on LibreTimes has authority to remove your content, restrict your account, or otherwise make a moderation decision on its own. Every action that restricts or removes content or an account is made and explained by a human moderator; see the Acceptable Use Policy for the full process, including how to appeal.

8a. The AI assistant on works and in the editor

Works pages carry an optional Ask AI assistant that answers questions about the text you have open, and the editor carries an optional AI menu on selected text. Both are off until we switch them on, and you can turn them off for your account at any time in Settings → Privacy; when they are off, no assistant is shown to you at all.

When you ask a question on a work, two things leave LibreTimes and are sent to a third-party model provider: your question (and the earlier turns of that conversation) and the public text of that one work. Nothing else is sent — not your profile, not your drafts, not private or unlisted works, and not any other work. The assistant only ever reads works that are already public to everyone.

When you use the AI menu in the editor — improve, shorten, translate, explain or a custom instruction on a passage — only the text you selected is sent, together with your instruction and the draft's language and type. The rest of the draft, its title and everything else in your account stay on LibreTimes. Nothing is stored from these requests; the result is shown in the editor as a suggestion you accept or reject, and accepting one records that the work was AI-assisted in its disclosure field (section 5 of the content policy). The dialog says what is being sent each time.

The editor also carries an optional assistant panel — a chat beside your draft. It does not read the draft: what is sent is what you type into it, the draft's type and language, and any text you attach yourself, including the current selection when you press Add selection. Those conversations are stored like the ones on works (private to you, deletable from the panel, retained under section 7), and putting an answer into the draft records the work as AI-assisted in the same way.

The provider is named in the assistant itself (today it is reached through OpenRouter, an aggregator that routes to the model shown on each answer), on a free tier whose terms permit the provider to use what it receives to improve its services, including training. Treat what you type into the assistant, and the passages you send from the editor, accordingly. We will update this section if the provider or the terms change.

Your conversations with the assistant are stored on LibreTimes and are private to you: they are not shown to anyone else, are not published, and you can delete any of them yourself from the assistant panel. They are retained under section 7 like the rest of your account data. Answers are machine-generated and are labelled with the model that produced them; they are not reviewed by a person and may be wrong.