wewrote

Privacy policy

A book is made of other people's photographs and words, so this matters more here than on most sites. Written plainly, and short enough to actually read.

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wewrote, is not trading yet. Our name and business address are not finalised, so this page is not yet a complete statement of who you would be buying from. Nothing on the site can take a payment until they are.
The short version.

We collect the names, messages, photographs and email addresses needed to make and post one book. We do not sell anything to anybody, we run no advertising trackers, and photographs have their location data stripped in your browser before they are ever uploaded. A finished book’s contents are deleted after 24 months.

Who is responsible

wewrote, is the data controller for the information described here. The controller’s name and business address are not finalised, and will both be stated here before we take any payment. For anything on this page, write to privacy@wewrote.co.uk.

What we collect, and why

WhatWhyLawful basis
Organiser’s name and emailTo send you your book’s links, sign you in, confirm your order and tell you when it ships.Performing our contract with you
Contributors’ names, messages and photographsThey are the book. We store them, lay them out and print them.Our legitimate interest in making the book the organiser asked for. A contributor has no contract with us, so contract is not the basis for their data — they choose to add a page, and can take it out again.
Delivery address and any gift noteTo post the book, and to print the note that goes inside.Performing our contract with you
Payment record — amount, date, and Stripe’s referenceTo take payment, refund it, and keep the accounts. We never see your card number.Contract, and our legal obligation to keep financial records
Your password, if you set oneSo you can sign in without waiting for an email. We keep only a scrambled form of it (scrypt, salted), never the password itself, so nobody here can read it.Performing our contract with you
Sign-in tokens and sessionsSo you can get back to your books without a password.Performing our contract with you
Reminders about your own bookUp to three emails to an organiser whose book is not finished: three days before the date they set, on the day, and a week after. They stop when the book is ordered.Our legitimate interest in helping you finish the book you started
A contributor’s email, if they ask to see the finished bookTo send one link to the finished book, after it has been given, if the organiser allows it.Your request (we send it because you asked)
Our mailing list: name, email, where we met you, and when you joinedTo send occasional news about wewrote,: new occasions, ideas, the odd offer. Organisers are added when they start a book unless they tick the box to refuse; contributors are added only if they tick the box asking to be.Organisers: the “soft opt-in” for existing customers (PECR regulation 22(3)), with a refusal offered at sign-up and in every email. Contributors: your consent.
A count of recent sign-in attempts, by address and network addressTo stop somebody using our sign-in emails to flood an inbox.Our legitimate interest in keeping the service usable
A count of visits: which kind of page was opened, the day, the site that sent you if there was one, and a code made from your network address and browser that changes every dayTo see how many people visit, start a book or add a page, and where people give up, so we can make it easier. The code is made with a value we delete the next day, so a visit can never be linked to another day or traced back to you. No cookie is used, and nothing is counted if your browser asks not to be tracked. Kept for about thirteen months.Our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the service
Which book led to a new oneWhen somebody starts a book after writing in one, or after following a link from one, we note which book it was, to understand how people hear about us. Nothing about it is shown to anyone else.Our legitimate interest in understanding how the service grows

That is the entire list. There is no advertising, no profiling and no third-party tracking script anywhere on this site; the visit count above is our own and never leaves it. Every marketing email has a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing never affects emails about a book you started or wrote in.

Photographs, and the location data cameras add

Phones record where a photograph was taken. Every photograph added to a book is re-encoded in the browser it came from before it is uploaded, which removes that data along with the rest of the camera’s metadata. It was done to make uploads fast; the effect is that no photograph reaches us carrying the coordinates of where it was taken. What is visible in a picture is a different matter — a door number is still a door number — so choose the photograph you would be happy to see printed.

Photographs are stored at long, random web addresses. They are not listed or searchable, but anyone holding the exact address of a photograph can open it without signing in — that is how the pages load instantly. Treat those links as private, and do not paste them anywhere public.

Cookies, and what your browser keeps

We set two cookies, and neither is for advertising:

  • A contributor marker — a random code, kept for a year, so you can find and change your own pages, so a book’s per-person page limit means something, and so that if you later start a book of your own we can note which book led you to us.
  • A sign-in session — set only if you choose to sign in, kept for sixty days or until you sign out.

Two more things are kept by your browser rather than sent to us:

  • Books you have started on this device, so this browser can find them again without an email. That includes each book’s own secret link, which is what makes it a list worth having — and worth clearing on a shared computer. There is a Forget button beside every one.
  • A note that you have just added a page, so the next screen can thank you properly. It is gone when you close the tab.

There is no cookie banner because there is nothing here to ask permission for: no advertising, no third-party analytics, no trackers, and nothing that follows you off this site. Our own visit count uses no cookie and stores nothing in your browser. The key for sending photographs from a phone is not a cookie — it travels in the address of the page the code opens, and it expires in minutes.

Who else sees any of it

  • Vercel — hosting and photograph storage. Configured to keep the data in London.
  • Neon — the database. Configured to keep the data in London.
  • Stripe — payments. They handle your card; we do not. Stripe is a US company and processes data outside the UK.
  • Resend — sending our emails, and holding a copy of our mailing list for the occasional newsletter. A US company; our sending region is Ireland.
  • Our printer — receives the finished print files and the delivery address, and nothing else. We will name them here as soon as the contract is signed; until then no book has been printed.

Each is a processor acting on our instructions under a written data processing agreement. Where a processor takes data outside the UK, we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, which each of these companies publishes; ask us at privacy@wewrote.co.uk and we will point you at the current version. We do not sell or share personal data for anybody else’s purposes.

How long we keep things

  • An open book — while you are filling it, and until you delete it.
  • A printed book’s pages and photographs — 24 months after printing, so we can reprint it if it is lost or damaged in the post. After that we delete them. That deletion is done by a person on a schedule rather than automatically, so if you want your pages gone sooner, ask us and we will do it straight away.
  • Order and payment records — six years, which is what tax law requires.
  • Sign-in tokens — twenty minutes. Sessions — sixty days, or until you sign out.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict what we do with it, or object to us doing it. Write to privacy@wewrote.co.uk and we will answer within one month, which is what the law allows us. In practice it is usually the same week.

If you wrote a page in somebody else’s book and want it removed, you can do it yourself from that book’s page while it is still open, or ask us. Removing a page deletes its photographs too, not only the words. If the book has already been printed we can delete our copy, but we cannot recall a printed book that has been given away — and it is worth knowing that before you write in one.

If you think we have got this wrong, please tell us first. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

wewrote, is for adults. Only an adult can organise a book, and we ask organisers not to invite children to write pages themselves — a child’s drawing or message is welcome, added by their parent, and is then treated exactly like any other page.

We know this needs saying plainly for books filled at a party, where a card on a table can be picked up by anybody in the room: if you put out table cards, it is the organiser’s job to make sure children are not adding pages on their own. We collect no age and cannot tell. If you believe a child has given us information directly, tell us at privacy@wewrote.co.uk and we will delete it.

Security

Everything travels over HTTPS. A book is reached by a long, unguessable link rather than a password, and every organiser action re-checks that link on the server. Sessions can be revoked. Payment card details never touch our servers.

We are honest about the trade in that design: a private link is only as private as the place you put it. If one gets out, replace the invite link from your book’s page and email us about the organiser link.

See also our terms and conditions and delivery and returns.

Last updated 13 October 2026.