Privacy and data
Who we are and what this is
This document explains what data we collect when you use Yaoi Scan, what we use it for, and what you can do about it. It is written to be understood, not to cover our backs.
You can read the catalogue without an account and without giving us any personal data. Everything below mainly applies if you choose to register.
What we store
If you create an account: your email address, your username, the name shown to others, and your password, which is always stored encrypted and which nobody — including us — can read. If you upload a profile picture, we store it too.
What you do on the site: your reading history, bookmarks, collections, ratings and comments. The history is yours: you can turn it off or clear it from your account.
Technical data: the IP address and time of your last activity are attached to your open sessions, so that you can close them and so we can spot strange logins. In our operational logs the IP address is not stored as such: it is stored as an irreversible code, useful for spotting abuse but not for identifying you.
If you sign in with Google: we receive your name, email address and profile picture from Google. Nothing else. We have no access to your Google account or to anything in it.
Cookies and advertising
We use our own cookies that are essential for the site to work: your session, your content preferences and your reading settings. Without them you could not stay signed in.
This site is funded by advertising. The ad networks we display are independent companies and may use their own cookies and identifiers to choose which ads to show you and to measure whether they work. That data is handled by them under their own policies, not by us. If you want to limit this, you can block third-party cookies in your browser settings; the site will keep working.
What we use your data for
So that you can sign in, keep your place in what you are reading, comment, and so we can keep the site standing: preventing abuse, spam and unauthorised access attempts. We do not sell your data to anyone. We do not share it with third parties unless the law requires us to.
How long we keep it
As long as you have an account. In addition, accounts that go a long time without any activity are deleted automatically, so we do not keep data belonging to people who no longer use the site.
What you can do
From your account settings you can see and change your data, decide which parts of your profile are public, turn off your history, and delete your account.
When you request deletion, the account is flagged and removed once a grace period has passed. During that time, simply signing in again cancels it: so if someone requested it without your permission, you lose nothing. When the period expires, your email, your name and your personal data are replaced with meaningless values, and your comments are shown as belonging to a deleted account, so the conversations you took part in are not broken.
Minors
You must be at least 13 years old to hold an account, or 16 if you live in the European Union. If we find an account belonging to someone below that age, we will delete it.
Security
Passwords are stored encrypted and never in plain text. You can enable two-step verification. IP addresses in our logs are stored as an irreversible code. Even so, no system is infallible: use a password you do not reuse elsewhere.
Changes
If we change anything important in this policy, we will publish it here. The date of the last update appears at the bottom of the page.