Privacy Policy
Effective date: October 29, 2026
This Privacy Policy describes how Shorterest ("we," "us," or "our") collects and uses information when you visit shorterest.com. By using the site, you accept the practices described here.
Reader accounts and optional audience research
Accounts store your email, chosen name, a salted password hash, an assigned editorial edition and expiring session tokens. Email identifies your account; names need not be unique. Registration is for adults aged 18 or over.
If you choose to participate in audience research, reading events, article ratings and agreement choices can be linked to your account. Optional age range, broad region and gender are self-reported; we do not infer them. Interest selections and research consent can be changed at your account. Withdrawing removes saved demographic and opinion responses and account links from research events. These fields are not exposed through public agent APIs. Contact us for account access or deletion requests.
What We Collect
We collect limited data to operate and improve the site:
- Cookies. The site sets a session cookie (
shrt_sid) to support reader features such as feedback submissions. This cookie contains a randomly generated session identifier - no personally identifiable information. - Visitor cookie. We set a first-party cookie named
sr_vid. It holds a random identifier and lasts 13 months. It is not your name or email. When you sign up or sign in, we attach that cookie to your account. - Reading activity. We record the pages you open, the stories that sit on screen, the ones you click, how long you stay, how far you scroll, and whether you finish an article. We also record shares, ratings, agreement or disagreement, and comments when you do those things. With that we store the country and region reported by our host, the kind of device (phone, tablet, or computer), and how you arrived, including the referring site and campaign tags. We do not store your IP address. We use this record to personalize articles and to infer readers' interests and viewpoints.
- Accounts. An account adds your profile and your comments to the visitor record. The name on a comment is the name on the account. If you opt in to audience research, your ratings and opinions are included too.
- Feedback submissions. If you submit a star rating on an article, we record the rating along with your anonymous session ID. We do not collect your name or email for this purpose.
- Contact form submissions. If you use the contact form, we collect the name, email address, and message you provide in order to respond to your inquiry.
- Advertising cookies. We use Google AdSense to serve advertisements. Google and its partners may set cookies on your browser to serve ads based on your prior visits to this site and other sites on the internet. For more information, see the section on Advertising below.
Advertising
Shorterest uses Google AdSense to display advertisements. Google AdSense uses cookies and similar technologies to serve ads that are relevant to your interests. Google may use information about your visits to this and other websites to provide targeted advertisements about goods and services that may interest you.
Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to this website or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings or by visiting aboutads.info. You may also opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting networkadvertising.org.
Analytics
We use first-party analytics hosted on shorterest.com. A small beacon on the page sends reading events to our own /api/tracking/event endpoint, tied to the sr_vid cookie. We use that record to personalize which articles we show and to infer readers' interests and viewpoints. No third-party analytics vendor receives these events. We do not sell personal information.
How We Use Data
The data we collect is used to:
- Operate and maintain the site
- Understand which topics and articles readers engage with, in order to improve editorial quality
- Serve relevant advertising through Google AdSense
- Respond to contact form inquiries
We do not sell personal information to third parties. We do not share contact form data with advertisers.
Your Choices
You can opt out in the cookie notice at the bottom of the page, or reopen that notice from Cookie settings in the footer. Opting out clears the visitor cookie and deletes the reading record tied to it. After that we keep only counts that are not tied to a visitor. Visitors in the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland do not receive the visitor cookie until they choose Allow.
You can also clear cookies in your browser settings. Doing so resets the visitor cookie. It does not affect your access to articles on the site.
To opt out of Google's personalized advertising, visit google.com/settings/ads.
Most browsers allow you to refuse cookies or be notified when a cookie is being set. Consult your browser's help documentation for instructions.
Data Retention
The visitor cookie and the reading events tied to it are kept for 13 months. Contact form messages are retained only as long as needed to respond to your inquiry. Account session cookies expire within 30 days.
Children's Privacy
Shorterest is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, contact us and we will delete it promptly.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The effective date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised. Continued use of the site after a revision constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
Contact
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us via our contact page.