Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 6th 2026

ShortStoryEngine helps authors prepare short stories for publication. This policy explains what we hold, why, and what you can do about it.

1. Who is responsible for your information

ShortStoryEngine is operated by Broomerr Media Ltd. In this policy, "we", "us", and "our" refer to Broomerr Media Ltd. Privacy questions and rights requests can be submitted through the GazMat Support Center.

2. What we collect

Your account. Your name, email address, and a hashed password. We never store your password itself.

Your stories. The files you upload and the versions we generate from them.

Your AI provider key. If you connect one, it is stored encrypted. We only ever display the last four characters back to you.

Your submission records. The markets you target, dates, statuses, and responses you record.

Your author details. Anything you add for the manuscript templates — mailing address, biographical facts, publication credits, and links.

Your purchase. When you buy access, the payment platform tells us your purchase email, the product, and a sale ID. We never see your card details.

Technical information. IP address, browser and device information, session identifiers, authentication and security records, and ordinary application logs. Story content is actively excluded from our logs by a redactor.

Support information. Messages, screenshots, sale IDs, and anything else you send us when asking for help.

3. How information is collected

• Directly from you when you register, sign in, upload a story, edit your profile, or contact support.
• Automatically through essential session, security, server, and application technologies.
• From the payment platform when it sends purchase, refund, dispute, or cancellation notifications.
• From administrators when they make an authorised membership or support adjustment.

4. How your writing is handled

Your stories are your intellectual property, and the system is built around that:

• Story files are kept on private storage, never in a public folder.
• Story text is never written to our logs.
• Story text is never sent to any AI provider except through your own API key. There is no shared or house key anywhere in the system.
• We do not use your writing to train anything, and we do not share it with anyone.
• You can export any story at any time, and delete it permanently.

When you use a feature that calls an AI provider (an author bio, a cover letter), that request goes to OpenAI or Anthropic under your key and is subject to their terms and privacy policies, not ours.

5. How we use information

We process information where necessary to provide the Service, meet legal obligations, protect legitimate business interests, or act with your consent. Uses include:

• Creating and securing accounts, authenticating users, and resetting passwords.
• Matching purchases to accounts and granting the correct membership access.
• Applying access terms, expiry, refunds, and plan limits.
• Converting, formatting, storing, and delivering your story files.
• Providing support, diagnosing failed purchases or failed jobs, and responding to requests.
• Preventing fraud, misuse, and security incidents.
• Maintaining audit, tax, accounting, and transaction records where required.
• Improving reliability, usability, templates, and the market directory.
• Sending essential service, security, purchase, or account communications.

6. Who else processes your data

We may also share the minimum information necessary with professional advisers and authorities where reasonably necessary for legal, tax, accounting, security, fraud prevention, or regulatory purposes, and with a successor organisation as part of a merger, sale, financing, or transfer of the business, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.

We do not sell personal information, and we never sell, share, or license your stories.

7. Cookies and sessions

We use a session cookie to keep you logged in and a CSRF token cookie for security. These are necessary for the app to work. No advertising or third-party behavioural tracking cookies.

You can configure your browser to reject cookies, but account access and other core features will then stop working.

8. Data security

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect your information. Specifically: story files and generated documents are stored outside the public web root and require authorisation to download, passwords are hashed, your AI provider key is encrypted at rest and only ever shown to you as its last four characters, and story text is excluded from application logs by an active redactor.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for using a strong password, protecting your account, and telling support promptly if you suspect unauthorised access.

9. Data retention

We retain information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, including providing access and downloads, handling support, preventing fraud, maintaining security, and satisfying legal, accounting, tax, refund, dispute, and reporting requirements.

Purchase, membership, refund, and audit records may be retained after access ends because they establish transaction and access history. Information may be anonymised and retained for statistical or service-improvement purposes.

10. International processing

Our providers may process information in countries other than your own. Where required, we use appropriate contractual or legal safeguards for international transfers.

11. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to:

• Request access to the personal information we hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Request deletion where there is no overriding reason to retain it.
• Object to or request restriction of certain processing.
• Request a portable copy of information you provided.
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
• Complain to the relevant data-protection authority.

Much of this you can do yourself: story export and permanent story deletion are built into the app. To delete your whole account, or for anything else, contact support and we will act on it.

We may ask for information needed to verify your identity first. Some information cannot be deleted immediately where retention is required for legal obligations, fraud prevention, transaction evidence, refunds, disputes, or the establishment and defence of legal claims.

12. Children

The Service is intended for adults and is not directed to children under 18. If you believe a child has provided personal information, contact support so the matter can be reviewed.

13. External websites

The Service links to markets, platforms, and other external sites. Those sites have their own privacy practices, and we are not responsible for their content or how they handle personal information.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Service, law, providers, or business practices change. The updated date will appear at the top of this page, and we will tell you by email about anything significant.

15. Contact

To ask a privacy question or exercise a privacy right, submit a request through the GazMat Support Center. Include the email address associated with your account and enough detail for us to understand your request. Do not send passwords or full payment-card details.