Privacy Policy

Paper Radio turns research papers into audio episodes. This page explains what we keep, why we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it.

What we keep

• If you create an account: your email address, and the display name and avatar you give us. Signing in with Google shares those with us; a sign-in link uses only your email address.
• What you do here: the episodes you listen to, the ones you like, the shows you follow, the papers you open, and any comments or reactions you post.
• How much is heard: for each play we keep the episode, how many seconds were listened, and where playback stopped, so the station can tell whether an episode is any good. This is counted for every listener, including visitors with no account, and it holds no IP address, no user agent and no cross-site identifier — just the session you already have (if any), an episode and a number of seconds.
• Your studio: the drafts and paper requests you save.
• Fast Track orders: what was ordered and its status. Card details never reach us — you enter them on Stripe's own page.
• Sign-in credentials: if you register a passkey, we store its public key. The private key stays on your device.

Cookies and browser storage

• One cookie, pr_session, is what keeps you signed in. It is the only cookie this site sets.
• Your sign-in token and your player settings are kept in your browser's own storage, on your device.
• There is no advertising or third-party analytics tracking here, and we do not sell or share personal data for advertising. The play counts described above are our own, first-party, and hold no IP address or cross-site identifier.

Who else is involved

• Google — only if you choose to sign in with Google.
• Stripe — only when you order a Fast Track; it handles the payment, and its own policy covers what it collects.
• Our email provider — to send you a sign-in link when you ask for one.
• A content delivery network — to serve episode audio and video to your browser.
• arXiv — the papers themselves: their titles, abstracts, page text and figures come from arXiv, and opening a paper takes you to arXiv's or the DOI's own page.
• Discord — if you follow our community link. It is a separate service with its own terms.

The papers are not ours

Paper Radio summarises work published on arXiv. The papers and their figures belong to their authors and are made available by arXiv under arXiv's own terms; every episode links back to the original and to the DOI.

If you hold rights in a work and want a Paper Radio episode or page that covers it taken down, contact us and we will act on it.

Comments are public; everything else is yours

A comment you post is visible to everyone and is shown with your display name. You can delete your own comments.

Your listening history, your likes and your follows are kept for you. We publish counts — how many people liked an episode, how many played it — never who.

How long we keep it, and what you can ask for

We keep your data while your account exists. Ask us and we will delete your account and the data that belongs to it, give you a copy of what we hold, or correct what is wrong.

The Contact page is how to reach us; corrections and privacy requests are read by the same people who run the station.

Children

Paper Radio is not directed at children. If you are below the age at which you can consent to this kind of service where you live, please do not create an account.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes we update the date below. If a change is significant we will say so on the site.

Last updated: 27 September 2026.