Privacy Policy
About This Site
thoth.cards is a Thoth Tarot reference and personal practice tool. This policy describes how we collect, use, and protect your information when you use the site.
For questions about this policy, contact us at privacy@thoth.cards.
What Data We Collect
Account Information
You may create an account using an email and password, or by signing in through a social login provider. Our self-hosted authentication system manages your credentials in either case. The thoth.cards application never sees or stores your password.
When you create an account, we store:
- A unique account identifier
- Your display name (you can edit this)
- Your email address. The authentication system stores it, and the application database never sees it. We use it only for account verification and password resets.
- Your date of birth, if you choose to provide it. We use this for natal-chart and soul-year correspondence features. The field is optional and you can leave it blank.
- Your birth time and birthplace, if you choose to provide them. We use these only for natal charts. Both are optional and we never show them to anyone else. You pick your birthplace from a list of cities, and we store the one you pick.
- Your pronouns, gender, tarot experience and time zone, if you choose to provide them. All are optional. We use your time zone to date your readings and journal entries correctly.
- A profile photo, if you upload one. We remove location and camera data from the image before storing it.
If you sign in through a social provider, we import that provider's basic profile information (name, email, profile picture URL) into your account on first login and use it for subsequent logins. We do not access your social media contacts, posts, or activity.
Readings and Journal Data
If you use the Readings feature, we store:
- The cards drawn in each reading and the spread used
- Any journal entries or personal reflections you write
- Tags you apply to your readings (for example, "career," "relationship," "shadow work")
- The visibility setting you choose for each reading (private, members-only, or public)
- A share link identifier, if you generate a public share URL
- Timestamps for each reading
This data serves your personal practice. The feature exists to build a long-term personal record, so you can look back across months or years of readings and recognize patterns.
Cookies
We set a small number of cookies, all strictly necessary for the site to function:
| Cookie | Purpose | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Access token | Maintains your logged-in session | HttpOnly, SameSite=Strict, Secure; expires after 15 minutes |
| CSRF token | Protects against cross-site request forgery on actions like saving a reading | SameSite=Strict, Secure; expires after 15 minutes |
| OIDC state cookies | Used during the login redirect; last only seconds | HttpOnly, Secure |
We set no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies, and no third-party cookies. We do not fingerprint your browser.
Analytics
We use a self-hosted instance of Umami, a privacy-focused analytics tool. Umami does not set cookies, does not collect personally identifiable information, and does not track users across websites. It uses a daily-rotating server-side hash and no client-side identifiers.
We collect only aggregate, anonymous usage data, which covers page views, referral sources, and country-level geographic region. This helps us understand how the site is used and improve it. We do not use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or any third-party analytics service.
Server Logs
Our servers produce structured logs for operational and security purposes. Per-request log entries include a request identifier, your account identifier (on authenticated requests only), the request path, HTTP status, and response time. Our web server also logs client IP addresses.
We have not yet formalized log retention. We do not keep indefinite logs and will set a retention period and update this policy then.
How We Use Your Information
- Providing the service: authenticating your account, storing and displaying your readings, enabling search and filtering of your reading history
- Account communications: we send email verification, password reset, and
security-related messages from
noreply@thoth.cardsvia our self-hosted mail server. We do not send marketing or promotional emails. - Improving the site: using anonymous, aggregate analytics to understand usage patterns
- Security: detecting and preventing unauthorized access or abuse
We do not use behavioral targeting, recommendation algorithms, or engagement-metric optimization. Card of the Day follows a deterministic, date-seeded schedule that is the same for every visitor.
What We Do Not Do
- We do not sell your data to anyone, for any reason.
- We do not serve advertisements.
- We do not share your data with data brokers or marketing platforms.
- We do not profile you for targeted content or advertising.
- We do not use any third-party analytics, tracking, or advertising scripts.
- We do not send personal data, including journal entries, tags, account information, or browsing history, to any third-party service for AI processing.
- We do not send what you type into the birthplace search to any outside service. We search our own copy of the GeoNames place list, used under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Social Login Providers
When you sign in through a social login provider, that provider can see that you authenticated with thoth.cards through our identity service. Each provider has its own privacy policy that governs their side of the authentication. We receive only the basic profile information listed above (name, email, profile picture).
If you later disconnect a social login from your account, we do not automatically remove the profile information already imported. You may request its removal by contacting us.
Public Readings and Sharing
Your readings are private by default. You may set a reading's visibility to:
- Private: visible only to you
- Members: visible to other logged-in thoth.cards users
- Public: accessible to anyone via a shareable link
When you share a reading publicly, anyone with the link can see the cards drawn, the spread layout, and your journal entry for that reading. We show your display name. We never expose your email address, login identity, date of birth, birth time, or birthplace in shared readings.
You control visibility per reading and can change it at any time.
Where Your Data Lives
The entire data path is self-hosted on infrastructure we operate and control. We do not store your data on third-party cloud platforms or SaaS services.
The narrow exceptions:
- Social login providers: involved only if you choose to sign in through one of them, and only during the authentication handshake
- Backblaze B2: we store encrypted database backups in a Backblaze B2 bucket, encrypted in transit and at rest, with a 30-day retention cycle. Profile photos and blog images are stored in a separate private B2 bucket and served through short-lived links
We encrypt all traffic between your browser and our servers via HTTPS/TLS.
Data Retention and Deletion
We retain your account and reading data for as long as your account exists. The Readings feature exists to build a long-term personal record, so we do not automatically delete your history.
Session data: Access tokens expire after 15 minutes. Login sessions expire after 4 hours of inactivity or 24 hours absolutely, whichever comes first.
Backups: We retain database backups for 30 days, then automatically delete them.
Account deletion: You may request deletion of your account and all associated data at any time by contacting privacy@thoth.cards. On a verified deletion request, we delete your authentication account, your local user record, and all associated readings, journal entries, and tags. We complete deletion within 30 days. Deletion requests do not affect aggregate, anonymized analytics data (which cannot identify you). Data may persist in encrypted backups for up to 30 days after deletion, after which we automatically purge it.
Your Rights
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you
- Correct inaccurate data. You can edit your profile, including your birth details, in the app. For email and password changes, use the authentication system's account console.
- Delete your account and all associated data
- Export your reading and journal data. Export currently requires a manual request. A self-service export feature is in progress.
To exercise any of these rights, contact privacy@thoth.cards.
Children's Privacy
thoth.cards is not for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we update the "Last Updated" date at the top. If we make material changes to how we handle your data, we will notify logged-in users through the site before the changes take effect.
Contact
For any questions, concerns, or requests related to your privacy, email privacy@thoth.cards.