Last updated October 24, 2026
The short version
Readthrough counts how the site is used so we can make the edition and your feed better. We do it ourselves: no ads, no ad networks, no outside analytics or tracking scripts, and we never sell or share this data.
What we keep about visits
- Pages and taps. Which pages and stories are opened, how far a page is scrolled, which sections and story cards appear on screen and for how long, taps on stories, "More" and "Add more stories", "Read the original" links, and Share.
- Where a visit came from. The referring website (domain and path only), the first page you landed on, campaign tags in the link (utm_…), and the id of a shared story link.
- A coarse picture of the device. Country, phone/tablet/desktop, operating system and browser family, language, a screen-size bucket, whether the site was opened from the home screen, and the visual mode (Wave, Jelly…).
- Time on the site, counted only while the page is visible and in use.
- Anonymous ids. A random visitor id in a first-party cookie (
__Host-rt_v, kept for one year) and a session id that ends after 30 minutes without activity.
We do not store your IP address or your full browser identification string. For abuse protection, a one-way hash of the IP address that changes every day is used briefly as a rate-limit key and is never stored with your activity.
If you have an account
When you sign up or sign in, the visitor id on that browser is linked to your account, along with how you first found Readthrough. We also record account events (signed up, signed in, signed out), the topics you choose for your feed, and that you started or finished a Looking Glass conversation (with the number of messages and the topic ids it produced). We never record what you type to the Looking Glass, your email address, passkeys or sign-in links in these stats. Custom search terms you add to your feed are stored with your feed settings and noted, marked as such, when you save them.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, Readthrough sets no visitor id and records only a count of page views per day, with nothing that identifies you or your device.
How long we keep it
Detailed activity is kept for 400 days. After that it is reduced to daily totals that identify no one, and the details are deleted.
Your choices
- Download my data: on your Account page, get a file with your account, feed settings, passkey names, share links, Looking Glass conversations and usage history.
- Delete my usage history or Delete my account and data, also on your Account page. Deleting your account removes it and everything linked to it.
- Not signed in? Turn on Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track in your browser, or clear this site's cookies and storage.
Cookies on readthrough.org are first-party only: sign-in, security (CSRF), the anonymous visitor id above, and a marker that shows your name while signed in. The site also keeps copies of the visitor and session ids in this browser's local storage.