Privacy policy

Who operates Studio

Ordinary Glow Studio is operated by AKOUAS LLC, Wyoming, USA. For privacy questions or requests, contact hello@ordinaryglow.com.

This policy covers Studio’s public information pages and invite-only workspace. The public Ordinary Glow article website is a separate reading experience with its own advertising and analytics practices; this policy does not describe every service on that website.

Information we handle

Account and access information

Your name, email address, role and account status; password and recovery verification hashes; session, invitation and recovery records. Studio uses email-and-password accounts, not Google sign-in for Writers.

Editorial work

Drafts, images, article details, private Writer assignments, chosen public bylines, saved submission snapshots, review notes, published-article correction requests and decisions, in-app update read receipts, personal archive preferences and editorial history.

Publication and performance records

Publication operations and receipts, live article URLs, and saved aggregate Google Analytics reports associated with eligible Studio articles and their assigned Writers.

Security and technical information

Account actions and timestamps, request information used for authentication and abuse prevention, and hashed security rate-limit identifiers. Network requests involve IP addresses; our hosting provider may also process technical connection and security logs.

We use this information to provide account access, preserve editorial decisions, publish approved work, show article performance, respond to requests and protect the service.

Google Analytics data

Only the Owner connects Google Analytics. Studio requests read-only Google Analytics access (analytics.readonly) to check the configured Ordinary Glow property and load article-performance reports. This connection does not request access to Gmail or Drive and cannot change Analytics settings or website tracking.

The server receives Google authorization tokens and processes report responses. The saved authorization grant is encrypted server-side; it is not exposed to Writers or included in public pages. Saved reports contain aggregate metrics, such as views, users, new users and sessions, grouped by reporting period and eligible article.

Google-derived reports are available only to the Owner and Writers entitled to those article reports, with hosting services needed to operate this feature. We do not sell Google API data, use it for advertising or retargeting, or provide it to data brokers.

The Owner can disconnect Google in Studio or manage Studio’s access in the connected Google account. Disconnecting removes Studio’s saved authorization grant and pending connection flow. It does not automatically delete previously saved reports, editorial or security history, data held by Google, or permissions granted to other applications.

Recent article visitors

Separately from Google Analytics, eligible public Ordinary Glow articles offer an optional first-party counter. It is off until a reader allows it, and honours Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals. Declining does not prevent reading the article. This choice controls only this counter, not the public site's other services.

After permission, the public site uses a random, short-lived browser cookie. Its counter database stores a hash of that identifier, an eligible article identifier and the time of the recent visit; it does not store the reader's name, email address or IP address. Network hosting and security services may process connection information separately.

Studio receives only aggregate counts for the preceding 30 minutes. Each Writer can see their own eligible articles; the Owner can see all eligible Studio articles or select a Writer. Browser identifiers and individual visit histories are not sent to Studio. One browser visiting multiple selected articles counts once in their combined total. These are consenting browsers with recent visits, not necessarily people still reading, and the numbers need not match Google Analytics.

The browser cookie and counter records have a rolling 30-minute window. Expired visits are excluded immediately from reports; cleanup of expired database rows is scheduled and may lag, and hosting backups may retain earlier records. Readers can stop the counter on an eligible article and request removal of its current browser records. See the article counter disclosure and controls for details. No historical visits are backfilled.

Access and sharing

The Owner manages accounts and can access workspace content and reports. A Writer can access their assigned work and eligible article reports, not another Writer’s private workspace.

Cloudflare provides Studio’s hosting, database and file storage. Google processes the authorized Analytics requests. Selected approved content and restricted internal publication identifiers pass to Ordinary Glow’s publishing system to complete and verify publication. We may also handle information when necessary to investigate misuse, respond to a request or meet applicable legal obligations.

When the Owner explicitly requests GPT metadata suggestions, Studio sends the complete saved article title and original text through the existing local Dashboard to its configured GPT processor to suggest missing metadata. This transfer does not include images, Google Analytics reports or authorization grants, or account credentials. Suggestions require Owner review and explicit application; generating or applying suggestions does not publish an article.

When content is published

Private drafts are not automatically published. Owner-confirmed publication sends the selected approved content, public byline and article details to the public site. The public byline may differ from the private Writer account name.

Images retain their uploaded file contents, which can include embedded metadata. Remove location or other sensitive metadata before uploading if you do not want it transferred. Selected images can become publicly accessible during publication, before the article itself is completed. Cancelling a publication operation does not automatically remove images already transferred.

Public articles and images may be copied, cached or indexed outside Studio. Disabling an account or removing a private draft does not automatically retract public material.

Cookies and security

We do not add advertising or marketing tracking scripts to these public information pages. Cloudflare may apply network security controls, including browser checks, when serving them. The private workspace uses essential cookies for signed-in sessions, protection against forged form submissions and the Owner’s temporary Google connection flow.

Studio uses HTTPS, hashed password verification, server-side sessions, role-based access and encrypted storage for the saved Google authorization grant. No service can promise absolute security. Keep your password, recovery code and private invitation or recovery links confidential, and contact us if you suspect misuse.

The editor offers an optional browser recovery copy for unsaved article text. It is off until you enable it. Copies are stored on that device in browser storage, separated by account, article, draft revision and editor tab, with a 24-hour recovery window. This is not encrypted backup storage; anyone with access to the browser profile may be able to inspect it. Do not enable it on a shared or untrusted device. You can remove the article’s recovery copies using the editor’s recovery controls. Expired copies are rejected and cleaned when the recovery feature next runs; clearing browser data also removes them.

Retention and your choices

Studio currently retains account records, drafts and media, editorial snapshots and notes, publication history, security records and saved report caches, as well as metadata requests, results and Owner decisions. Metadata job records are also retained locally by the GPT bridge used by the Dashboard. There is no single automatic deletion deadline for these records. Session or token expiry, account deactivation and a report’s “stale” label do not mean the underlying records have been deleted.

Draft recovery keeps up to 10 earlier saved checkpoints per article for up to seven days, subject to a shared 1,000-checkpoint capacity limit. Expired checkpoints cannot be restored; database cleanup runs with subsequent draft saves or explicit maintenance and can lag after inactivity. Hosting backups can retain earlier copies. This recovery history does not replace submitted snapshots or publication records.

Personal archiving only hides an article from your working list; it does not delete the article. Explicit unused-image cleanup removes only eligible unreferenced private objects and preserves deletion/retry history. Completed GPT-job archival retains the full private job and a replay-prevention record; it is not deletion. Correction requests and in-app updates are retained as editorial history.

Contact hello@ordinaryglow.com to request access to, correction of or deletion of information associated with you. We will review the request, verify the requester where appropriate and explain what can be done in light of existing agreements, publication history, security needs and applicable obligations. Studio does not currently offer a self-service account deletion or data-export tool.

Handling a private record does not automatically remove published content, transferred images, third-party copies or data retained independently by Google or our hosting providers.

Questions and updates

For questions about this policy, Google data use or your information, write to hello@ordinaryglow.com. Please identify the relevant account or article without sending passwords or recovery codes.

We will update this page when Studio’s information practices change. The date above identifies this version.