Privacy
last updated October 2026
Kinlight is a reading room, not a service. The whole archive runs in your browser; there is nothing to sign up for, and no account or personal detail is ever asked of you.
What we don’t do
There are no accounts and nothing is ever submitted to us. We do not ask for, collect or store your name, email or any personal detail, and we never sell or share data about you. Even the books you write yourself (below) stay on your device — nothing you type is ever sent to us. If you choose to, you can keep a copy of them in your own Google Drive, which is described below.
Audience measurement and advertising
We use Google Analytics to see which pages are read, how visitors find the archive and which of its tools get used — opening a person, searching, tracing a relationship, starting a book — and Google AdSense to show advertising that helps keep it free. From your own books Analytics receives only counts, such as how many people a book holds: never a title, a name, a search or anything you write.
Both run under Google Consent Mode. A short bar at the foot of the page lets you accept or decline; in the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area nothing is set until you accept, and elsewhere measurement is on by default and the bar lets you opt out. You can change your choice at any time through the “cookie choices” link in the footer.
When you accept, Google may set cookies to count visits and measure advertising. When you decline — or before you choose, in the UK and EEA — analytics runs in a cookieless mode instead: no cookies are set and no identifier is stored, and Google receives only ordinary request information (including your IP address, used to estimate a coarse location and then discarded) reported back to us as aggregate totals.
On your device only
Your browser’s local storage remembers a few small reading preferences — which books you have opened, whether the notice card is dismissed, and your cookie choice. That record never leaves your device, and you can clear it at any time through your browser’s site-data settings.
If you begin a book of your own, or bring one in from a file, everything you write — names, years, stories, and any portrait photographs you add — is kept in your browser’s storage on this device only. It is never uploaded to us, we cannot see it, and it travels only when you export it to a file yourself or connect your own Google Drive (below). Take a book off the shelf in the library, or clear the site’s data, and it is gone from the device; browsers may also clear this storage themselves if the site goes long unvisited, which is why the archive keeps offering to bind your book to a file. If you add photographs of living people, they remain yours and remain here.
Google Drive, if you connect it
Keeping a copy of your own books in Google Drive is optional, and off until you connect it in the library. When you do, Kinlight asks Google for a single permission: to create and manage its own files in your Drive. It cannot see, list or open anything else there.
Your books — names, dates, stories and pictures — are copied from your browser straight to a “Kinlight” folder in your own Drive, and read back from it on the other devices where you connect the same account. They do not pass through any Kinlight server and we cannot see them. Nothing from your Drive is used for advertising or measurement, nothing is shared with anyone, and no person reads it.
Signing in needs one small helper. A web page cannot hold the secret Google requires, so Google’s sign-in code is exchanged for access through a relay we run on Vercel. The relay handles only that sign-in token, stores nothing, and never receives your books. The access it returns is kept in this browser’s storage, so the copy can stay in step without asking you to sign in every hour.
Disconnect in the library at any time: the access is revoked and forgotten, your books stay on this device, and the copies stay in your Drive until you delete them there. Taking a book off the shelf while connected moves its Drive copy to Drive’s bin. You can also remove Kinlight’s access from your Google Account’s security settings.
Kinlight’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Third parties
The pages are hosted on GitHub Pages, so GitHub may log requests (such as IP addresses) under the GitHub Privacy Statement.
Portraits load directly from Wikimedia Commons: when a card comes into view, your browser requests the image from wikimedia.org, under the Wikimedia Foundation’s privacy policy.
Audience measurement and advertising are provided by Google, under Google’s Privacy Policy.
If you buy the heirloom print, the payment is processed by Stripe under Stripe’s privacy policy — your card details go to Stripe and we never see them. Our unlock service keeps only the purchase code it mints (and, if you ask for the code by email, that address, used once to send it). Nothing from your books rides any of these requests.
Living people
Records of living private individuals are redacted by design: initials, a birth decade and their place in the family — nothing more is published.
Reigning monarchs, royal families and comparable public figures are the exception: their records are drawn entirely from the public historical record — the same facts published in encyclopaedias and official announcements — and nothing non-public is ever added. If such a record concerns you and you would like it corrected or removed, write to the address below.
Contact
Questions about this notice — or a correction or privacy request — can be sent to support@kinlight.org. If you write to us, we see your email address and message and use them only to reply.
Changes
If this page changes, the date at the top changes with it.