The short version. Locuust keeps what you write on your own device first. If you sign in, it is copied to your account so it follows you between devices. Your drafts are yours alone. What you publish can be read by other people with an account here. We do not run ads, we do not run analytics or tracking, and we do not sell anything about you.
The rest of this page says exactly what is kept, who can see it, who else touches it, and how to have it removed.
Locuust is a place to write serialized fiction and to read what other writers publish, as a website and as an Android app. In this policy, "we" means the people who run Locuust. You can reach us by email at kani@locuust.com, or by leaving a message on the @locuust account's Message Board.
Your email address, and a password if you chose one. Passwords are handled by Google's Firebase Authentication and are never stored or readable by us. If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your email address and the name on your Google account; we do not receive your Google password. We need your email to sign you in, to let you reset a password, and to check that the address is yours (an account has to have a verified email before it can sync or publish).
To slow down people guessing passwords, signing in with a handle goes through a small server function that keeps short-lived counts of failed attempts per handle and per network address. The network address is kept only as a one-way hash.
Your pen name and handle (both are required), an optional bio line, pronouns, a Discord username if you add one, a profile picture and banner, and when you started. Your handle is yours alone, and when you give one up we keep a record of it on your profile as "Was previously", so a name cannot be quietly dropped and reused to mislead people. Your profile is visible to other people signed in to Locuust, and a pen name, bio and picture also appear in the preview card when someone shares a link to your page.
Stories, chapters, notes, covers, pictures, and the version history Locuust keeps so you can undo a bad edit. All of it is saved on your device as you write. When you are signed in it is also copied to your account (the "mirror"), so it follows you to your other devices and survives a lost phone. Pictures are stored as files in Google Cloud Storage; text is stored in Google Cloud Firestore. Your drafts are private. Nobody else can read them through Locuust, with one exception: a story you share with other writers is visible to those writers.
When you publish a story or a chapter, a public copy is made, and that copy can be read by anyone who has an account here. Only the parts you marked public are copied; private chapters stay private, and unpublishing takes the public copy down. The story's page shows its totals (reads, votes, saves) and its rank in tags. A link to a published story shows a card (title, blurb, cover, read count) to anyone who holds the link, including on chat apps, and search engines can list that card; chapter text is never in it.
Locuust has no private messages. You can put your Discord username on your profile so people can find you there, and it is shown to anyone signed in, like the rest of your profile. Anything you say on Discord is between you and Discord, under Discord's own policy; Locuust is not part of it and is not connected to Discord. Private messages sent on Locuust before 10 October 2026 can no longer be opened by anyone in Locuust.
Locuust writes alerts for you (a follow, a comment, a vote, a new part of something you read). In the Android app, if you allow notifications, your phone's notification address is kept in your account so alerts and invitations can reach you with the app closed. Signing out removes it.
If you answer the "How did you get here?" survey, your answers are kept. Signed in, they are attached to your account, one answer per account. Signed out, they are not attached to any account, and a note on your device stops you answering twice.
Locuust keeps your work, settings and a few preferences in your browser's storage (IndexedDB and local storage) or, in the Android app, in the app's own folder. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. If you use Locuust signed out, none of it leaves your device.
Google, which hosts Locuust, receives your IP address and basic technical details (browser, device, time) whenever you load the site or talk to our servers, as every web host does, and keeps ordinary server logs. We do not use these to build profiles of anyone.
| Your drafts and private chapters | You, and co-writers of a story you share with them. |
|---|---|
| Published stories, chapters, covers | Anyone signed in with a verified email. A story's card, not its text, to anyone with its link and to search engines. |
| Your profile | Anyone signed in. A short card (name, bio, picture) to anyone with a link to it and to search engines. |
| Comments, board posts, replies | Anyone signed in. |
| What you read, voted for, saved; your blocks | You. |
| Follows, reading lists | Anyone signed in. |
| Reports you make | The people who run Locuust. Not the person reported. |
Locuust is open to search engines. They can list the front page, the card of a published story (title, blurb, cover, read count) and the card of a writer's profile (name, bio, picture). They cannot read chapter text, comments, board posts or anything else that needs an account. Unpublishing a story, or deleting your account, takes your card off the site; a search engine may keep showing its own copy for a while until it visits again.
The people who run Locuust have technical access to the database, which means we can read what is stored there, drafts included. We do not read it except to fix a fault, deal with abuse, or because the law requires it.
We do not sell your data and we do not share it with advertisers. Locuust is not showing ads. If that ever changes, we will say so here first, and say what an advertiser would receive.
Traffic between you and Locuust is encrypted in transit. Access to the database is controlled by rules that are checked on every read and write, so a signed-in account cannot read another account's drafts. No system is perfect, and a story you publish can be read and copied by anyone who can read it.
Locuust is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you think a child under 13 has an account, tell us at kani@locuust.com or through @locuust and we will remove it. Stories can be rated Mature and carry content warnings; people under 18 should use their judgment, or have a parent's.
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will put the new date at the top, and for a change in what we collect or who gets it we will say so inside Locuust as well.
Email kani@locuust.com, or leave a message on @locuust's Message Board.