Effective date: July 1, 2026
The Open Lore Network ("OLN," "we," "us," and "our"), a project of the OLN Foundation, provides an openly-licensed, community-governed encyclopedia of fictional canon. This Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect, use, and share your personal information, and to help you exercise your privacy rights.
- Scope
- Personal information we collect
- How we use your information
- Disclosing your information to third parties
- Advertising and your choices
- Data retention
- Security of your information
- Children's information
- Your privacy rights
- Additional provisions for EEA and UK residents
- Contact us
Scope
The Open Lore Network is operated by the OLN Foundation. We are the controller of the personal information we collect from you as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to personal information we process in connection with our website at theopenlore.net and its subdomains and our related online offerings (collectively, the "Services").
We respect your right to privacy. Our aim is to ensure that our collection and use of personal information is appropriate to providing the Services and is in accordance with applicable data-protection law.
We may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time. If there are material changes, we will notify you as required by applicable law. If you continue to use the Services after an updated policy takes effect, you will be deemed to have accepted it. If you disagree with any change, you should stop using the Services and, if applicable, deactivate your account.
Personal information we collect
The categories of personal information we collect depend on how you interact with the Services and the requirements of applicable law. Most visitors read the Services without an account; an account is required only for certain activities, such as contributing to the knowledge base, proposing or reviewing changes, or participating in discussions.
Information you provide to us
- Account creation. When you register, we collect your email address and a username, and — depending on your sign-in method — basic profile details provided by your identity provider (see "Sign-in providers" below). You may optionally provide additional profile information such as a display name or avatar. We refer to this as "Registration Data."
- Contributions. We collect the content you submit — including facts, corrections, timeline events, articles, comments, and images — together with the username associated with your contributions. Contributions and their revision history are, by design, public and are retained as part of the encyclopedia's transparent change record.
- Your communications with us. We collect the information you provide when you contact us for support or otherwise communicate with us.
Information collected automatically
When you use the Services we may automatically collect certain information, including your IP address, device and browser details, operating system, approximate location inferred from your IP address, the pages you visit and links you click, and information about how you interact with the Services. We collect this using cookies and similar technologies.
Cookies and similar technologies. We and certain service providers use cookies and similar technologies ("Technologies") to operate the Services and understand how they are used. Our uses fall into these general categories:
- Operationally necessary — required to provide the Services, keep you signed in, and maintain security and integrity;
- Performance-related — help us understand how the Services are used so we can improve them;
- Functionality-related — remember your preferences and settings; and
- Advertising- or targeting-related — used to deliver and measure advertising, including interest-based advertising (see "Advertising and your choices" below).
Analytics and infrastructure providers. We rely on the following third-party processors to operate and improve the Services:
- Amplitude — product analytics, to measure engagement and improve the Services.
- Supabase — authentication and database services that store account and contribution data.
- Google — used to provide sign-in ("Sign in with Google"); see "Sign-in providers."
- Cloudflare — content delivery and security/anti-abuse protection.
- Google Cloud Platform — hosting and storage infrastructure.
Sign-in providers. If you sign in through a third-party identity provider (for example, Google), we receive basic account information from that provider (such as your email address and, where applicable, your name and profile image) as permitted by your settings with that provider. Your relationship with that provider is governed by its own privacy policy.
How we use your information
We use your personal information for a variety of purposes, including to:
- Provide the Services — create and manage your account; respond to your questions and requests; provide access to features; and communicate with you about your account, your activity, and changes to this Privacy Policy.
- Maintain and improve the Services, and keep them safe — measure interest and engagement; develop new features; authenticate users; keep a record of who is accessing and changing parts of the Services; provide network and information security and prevent fraud and abuse; and enforce our agreements.
- Advertising — to deliver, measure, and improve advertising on the Services, including interest-based advertising, as described below.
- Comply with law — meet our legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.
- With your consent — for any other purpose disclosed to you at the time you provide the information, or with your consent.
De-identified and aggregated information. We may create de-identified or aggregated information (for example, aggregate usage statistics) and use and disclose it for any lawful purpose.
Disclosing your information to third parties
- Service providers. We share personal information with the third-party processors described above who perform services on our behalf (such as hosting, authentication, analytics, and security), under contracts that require them to protect it.
- Advertising partners. As described below, we may allow advertising partners to collect certain information through the Services to deliver and measure advertising.
- Public contributions. Content you contribute to the knowledge base — and the username and revision history associated with it — is public by design and is visible to anyone who uses the Services.
- Legal and safety disclosures. We may access, preserve, and disclose information where we believe in good faith it is necessary to comply with law or legal process; to protect the rights, property, or safety of OLN, our users, or others; to enforce our policies or agreements; or to investigate suspected illegal activity.
- Business transfers. If we are involved in a merger, reorganization, transfer of the project, or a similar transaction, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, as permitted by law.
Advertising and your choices
The Services are supported in part by advertising. We and our advertising partners may use cookies and similar Technologies to deliver advertising that is relevant to you — including interest-based advertising (also called "personalized advertising"), which uses information about your activity to select ads likely to interest you — and to measure the performance of that advertising. This may involve advertising partners collecting information such as your IP address, cookie identifiers, the pages you visit, and general location.
Depending on where you live, the sharing of information with advertising partners for interest-based advertising may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information under applicable law. You can opt out of interest- based advertising and of any such "sale" or "sharing" in the following ways:
- Global Privacy Control (GPC). If your browser or a plug-in sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information for targeted advertising. Learn more at globalprivacycontrol.org. We do not respond to legacy "Do Not Track" (DNT) signals.
- Cookie settings. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings; note that some features may not work properly if you do.
- Industry opt-outs. You can opt out of many advertising partners at the Digital Advertising Alliance (optout.aboutads.info) and the Network Advertising Initiative (optout.networkadvertising.org).
Please note that opt-outs are specific to the browser and device you use, so you must opt out on each one. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16 years of age.
Email communications. You can unsubscribe from non-essential emails using the link in the email. We may still send you transactional or administrative messages about the Services (for example, updates to these terms), which you cannot opt out of while you hold an account.
Data retention
We retain personal information for as long as you use the Services or as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected — to provide the Services, resolve disputes, establish legal defenses, conduct audits, enforce our agreements, and comply with applicable law. Note that public contributions and their revision history are retained indefinitely by design, because the transparency of each change is essential to the encyclopedia's trustworthiness; de-identification cannot fully remove information already published in public contributions. Information is stored and processed in the United States (on Google Cloud) and in any country where we or our service providers operate.
Security of your information
We take reasonable steps to protect your information. However, no system is 100% secure, and to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law we cannot warrant the security of any information you provide. If we learn of a security breach, we may notify you electronically, by posting a notice on the Services, or by email as required by law.
Children's information
The Services are not directed to children under the minimum age stated in our Terms of Service (16 in California and the EEA excluding the U.K.; 13 in the rest of the world including the U.K.), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under that age. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us; if we learn we have collected a child's personal information in violation of applicable law, we will take steps to delete it. See also our Child Safety Policy.
Your privacy rights
Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights, subject to applicable law and to verification of your identity:
- Access the personal information we hold about you;
- Correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information;
- Delete your personal information, subject to legal exceptions (note that deletion may limit your ability to use the Services, and that public contributions and their history may be retained as described above);
- Opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information and of interest-based advertising (see "Advertising and your choices" above); and
- Appeal a decision on your request, where applicable law provides for it.
To exercise any of these rights, email us at [email protected]. We will respond in accordance with applicable law and may take steps to verify your identity first. You may also use an authorized agent where applicable law permits, provided the agent can demonstrate authority to act on your behalf.
Additional provisions for EEA and UK residents
Where EEA or UK data-protection law applies, we process your personal information on one or more of the following legal bases: your consent; performance of a contract with you; compliance with a legal obligation; or our legitimate interests in operating, securing, and improving the Services, where those interests are not overridden by your rights. Where we rely on consent (for example, for advertising or targeting Technologies), you may withdraw it at any time; where we rely on legitimate interests, you may ask us for information about our balancing assessment.
Where we transfer personal information outside the EEA or UK, we take steps to ensure the transfer complies with applicable law (for example, by transferring to a country recognized as providing adequate protection, or by using Standard Contractual Clauses). You have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority (for example, the UK Information Commissioner's Office).
Contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, or if you wish to exercise your rights, please contact us at [email protected].