How we handle your information

Seacoast Stories is a small operation. We like to keep things simple, and that goes for your information too. This page explains what we collect on this site and what we do with it. No legal maze. Just the honest version.

What we collect

A few forms on this site ask for your name and email address. Some also have room for a message or event details. That covers the contact form, story ideas, guest suggestions, partnership inquiries, event RSVPs, the events email list, the episode-page signup, and the shop waitlist. Contact submissions and shop waitlist entries are stored in the site's Postgres database. The site also uses the first-party analytics and third-party services described below.

For first-party page-view analytics, the server records the day, page path, referring hostname or campaign tag, device type, browser family, an approximate country, and a daily-rotating anonymous hash derived from the request IP address, user agent, date, and server salt. The raw IP address is not stored in the page-view row. The server may send the IP address to country.is for the country lookup. Anonymous interaction endpoints also record labels such as a listen platform, event click kind, or listen-bar state. On a published deployment, Replit may inject its Umami analytics tracker; the site can also send Umami anonymous event labels. Form field contents are not used as those event labels.

Where it goes

When you follow a tracked partner link, we record the time, short path, destination and campaign, referring URL, browser user agent, and source tag (such as Spotify, Instagram, newsletter, or QR). Visits without a source tag are labeled untagged. These click records are stored in our database for private partnership reporting. The destination receives campaign parameters, including the source tag when supplied.

Your submission lands in our inboxes and a real person reads it. Contact messages go to contact@seacoaststories.com. Guest suggestions go to press@seacoaststories.com. Partnership inquiries go to partnerships@seacoaststories.com. Everything else goes to hello@seacoaststories.com.

Emails you might get from us

When you submit a form, we send one short thank-you email so you know it landed. If you join the events list, we email you when a new event is announced. If you join the newsletter, you get the newsletter. That is the extent of it.

Local Thread and browser storage

The Local Thread currently allows posting without creating an account or providing an email address. Threads and replies are public and can include the display name, town, title, and text you submit. The server creates a participation session represented by an HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite cookie scoped to the community, and stores hashes for that session and abuse controls. Reactions, RSVPs, and similar community actions use those server-side hashes.

Site scripts use browser storage for limited preferences and dismissal state. Local Thread uses localStorage for a poster's display name and town and for follow preferences; it uses sessionStorage for its signup-prompt dismissal. Other site prompts use localStorage for event, episode-signup, and listen-bar dismissal state and sessionStorage for a partnership-prompt variant and visibility state. These values stay in your browser; a Local Thread profile is sent only when you use it in a post.

Third-party services

The newsletter subscribe form is an embedded Substack form. Substack receives and manages newsletter subscriber information and email delivery under its own terms. The Stories page also retrieves public posts from Substack. The shop uses Shopify's Storefront API and sends checkout to a Shopify-hosted checkout; information entered there is handled by Shopify rather than by the site's contact forms.

Spotify and YouTube can be embedded on pages as well as linked, and Apple Podcasts is linked from the site. Event ticket links can also take you to an outside ticketing or reservation service. Those services receive normal browser requests and have their own privacy policies. Email delivery for site notifications uses Resend. Provider-side collection, retention, and terms are not established by this page.

We never sell your data

We do not sell, rent, or trade your information. Not to advertisers. Not to anyone. Your email exists so we can talk to you, and for no other reason.

Questions

Want to know what we have, or want us to delete it? Email hello@seacoaststories.com and we will take care of it.