Privacy Policy

Histora — last updated 22 October 2026

Who we are

Histora is a reading app about historical figures and events, published for Android on Google Play. This policy explains what the app stores, where it goes, and what you can do about it. It replaces an earlier version which described Histora as an app that collected nothing; that stopped being true when accounts and synchronisation were added.

Data we collect

Your account

Histora requires an account, so that your reading progress follows you to a second device. When you sign up we store:

• your e-mail address, used to sign in and to reach you about your account;
• a username you choose, shown only to you;
• your password, which is stored only as a cryptographic hash by our authentication provider. Nobody, including us, can read it back.

Your reading

So that your place in a story is the same on every device, the following is stored against your account on our server:

• which chapters you have completed and which stories you have opened;
• which characters you have unlocked, and when;
• your reading streak and the date you last read something;
• your notification preferences — whether the daily reminder is on and the time you picked for it, your time zone, and whether you allow the two kinds of notification we send from our servers;
• which new stories you opened today and when, so that the free daily limit counts per account rather than per phone;
• your invite code, the account identifiers of friends who signed up with it, and the rewards that earned you. Nothing about your contacts is read or uploaded — an invitation is a message you send yourself, from your own messaging app.

Your answers

Some chapters end with a quiz, a poll or a choice point. Quiz answers are not stored anywhere — a quiz is a self-test while you read, not a grade. Poll votes and choices are stored, one row per question, so the app can show how other readers answered. Other readers only ever see totals; nobody can look up how you voted.

Your subscription

Histora Pro is a monthly or yearly subscription bought through Google Play. Google takes the payment; we never receive your card or bank details. To know whether your account has Pro, we store against your account the plan you chose, whether you are in a free trial, the date it renews or ends, whether it renews automatically, and the store it was bought in.

Purchases are checked and kept in sync by RevenueCat, a subscription service that receives the purchase from Google Play and from the app. RevenueCat holds your account identifier (a random code, not your e-mail address), the purchase token Google issues, the product, the purchase, renewal and expiry dates, price, currency and country, and basic technical details such as the app version, the Android version and the app language.

Feedback you send

If you send us a bug report or an idea from inside the app, we store the message you typed together with the app version and the platform. So that we see it, the message is also posted, with your e-mail address and your account identifier, to a private channel in the Discord workspace of the two people who build Histora. Nobody else has access to that channel. We use your e-mail address only to answer you.

When you create an account, the username you chose is posted to a private channel in that same Discord workspace, so we know someone new joined. Nothing else about you goes with it: no e-mail address, no account identifier.

Usage statistics

This version of Histora sends no usage statistics. It contains no analytics SDK and measures nothing about how you use the app. Apart from the advertising described next, the only data that leaves your phone is the data described above — your account, your progress, your poll and choice answers, and any feedback you choose to send.

Histora asks for no location permission and reads no GPS.

Advertising (from version 1.2, without Pro)

If you read Histora without a Pro subscription, the app shows ads from Google AdMob: a banner on the home screen and on each era’s page, and one full-screen ad after you finish a story — never inside a chapter. Pro readers see no ads, and for them the advertising SDK is not started at all.

To choose, show and measure ads, and to prevent fraud, Google AdMob receives:

• your device’s advertising ID;
• your IP address, from which Google derives an approximate location;
• device and app information such as the phone model, Android version, app version and language;
• how you interact with the ads (whether one was shown or tapped).

It never receives your e-mail address, your account identifier or what you read.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland the app asks for your consent first, using Google’s consent form, and shows no ads until you have made a choice. If you decline personalised ads, Google may still show non-personalised ads, which use the information above only to show, measure and protect the ad. You can change your choice at any time under Settings → Privacy → Ad choices.

In US states with a privacy law of their own (such as California), showing ads based on your advertising ID can count as “selling” or “sharing” personal information. You can opt out under Settings → Privacy → Ad choices by choosing Don’t sell or share my data; you will then still see ads, but not ones based on your data. We never sell your data for money.

On any Android phone you can also reset or delete your advertising ID under Android Settings → Privacy → Ads.

Ads are limited to content suitable for a general audience. Google processes this data under its own privacy policy; see how Google uses information from apps that use its services.

Data stored only on your device

The following never leaves your phone, and disappears when you clear the app’s data or uninstall the app:

• your theme (light, dark or system) and your language preference;
• your profile picture. If you choose a photo from your gallery, the app remembers where that file sits on your device — the picture itself is never uploaded;
• your e-mail preferences. Histora sends no e-mail yet. The monthly letter, new stories and reading tips are on unless you switch them off in Settings → Email; offers are off until you switch them on. Once we do start sending, every message carries an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and that link is the way to stop them for good;
• a copy of your reading progress, so the app also works without a connection.

Who else sees it

We do not sell data. These companies process data on our behalf, each only for the job described — with one exception, Google AdMob, noted below:

• Supabase (Supabase, Inc.) — the database and sign-in service holding your account, your reading progress, your poll and choice answers, your invite code, your subscription status and your feedback.
• Google (Google Play) — only if you subscribe: Google takes the payment and manages the subscription under its own privacy policy.
• RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc.) — only if you subscribe: verifies purchases and keeps their status in sync, as described under “Your subscription”.
• Discord (Discord Inc.) — hosts the private channel where your feedback reaches us, and where we are told a new account was created (with its username only).
• Google (Google AdMob) — only if you read without Pro: shows the ads described under “Advertising”. For advertising, Google does not only act for us but also decides for itself how it uses this data, under its own privacy policy. That is why the consent form asks you, and not only us.

RevenueCat and Discord are based in the United States, so data you send them may be processed there, under the safeguards those companies provide for transfers from the EU (such as the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses). Everything travels over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).

Your rights

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom you have the right to access, correct, export or erase your personal data, and to object to processing. In practice:

• Object to processing — write to the address below and we answer within 30 days. This version measures no usage statistics, so there is nothing of that kind to object to; deleting your account removes everything else.
• Delete your account — Settings → Delete account, after one confirmation. This is immediate and permanent: your account, your reading progress, your unlocked characters, your poll and choice answers, your invite code and any feedback you sent are removed from our database in a single step, and the same data is cleared from the device you are holding. There is no backup to restore from and no way to undo it. You do not need to write to us and we do not keep a copy.
• A subscription is not cancelled by deleting your account. Google Play keeps billing until you cancel it yourself, in the Play Store under Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions (or Settings → Manage subscription in the app). Cancel first, then delete.
• What deleting does not reach. A copy of feedback you sent stays in our private Discord channel, and RevenueCat keeps a record of past purchases. Write to us and we remove both. Google keeps its own record of purchases under its own policy.
• Ask for a copy of your data — Settings → Request my data, which opens an e-mail to us with the request already written. We answer within 30 days, normally much sooner. There is no automatic export button; the data is sent to the address you write from.
• Anything else about this policy, at the address below.

How long we keep it: your account data stays for as long as the account exists. Delete the account and it is gone at that moment — we do not keep an archived copy and cannot recover it afterwards.

You can also complain to your national data protection authority. In the Netherlands that is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

Notifications

Android will not let us send any notification until you have granted permission, and that permission is asked for only after you finish your first chapter. Say no and you receive nothing. Notifications come in two kinds, and the difference matters both for your privacy and for how you switch them off.

Created by your device

The daily reading reminder, at a time you choose; the warning that your reading streak is about to end; and a note when you reach a milestone, such as your tenth finished chapter. All three are worked out and scheduled entirely by your own phone, from reading progress it already holds. No push service is involved, no message is sent to or from a server, and we have no way of knowing whether they appeared or whether you opened them.

The daily reminder has a switch under Settings → Notifications, along with the time it arrives. The streak warning and the milestone note do not: they are part of reading with Histora, and there is no row for them. Android keeps its own control either way, and it is the one that decides: each kind has its own notification channel, so you can press and hold a notification, or open Android Settings → Apps → Histora → Notifications, and silence one kind without losing the others — or all of them at once. Nothing we do can override that.

Sent by us

This version sends no notifications from our servers. The push service is not active in this release, so no registration token for your installation is created, stored or used, and the two server-sent categories do not appear in Settings.

Permissions

None of the permissions Histora requests give access to your files, your contacts or your location:

• VIBRATE — the short haptic feedback when you tap a chapter or unlock a character. A normal permission; it asks for no confirmation.
• POST_NOTIFICATIONS — needed to show the daily reminder described above. Android asks you for this one, and only after you have finished your first chapter. If you say no, the rest of the app is unaffected.
• RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED and WAKE_LOCK — let a reminder you enabled survive a restart of your phone and arrive on time. Without them the reminder would silently stop after every reboot.
• INTERNET and ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE — used to sign you in, synchronise your progress and load the polls and choice points.
• com.android.vending.BILLING — lets the app open Google Play’s payment screen when you choose to subscribe. It gives no access to your payment details.
• com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID — lets Google AdMob read the advertising ID described under “Advertising”. It is only used for readers without Pro, and you can reset or delete the ID in your phone’s settings.

Apart from AD_ID, the app declares no permission for identifying you across other apps, and no permission relating to push messaging: the reminder is scheduled by your own device’s alarm clock, and no push token is ever requested.

Offline use

All story text and all images are bundled inside the app, so you can read without a connection. The quizzes, polls and choice points come from our server and are simply absent when you are offline — the chapter reads exactly as it otherwise would. Progress you make offline stays on your device and is sent up the next time you have a connection.

Children

Histora is suitable for all ages, has no chat, and shows no content written by other readers. It is not directed at children under 13, and creating an account requires an e-mail address. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13; if you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will remove it.

Advertising and payment

From version 1.2, Histora is free to read with ads from Google AdMob, as described under “Advertising”. The optional Pro subscription, handled by Google Play as described above, removes the daily story limit and all ads. Versions before 1.2 contain no advertising SDK.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version is published on this page with a new date at the top. The version that applies to you is the one published here.

Contact

Questions about this policy, a request for a copy of your data, or an objection to the usage statistics? E-mail businessdemore@gmail.com. Deleting your account does not need an e-mail — the app does it for you under Settings → Delete account.

Managing e-mail. There are two ways, and either is enough: the switches under Settings → Email in the app, or the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any message we send you. The monthly letter, new stories and reading tips start on; offers start off. We send no e-mail at all in this version.