What we do with email addresses.

The short version

We don't sell, rent, or trade anybody's address. Not ever, not to anyone.

If you're a reader: you're on an author's list, not ours. Every marketing email an author sends you has a one-click unsubscribe, and it works immediately.

If you're an author: your list is yours. Ask us and we'll send you a copy of it — there's no export button in the product yet, so for now that's a person on our end doing it by hand.

If you joined an author's list

We keep your address, where and when you signed up, whatever tags the author files you under, and the history of the mail they send you: delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, reported as spam. Out of that history we work out a rough engagement score, which is a single number telling the author how warm a reader you are. There's no profile of you beyond that, no tracking of you around the rest of the web, and nothing goes to a data broker.

Opens and clicks aren't magic, so here's the mechanism. The emails an author sends you carry a tiny invisible image; your mail app loads it when you open the message, and that's what records an open. Links in the message point at our email provider first and then send you on where they said they'd go, and that's what records a click. The provider also tells us roughly where the message was opened — town, region and country, worked out from the network you were on — along with the kind of device and mail app you used. We keep the reports it sends us as they arrive.

When you type your address into an author's page, we email you to ask you to confirm it before that author can send you anything. That isn't a formality — it's how we know the address belongs to the person who typed it.

Authors can also bring across a list they already had, from another mailing tool or a spreadsheet. Those addresses aren't asked to confirm again: the author states on the record that everyone on the file asked to hear from them, and we go on that. So if mail turns up from an author you don't remember giving your address to, an upload is the likely reason — and unsubscribing works exactly the same way. From an uploaded file we take only the email address, any tags, and the date the person signed up; nothing else in it is stored, and the file itself is deleted the moment the import finishes or fails.

The list is the author's, so what's on it is theirs to see. We can see it too, because we run the servers, and so can the handful of companies listed further down that keep those servers and that email working. Past that, nobody.

Who actually sends the email

The author's name is on it and your reply goes to them — but the sending is ours. Since 8 September 2026 the address it leaves from sits on the author's own corner of awdur.com, of the shape hello@penname.awdur.com; a new author's mail comes from an address on mail.awdur.com until theirs is set up. Either way, Awdur is the sender of record for every email an author sends through us, which means we're responsible for it. If something arriving from an author on Awdur is doing what it shouldn't, tell us: hello@awdur.com. We'd rather hear from you than have you press "report spam", though you're entitled to do that too.

Leaving a list

Every marketing email carries an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and most mail apps show their own one-tap unsubscribe button as well. Both work straight away. Neither asks you to sign in, and neither asks you why. The one message with no such link is the note asking you to confirm your address — there's nothing to leave yet, and if you ignore it nothing further is sent.

Leaving one author's list doesn't touch any other list you're on. They're separate, and we keep them that way.

One thing does carry across, and you should know it: if mail to you bounces for good, or you report a message as spam, our email provider records that against your address for the whole platform, so mail from other authors on Awdur can stop reaching you too.

Unsubscribing stops the mail; it doesn't erase you. We mark the address unsubscribed and keep the record — the address, the history, the tags — because that mark is the only way to be certain that author never mails you again by accident.

If you'd rather we forgot the address entirely, email hello@awdur.com from it and we'll delete it.

If you have an Awdur account

We store your name, your email address, your password (hashed, so we can't read it), and the things you make: your page, your books, your reader list, your emails. We use your address to run the account — signing in, password resets, notices about the account itself, and a weekly summary you can switch off. We'll also use it to tell you what's new in Awdur, either in that summary or in a short note from hello@awdur.com — rarely.

Your reader list belongs to you, not to us. There's no close-account button in the product yet: email hello@awdur.com and we'll close the account and delete what's in it by hand.

When you apply for an account

An account here isn't automatic — a person on our end reads every application, so we give them something to read it with. When you send one we record the network address your connection presents to the sites you visit, which browser you used, and how long you spent filling in the form. We look up the domain of the email address you gave to see whether it accepts mail at all, and whether it's a free-mail provider or a domain of your own. We also note whether the welcome email we sent you actually arrived. Whoever is deciding sees all of that beside your application; it goes nowhere else.

The parts that identify you — the network address and the browser — are deleted 30 days after we approve you, 90 days after a rejection, and at 90 days from the application either way if nobody ever decides. Ask us before then and we'll delete them; if your account is erased they go with it. The rest — how long the form took, what we learned about your mail domain, whether the welcome email arrived — stays with the account.

Who else touches it

These are the companies that keep it running, and this is what each one does for us. Postmark delivers the email, so it handles every address a message goes to and sends us the delivery reports. Render runs the servers, so the database lives there. Cloudflare stores files like cover images and headshots, and holds an uploaded list file until the import that used it is done. DNSimple holds the DNS records for authors' awdur.com subdomains, including the keys that sign their mail; it never sees a reader's address. Fathom counts page views, on authors' public pages and inside Awdur, so it counts readers too; it sets no cookies and builds no profile of the people it counts. None of them pays us for access to anything — that isn't a thing we do. Each of them has its own privacy policy that says what they do with what passes through them: Postmark, Render, Cloudflare, DNSimple, Fathom.

How long we keep things

A reader's address stays for as long as the list does, and an unsubscribed address stays as the record of the unsubscribe.

Two different things are going on with the rest of it, so here's both. The history that hangs off your reader record — delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, reported as spam — stays as long as that record does, because it is what the engagement score is made of; delete the reader and it goes too. The raw reports our email provider sends us, the ones described further up that arrive with your address inside them, are deleted 30 days after they reach us, every day, whether anyone asks or not.

An uploaded import file goes sooner still: deleted as soon as the import finishes or fails, either way.

Cookies and counting

The book pages set no cookies at all; the author's landing page sets one, because it has a form on it. So does the thank-you page you land on after signing up, and so do the confirm-your-address and unsubscribe pages our emails link to — same cookie, same reason. Signed into Awdur you carry two, and both exist only to keep you signed in. Fathom, the page-view counter above, sets none.

None of this is advertising. There's no ad network in the product and no advertising pixel; the only pixel here is the open-tracking image in an author's email, described further up.

Children

Awdur isn't built for children and isn't meant for them. When you apply for an author account you have to confirm you're at least 13, and we keep a record of that confirmation, and when you made it, for as long as the account exists. We don't knowingly collect anything from anyone under 13, and if we find out we have, we delete it. If you think we have, tell us at hello@awdur.com.

If this page changes

The date at the top always says when it last moved, and if we change something that matters we'll say what changed, right here.

Ask us anything

hello@awdur.com. A person reads it.