ℹ️ Privacy policy

What information we collect.

Ad-supported businesses often track a lot of information about you to better serve advertisers. Micro.blog isn’t like that. We have no ads and the business model is a simple subscription where you pay for extra features you use, such as blog hosting. We only collect enough information to run Micro.blog.

This help page outlines what kind of data is used by each major component of Micro.blog.

Micro.blog platform

You register with a name, email address, username, and web site URL. We store this information in a database on the Micro.blog servers. We send email to your address such as subscription receipts or other occasional notifications. If you do not upload a profile photo, we use a hash of your email address to look up a profile photo on Gravatar.

Micro.blog does not have traditional passwords. When signing in, we generate a random number to establish your web browser session. There are also tokens on your account that can be used with third-party apps. We use cookies to keep track of when you are signed in to Micro.blog.

Your time zone and IP address are sent from a web browser when visiting Micro.blog. We store the time zone with your account and use it to adjust all the post times to your local time. We use the IP address to rate-limit a client when there are too many requests in a short time period.

The timeline in Micro.blog is built in part from RSS or JSON feeds. When you add a feed to Micro.blog, it is considered public and may be included in subscription exports. Do not add private feeds or feed URLs that contain passwords.

If you enable cross-posting to Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, and Mastodon, we store authentication information that lets Micro.blog post to your accounts on those services.

If you register a domain name on Micro.blog, we send the domain name and the contact information you enter for that domain name to Name.com, who manages the name servers for your registration. No payment information is ever shared with Name.com.

Native apps for iOS, macOS, and Android

The native apps for Micro.blog (such as Micro.blog, Epilogue, Sunlit, and Wavelength) store a token for your account in the system keychain. The apps also store basic user and microblog information in preferences.

When authenticating with WordPress and compatible blogs, Micro.blog stores your WordPress password in the system keychain. The XML-RPC API sends the password with each request, so we recommend using SSL if you’re using an external blog.

Hosted blogs

Blogs hosted on Micro.blog are as separate as possible from the rest of the Micro.blog platform, and so by default collect less information from visitors.

We log a visitor’s IP address, web browser version, and requested path on your blog. These logs are kept for 2 months.

In most Micro.blog themes, some resources are retrieved from the main Micro.blog platform. For example, the profile photo and JavaScript to include replies for a blog post, if enabled. When one of these resources is loaded and a visitor is already signed in to Micro.blog, a cookie identifying the visitor is sent to Micro.blog. Otherwise, no cookies are ever used for hosted blogs.

Credit cards

Micro.blog uses Stripe for credit card processing. Credit card information is sent directly from your web browser to Stripe. Micro.blog does not see or store your credit card number.

Stripe manages your billing information, including name, zip code, credit card number, and expiration date. Your Micro.blog email address and username are stored on Stripe for sending receipt emails, and so that we can look up your account to confirm or update something about your subscription, usually from a support request.

Supporting services

Micro.blog relies on a few other services as supporting infrastructure, including:

  • Linode: Hosting the app, database servers, and storage for photos and other uploads.
  • Amazon Web Services: Additional backups and bookmark archives are stored on S3. Cloudfront is used as a CDN.
  • Help Scout: When you email help@micro.blog, your email goes to Help Scout.
  • SendGrid: We occasionally send newsletter-style email to all users. There is a link to unsubscribe in those emails. We also use SendGrid to send automated emails such as sign-up confirmations or blog expiration warnings. We have open tracking disabled to avoid spy pixels.
  • Cloudflare: Analytics used only on the Micro.blog home page and registration page to see how many people are visiting Micro.blog. Not used for signed-in users.
  • Sentry: To track performance of our web servers and unexpected errors.
  • GitHub: Themes and plug-ins are stored in GitHub. There is also an option to backup your blog to GitHub.
  • OpenAI: Podcast episodes uploaded to Micro.blog are processed through OpenAI to generate transcripts. Web pages you bookmark can also be sent to OpenAI to summarize the text.
  • Google Books: Book search, book covers, and our companion app Epilogue use Google Books.
  • Open Library: Book lookups and covers also use the Internet Archive’s Open Library.
  • Slack: We used to have a public Slack that any Micro.blog user could join, but it has been discontinued.

Related: Terms of Service

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