Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 23, 2026

Excerp ("we", "our", "the app") is a mobile app that lets you swipe through short cards summarizing technology and AI news, save articles to a reading list, take short quizzes to earn a Verified badge, see a leaderboard of verified readers and, if you choose, see which other readers are reading the same article and send them a message request. Excerp can also build a skills list: you choose a job role, and optionally an industry and a job posting you paste, and it lists the skills that role needs, in learning order, with links to learning material. This policy explains what information we collect, where it is kept, and how you can have it deleted.

Information we keep on our server

• Sign-in information: when you sign in with Google or with Apple, Google or Apple gives the app a sign-in token and the app sends it to our server. We use it to confirm your email address and to get your Google or Apple account ID, a permanent number Google or Apple gives your account for Excerp, which we use to recognize your account if your email address ever changes. If you sign in with Apple you can choose to hide your email address: Apple then gives us a private relay address (it ends in privaterelay.appleid.com and forwards to you), and we treat it as your email address. We keep your email address, your Google or Apple account ID, and a sign-in session (a secret code, stored in scrambled form) so you stay signed in. We do not store or use your name or profile photo from Google or Apple; Excerp asks Apple for your email address only. A Google account and an Apple account are separate accounts in Excerp, even if they share an email address; they are never merged, and each has its own data. If access to the app is limited to approved accounts, we also keep the email addresses on the approved list and of people who signed in and asked for access.
• Your account reference: a short code, such as EXC-7K4Q-92M3, made from your Google or Apple account ID by a one-way scramble. It is shown in the app under Profile. It cannot be turned back into your Google or Apple account, and it cannot be used to sign in or to see your data. You can quote it when you contact us about your data.
• Your data, once it is saved to your account: when you complete your profile or verify your first article, or, if you were already using Excerp, the first time you open the updated app, Excerp starts saving the following to your account, so you can get it back on a new phone: your profile (your display name, industry and topics of interest), your saved articles (with when you saved them, and a note when you remove one so your other phones remove it too), and your verified articles (with when, and under which topic). The app tells you once when this starts.
• Skip counts: from the moment you sign in, Excerp counts how many times you skipped each article by swiping it away, and the app tells our server. We keep only the count for each article, tied to your account, with no times and no record of the order. Nobody else can see it.
• Skills lists: when you build a skills list we keep the role and industry you chose, the name you give the list (if any), and the list itself: its skills, the links we suggest and our ratings. If you paste a job posting, we keep the text exactly as you pasted it (up to 4,000 characters), so the list can be built and rebuilt from it. The posting, your list, and the wording of the skills and tools found in your posting are private to you: no other reader can see them, and they are deleted when you delete the list or your account. Where a skill you asked for is one that public job postings also ask for, your list simply uses that shared skill's public name; your own wording is not stored on it. To save time and cost, we also keep a shared record, with no link to you, of whether a web page was judged useful for a skill. It holds only skills that public job postings also ask for (such as "SQL" or "stakeholder management"), never a phrase that exists only because of your posting. Its entries are used for up to 30 days, and because it is not tied to any reader, deleting a list or your account does not remove them. We also keep a short record of each request to build or check a list (the date and kind of request, with no posting text) for 90 days, to apply daily limits. Your pasted posting never counts toward our shared research on a role, which uses only public job postings.
• Leaderboard information: the leaderboard is made from your verified articles. It shows your name (the display name in your profile, or "Reader" if you have not set one) and your number of verified articles to other users of the app. Other readers see only your leaderboard name and your number of verified articles. Earlier versions of Excerp identified you on the leaderboard by a random number made for your phone. The first time your data is saved to your account, that number is linked to your account once, so your earlier entries join it, and it is not used otherwise.
• Being seen by other readers: this is off until you turn it on in Profile, under "Show me as reading". When you turn it on you confirm that you are 18 or older and accept our Terms of Use, and we keep that you did, and when. While it is on, other readers who have it on can see your display name, your industry and your interests, and, on the page of an article you saved or verified in the last 30 days, that you did. On your profile card they also see how many articles you have verified and whether you take message requests. They cannot see your email address, your Google or Apple account ID, your account reference, or any other article you read. You can turn it off at any time, and you disappear from other readers' lists straight away. An article page also shows how many readers saved or verified it in the last 30 days, as a number only and only when it is 3 or more; it counts readers whether or not they are visible.
• Message requests and messages: if you turn on "Allow message requests", other readers can send you one text message to ask to talk. We keep each message: its subject and text, who sent it and who it was sent to, when, the article it came from if the sender chose one, whether the person it was sent to has read it, and whether either person has hidden it from their own view. We also keep a short scrambled fingerprint of the text, so that we can stop the same text being sent to many people. The sender is never told whether you read a message, or whether you accepted or declined. A first message is a request: you choose whether to accept, and if you decline the sender is not told. Messages are text only, with no links or attachments. They are stored on our server and are not end-to-end encrypted. We do not read your messages as a matter of course, but we can read a message if it is reported, if we need to in order to run, secure or moderate the service, or if the law requires it.
• Blocks: the readers you block. Only you can see this list. You and a reader you block no longer see each other, and they are not told.
• Reports and moderation: when you report a reader or a message, we keep your report (the reason, your note if you wrote one, and a copy of the profile or message you reported, as it was) so that we can review it, even if the message is later deleted or the reader changes their name. The person you report is not told. If several different readers report the same person within a week, their account is paused for a week until we have looked. We also keep a record of what we do about reports, such as suspending or banning an account: the action, the date and a random number for the account, and not the person's name or email address.
• Technical information: our server sees your IP address when your phone connects. We use it only to deliver the service and to limit abuse, we hold it briefly in the server's memory, and we do not write it to logs.
• Deleted accounts: when an account is deleted, we write a one-way scrambled code of its Google or Apple account ID, and nothing else, to a file kept apart from our database for 35 days. If we ever have to restore a backup, this lets us delete that account again. It cannot be turned back into your Google or Apple account or your email address.

Information that stays on your phone

Until your data is saved to your account, everything you do in Excerp is on your phone only. Afterwards, these still stay on your phone: which articles you skipped and in what order you swiped them (our server gets only the counts), your progress through a quiz you have not finished, and anything that has not been sent yet because your phone was offline. We never see your quiz answers or scores, only whether you passed. Your messages are kept on our server, not on your phone: the app shows them while you read them and does not keep a copy. Deleting the app or clearing its data removes what is on the phone. The app also remembers on your phone that you agreed to the skills-list notice, so it does not ask every time, and which list you opened last.

If more than one Google or Apple account signs in on the same phone, each account keeps its own data on the phone, and signing in as another account shows that account's data.

The app itself contains no advertising, analytics or crash-reporting tools.

How we use this information

• To sign you in and keep you signed in.
• To save your profile, saved articles and verified articles to your account, and give them back when you sign in on a new phone.
• To run the leaderboard and show it to users of the app.
• To let readers who choose to be seen find each other, and to deliver message requests and messages between them.
• To improve your experience by avoiding content you've shown you're not interested in, using the counts of articles you skip.
• To review reports, protect readers from abuse and enforce our Terms of Use.
• To build the skills lists you ask for, and keep them for you.
• To keep the service secure and prevent abuse.

To write the article cards, we use outside services (a web search service and an AI language model) that read public company blog posts. None of your information is sent to them for the article cards. Building a skills list is different: see "Skills lists and outside services" below.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your data with third parties for advertising purposes.

Skills lists and outside services

Before your first skills list is built, the app tells you what follows and asks you to agree. If you do not agree, nothing is sent and the rest of Excerp works as before. You can withdraw your agreement in Profile at any time; the app will then ask again before the next list is built. Deleting your lists or your account removes what we hold for you (see "Delete your Excerp account"). When you build a list:

• AI language model (Nebius): the text of the job posting you paste is sent to an AI language model run by Nebius (Token Factory), the company that also hosts our server. It reads the posting to find the skills it asks for. The role, your industry choice and the skill names found are also sent to it, with public job postings and public web pages we collect, to rank skills and judge pages.
• Web search (Tavily): we send short search phrases: the role, your industry and skill or tool names, some of which come from your posting. The posting itself is not sent.
• Public websites: our server opens public web pages (job postings, articles, our library sources and the links we suggest) to read them and check that they open. Those sites see our server's address, not you.

We do not send your name, email address, Google or Apple account ID or account reference to any of these. We use them only to build your list, and we do not sell your data or use it for advertising or tracking. Each of these services handles what it receives under its own terms and privacy policy.

Pages we read and links we show: for some sources in our library we read the page and keep a few short factual sentences, with the source named, to use when building lists. For sources marked link-only, we read the page only to decide whether it teaches the skill, and keep and show nothing from it except the link, its title, our own short description and our rating. Pages found by web search are treated like the first kind. The app shows you links, titles and descriptions we wrote, not text copied from pages. The links lead to other people's websites, whose own privacy policies apply.

Where your information is stored

Our server runs on Nebius cloud infrastructure in London, United Kingdom. We make backup copies of the server's data for safety, and each backup is deleted after 30 days.

Data retention

• Sign-in sessions stop working 30 days after you last use the app, and expired sessions are deleted from our server whenever someone signs in.
• Email addresses on the approved or waiting list are kept until we remove them.
• Your account (your email address, Google or Apple account ID, account reference, profile, saved articles, verified articles, skip counts, leaderboard entries, blocks, and your confirmation that you are 18 or older and accepted the Terms) is kept until you delete your account in the app or ask us to delete it.
• Messages are deleted 12 months after they were sent. A request nobody answers within 30 days is closed and can no longer be accepted, and its message is deleted at 12 months like any other. A message you hide is hidden from your view only.
• Reports that are still open are kept until we deal with them, and are deleted 90 days after that. The record of what we do about reports (the action, the date and a random number) is kept.
• Skills lists and pasted postings are kept until you delete the list or your account. The record of your list requests is deleted after 90 days. The shared record of judged pages described above (kept only for skills that public job postings also ask for) is used for up to 30 days and is not tied to any reader. What the outside services receive is kept under their own policies.
• Backups are deleted after 30 days.
• The code kept for deleted accounts is deleted after 35 days.
• Information on your phone stays until you delete the app or clear its data, or choose to remove it when you delete your account.

Delete your Excerp account

In the app: open Profile, choose Delete account, and confirm. The app also asks whether to remove your data from this phone too. Keeping it on the phone is the default, and nothing is removed from your phone unless you choose that. Your data is deleted from our server straight away, and the app signs you out.

If you signed in with Apple, the app asks you to sign in with Apple once more before it deletes the account. Apple gives the app a one-time code, our server uses it to tell Apple to end the app's access to your Apple account (you can also see this in your Apple ID settings under Sign in with Apple), and the code is then discarded. We keep nothing from Apple after that. If Apple cannot be reached, your account is still deleted.

To delete one skills list and the posting you pasted for it, without deleting your account: open Skills list, tap the "..." button at the top right, then Delete, and confirm. The list, the posting and the skills made only for it are deleted from our server straight away.

By email: to delete your data without the app, or entries made by an earlier version of Excerp that were never saved to your account, email doer@excerp.app from the email address you use to sign in to Excerp (if you hide your email with Apple, from any address, with your account reference), with the subject "Delete my Excerp account". Please include your account reference (shown in the app under Profile, Account reference). If you do not have it, include the name you use on the leaderboard so we can find your leaderboard entries, and if your name is "Reader" (the default), also the title of one article you verified and roughly when. We will delete your data and confirm by email within 30 days.

Either way, we remove:

• your email address, your Google or Apple account ID and your account reference;
• your profile (display name, industry and topics);
• your saved articles and your verified articles;
• your skip counts;
• your skills lists, the job postings you pasted, and the skills and links made for them;
• your leaderboard entries, including the random number from earlier versions, and the entries it earned;
• your blocks, and your choices and confirmations about being seen and messaging;
• your own view of every conversation;
• your sign-in sessions, and your place on the approved or waiting list, if you are on it.

What this does not remove:

• Information on your phone, unless you chose to remove it in the app. Delete the app or clear its data to remove it from your phone yourself.
• Messages you sent stay with the readers you sent them to, without your name, until they expire after 12 months. They show as from a "Deleted account". Messages you received stay in the sender's copy in the same way. Do not send anything you would not want a recipient to keep for that long.
• Reports you made, or that others made about you. They are kept for the moderators with the copy of what was reported and no link to your account, and deleted 90 days after we deal with them, and the record of what we did is kept.
• What the outside services described above already received when your lists were built; they hold it under their own policies. The shared record of judged pages is not tied to you and is not removed; it holds only skills that public job postings also ask for.
• Copies in our backups. These are deleted automatically within 30 days.
• The one-way code kept for deleted accounts, for 35 days.

If you sign in again later, you start a new, empty account. Data you kept on your phone is not sent to it until you complete your profile or verify another article.

Third-party services

• Google: Excerp uses Google Sign-In for authentication, and Google Play provides the app to you and may give us aggregated statistics about installs and crashes. Google's own privacy policy applies to its services.
• Apple: Excerp offers Sign in with Apple on iPhone for authentication, and the Apple App Store provides the app to you and may give us aggregated statistics about installs and crashes. Apple's own privacy policy applies to its services.
• Nebius: hosts our server, as described above, and runs the AI language model used to build skills lists.
• Tavily: a web search service that receives the search phrases described above.
• Cloudflare: provides our domain name, hosts this page, and forwards emails sent to us.
• Article websites: when you open an article's original page, it opens the publisher's website, and the publisher's own privacy policy applies.

Children's privacy

Excerp is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Being seen by other readers and sending or receiving messages are only for people 18 or older, and we ask you to confirm that when you turn them on.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. If a change affects what we keep about you, the app will tell you.

Contact us

If you have questions about this privacy policy, contact us at doer@excerp.app.