Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 9, 2026 Last updated: November 7, 2026

Paper Route is operated by ThePaperRoute, Inc., a Delaware corporation ("Paper Route," "we," "us"). This policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to our website (paper-route.com), our subscription service, and any forms or tools we use to collect content.

The short version: we collect what we need to make a private magazine for one person. We never sell personal information, we never share it for advertising, and we don't show ads. We use a small number of vendors (payments, storage, AI writing tools) to run the service, we do not let those vendors train AI models on your content, and we delete what you send whenever you ask us to.

1. Who this policy covers

• Subscribers: people who buy a subscription.
• Recipients: the people who receive the printed magazine. Recipients usually don't interact with us directly; their information is provided by the Subscriber and Contributors.
• Contributors: family and friends who submit photos, stories, and updates.
• Website visitors.

2. What we collect

From Subscribers

• Name, email address, phone number.
• Billing information. Payments are handled by Stripe; we see the last four digits of your card, the card type, and the billing address, but not the full card number.
• Your relationship to the Recipient.
• Account communications and support requests.

About Recipients (provided by the Subscriber and Contributors)

• Name, mailing address, and date of birth or age.
• Biographical information: where they grew up, family members, career, interests, favorite teams, hobbies, and similar details gathered during onboarding.
• Photos and stories in which they appear.
• The name of the residence or community where they live, if that is part of the mailing address.

From Contributors

• Name, email address, and/or phone number, and your relationship to the Recipient.
• Everything you submit: photos, captions, stories, updates, voice notes, and messages. Submissions may include information about other people, including children, who appear in them.

From website visitors

• Our hosting providers keep standard server logs, including IP address and browser type. Cloudflare hosts this website and the subscriber application, including the account setup form. We do not run analytics, tracking pixels, or advertising cookies, and we set no cookies of our own.

We do not knowingly collect health information. Please do not submit medical details about the Recipient or anyone else unless we have asked for it for a specific issue.

3. How we use it

We use personal information only to:

• Produce, print, and mail the Recipient's issues, including using AI tools to organize, write, edit, and lay out content.
• Make other printed keepsakes for the same family from what has been sent, such as an annual yearbook, when the family asks for one.
• Tailor each issue to the Recipient's interests and the topics provided at onboarding, including producing interest-based content in months when contributions are light.
• Communicate with Subscribers and Contributors about deadlines, proofs, delivery, billing, and support.
• Process payments and prevent fraud.
• Improve the service using de-identified, aggregated information (for example, how many photos a typical issue contains). This never involves using your actual content, names, or photos.
• Meet legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service.

We do not use your information, the Recipient's information, or Contributor content for advertising, for marketing to anyone, for building profiles about you, or for training our own or anyone else's AI models. Nothing in an issue and nothing submitted for an issue will be used as a sample, testimonial, or marketing material unless every Contributor whose content is involved and the Recipient (or their legal representative) give us permission.

Text messages

If you are a subscriber and ask us to text you, we use your mobile number only to send messages about your magazine: a reminder before each issue closes and a note when one ships, around two to four a month. If you are a contributor and tick the box asking us to text you, a subscriber adds you as a contributor with your agreement, or you text our number, we use your mobile number only to send messages about the magazine: a welcome, up to one prompt per week, and replies to photos and messages you send. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP at any time to stop receiving texts, or HELP for help.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties. We share mobile numbers only with our messaging provider, solely to deliver these messages.

Voice notes

You can tell a story out loud instead of writing it: by recording it in our app, or by sending a voice memo by text or email. When you do, we receive the recording itself, and we keep the words transcribed from it along with any changes you make to them.

• We turn the recording into words automatically. Our cloud provider, Cloudflare, transcribes it with a speech-recognition model (see Section 4).
• Only the words are printed. If you choose, a code printed beside them lets people hear your recording. In the app you read the words back and correct them before you send. For a voice memo sent by text or email, we email you the words with a link to check and correct them. If you don't, they are printed as we heard them once the issue closes. If you choose to share a recording, a code printed beside your story lets anyone who scans it hear it (see below).
• We tidy stories sent by text or email. We write out dates such as “yesterday” or “last Saturday” as calendar dates, because the magazine arrives weeks later, and we drop a closing sign-off such as “Love, Sam,” because the magazine already says who a story is from. We keep your original wording alongside.
• Unless you choose to share it, only you can play your recording. The family member who manages the magazine and the other contributors see the words, not the recording, and cannot play it. Our team may access a recording only when we need to fix a problem with it, and to check a recording you chose to share before it is printed.
• If you share a recording, anyone with the printed code or its link can hear it. Sharing is your choice, made for each recording, and we record when you made it. The page that plays it shows your first name and the words printed beside the code. It does not show who the magazine is for, the month, or anything else about the family, and it needs no account. We check the recording before it is printed, and we may switch a recording off if it should not be heard. Anyone who has the code or link can pass it on, and we cannot stop someone saving a recording they can play. We keep a count of how often a code is opened and played, without recording who opened it.
• You can remove your recording at any time. You can do it in the app, from the link in our email while that issue is still being made, or by asking us. Removing the recording deletes the audio and keeps the words, so the story still prints. If it was shared, its code stops playing straight away and the page says the recording is no longer available; the printed code stays on paper that has already been mailed. To remove the words too, ask us to delete the story (see Section 7).
• Recordings can include other voices, such as people talking in the background. We use a recording to produce the words of your story and, only if you choose to share it, to play it to anyone who scans its printed code. If a recording has other people's voices in it, think about that before you share it.

4. AI processing

We use third-party AI services, currently Anthropic's Claude, to help draft, edit, and lay out issues. Content and Recipient details are sent to those services to do that work. We use these services only under terms that do not permit the provider to train its models on our data. AI output is reviewed by us and proofed by a family member before printing, as described in our Terms of Service.

Voice notes are transcribed by Cloudflare’s AI service, which runs a speech-recognition model on Cloudflare’s own systems. The recording goes only to Cloudflare for this, under the same condition: it is not used to train models.

If you choose to share a recording, we check it before anyone can play it from its printed code. The words heard in the recording, and the list of things the family asked us never to print, are sent to Anthropic’s Claude, which tells us whether the recording touches anything on that list. The recording itself is not sent to Anthropic. The same condition applies: neither is used to train models. A recording the check is unsure about does not play until we have looked at it. We check it again if the family adds to that list, and it does not play until it passes.

5. Who we share it with

We share personal information only with the vendors we need to run the service, only for that purpose, and under contracts or terms that restrict what they can do with it:

Google Workspace hosts our own company email. If you write to us, that message is in our mailbox. It is not used to store submissions or Recipient information.

Issues are printed and mailed by Paper Route directly; no outside printer receives your content or the Recipient's address. If we begin using a print or mail vendor, we will add it to this table and update this policy before sending it anything.

We may also disclose information if required by law or legal process, to protect the rights or safety of a Recipient or any person, or as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets (in which case this policy continues to apply to the transferred information).

We never sell personal information and never share it with anyone for advertising or marketing purposes.

Within a family. Content you submit appears in a printed issue. The Recipient will see it, and so may anyone the Recipient shows it to. Other Contributors to the same Recipient may see your submissions during proofing. We may share a Contributor's name with the Recipient and other Contributors (for example, as a byline or caption).

6. Storage and security

Submissions and Recipient information are stored in our Neon database and in Cloudflare R2 file storage, scoped to each Recipient, with access limited to the people at Paper Route who need it to produce issues. Photographs and voice notes are stored as private files that are not publicly reachable; links to them are generated on demand and expire. The one exception is a recording its sender chose to share with a printed code: it can be played from that code’s page, and from nowhere else. Dossiers and finished issues are also held in Google Drive. Our vendors store information on their own systems under their own security programs. We use reasonable administrative and technical safeguards, including access controls and two-factor authentication on our accounts, but no system is perfectly secure and we cannot guarantee against unauthorized access.

If we learn of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you as required by law.

7. How long we keep it

What you send belongs to you. Photographs, notes, captions and voice notes stay yours. We keep them, securely, so they can go into the magazine and into other keepsakes the family may ask for later, such as an annual yearbook. That includes voice recordings and the words transcribed from them. We delete them when you ask.

If you ask us to delete, we do. You can ask us to delete everything you have ever sent, or only what you sent for one person. We finish within 30 days, including from our backups. Issues already printed and posted cannot be recalled — paper is paper — but nothing of yours will appear in an issue after that.

We do not delete what you send on a timer. There is no expiry date on a photograph. What you have sent stays in the family’s archive until you ask us to remove it. We would rather a grandchild’s picture still be there in five years than tidy it away because nobody had sent anything lately.

If a contributor dies, whoever handles their estate can ask us to delete what they sent, and we will. We do not delete it on our own.

If you are in a photograph someone else sent, you can ask us to remove it, whether or not you use Paper Route. A parent or guardian can ask on behalf of a child. Write to us and we will take it out.

Information about the person the magazine is for — their notes, their address, the dates that matter to them, the issues made for them and the record of what was printed — is deleted 90 days after either the subscriber asks us to delete the account, or we are told the person has died.

Cancelling a subscription on its own deletes nothing. People pause, and a magazine often starts again. If you want everything removed, tell us and we will remove it.

If something arrives from someone we do not recognise, we hold it while we ask who they are. If it turns out not to belong here, we delete it straight away. If nobody confirms it within 14 days, we delete it then.

Backups. Our systems keep short-term copies so we can recover from a failure. Anything deleted is gone from those within 30 days.

We keep billing and transaction records for as long as tax and accounting rules require, and we may keep information we need to resolve a dispute or comply with law. You can ask us to delete sooner at any time (see Section 8).

8. Your choices and rights

Anyone covered by this policy can:

• Access a copy of the information we hold about them.
• Correct it.
• Delete it — everything, or only what you sent for one person. We cannot recall issues already printed.
• Ask for a photograph of you to be taken out, whether or not you use Paper Route. A parent or guardian can ask for a child.
• Withdraw as a Contributor at any time.
• Ask questions about how their information is used.

Email [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days and may ask you to verify your identity. If you are a Recipient or the legal representative of a Recipient, you can exercise these rights for the Recipient.

Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and other states with consumer privacy laws may have additional rights. Because we do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising, there is nothing to opt out of on that front, but the access, correction, and deletion rights above are available to everyone regardless of where they live. We do not respond to browser "Do Not Track" signals because we do not track visitors across sites.

9. Children

Our website and service are for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13. Photos and stories about children are submitted by adult Contributors, who confirm that they are the parent or guardian or have the parent's or guardian's permission. If you believe a child has submitted information to us directly, contact us and we will delete it.

10. Google Photos

You can choose photos from your Google Photos account to send, instead of downloading them and uploading them again. This is optional. Nothing is connected unless you ask for it, and the rest of the service works the same without it.

What we can see. When you connect, Google asks your permission for Paper Route to see only the photos you pick in Google’s own photo picker, each time you pick them. We cannot see the rest of your library, your albums, or anything else in your Google account, and we cannot change or delete anything in Google Photos. We also receive the email address of the Google account you connected, so we can show you which account it is.

What we keep. To remember the connection, we keep a token from Google, encrypted, so you are not asked again each time. The photos you pick are copied to our file storage so you can caption them. If you send them, they become part of what you have sent and are kept and deleted as described in Section 7. If you do not send them, the copies are deleted within a day. Google removes location information from these photos before we receive them; we keep the date they were taken.

How we use it. We use what we receive from Google only to put the photos you choose, with the words you write, into the magazine and keepsakes you are sending them for, as described in Section 3. Like everything else you send, a photo you choose may be processed by the AI services in Section 4 to help write and lay out the issue, under terms that do not let them train on it. We do not use it for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train our own or anyone else’s AI models. People at Paper Route see a photo you chose only as part of producing the issue you sent it for.

Paper Route’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Disconnecting. You can disconnect Google Photos at any time under Account › Connections. We then revoke our access at Google and delete the token. You can also remove Paper Route in your Google account’s security settings. Photos you have already sent stay in the magazine archive until you ask us to delete them (Section 8).

We do not access anyone’s phone photo library or social media accounts. If we ever offer another source like this, we will ask for your separate, explicit permission first and update this policy before it launches.

11. Where your information is processed

We are based in the United States and process information here. If you contribute from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If a change is material, we will email Subscribers and active Contributors before it takes effect and update the date at the top. Continued use of the service after the effective date means you accept the change.

13. Contact

ThePaperRoute, Inc. 1522 Western Ave, Ste 66298 Seattle, WA 98101 [email protected] for general inquiries [email protected] for privacy requests, account, and content questions