Privacy, by design.

How PennaPal will work

These principles will apply when PennaPal opens. None of these services are running yet; only the waitlist is.

• Drafts and private letters stay private. Only writing you choose to publish appears in Discover.
• Private letters are never read in advance. A person only reviews a letter if it’s reported.
• Other members see your pen name, PennaPal ID, the writing you publish, any one-line introduction you add, and the country you choose to share (or “Somewhere in the world”). Your real name, age, gender and exact location aren’t shown unless you reveal them in your own writing.
• We collect only what’s needed to run PennaPal. We never sell your details or show ads.
• Your letters are yours: keep them, download them, or delete your account at any time.

The waitlist (running now)

When you join the waitlist, we store:

• Your email address (required), to tell you when PennaPal opens.
• The pen name you’d like (optional), so we can try to keep it for you.
• The country you’ll write from (optional), to plan where PennaPal opens first.
• Whether you’d like to be a founding writer (yes or no), to invite you to help test PennaPal.
• The date and time you agreed, as a record of your consent.

Who can see it: only the PennaPal team, through the website’s admin area. We never sell or share it.

How long we keep it: until PennaPal opens, then for no more than 12 months. If you join PennaPal, we keep only what your membership needs and delete the rest of your waitlist record. If you don’t join within 12 months of launch, we delete it. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time.

Removing your details: email us at any time. We’ll remove your details from the waitlist, and from exported copies and email tools under our control, then confirm when it’s done. Copies may remain in protected website backups until those backups expire under our hosting provider’s schedule. If we ever restore a backup, we’ll delete your details again.

Age: ticking “I’m 18 or over” is a declaration, not an age check. Everyone will complete a private age check before using PennaPal.