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RealishLet’s Keep It Real

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 16, 2026

This page explains what data realish.net collects, why, and how you can control it.

1. Who we are

Realish.net is run by the Realish editorial team, Ukraine. We are responsible for processing your data on this site. For any question about your data, write to info@realish.net or use the Contact Us page.

2. Comments and replies

You can comment without an account. For a comment or a reply to another reader we store your name, the text, the time, your country (determined from your IP address) and an anonymized fingerprint of your IP address — the address itself is not stored. The fingerprint helps us block spam and duplicates.

Before a comment is published, it goes through an automatic check on the site: links, ads, insults, phone numbers and addresses are not allowed. The editors can hide any comment. The icon next to your name is picked from your name or chosen by you — we don't use third-party avatar services.

You can mark a comment with a heart. For this, your browser keeps a random number and the site keeps an anonymized fingerprint of your IP address, so the same heart can't be added many times.

Editorial replies. To prepare an editorial reply to a comment, the name and text of a published comment, together with the story's title and a short summary, are sent to OpenAI. It suggests a draft, and a person on our team decides whether to publish it. OpenAI receives this data at the site's request and does not use it to train its models.

3. Reader stories

If you send a story through the Share your story form, we receive your name or pen name, your email address, the story and its short title if you gave one, as well as the country the form was sent from and an anonymized fingerprint of your IP address. Your email is used only to contact you about the story: it is never shown on the site or shared with third parties. We publish a story only with your consent, in edited form, with names and places changed. The form draft is kept only in your browser.

4. Signing in

Signing in is optional. If you sign in with Google, Google shares your name, email address and Google account number with us; we never see your Google password and never post anything on your behalf. If you sign in by email, we store your email address and send a one-time sign-in link to it. Under your comments, people see only the name and icon you chose; nobody sees your email.

5. Emails

Sign-in links, "someone replied" emails and "someone liked your comment" emails (if you turned them on) are sent through the Resend email service. You can turn them off with the link at the bottom of any such email or in your profile on the site. We don't send marketing emails.

6. Cookies and browser storage

  • Sign-in: if you're signed in, the site sets the realish_reader cookie (for 180 days) and realish_in, a "signed in" marker. Signing out removes them.
  • Settings and drafts: your theme, text size, the name and icon for commenting without an account, and drafts of a story or reply are kept only in your browser and never reach our server until you submit the form yourself.
  • Ads and analytics: Google and other ad networks set their own cookies (section 7). Visitors from the European Union, the United Kingdom and Switzerland see a Google consent window on their first visit, where they can allow or refuse advertising cookies. You can change your choice at any time in Google's privacy settings on the site, and delete cookies in your browser settings.

7. Advertising and visit statistics

The site shows ads from Google AdSense and other ad networks. These services and their partners use cookies and similar technologies to show ads based on your previous visits to this and other sites. You can turn off personalized Google ads in Google Ad Settings, and this page explains how Google uses data from partner sites.

We use Google Analytics for visit statistics. In addition, the site itself counts how many times a story is opened and how far people read it — only as overall numbers per story, never linked to an individual reader.

8. Videos and content from other sites

Stories sometimes include embedded videos and content from other platforms, such as YouTube. They behave as if you had visited that site directly: they may collect data about your visit, set their own cookies and track your activity, especially if you're signed in to your account on that platform.

9. Who receives data

We don't sell your data. It is received only by the services the site needs to work:

  • Hetzner — the rented server that runs the site and its database;
  • Resend — sending emails;
  • Google — Google sign-in, AdSense ads and Google Analytics statistics;
  • Other ad networks — ads;
  • OpenAI — drafts of editorial replies to comments (section 2).

The country is determined from your IP address on our own server using the DB-IP database — the address itself is not sent anywhere. Apart from the above, data is shared only when the law requires it.

10. Legal basis for processing

  • Your request: publishing your comment or story, signing you in, emailing you about a reply — we can't do what you asked without the data needed for it.
  • Your consent: publishing a story you sent; advertising cookies for visitors from the EU, the UK and Switzerland. You can withdraw consent at any time.
  • Legitimate interest: protection against spam and abuse, overall reading statistics, site security.

11. How long data is kept

  • Comments and reader stories — until you ask us to delete them or the editors remove them.
  • Your account — until you ask us to delete it. A sign-in session lasts up to 180 days; a sign-in link works for 15 minutes and is erased after 7 days.
  • Database backups are kept for a limited time and then deleted.

12. Age

The site is intended for adult readers. You must be at least 16 to comment, sign in or send a story.

13. Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, its correction or deletion, including deleting your account — write to info@realish.net from the email address you sign in with. Data we are required by law to keep can't be deleted, but we don't use it for anything else.

If you believe we are handling your data improperly, you can complain to the data protection authority in your country. But please write to us first — we'll try to sort it out ourselves.

Next to a commenter’s name we show the country the comment was sent from. Our server determines it from the IP address at the moment of sending, using the DB-IP database. Only the country is published with the comment; the IP address itself is never shown, and to stop spam and repeat comments we keep only a hashed fingerprint of it, from which the address cannot be recovered.

IP Geolocation by DB-IP