Privacy
What Penny Post does with your data
Penny Post is a small, personally-run project. This page explains, plainly, what data is collected, why, and what your rights are — including under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
What we collect
Just the essentials
Account information
Your email address, and the name you choose to sign your letters with. That's the entire account — no phone number, no address, no payment details.
Letters and drafts
The content of letters you send and receive, and any drafts you've started. Drafts are only visible to you. Sent letters are visible to you and the person you wrote to.
Session and security data
When you log in, we briefly store your IP address and browser identifier to keep your session working and to prevent abuse of the login system (for example, limiting how many login links can be requested in a short period). This isn't used for tracking or profiling.
Why we collect it
Legal basis for processing
To provide the service
Your email, name, and letters are processed because they're necessary to provide the correspondence service you've signed up for (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — performance of a contract).
To keep the service secure
IP addresses and rate-limiting data are processed under legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR) — specifically, preventing spam, abuse, and unauthorized account access.
Who else sees it
Third parties and hosting
Hosting
Penny Post runs on a server hosted in the EU. Letters are stored in a database on that server — not with a third-party cloud database provider.
Sending emails
Login links and account notifications are sent via Fastmail, an independent email provider. Fastmail processes your email address solely to deliver these messages. Penny Post has opted in to Fastmail's European data region, so the primary copy of this mail data is stored in Amsterdam — though, per Fastmail's own disclosures, resilient backups and some account metadata are still replicated to their US locations as part of their standard infrastructure. This processing is governed by a Data Processing Agreement between Penny Post and Fastmail, which you can read here.
Fonts
Typefaces are loaded from Bunny Fonts, a privacy-focused, EU-based font service that doesn't log or track visitors — unlike Google Fonts' standard embed, which sends visitor IP addresses to Google.
No advertising, no analytics, no trackers
Penny Post doesn't run ads, analytics scripts, or third-party trackers of any kind. There is nothing to opt out of, which is why we do not have a "cookie banner"
How long we keep it
Retention
Your account data is kept for as long as your account is active. Drafts are deleted immediately if you delete them, or if you delete your account entirely. Sent letters remain visible to the person you sent them to even after you delete your account, since a letter you've already sent is something the recipient has a right to keep — much like a paper letter someone has already received.
Your rights
What you can do
Access and correction
You can view and update your name and email at any time from your profile settings.
Erasure
You can delete your account at any time from your profile settings. Your drafts are deleted permanently, and your account is anonymized. As noted above, letters you've already sent remain visible to their recipients.
Portability
You can download a copy of your correspondence in a portable format.
Questions or requests
For anything not covered here, or to make a request about your data, email pennypost@vjbe.net.
Last updated
10 October 2026
This page may be updated as Penny Post changes. Significant changes will be noted here.