This page explains, in plain English, what information The Girl Nook collects when you visit thegirlnook.com, what we do with it, and the choices you have. We keep it to the minimum we need to run the site.
Who we are
The Girl Nook is an independent site at thegirlnook.com. You can reach us any time at thegirlnook@gmail.com or through our contact page.
What we collect and why
Contact form. If you use our contact form, we collect your email address, your message, and any name or subject you choose to add. We use this only to reply to you. The message is emailed to us and saved in our website’s private admin area.
Your account. You don’t need an account to like a thought or to share one. To reply to a thought, or to get email notifications and edit or delete your own thoughts, you sign in with your email address using a one-time link (no password). We store your email address so you can sign in, and we give you a randomly generated “Wall name” (or one you choose) that is shown instead of your real identity. Your email address is never shown publicly or to other members. We remember that you’re signed in for up to 30 days using a cookie, and you can sign out at any time from your account page.
“Is It Just Me?” thoughts and replies. You can share a thought without an account. When you do, we store what you type, a randomly generated Wall name, and a record of when you agreed to your thought being featured on our website, Substack and social media. Your name is never published. If you add your email afterwards, the thought is linked to your account so you can get reply emails and edit or delete it. Without an account, you can’t edit or delete a thought yourself; email us and we’ll remove it or link it to your account. When you reply, we store what you type together with your Wall name and link it to your account. Please don’t include details that could identify you or anyone else. Thoughts are reviewed by us before they appear; replies appear straight away and can be reported by other members. A copy of each submitted thought (the text only, not your email address or account) is also saved to a private Google Sheet, using Google Apps Script, that only we can access. Published thoughts and replies can be seen by anyone, may be found through search engines, and may be shared on our social channels, sometimes as images.
Likes. You don’t need an account to like a thought or a reply. If you’re not signed in, we remember what you’ve liked in a small cookie on your device so you can’t like the same one twice, and we briefly use your IP address to limit repeated likes. If you’re signed in, your likes are saved to your account instead.
Emails we send you. We send you: your sign-in link; a note when a thought or reply you wrote goes live; and a note when someone replies to you. These are service emails, not marketing. We don’t add you to any newsletter — our Substack letter is separate and opt-in on Substack itself.
Analytics. We use Google Analytics to understand how people use the site, such as which pages are visited, roughly where visitors are located, what device and browser they use, and how they found us. It uses cookies and similar technologies. We use this information in aggregate and don’t use it to identify individual visitors.
Fonts. Our pages load fonts from Google Fonts. This means your browser connects to Google’s servers, which receive your IP address as part of the request.
Hosting, security and email delivery. The site is hosted by Hostinger, which keeps standard server logs (such as IP address, browser type and pages requested) to keep the site secure and running, and which sends our service emails. We also use caching to make pages load faster. To protect against spam, we may store a short-lived record of your IP address when you report content.
Why we use your information
To let you sign in, to publish and moderate the thoughts and replies people share, to send you the service emails above, to reply to messages, to keep the site secure, and to understand and improve the site. Where the law requires a reason for using your information, ours are your consent (for example, when you create an account, submit a form or accept cookies), performing the service you asked for, and our legitimate interest in running and improving The Girl Nook.
Cookies
We use a cookie to keep you signed in, and cookies for analytics (Google Analytics). You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, or install Google’s opt-out browser add-on. The site works without the analytics cookies; the sign-in cookie is needed if you want to like, reply or share. We also use small cookies to remember the thoughts and replies you’ve liked when you’re not signed in.
Who we share it with
We don’t sell your information. We share it only with the services that help us run the site: Google (analytics, fonts, form processing and spreadsheets) and Hostinger (hosting and email delivery). These providers handle data under their own privacy policies.
Other sites
Our site links to other places, including our Substack newsletter and social media accounts. If you subscribe or comment there, that’s handled by that platform under its own privacy policy, not by us.
How long we keep it
We keep contact messages only as long as we need them to reply and keep reasonable records, then delete them. We keep your account until you ask us to delete it. Published thoughts and replies stay on the site until you or we remove them, and you can edit or delete your own from your account page. Copies in our private sheet are kept while we run “Is It Just Me?”. Analytics data is kept for the period set in our Google Analytics account.
Your choices and rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, or to object to how we use it. You can edit or delete your own thoughts and replies and change your Wall name (once a month) from your account page. To delete your account or request a copy of your data, email thegirlnook@gmail.com and we’ll respond as soon as we can. If you’d like a thought removed from our private sheet or the site, tell us and quote a line from it.
Children
The Girl Nook is written for adults. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you think a child has sent us their details, please email us and we’ll delete them.
Changes to this policy
If we change how the site works, we’ll update this page. Last updated: 26 September 2026.