Privacy

The page a link brings you to is free to read, and so are three swipes after it. To read further you make a free account. This page says what is kept with and without one, and how to switch it off or erase it.

Reading without an account

When a card is opened, flicked past, shared or followed to its source, the site records that the event happened. Each event carries a random identifier your own browser generates and keeps, plus which card and which action. That identifier exists for one purpose: so that one device opening the same card twice is counted once, and so we can tell how many people who opened a card went on to share it.

It is not linked to a name or an email address, and we do not store your IP address against these events. Your browser also keeps a count of the swipes you have used, so the site knows when the free ones are finished.

The site also records which page of your visit a card or an advertisement was, how long an advertisement stayed on screen, and whether it was tapped. For each visit it records when the visit started and ended, how long it lasted, how many pages were turned, whether the sign-up page was shown and whether an account was made from it, along with the language, the country your connection comes from, whether you were signed in and whether SHOTS+ was on. Advertisement and visit records are never recorded against an account, whether or not you have one.

Your account

An account is a BQX ID: an email address and a way to sign in, held by BQX Innovation Ltd and usable across its other services. SHOTS keeps these things against it: the edition you read in, the topics you chose, the publications you follow, the cards you saved, and, if you turn on breaking alerts in the app, a notification token for your phone.

Using what you read

With Use what I read switched on, the events described above are also recorded against your account: which cards you opened, how long each stayed on screen, which you forwarded and which you followed to the publisher. From those, the site keeps a score for each topic, publication, running story, city and language you have shown interest in, and uses the scores to decide the order of your cards. Scores fade: one loses half its weight every fourteen days.

It changes the order only. No card is hidden from you because of it, and a breaking story is always first. We do not use it to build an advertising profile, we do not sell it, and we do not share it with the publications you read.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland the switch starts off, and nothing is recorded against your account until you turn it on. Elsewhere it starts on, and the step after sign-up says so. You can change it at any time in your account. Turning it off erases the scores and removes your account from the events already recorded.

Deleting your account

Your account has a delete button. It erases what SHOTS holds about you at once: your topics, follows, saved cards, scores and notification tokens, and it removes your account from recorded events. You can ask in the same step for the BQX ID itself to be deleted; that is done within 30 days.

Location

When your network suggests a city, the site may put local stories nearer the top and it tells you when it has done so. That city is read from the request as it arrives, used to order that one response, and not stored.

Headlines, follows and saves

On the website, the publishers and topics you follow, the headlines you save and where you were last caught up are kept in your browser only. In the app they are kept with your account so they follow you between phones. When you open a headline we count, without your name or account, that a reader went to that publisher, so we can tell publishers how many readers we sent them. Pictures in headlines load from the publisher’s own servers, which see your request as they would on their own site; we ask your browser not to send them the page you came from. Live channels on the World page play through YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player.

Advertising

Some cards carry advertising. Where advertising is served by Google, Google and its partners may use cookies or similar technologies to serve and measure those advertisements. You can review and change your choices at Google Ads Settings, and read how Google uses information from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you are asked for consent before any advertising or measurement technology that requires it is used, and you can change that choice at any time from the link in the footer of this page.

Not every card carries advertising. Which ones may is an editorial rule, and it is set out on editorial standards.

SHOTS+

If you subscribe to SHOTS+ in the app, Apple takes the payment and we never see your card. Apple gives us a signed record of the purchase: which subscription, when it started and when the paid period ends. We keep that against your account so your deck carries no advertisement pages, and for our accounts.

Changing your choice

Use Change your choice in the footer of any page. It asks again immediately, and choosing to be counted or not to be takes the same single click either way. If you decline, the random number is removed from your device and nothing further is kept there.

Where advertising is served by Google in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, that consent is collected and stored by a consent management platform certified by Google, and changing it there changes it for the advertising. The choice above covers what SHOTS itself does.

Publications and writers

People who publish here do so through a BQX account, and that account is covered by BQX's own terms.

Children

SHOTS is a general news service and is not directed at children under 13.

Contact

For anything about this policy, including a request about data, use contact. SHOTS is operated by BQX Innovation Ltd.