DARIENCRUTE.COM PRIVACY POLICY Version: 1.0 Effective Date: July 24, 2026 Last Updated: July 24, 2026 1. INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE DarienCrute.com is operated by Darien Cruté. This Privacy Policy explains how DarienCrute.com, referred to in this policy as "DarienCrute.com," the "Site," "we," "us," or "our," collects, uses, stores, discloses, and protects information when you visit the Site, create or use an account, manage a private profile, submit a book rating or review, send a contact message, download public materials, or otherwise use the Site. DarienCrute.com is an author and educator website. Its current account-based features are limited primarily to account authentication, private account profiles, book reviews, password and account management, and legal-policy acceptance records. This policy applies only to DarienCrute.com and the features provided directly through it. WickborneWorld.com and other linked websites are separate services governed by their own terms, privacy policies, and data-retention practices. DarienCrute.com may link to WickborneWorld.com, booksellers, ebook platforms, storefronts, social platforms, or other external services. Those services are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. By creating or using a DarienCrute.com account, you acknowledge that you have received and reviewed this Privacy Policy. Agreement to the separate Terms of Use is required to create or continue using an account. 2. AGE ELIGIBILITY AND MINOR USERS DarienCrute.com accounts are intended only for individuals who are at least 16 years old. The Site does not request or store a date of birth as part of its current account-registration process. Instead, a person creating an account must affirm that they are at least 16. A user who is 16 or 17 must also affirm that a parent or legal guardian has permitted the user to use the Site. A user under 16 may not create or use an account. If we learn that an account belongs to a person under 16, we may suspend or close the account and delete associated personal information, subject to limited retention for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, dispute resolution, or documentation that the deletion occurred. If we actually know that a user is 16 or 17, we will limit processing of that user's personal information to what is reasonably necessary to: - Create, authenticate, maintain, secure, or close the account; - Provide a feature or service requested by the user; - Display and administer a review submitted by the user; - Respond to a contact, privacy, support, or account request; - Maintain Site functionality and internal operations; - Prevent spam, fraud, abuse, and security threats; - Enforce the Terms of Use or protect legal rights; or - Comply with applicable law. We do not sell personal information. We do not use account information for targeted advertising, behavioral advertising, data brokerage, or unrelated profiling. If we know that information belongs to a user who is 16 or 17 and later learn that the user has reached adulthood, we will not begin a materially different use of information collected while the user was a minor without providing notice or obtaining consent where required by applicable law. 3. INFORMATION WE COLLECT 3.1 Account Information When you create or maintain an account, we may collect or maintain: - Your chosen username; - Your email address; - Your password in hashed form; - Your account access level and active or inactive status; - Your account creation and update dates; - Password-reset and authentication records; - A randomly generated internal token used to separate legal-acceptance evidence from the identifying account if the account is deleted; and - Records showing which versions of the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Data Retention Policy were presented and accepted or acknowledged. DarienCrute.com does not store your plaintext password. Your password is processed through a password-hashing system so the Site can authenticate your login. The account-registration process does not request a date of birth, and the active account record does not maintain a birthday or age field. Information you voluntarily place in a contact message or public review is handled according to the section governing that submission. 3.2 Book Ratings and Reviews When you submit a book rating or written review, we may collect: - The book reviewed; - Your selected star rating; - Your written review; - The date and time of submission; and - The account associated with the submission. A published review may display the rating, review text, and submission date. DarienCrute.com does not currently display the reviewer's username, email address, private profile, or other identifying account information alongside a public review. Reviews remain associated with the submitting account internally so that we can administer, moderate, investigate, remove, or respond to requests concerning the review and enforce the Terms of Use. Do not include your full name, email address, physical address, phone number, school, workplace, social-media information, financial information, medical information, exact location, or other sensitive personal information in a public review. Information voluntarily included in the review text may become publicly visible. 3.3 Contact Messages When you use the contact form, we may collect: - Your first and last name; - Your email address; - The subject of your message; - The contents of your message; and - The date and time of submission. Contact information is used to receive, evaluate, and respond to the message and to protect the Site against spam, fraud, threats, and abuse. 3.4 Private Profile Information A DarienCrute.com profile currently contains or provides access to: - The account username; - The account email address; - Account access level and status; - Account creation and update dates; and - Password-change and account-deletion controls. Profiles are private. They are not publicly searchable, publicly shareable, or available through a user directory. The Site does not currently provide private messaging, friend lists, user search, or direct user-to-user communication. Authorized administrators may access account and profile information when reasonably necessary for support, account administration, moderation, security, investigation, legal compliance, or enforcement of the Terms of Use. 3.5 Legal-Policy Acceptance Evidence When you accept the Terms of Use and acknowledge the Privacy Policy and Data Retention Policy, we may record evidence such as: - A randomly generated event identifier; - A randomly generated pseudonymous subject identifier; - The version number and cryptographic hash of each document presented; - The date and time of acceptance; - The acceptance context and method; - A keyed cryptographic digest of the Internet Protocol address associated with the acceptance; and - A keyed cryptographic digest of the browser user-agent string, when available. The keyed digests are designed to support evidence and abuse investigation without retaining the raw Internet Protocol address or raw user-agent string in the legal-acceptance record. 3.6 Public Downloads and Business-Card Materials The Site may provide public downloads, including a digital contact card. Downloading a public file does not require an account. The request may still appear in ordinary server or security logs as described below. 3.7 Technical and Security Information When you access the Site, our server, hosting environment, security controls, and essential service providers may automatically receive or generate information such as: - Internet Protocol address; - Browser type and version; - Device and operating-system information; - Requested pages, files, or resources; - Referring page; - Date and time of access; - Session identifiers; - Login and password-reset attempts; - Form-security and rate-limit information; - Error and diagnostic information; and - Records of suspected spam, fraud, abuse, or unauthorized access. Some technical information is processed temporarily and is not intended to become a permanent user history. 4. HOW WE USE INFORMATION We use personal information to: - Create, authenticate, maintain, secure, and close accounts; - Maintain private account profiles; - Accept, display, administer, and moderate book ratings and reviews; - Send password-reset, account-security, policy, and service-related emails; - Record and enforce acceptance of current legal documents; - Respond to contact messages, support requests, rights complaints, and privacy requests; - Detect and prevent spam, fraud, abuse, rating manipulation, and unauthorized access; - Diagnose technical problems and maintain Site reliability; - Enforce the Terms of Use; - Protect users, the Site, and legal rights; - Comply with applicable laws and lawful government requests; and - Establish, exercise, or defend legal claims. We do not currently use account information to operate targeted advertising or create advertising profiles. 5. HOW WE DISCLOSE INFORMATION 5.1 Service Providers We may use service providers that process information on our behalf, including providers of: - Website hosting and server infrastructure; - Email delivery; - Security, spam prevention, and fraud prevention; - Data backup and storage; - Domain, content-delivery, and website-asset services; and - Technical maintenance or support. Service providers may process information only as necessary to provide their services, comply with their legal obligations, protect their systems, or perform other activities described in their applicable agreements and policies. We seek to limit the information transmitted to service providers and to use reasonable contractual, technical, and operational protections appropriate to the service and information involved. 5.2 Legal and Safety Disclosures We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to: - Comply with a law, court order, subpoena, warrant, or lawful government request; - Investigate or prevent suspected fraud, abuse, security incidents, or illegal activity; - Protect the rights, property, or safety of users, DarienCrute.com, or others; - Enforce the Terms of Use; or - Establish, exercise, or defend a legal claim. 5.3 Business Transfers Information may be transferred as part of a merger, acquisition, restructuring, sale of assets, succession, or transfer of the Site to another operator. Any successor would be expected to handle information consistently with applicable law and the privacy commitments in effect at the time of transfer. 5.4 WickborneWorld.com and Other External Services DarienCrute.com does not automatically share account credentials or active account records with WickborneWorld.com merely because the sites are operated by the same person or linked to one another. Information you submit directly to WickborneWorld.com, a bookseller, a storefront, or another external service is governed by that service's own policies. 6. WHAT WE DO NOT CURRENTLY DO DarienCrute.com does not currently: - Sell personal information; - Provide personal information to data brokers; - Use account information for targeted or behavioral advertising; - Display usernames or account identities with public reviews; - Make user profiles public, searchable, or shareable; - Offer private messaging or user-to-user communication; or - Request a date of birth during account registration. Before introducing public profiles, messaging, advertising, payments, artificial intelligence features, or materially different data uses, we will review the privacy and safety implications and update the applicable policies and account notices. 7. COOKIES, SESSIONS, AND TRACKING The Site uses essential session technology to keep users logged in, protect account access, remember temporary form information, support legal-acceptance and security workflows, and provide requested features. We do not currently use cookies for targeted advertising or cross-site behavioral advertising. Because the Site does not currently collect personal information for cross-site behavioral tracking, browser "Do Not Track" signals do not materially change the Site's current practices. We will respond to legally recognized privacy-control or minor-status signals where and when applicable law requires us to do so. External websites and linked services may use their own cookies or tracking technologies. Their practices are governed by their own privacy policies. 8. DATA RETENTION We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary to: - Maintain an active account; - Provide a requested feature; - Preserve and administer user-submitted reviews; - Respond to messages, requests, or disputes; - Maintain security and fraud-prevention records; - Document legal-policy acceptance; - Comply with legal obligations; - Enforce agreements; or - Establish, exercise, or defend legal claims. Specific retention periods and deletion procedures are described in the separate DarienCrute.com Data Retention Policy. When information is no longer reasonably needed, we will delete, destroy, or deidentify it according to that policy. Information may remain temporarily in restricted backups until the applicable backup cycle expires. 9. SECURITY We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical measures designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, acquisition, alteration, disclosure, loss, misuse, or destruction. These measures may include: - Password hashing; - Encrypted network connections; - Session security and form-security tokens; - Login and password-reset rate limiting; - Access restrictions; - Security logging and monitoring; - Limited administrative access; - Server and software maintenance; - Pseudonymous legal-evidence identifiers; - Keyed cryptographic digests for limited legal-acceptance evidence; and - Backup and recovery procedures. No website, transmission method, or storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. Users are responsible for protecting their login credentials and should notify us promptly if they suspect unauthorized access to their account. 10. YOUR CHOICES AND REQUESTS Depending on the request and applicable law, you may ask us to: - Confirm whether we maintain an account associated with you; - Provide access to certain account information; - Correct inaccurate account information; - Delete your account and associated personal information; - Remove a submitted review; - Explain how particular information is being used; - Object to or withdraw consent for a use that depends on consent; or - Close or deactivate your account. Some information can be reviewed or managed directly through the profile page. Other requests may be submitted to support@dariencrute.com. We may request reasonable information to verify the identity of the account holder before fulfilling a request. Do not send passwords, authentication links, financial information, government identification numbers, or unnecessary identity documents by email. We may retain limited information after a deletion request where reasonably necessary for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, dispute resolution, enforcement, or documentation that the request was completed. If we actually know that a user is 16 or 17, that user may submit privacy requests concerning their own account. We will not disclose the user's account information to another person, including someone claiming to be a parent or guardian, without appropriate verification and a valid legal basis. 11. ACCOUNT DELETION A verified account-deletion request will result in deletion of the active account and associated personal information, subject to the Data Retention Policy and applicable legal exceptions. Account deletion ordinarily includes: - Account credentials and private profile data; - Reviews associated with the account; - Active password-reset records; - Active sessions where technically available; and - Other account content not required to be retained. Before deleting the identifying account, DarienCrute.com may detach and retain limited legal-policy acceptance evidence under a pseudonymous subject identifier. That retained evidence does not include the username, email address, password hash, review text, contact-message content, or other ordinary account data. It is retained for the period described in the Data Retention Policy to document the legal agreement and address disputes or compliance obligations. Deletion from active systems may occur before deletion from restricted backups. Backup copies are removed or overwritten through the ordinary backup-retention cycle. 12. THIRD-PARTY LINKS AND SEPARATE WEBSITES The Site may link to WickborneWorld.com, booksellers, ebook platforms, storefronts, social platforms, or other websites and services. DarienCrute.com does not control an external service and is not responsible for its privacy, security, content, or data practices. WickborneWorld.com has its own terms, privacy policy, and data-retention practices even though it is associated with Darien Cruté and the Wickborne series. Review the privacy policy of any separate website or external service before providing information to it. 13. PROCESSING IN THE UNITED STATES DarienCrute.com is operated from the United States. Information may be stored and processed in the United States and in other locations where authorized service providers operate. Users accessing the Site from outside the United States understand that their information may be processed under laws that differ from those in their place of residence. 14. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect: - Changes to the Site; - New account, review, communication, or commercial features; - Changes to service providers; - Changes to data practices; - Security developments; or - Changes in applicable law. The effective date and version number will identify the current policy. For material changes, we may provide notice through the Site, the user's account, email, or another reasonable method. Where required, users will be asked to acknowledge the revised policy or provide new consent before the relevant processing begins. Merely continuing to use the Site will not be treated as consent to a materially different nonessential use of personal information where applicable law requires separate informed consent. 15. CONTACT Questions, concerns, and privacy requests may be directed to: Darien Cruté Website: DarienCrute.com Email: support@dariencrute.com Subject Line: Privacy Request Please do not send passwords, authentication links, financial information, government identification numbers, or other highly sensitive information by email.