Privacy notice

Mornning is a personal news briefing in private beta. It is free and, for now, non-commercial: a personal project run by one person, not a company. That person is responsible for your data; write to hi@astanciu.com about anything on this page.

This page says what Mornning stores, why, who else receives it, how long it is kept and how to delete it. Mornning is not meant for anyone under 16.

The short version

• Mornning stores what it needs to build your briefing: your account, what you follow, your sources and your feedback.
• The AI work runs on the AI provider you choose, with your own API key.
• No ads, no analytics, no marketing emails, and your data is never sold.
• Conversations about stories and voice recordings are not saved.
• You can delete your account, and what Mornning stores for it, at any time in Settings. Your API keys keep working at your providers until you delete them there.

What Mornning stores, and why

• Your account: your email address, your name and photo if you sign in with Google, and when you last opened the app. Why: to sign you in, and to see whether the beta is being used.
• What you follow: your interests, the people and companies you follow, what you're working on, goals, exclusions and "about you" text, plus the web searches Mornning builds from them. Why: to find and pick stories for you.
• Your sources: the feeds you follow or import. An imported OPML file is read once and not kept. Why: to fetch new articles.
• Your feedback and settings: your feedback on stories, what Mornning learns from it, your AI provider choice, your time zone (your day starts at 04:00 in it), whether automatic updates are on, and how the app looks (Classic Feed or Cards; light, dark or your device's setting). Why: to make your briefing fit you.
• Your briefing: how each story was assessed for you and why it matters to you, a short memory of the stories Mornning has assessed for you, Signals, and each day's briefing list: which stories, in what order, and how far you've read. Mornning may keep a short memory of stories it has assessed for you, including what changed and a short supporting excerpt from the source. Recent briefing history may also be used to avoid repeating stories you've already received. Why: this is the briefing you see, the same on every device.
• API keys you add: encrypted (AES-256-GCM) with a key kept in Mornning's Google Cloud project, and never shown again; Settings shows only their last four characters. Mornning's servers decrypt a key only to make your requests. Why: to make requests to your providers for you, including automatic updates while you're away.
• Operational records: the stages, counts, timings, errors and token use of each update and of each request you make yourself, which provider handled it and what it cost, as the provider reported it or as Mornning estimates it, how often updates run for you, and your monthly limit if you set one. No story text, prompts or keys. Why: to keep updates working, find faults, show you your API usage and check your monthly limit.
• If you request an invite: your name and email address, what you do and how you found Mornning (if you say), why you'd like to try it, and where your visit came from (the first page you opened, a link's campaign tags and the referring website's name). It is kept in Google Cloud Firestore, in Google's European Union multi-region, and is never sent to an AI provider. Why: to review your request and manage your beta access, to send your invitation, to see which channels bring people to Mornning, and to improve the private beta.
• If you're invited: your email address, who invited you, an internal note and whether you accepted. Why: to manage access to the beta.

Mornning does not store:

• Conversations about stories. They exist only in your open browser tab.
• Voice recordings. A recording is turned into text and discarded; only text you then submit is saved.
• Messages that update what you follow. Only the changes you confirm are saved.

The shared article pool

Mornning gathers articles from public feeds and web search into one pool that every briefing draws from. Articles found through your sources or searches join it, don't record who found them, and stay after you delete your account. They never keep the full address of a feed you follow, or the words of a search built from your interests. Feeds whose address contains a private key or login are not accepted.

Your AI provider and your keys

Mornning has no AI of its own. It uses the AI provider you connect with your own API key: OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), xAI (Grok), Google (Gemini), Mistral AI or OpenRouter. Requests are billed to your provider account and fall under your agreement with that provider, which handles what it receives under its own terms. Mornning asks OpenAI not to store its requests for later use; OpenAI may still keep them for up to 30 days to detect abuse, under its own terms. OpenRouter passes each request on to the company that runs the model, under OpenRouter's terms; Mornning asks it to use only companies that don't keep requests. Each provider decides what it bills and how long it keeps what it receives.

If automatic updates are on, Mornning sends these requests on the schedule you choose, up to six times a day plus a retry when an update fails, without you being present, using your key and your provider credit. You can turn them off, or remove a key, at any time in Settings.

Who else receives your data

• Google Cloud and Firebase: hosting (Netherlands), scheduled updates (Belgium), the database (Europe), sign-in (including password reset emails and address confirmation emails, which Firebase Authentication sends) and logs.
• The AI provider you choose: the stories being assessed (title, description and an excerpt), what you follow, short summaries of related stories Mornning assessed for you earlier, and your questions about a story.
• OpenAI, for voice input: your recording, sent with your OpenAI key, if you use the microphone.
• The web search provider you choose, only if you add its key (Exa or Perplexity): web searches built from what you follow.
• Invitations: today the person who runs Mornning emails invitations personally, so their email provider sees your address. If automatic sending is turned on, Resend will deliver them instead.
• Publishers: Mornning's servers fetch feeds and article pages from their websites, and article images load straight from the publisher in your browser, so that site sees your IP address and may set its own cookies.

Firebase sign-in, Google's logs, your AI provider, your web search provider and Resend may process data outside the European Union, under their own terms. Mornning doesn't sell your data, show ads, or share your data with anyone else.

The person who runs Mornning, and anyone they make an admin, can see in Mornning's admin pages: your account details; which providers you connected and whether they work (never the keys); what you used on your keys and what it cost; how many interests, people and work items you follow, but not what they are; the names of the sources you follow; your recent updates; and the titles and scores of your recent top stories, but not why they matter to you. Opening one person's admin pages is recorded in an audit log; the overview lists, which show everyone's email address, status and usage, are not recorded per person. The person who runs Mornning can also reach the database through Google Cloud, for example to fix a problem, and could technically decrypt saved keys there, because the encryption key is kept in Mornning's Google Cloud project. Mornning's own tools for starting an update by hand, or for copying a day's stories to check briefing quality, work only on their own account, not on yours.

Why Mornning may use your data

EU data protection law (the GDPR) applies even to a free project run by one person. Mornning relies on:

• providing the service you signed up for or asked for: your account, your briefing and your invite request (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR);
• a legitimate interest in keeping Mornning secure and working, and in knowing how people find it: logs, limits on repeated attempts, the audit log and where an invite request came from (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

How long data is kept

• Your data is kept until you delete it or delete your account. When you remove a key, Mornning deletes its copy straight away; the key itself keeps working at your provider until you delete it there.
• Each day's briefing list (which stories, in what order, and how far you've read) is deleted after 14 days. What Mornning learns from your feedback is kept, as above.
• Mornning may temporarily keep a small sample of stories it considered but did not include, so we can measure and improve briefing quality. These evaluation records are automatically deleted after 14 days.
• An invite request, or an invitation nobody accepted, is kept until you ask for it to be deleted, or until you delete an account with that email address.
• Logs are kept for 30 days. Mornning identifies accounts in its own log lines only by a one-way hash; Google's hosting also logs IP addresses, browser types and the address of each page opened, which for admin pages includes an account ID.
• Counters that limit repeated attempts expire on their own. The admin audit log is kept: it identifies the people an action concerned only by a one-way hash, and the admin who acted by their account ID.
• The database keeps recovery copies for 7 days, so deleted data is gone for good after 7 days. There are no other backups.

Deleting your account

Go to Settings → Account → Delete account. It immediately deletes your account, everything Mornning stores for you (including an invite request made with your email address), Mornning's copies of your keys and your sign-in. If an update is running at that moment, you're asked to try again a few minutes later. Articles in the shared pool and the audit log remain; recovery copies expire within 7 days, and logs within 30. Mornning can't delete or revoke anything your providers hold: each key you added keeps working until you delete it in your account with that provider, and so does the key OpenRouter made for Mornning if you connected OpenRouter by signing in to it. A request already sent finishes at the provider, and what your AI and search providers received stays with them under their own terms.

Your rights

You can ask to see your data, get a copy of it, correct it, delete it or object to how it is used. Most of this you can do in Settings; for the rest, email hi@astanciu.com. You'll get an answer within one month. You can also complain to the data protection authority in your country.

Email from Mornning

Mornning sends no newsletters, no marketing emails and no notifications. Your data, an invite request included, is never used for advertising or ad targeting, never sold, and never added to a mailing list. The only emails Mornning sends are:

• your invitation, if you're invited;
• a link to confirm your email address, if you create a password (sent by Firebase Authentication);
• a password reset link, when you ask for one (sent by Firebase Authentication);
• a message about your account or its security, if one is ever needed;
• billing messages, before anything is charged, if paid plans are ever introduced.

Cookies and browser storage

• __session: keeps you signed in for up to 5 days.
• mornning_locale: remembers your website language for up to a year.
• Your browser also remembers that you've seen the message about the second language and, if you read in Cards, the swipe tip. Neither ever leaves your browser.
• Where your visit began (a link's campaign tags and the website that sent you) is kept only in the open page's memory, never stored in your browser. It is sent only if you request an invite, and is gone when you reload or close the page.
• On the sign-in and invitation pages, the Firebase sign-in library keeps a small technical record in your browser (its version and the days it was used) and sends it to Google with sign-in requests. Signing in with Google happens in a Google window, under Google's terms; on phones and in Safari, Google's sign-in helper loads as soon as those pages open.
• Mornning uses no analytics or advertising cookies.

Security

Data travels over HTTPS and is encrypted at rest by Google Cloud; saved keys are encrypted again by Mornning. No browser reads Mornning's database directly: Mornning's servers read it to show you your own data, to run your updates and, in the admin pages, for the people described above, and never send saved keys to any browser.

Changes

If Mornning changes how it handles data, this page and the date at the top change too.