Privacy policy

The Daily Smile is a short daily news edition, on our website, in our app and by email. This policy explains what we store about you, why, for how long, and what you can ask us. We keep it short and plain on purpose.

1. Who we are

The Daily Smile (“we”, “us”) is a news service based in Belgium. We decide what happens with your personal data, so we are the “controller” under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

For anything about your data, write to [email protected] or use the contact form on this website.

2. What we store

We only ask for what we need. Depending on how you use The Daily Smile, we store:

• Your account: your email address, first name and last name.
• Your settings: your language, your region and your date format.
• Your devices: the push token of your phone (and whether it’s iPhone or Android), only when you allow notifications, so we can tell you when the edition is ready.
• Your login: a single-use link and code, of which we only store a scrambled version (a hash).
• The waiting list: your first name, last name, email address, language and, when you pick it, the plan you’re interested in.
• Messages: what you send us through the contact form, or when you report a mistake in a story.
• Technical data: your IP address, browser and the time of a request, to keep the service safe and to stop spam.

3. Why we use it, and on what basis

We use your data only for these purposes:

• To give you the service you asked for: your account, your edition in your language and region, your emails (the contract with you).
• To send push notifications and to measure with cookies: only when you agreed (your consent, which you can withdraw at any time).
• To keep the service safe, stop spam and abuse, and improve it with anonymous numbers (our legitimate interest).
• To keep the records the law asks of us, for example invoices once paid plans start (a legal obligation).

4. Logging in without a password

We don’t use passwords. When you log in, we email you a link and a 6-digit code. They work once and expire after 15 minutes. We only store a hash of them, so even we can’t read them back.

5. Cookies and measuring

This website uses three kinds of cookies. You choose which ones you accept in the cookie banner, and you can change your choice at any time with “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page.

Without your consent we still count, anonymously and without cookies: which pages are visited, clicks, errors and your cookie choice itself. For this we use an identifier that changes every day and is never linked to you as a person.

• Necessary (always on): the cookie that remembers your cookie choice (_el_consent, 12 months). In the app, your login is remembered on your device until you log out.
• Statistics (only with your consent): _el_id (13 months) and _el_s (30 minutes), so we can link visits over several days and understand how the site is used.
• Marketing (only with your consent): today we don’t set any marketing cookies. If we ever use ads, their cookies only load after you say yes.

6. Who helps us

We never sell your data. A few companies process data for us, under a contract that protects it:

• Amazon Web Services (servers and backups, in the EU, Paris).
• Cloudflare (our domain, and the invisible check that a person sends our forms).
• Twilio SendGrid (sending our emails, such as the login link and the edition).
• Expo, Apple and Google (delivering push notifications to your phone).
• EventsLake (our measuring tool, hosted in the EU).
• Google Cloud (the AI that helps write the stories; we never send it your personal data).

7. Data outside the EU

We keep our data in the EU. Some of the companies above are based in the United States. When data goes there, it’s protected by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or by the standard contract clauses of the European Commission.

8. How long we keep it

• Your account: as long as you have one. When you delete your account in the app, we delete your data right away; copies in our backups are gone within 30 days.
• Push tokens: until you switch notifications off, log out or delete your account.
• The waiting list: until the app is launched plus 12 months, or until you ask us to remove you.
• Contact messages and reports of mistakes: 2 years.
• Technical logs: 30 days.

9. Your rights

You can ask us to see, correct or delete your data, to limit what we do with it, to give it to you in a common format, or to stop using it. When we use your data with your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. We answer within one month.

Write to [email protected] or use the contact form. If you’re not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Belgian Data Protection Authority (Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit / Autorité de protection des données), Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels, dataprotectionauthority.be, or to the authority in your own country.

10. Children

The Daily Smile is meant for people of 13 and older. We don’t knowingly store data of younger children. If you think a child gave us data, tell us and we’ll delete it.

11. Security

We protect your data with encryption on every connection, databases that are not reachable from the internet, nightly encrypted backups, and access for as few people as possible.

12. Changes

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. If a change matters for you, we tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.