Privacy Policy

This page covers the newsletter signup and the analytics cookie on Paths Are Many — what we collect, why, who else sees it, and how to change or remove it. If anything here is unclear, write to us at privacy@pathsaremany.com.

What we collect, and why

When you sign up, we ask for your email address and, optionally, which continents, countries, teachers or traditions you'd like to hear about. That's everything — no account, no tracking of your visits, no profile beyond the choices you explicitly make on the signup form.

Two separate systems, on purpose

Your email address, your consent record and the sending itself are handled by Brevo (Sendinblue SAS), an email service provider based and hosted in the EU. Brevo confirms your subscription by email (double opt-in) before you receive anything from us, and handles unsubscribing, bounce management and your subscriber status entirely on their end. You can read Brevo's own privacy policy for how they handle that data.

Separately, our own database stores only which content you'd like — the teachers, traditions, countries or continents you selected — linked to your email address. We don't store a subscription status, a confirmation token, or anything about how or whether Brevo delivered an email to you. If Brevo tells us you've unsubscribed or that your address is bouncing, we delete your stored preferences automatically, so they never outlive your consent to have them.

Following specific teachers or traditions

Choosing to follow a specific teacher or spiritual tradition can reveal something about your religious or philosophical beliefs — a special category of personal data under GDPR Article 9. We only store this if you take a separate, deliberate step: checking an unticked box that explains this explicitly, distinct from the general geographic preferences. We record that you gave this consent, when, and which version of the consent text you saw, so a later change in wording never gets applied retroactively to a decision you made under different words.

You did not give this consent just by visiting the site, and it is never assumed or pre-selected on your behalf.

Your choices

Every email we send includes a link to manage your preferences, where you can:

• See exactly what's currently stored for your email address
• Add, remove or change any preference, including withdrawing consent to follow a specific teacher or tradition
• Delete all of your stored preferences, without unsubscribing your email address entirely

To unsubscribe from emails entirely, use the unsubscribe link in the email itself — that's handled directly by Brevo, and it also removes your stored preferences with us. You can also write to privacy@pathsaremany.com at any time to access, correct, export or delete your data — including a full erasure request covering both systems.

Tracking

We do not enable open or click tracking on these emails. We don't know if you've opened an email or which links you clicked.

Cookies and analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand, in aggregate, how visitors use this site: which pages get read, which paths and teachers people explore. It sets a cookie. We don't sell your data to anyone, and we don't build our own profiles of individual visitors.

If you're visiting from the EU/EEA, the UK or Switzerland, you'll see a short notice asking whether that's okay before the analytics cookie loads. Declining is fully respected, nothing is sent, and the site works exactly the same either way. For visitors elsewhere it is loaded by default, as is common practice; you can still block or clear it any time in your browser's own settings. This data is processed as described in Google's privacy policy.

Embedded players

Some pages carry players from other platforms — YouTube and Vimeo for films and talks, and Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud or YouTube for audio recordings. Nothing on this site is uploaded or hosted here; every recording stays where the teacher published it, and we link or embed it.

None of those players loads until you click it. Until then the card you see is drawn by this site alone, the platform is never contacted, and it cannot set a cookie or learn that you were here. From the moment you press play you are dealing with that platform as well as with us, under its own terms and privacy policy.

If you become a member

Signing in is optional. Everything on this site can be read without an account. If you do make one, this is what changes.

What we store

• Your email address, because that is how you sign in. There are no passwords here: we send you a link and a six-digit code, and both stop working after fifteen minutes.
• What you put in your profile: a display name, and optionally a photo, a short introduction, a country, a city, one link per kind (website, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and one other), and which language you want emails in.
• Which teachers, paths, videos and recordings you save, and whether each is a favorite or something you are only keeping an eye on. Also which events you are going to, and who may see each of those kinds. All of this needs your separate agreement; see below.
• Which events you marked as going or interested, and any feedback you gave afterwards about an event you attended.
• Technical records of your sign-in sessions: when they started, when they expire, the browser you used and the IP address it came from. These are what keep you signed in and let you see where else you are logged in.

Why we ask twice about saving

Which spiritual teachers and paths someone saves says something about their beliefs, and European data protection law treats that as a special category of personal data. So we ask separately and explicitly, with a box that is not ticked in advance, and we store none of it until you say yes. You can withdraw that agreement at any time on your account page, and withdrawing deletes what was saved under it.

Marking an event as going is not in that category and does not need the separate agreement. An appointment in a diary is a different kind of thing from a statement about what you believe.

Your photo

A profile photo is resized to a square, converted, and stored with Vercel Blob. Everything the camera wrote into the file is removed first, including the make and model, the timestamp, any name, and the GPS coordinates. That last one matters: a photo taken at home carries your address. The stored file has a name nobody can guess, and replacing or removing your photo deletes the old file for good.

Your profile, if you make it visible

Off unless you turn it on. Even then it is only visible to other signed-in members, never to visitors who are not signed in and never to search engines; the page carries a no-index instruction and is not in the sitemap. It shows your photo, name, introduction, place and links, and whichever of your saved things you have chosen to share. It does not show your email address, and it does not show the things you marked as merely interesting or to watch later.

Other members can report a profile. A report goes to the site owner, who can hide the profile or remove the photo. The person reported is not told who sent it.

Who may see what you save

Saving something is not sharing it. For each of the five kinds (teachers, paths, videos, recordings, events) you choose separately who may see it: nobody, your connections, or all members. Nothing is filled in for you, and until you choose, nothing is shared. You can change or close any of it at any time, and that takes effect at once.

"All members" is mutual: another member sees that kind of yours only if they share the same kind themselves. Your connections always see what you have released to them. The first four kinds need your profile to be visible; the events line works on its own, because that shows your name on an event page rather than on your profile.

Connections with other members

Members can connect with each other. A connection is mutual and needs an answer: one person asks, the other accepts or declines. We store who asked whom, whether it is open, accepted, declined or blocked, and when. A request cannot carry a message, because there is no messaging between members here, so there is nothing about that to store.

A request on its own shares nothing. If you decline, the other person is not told; they simply cannot ask again. If you block someone, your profile stops existing for them, and blocking survives even if you later withdraw your agreement, because it is a boundary you set rather than something we keep about you. You can also choose, like any other kind, who may see the list of people you are connected to; everyone in that list accepted the connection themselves.

We email you when someone sends you a connection request. That message names the sender, never their email address, and carries no message from them. You can turn these emails off on your account page; the request itself still appears there.

Being found by name

If your profile is visible, another member can reach it by typing your display name exactly. There is no member list, there are no search suggestions, and part of a name matches nothing. Each member can do this twenty times an hour at most. You can turn it off on your account page, and then your own invitation link is the only way in.

Inviting someone who is not a member

You can invite someone by typing their email address. We send one message with your display name in it, and then we do not keep the address. What stays is a fingerprint of it, from which the address cannot be worked out, not by us either. That fingerprint does two things and nothing else: it makes sure the same address can never be invited a second time, by anyone, and it lets the recipient refuse invitations for good without having to tell us who they are. There is never a reminder, and we never add the address to a mailing list.

Numbers and names at events

An event page shows how many members are going. That number is anonymous, names nobody, and is visible to everyone. Names are a separate matter: they are only shown to signed-in members who have themselves turned on showing their events, and only of members who did the same and did not hide themselves at that particular event. Only upcoming events, and only the display name someone filled in themselves; we never fall back on an email address.

The feedback you give after an event

If you marked an event as going and it has passed, you can answer one question about it and add a private note. Only the site owner reads this. It never appears anywhere public: there are no stars, no averages, and no counts on teacher or event pages. If you later withdraw your agreement, the answer stays but is detached from your account, so it is no longer about you; if you delete your account it goes with it.

Getting your data out, and deleting it

Your account page has a button that downloads everything we hold about you as a JSON file, and a button that deletes your account. Deleting removes your profile, your photo, your links, your saved items, your events, your feedback and your sessions, at once and for good. There is no waiting period and no recycle bin. You can also withdraw the agreement without deleting the account; that removes the same things but leaves the account and your email address.

Who else sees this

Four companies process parts of it on our behalf, and no others. Brevo sends the sign-in emails and the newsletter, and therefore handles your email address. Neon stores the database, in the European Union. Vercel runs the site and briefly sees the requests your browser makes. Vercel Blob stores the profile photos. None of them may use any of it for their own purposes.

How long we keep it

Your account stays as long as you want it. Sign-in links and codes are deleted within fifteen minutes. Sessions expire on their own, and we keep no record of how often you sign in. The short-lived counters that stop someone from flooding a stranger's inbox, or from searching for names all day, keep nothing older than an hour. The fingerprint of an invited address stays, because it is the only thing that prevents a second invitation and makes a permanent refusal possible; it is not a personal detail that can be read back. If you delete your account, everything attached to it goes at that moment.

How long we keep it

Your preferences stay in our database for as long as Brevo confirms your address is an active, subscribed contact. The moment that changes — you unsubscribe, or the address hard-bounces — your stored preferences are deleted, not just marked inactive.

Legal basis

Processing your email address and general (geographic) preferences relies on your consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)), given through Brevo's double opt-in confirmation. Processing teacher or tradition preferences additionally relies on your explicit consent to special category data (GDPR Art. 9(2)(a)), given through the separate checkbox described above. You can withdraw either at any time, with no effect on the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal.

The analytics cookie relies on the same basis, consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)/ePrivacy), for visitors in the EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland, given through the cookie notice described above. For visitors elsewhere, it relies on legitimate interest in understanding site usage.