Privacy Policy

Occurances is a place to react to and talk about the news. We are based in Uganda and act as the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at [email protected].

We follow Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019, and we apply the same standards to readers wherever they are, including the rights described below.

Your account. Your username, email address and a securely hashed password. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, profile photo and a Google account identifier instead of a password.

What you post. Your comments and replies, and the reactions you leave on stories and comments.

How you use Occurances. Stories you open, save or hide, the topics and sources you follow or mute, and the interests we infer from these signals to rank your front page. You can see and change what we have learned on your Preferences page.

Newsletter. The email address you give us when you join the newsletter, and whether you closed the newsletter banner while signed in.

Technical data. Your IP address, the approximate location it suggests, your browser and device type, and server logs of requests. If something breaks, an error report with technical details about the failure is sent to our monitoring service.

We do not collect payment details, and we do not knowingly collect sensitive data about you.

• To run your account, keep you signed in and show your comments and reactions under your username.
• To rank stories around what you follow, mute and read.
• To show how people feel about a story, through reaction counts and discussion.
• To send the newsletter, if you asked for it.
• To keep Occurances secure, prevent abuse and spam, and enforce our Terms of Use.
• To find and fix errors and understand how the service performs.
• To meet our legal obligations.

We rely on:

• Contract, to provide the account and features you sign up for.
• Consent, for the newsletter and for optional cookies. You can withdraw it at any time.
• Legitimate interests, to personalise your front page, keep the service secure and improve it, where those interests are not outweighed by your rights.
• Legal obligation, where the law requires us to keep or disclose information.

Your username and your comments and replies are public. Your reactions are shown to others only as part of a total, never under your name. Your email address, saved stories, reading activity and preferences are never shown to other readers.

We do not sell your personal data or share it for advertising. We share it only with:

• Service providers who run parts of Occurances for us under contract: hosting (Vercel and Railway), sign-in with Google (Google and Firebase), email delivery (Mailjet), error monitoring (Sentry) and IP geolocation. They may only use the data to provide their service to us.
• Authorities, when the law requires it or to protect the safety and rights of readers, the public or Occurances.
• A buyer or successor, if Occurances is merged, sold or reorganised. This policy will continue to apply to your data.

Stories link to publishers' websites, and some story images load from their servers, which can see your IP address. Their own privacy policies apply there.

Some of our service providers store or process data outside Uganda, including in the United States and the European Union. When that happens we rely on providers that offer adequate protection for personal data, through contractual safeguards or the laws that apply to them.

• Account data, preferences and reading signals: while your account exists.
• Sign-in sessions: up to 30 days, or until you sign out.
• Newsletter address: until you unsubscribe.
• Server logs and error reports: for a limited period, normally no longer than 90 days.

You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• correct data that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete your account and personal data;
• stop or restrict certain processing, or object to it;
• withdraw consent you gave earlier, without affecting what happened before.

Write to [email protected] from the email address on your account. We will reply within 30 days. You can change your cookie choices at any time on the Cookies page.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to Uganda's Personal Data Protection Office, or to the data protection authority where you live.

We protect your data with encrypted connections, hashed passwords, httpOnly session cookies and access controls on our systems. No service is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Occurances is not meant for children under 13. Readers under 18 need permission from a parent or guardian to create an account. If you believe a child has given us personal data without that permission, contact us and we will delete it.

We will update this page when our practices change and revise the date at the top. If the changes are significant, we will tell signed-in readers before they take effect.