Privacy
Privacy policy
Spin Diary is a music diary. We keep what you put into it so we can show it back to you and to the people you share it with. There are no ads, no trackers and no analytics scripts, and we never sell or rent anything about you. Email is optional.
Who we are
Spin Diary is run by Obegi Software LLC, a Washington limited liability company. We decide what the site collects and why, and we’re who to ask about anything on this page (see Contact).
What we keep, and why
Your account
- Handle, display name and password. The password is stored only as a salted scrypt hash; nobody, including us, can read it.
- A recovery code, shown once at sign-up and stored only as a hash, so you can get back in without email.
- Profile choices: bio, headline, mood, colours, the widgets on your page, and a profile picture if you upload one (we re-encode it as a 512-pixel image and keep no photo metadata such as location).
- Email address, only if you add one. See Email.
What you log and do
- Your logs: scores, reviews, etchings, descriptor words, dates, spins, song scores; your lists, queue, likes, replies, guestbook scratches, follows, crate swaps and quick-rate skips.
- Private messages between you and the person you’re talking to. They’re stored so both of you can read them. A moderator sees a message only if one of you reports it.
- Notifications we show you, and a record of which notification emails we sent (never their content), so we can keep emails infrequent.
- Imports you start: the source, the username you gave us on that site, progress, and up to 200 titles we couldn’t match, so we can show you the result.
- Listening sync, if you connect Last.fm, Spotify or Apple Music: your Last.fm username, your Spotify or Apple Music sign-in token (encrypted), and the albums your recent plays point to, so they can wait in Needle drops for you to log.
- Listening clubs you start or join: the club’s name, who’s in it, who’s been invited and by whom, and each week’s record, who picked it and their note.
- Blocks and reports, so moderation works.
Technical information
- A session record for each device you sign in on: a hash of the sign-in token, which account it belongs to, and when it was made. It stops working after 30 days, and signing out deletes it.
- Your IP address is used, in memory only, to slow down password guessing and spam sign-ups. We don’t store it in our database, and it’s forgotten when the server restarts.
- Wrong password attempts on an account (a time for each, not the passwords and not your IP address), so an account can’t be guessed at from many places at once. Only the last 15 minutes count.
- Every request to the site passes through Cloudflare and Railway (see Other services), which keep their own request logs, including IP addresses, under their own policies.
- If you use the iOS app with notifications allowed: a device token Apple gives your phone, so we can send it notifications. See The iOS app.
- Your time zone (see Cookies), so “Today” in your feed means your today.
What’s public
Spin Diary is a social diary: your profile page, logs, reviews, etchings, lists, queue, stats, followers, replies and guestbook scratches can be seen by anyone, signed in or not, and may appear in search engines and in share images you or others create. Your email address, password, messages, crate swaps, blocks, reports, recovery code and settings are never public, and neither are your listening clubs: a club, its members and its weekly records are seen only by the people in it (and a club’s name by the people invited to it). Your friends page is private to you, though who follows whom shows on profiles. If you block someone, neither of you sees the other’s logs, replies or messages.
Email (optional)
You don’t need an email address to use Spin Diary. If you add one, we send a link to confirm it’s yours, then use it only for the notification emails you leave switched on in Settings (for example new messages, replies and swaps) and for password reset links you ask for. We don’t send newsletters or marketing, and we never show your address to anyone. Every notification email has a one-click unsubscribe, and you can remove your address at any time.
Emails are delivered by Resend, which processes your address and the email only to deliver it. A notification email can quote a short excerpt of what it’s about (the start of a message, reply, mention or guestbook scratch), so that excerpt passes through Resend too.
A few security emails can’t be switched off, because they’re how you’d find out someone else got into your account: when your password changes, and (sent to your old address) when the email on your account is replaced.
The iOS app
The Spin Diary app for iPhone shows the same site, with the same account, and this policy covers it too. A few things work differently on the phone:
- Notifications. If you allow them, Apple gives your phone a device token, which we store with your account so we can send you notifications (messages, replies, mentions, follows, guestbook scratches, swaps, club invites and picks). Each notification’s text passes through Apple’s push service to reach you; for a new message, that text is the first 160 characters of the message. Signing out stops them on that phone, and you can switch them off any time in your iPhone’s Settings.
- Apple Music. If you connect it in the app, iOS asks your permission and gives us the same Apple Music token the website gets. It’s used only to read your recent plays for Needle drops.
- Camera and photos. Used only when you choose a profile picture, and only the picture you pick is uploaded.
Like the website, the app has no ads and no analytics or tracking code.
Other services we use
Railway, Cloudflare and Resend are US companies, so your information may be processed in the United States.
| Service | What it’s for | What it gets |
|---|---|---|
| Railway | Hosting and the database | Everything above is stored there |
| Cloudflare | Sits in front of the site and passes every request on to it | Every request your browser or the app makes to Spin Diary, including your IP address. Your browser may also send it a report if a page fails to load. |
| Resend | Sending email, if you add an address | Your address and the email we send you |
| Apple Music (iTunes Search), MusicBrainz, Deezer, Cover Art Archive, Wikipedia | Album details, covers and 30-second previews | Our server asks for albums by name; nothing about you. Your browser loads some things straight from them, so they see your IP address: the small covers in album search results (Apple, Deezer or the Cover Art Archive), and the clip when you press play on a preview (Apple or Deezer). |
| Last.fm, Spotify, Apple Music | “Needle drops”, only if you connect them | We read your recent plays. Spotify and Apple Music sign-in tokens are stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM). On the website, connecting Apple Music loads Apple’s MusicKit script and opens Apple’s own sign-in window; connecting Spotify sends you to Spotify to agree. Disconnect any time in Settings. |
| Musicboard, Discogs, Last.fm | Imports you start | We read the public profile you point us at. We never ask for those passwords. A Rate Your Music or other CSV file is read in your browser, and only the rows go to our server. |
| Apple Push Notification service | Notifications in the iOS app, if you allow them | Your phone’s device token and the notification’s text |
| Have I Been Pwned (Pwned Passwords) | Refusing passwords known from data breaches, when you choose a new one | The first 5 characters of a hash of the new password. Never the password itself, and nothing that says who you are. |
| Google Fonts | Fonts in share images | Our server downloads font files; nothing about you. The site’s own fonts are served from Spin Diary. |
Links to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Bandcamp on album pages are ordinary links; those sites have their own policies.
Cookies and storage
- dw_session: keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days. Essential; the site can’t work without it. It holds a random token, can’t be read by scripts, and is only sent over HTTPS.
- dw_tz: your time zone name (like “America/New_York”), for dates in your feed. Kept for a year.
- dw_sp_oauth: only while you connect Spotify. It holds a one-time code that checks the answer coming back from Spotify, and lasts 10 minutes.
- Your browser’s local storage keeps an unsaved review draft on your own device until you save it.
No advertising or tracking cookies, and nothing is shared with advertisers.
How long we keep it
- Your account and what’s in it (logs, lists, profile, follows, likes, notifications, the email record, imports, connections, clubs you started): until you delete it, or delete the account.
- Messages can’t be unsent. A conversation is kept until either of you deletes your account, which deletes it for both of you. A moderator can remove a message that’s reported.
- Sessions: they stop working after 30 days; signing out deletes them, and “sign out everywhere” or a password change deletes all of them.
- Email links: confirmation links expire after 48 hours and password reset links after an hour.
- Listening sync: disconnecting deletes the stored token and stops syncing. The albums it already found stay with your account until you delete it; logging or dismissing one takes it out of Needle drops.
- App devices: until you sign out on that phone, Apple tells us the token is no longer valid, or you delete your account.
- Reports are kept as a record after a moderator deals with them, until the reporter’s account is deleted.
- Wrong-password records: cleared when the right password is entered; otherwise ones older than 15 minutes are removed the next time someone tries that account.
- IP addresses are never written to our database; the copies held in memory are gone when the server restarts.
Your choices
- Download it. Settings → Your diary downloads every log as a CSV (album, artist, year, score, review, etching, spins and dates), and your queue as a second file. For anything else we hold about you, ask us.
- Change it. Edit or remove any log, review, list or reply you wrote; change your profile and email in Settings.
- Delete it. Settings → Delete account removes your account and everything tied to it: logs, reviews, lists, conversations, likes, follows, clubs you started, club memberships, uploads, connections, app devices, email and the reports you filed. Records you picked in other people’s clubs stay in that club’s history, no longer linked to you. If our database host keeps backups, a copy may stay in them until they’re replaced.
- Emails and notifications. Switch each kind of email on or off, unsubscribe from any email, or remove your address. In the iOS app, turn notifications off in your iPhone’s Settings.
Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or California) you may have further rights, such as asking what we hold about you, asking us to correct or delete it, or objecting to how it’s used. Ask us and we’ll help. If you can’t sign in to delete your account yourself, ask us and we’ll check it’s yours and delete it.
Children
Spin Diary isn’t for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly keep accounts for them. If you think a child has made one, tell us and we’ll remove it.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we’ll update the date at the top and say so on the site before the change applies.
Contact
Questions or requests about your data: email info@masonobegi.com or use the contact form at masonobegi.com/contact. We aim to reply promptly. See also the terms of use and the accessibility statement.