Privacy policy

Effective October 6, 2026

This policy explains how the Minds Feed website and Android app, developed by Busted Minds, handle information when you browse, search, save, follow, or tune recommendations.

Information you provide

If you sign in with Busted Minds Account, Minds Feed receives your account identifier and email address. Your edition countries, reading languages, selected interests, followed teams, competitions, companies, markets, assets, and institutions, likes, saves, other follows, mutes, blocked publishers, not-interested choices, opens, shares, and reading time may be associated with that identifier. Recently viewed contains up to 100 unique stories opened during the previous 90 days. Opening a story again moves it to the top. You can remove one story or clear the full trail without removing saved stories or follows.

Your reading workspace

Your story follows, alert choices, private notes, collection names and memberships, read/unread state, reading positions, and daily briefing progress are associated with your account and included in data export and deletion. Briefing snapshots older than 32 days are removed when a new briefing is created. Downloading an eligible reader report stores its text and source information on your device, separately from cloud saves. You can remove downloads in Reading desk or clear site storage. Notes are not sent to BM AI. Requesting a structured comparison sends the same bounded source context as a story question.

Guest and device data

You can browse without an account. Guest saves, likes, feed choices, and unsent interaction signals are stored in your browser or app storage. During edition setup, the app may suggest a country and languages from your browser locale, language list, and time zone. Minds Feed does not request GPS location or retain an IP address for this suggestion. Clear the site's storage in your browser or Android settings to remove local data.

How recommendations work

We use your confirmed edition countries, reading languages, story taste-test choices, followed sports and finance entities, and later reading interactions to rank stories, build the Following view and digest, and explain why stories appeared. We also use recency, source coverage, and important local or global topics so the feed is not limited to your existing interests.

Third-party media bias labels provide source context only. Minds Feed does not use them to infer your political beliefs, build a political profile, or rank your feed.

Product operations and publishers

Busted Minds systems process account authentication, feed and preference storage, scheduled updates, media, and notifications. Contracted infrastructure services may process this information on our behalf and under our instructions. If you enable story notifications, we store the browser push endpoint and encryption keys needed to deliver them.

For supported articles, the minds reader requests the selected public page through a Busted Minds server and returns extracted text without publisher scripts, ads, trackers, or active markup. The reader does not bypass logins or paywalls and does not permanently store article text. If you open the original page, the publisher receives information normally sent by your browser, subject to its own policy.

On supported Android app versions, original article pages open in the Busted Minds publisher browser. Its optional ad blocker is enabled by default and checks resource domains against a bundled list on your device. It reduces common ads and trackers; some ads may remain. These checks and the blocking preference are not sent to Busted Minds servers. You can change the device preference in Feed controls, turn blocking off for the current visit, or open the page in your usual browser. Publisher cookies and website storage use Android WebView storage, separate from your usual browser and shared Busted Minds Account session. Third-party cookies are disabled. Publisher logins, subscriptions, and paywalls still apply. Videos, podcasts, and social conversations keep their original external routes.

Public social conversations

Minds Feed may check selected public Bluesky publisher feeds and public Mastodon trend endpoints to find links connected to a story. We store limited public metadata such as the post link, author handle, short excerpt, timestamp, and aggregate engagement counts. Social conversation links expire from story displays after seven days. They do not count as independent reporting, are not imported from private timelines, and are not sent to BM AI. Opening a conversation takes you to the social platform and is governed by that platform's privacy policy.

BM AI story questions

BM AI does not run automatically in Minds Feed. If you explicitly ask a story question, we send your question, a bounded copy of the selected story's source context, and a pseudonymous rate-limit key to BM AI so it can produce an answer. Minds Feed story questions and answers are ephemeral and are not added to BM AI chat history or used to rank your feed unless you report an answer for safety review. A report stores the question, answer, story and source identifiers, report status, and your account identifier until it is reviewed or you delete your Minds Feed data.

AI answers can be incomplete or incorrect. Minds Feed keeps numbered links to the publisher sources beside the answer so you can check the original reporting.

Use, sharing, and retention

We use information to provide, secure, troubleshoot, and improve Minds Feed. We do not sell personal information. We share data only with service providers needed to operate the product, to protect the service, or when legally required. Raw story-open records and Recently viewed entries are deleted after 90 days. Other product data are retained while needed for the service and can be deleted using the controls below.

Your controls

You can edit your edition countries, languages, interests, discovery level, likes, saves, follows, mutes, and blocks in the app. You can also permanently delete all Minds Feed data associated with your account. Deleting Minds Feed data does not delete the shared Busted Minds Account used by other products.

Children, changes, and contact

Minds Feed is not directed to children under 13. We may update this policy as the service changes and will revise the effective date. For privacy questions, email support@bustedminds.org or visit the Minds Feed contact page.