Privacy Policy & Transparency Notice

1. Executive Data Protection Overview

bytNEWS (“Platform”) is committed to data privacy and to describing what we actually do with your data, in plain terms.

2. Source Attribution

Stories on this site originate with established news organisations and are rewritten before publication. Every story carries the name of the newsroom it came from and a link to the original report.

3. What Happens To Text You Submit

When you use the verification tool:

• Email addresses and phone numbers are removed from your text on our server before it goes anywhere else.
• The remaining text is sent to Google’s Gemini API for analysis. It is not used to train Google’s models, because the Platform uses a paid API tier.
• If you submit a link, our server fetches that page and reads it. It will not fetch internal or private network addresses.
• Results are cached briefly to avoid re-analysing an identical submission. We do not attach your identity to a submission or build a history of what you have checked.

4. Scoring Disclaimer

Scores are analytical and advisory. They reflect whether a story’s claims match reporting we could retrieve at that moment, and they are not a legal or judicial determination of truth. A low score can mean a story is false, or simply that nobody we search has covered it yet — the result tells you which.

5. Editorial System

This site receives finished stories from the editorial system that produces them. That exchange carries article content only — headline, body, images, category and source details. No reader information is included in it, and we do not store subscriber credentials or payment details.

6. Cookies, Analytics and Advertising

Nothing is loaded until you agree. On your first visit we ask whether you accept analytics and advertising cookies. Until you choose, no analytics or advertising code runs and no such cookies are set. If you decline, none of it ever loads — the site works exactly the same either way.

What runs if you accept. Two services, both operated by Google:

• Google Analytics 4 — measures which pages are read and how people arrive. It records the page address, page title, referrer, and general device and browser information. IP addresses are anonymised before storage. We use this to understand what our readers find useful; we do not use it to identify individuals, and we do not combine it with any account you may hold here.
• Google AdSense — serves the advertising that funds the site. Google may set cookies to measure ad performance and, depending on your own Google settings, to personalise what you are shown.

Both send data to Google, which acts as an independent controller for it and may process it outside your country. Google’s own handling is described in its privacy policy, and you can control personalised advertising at Google Ad Settings.

Changing your mind. Your decision is stored in your own browser, not on our servers, and applies to that browser only. You can withdraw or give consent at any time using the link in the footer of every page — withdrawing is as easy as accepting, and takes effect immediately. Clearing your browser’s site data also clears the decision, and we will simply ask again.

Cookies we set ourselves. Separately from the above, signing in sets a session cookie that keeps you signed in. That one is strictly necessary for a feature you asked for, is not used for analytics or advertising, and is not covered by the consent banner.