Privacy policy

Who we are

Dramalyst is an independent reference site about vertical short dramas, operated from Hong Kong. For any privacy question, write to privacy@dramalyst.com.

What we collect

Nothing you have to give us

There are no accounts, no logins, no newsletter sign-up and no forms on this site. We never ask you for a name, an email address or a payment detail. If you email us, we hold that email in order to reply to it, and nothing more.

Standard server logs

The site is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes technical request data — IP address, user agent, the page requested, timestamp — to deliver pages and protect against abuse. We use this only in aggregate, to see whether the site is up and roughly how much traffic it gets. We do not use it to build a profile of you.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how much traffic the site gets and which pages people actually find useful. It records things like the page you viewed, roughly where in the world you are, your device type and browser, and how you arrived (search, a link, or directly).

IP anonymisation is enabled, so your full IP address is truncated before being stored. We use the results in aggregate. We have not enabled Google Signals, advertising features or cross-device tracking, and we do not upload any customer data to Google.

Google acts as our data processor for this and is a controller for its own purposes. See Google's privacy policy. You can opt out entirely with Google's browser add-on, or by using any browser setting or extension that blocks analytics scripts — the site works perfectly well without it.

Advertising

We currently show no advertising. If we add it, this section will say exactly which network, what it collects, and how to opt out — and it will be updated before any ad appears.

Cookies

We set no cookies for advertising, personalisation or profiling. On your first visit a banner asks whether you accept analytics cookies: Google Analytics is not loaded, and its cookies are not set, unless you choose “Accept”. Decline and the site runs with no analytics at all. The cookies that can appear on this site are:

• Google Analytics (_ga, _ga_*) — only after you accept. Tells one visit apart from another so visitor counts aren't wildly wrong. Expires after two years and holds a random identifier, not anything about who you are.
• Cloudflare — a strictly necessary security cookie that distinguishes real visitors from automated traffic. Required for the site to work, so it is not subject to consent; no advertising purpose.
• ReelShort's player — third-party cookies set by reelshort.com only if you tap play on a free episode, to run its video player and attribute a resulting install. Governed by ReelShort's privacy policy, not ours.

Full detail lives in our cookie policy. Blocking or declining cookies does nothing to the reading experience — every page reads the same with cookies switched off; only the video player needs its own.

Cover images load from the platforms

Where a drama has cover art, we show it by pointing your browser at the platform's own image server. We don't copy, store or re-host those images — they are delivered to you directly by the platform, in the same way an embedded image works anywhere on the web.

The practical consequence for you: loading a page with cover art means your browser makes a request to that platform's content delivery network, and that CDN can see your IP address and browser details, just as it would if you opened the app's own site. This happens when the page loads, not only when you click something.

To limit what leaks, we send those requests with a no-referrer policy, so the platform is not told which page of ours you were reading. We have no control over what the CDN itself logs — that's governed by the platform's own privacy policy, not ours.

Dramas without available cover art are shown with a typographic layout instead. We don't substitute an image we've stored ourselves.

Playing a free episode loads ReelShort's player

On some drama pages you can watch the first episodes free without leaving this site. The video is not ours: it plays inside ReelShort's own official embedded player, delivered from reelshort.com, using an embed that ReelShort provides for this purpose.

The player loads only when you tap play — nothing streams or connects to ReelShort until you choose to watch. Once you do, your browser connects to ReelShort and its provider (Crazy Maple Studio), which can see your IP address and device details and may set their own cookies to run the player and to credit us if you go on to install the app. That activity is governed by ReelShort's own privacy policy, not ours.

Tapping play is your affirmative choice to load that third-party player. If you never play a video, no ReelShort player is loaded and no ReelShort cookie is set.

Links to other sites

Watch links take you to the official apps and websites of third-party platforms. Some of those links are affiliate links — see our affiliate disclosure.

Once you follow a link, you are on someone else's site under their privacy policy, not ours. Affiliate programmes typically record the click and may set an identifier so a resulting install can be credited to us. We receive only aggregate reports — how many clicks, how many installs. We are not told who you are, and we cannot match a click back to a person.

What we never do

• Sell or rent personal data. There is no data here to sell.
• Build advertising profiles or run cross-site tracking.
• Ask for payment details. We take no money from visitors.
• Knowingly collect information from children under 13.

Your rights

Depending on where you live — including under the GDPR in the EU and UK, and the CCPA in California — you have rights to access, correct, delete or restrict processing of your personal data, and to object to it.

In practice we hold almost nothing about you: if you have never emailed us, there is likely no personal data of yours in our possession at all. If you have, write to privacy@dramalyst.com and we will delete the correspondence on request. We do not sell personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of under the CCPA's sale provisions.

Data about dramas, not about people

Nearly all data on this site concerns television content: titles, episode counts, languages, which app carries what. That's information about media products, not about individuals.

Changes

If this policy changes we will update the date at the top. Material changes — particularly adding analytics or advertising — will be made before the change takes effect, not after.