Privacy Policy

Last updated: 28 October 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information Double Crochet collects when you visit https://doublecrochet.io (the "site"), why we collect it, who we share it with and the choices and rights you have. It applies to the whole site, including reader accounts, comments and article submissions.

Double Crochet is run by DoubleCrochet io ("we", "us", "our"). For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are the controller of the personal information described here, except where this policy says a partner acts as an independent controller.

The short version

• You can read everything on the site without an account.
• If you create an account, we store your name, email address, a securely hashed password and anything you choose to add, such as a photo, a short bio, saved patterns and articles you send us.
• When you comment, we store your name, email address and comment, plus a hashed version of your IP address and your browser type to fight spam. Your email address is never shown publicly.
• We show ads from Google AdSense and use affiliate links to stores such as Amazon and Etsy. These partners use cookies and similar technologies. Where the law requires it, we ask for your consent first, and you can change your choice at any time.
• We do not sell your personal information for money. Some advertising cookies may count as "selling" or "sharing" under certain US state laws; you can opt out as described below.
• You can see, correct, download or delete your information. Account holders can delete their account themselves under Account settings.

Information we collect

Information you give us

Reader account. When you sign up we collect your display name, email address and password. Your password is never stored in readable form: we keep only a salted hash created with PBKDF2. You can also add a profile photo and a short bio, both optional.

Saved items and activity. If you save patterns, stitches or guides, we store which items you saved and when. We also keep a list of the comments you post while signed in so that you can find them again on your account page.

Comments. When you comment, we collect the name and email address you enter and your comment. The name and comment are published; the email address is not. If you are signed in, the comment is also linked to your account.

Article submissions. If you write an article through your account, we store its title, summary, category, text, any image you upload and its description. When you send an article to our editors, a draft copy is created in our editorial system for review. Nothing you submit is published without an editor reviewing it first.

Messages. If you email us, we receive your email address, name and anything you include in your message.

Information collected automatically

Technical information. Like every website, our servers receive information that your browser sends with each request: your IP address, browser and device type, operating system, the page you asked for, the page you came from, and the date and time. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes this information to deliver pages quickly and to protect the site from attacks and abuse.

Spam and abuse protection. For comments we store a one-way hash of your IP address and your browser's user agent string so we can spot spam and repeated abuse. To protect sign-in and sign-up forms from automated attacks, we record the IP address of each attempt for up to 24 hours.

Cookies and browser storage. We use a small number of cookies and browser storage items to keep you signed in, remember your settings and make the calculators and course work. Our advertising and affiliate partners also use cookies. Our Cookie Policy lists them in detail.

Information from partners

Our affiliate partners send us reports about purchases made after someone followed one of our links, such as the products bought and the commission earned. These reports do not tell us who you are. Google sends us aggregated reports about ad performance that do not identify you.

How and why we use your information

We use personal information only for the purposes below. If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we also list the legal basis we rely on.

• To run your account and the features you ask for, such as saving items, commenting and sending articles. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you (our Terms of Use).
• To publish and moderate comments and submissions, including removing spam and content that breaks our Community Guidelines. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a safe, useful community.
• To keep the site and your account secure, for example limiting repeated sign-in attempts and investigating abuse. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in protecting the site and its readers.
• To show advertising that pays for the site, including personalized ads where you have agreed to them. Legal basis: your consent where the law requires it (for example in the EEA, UK and Switzerland); otherwise our legitimate interest in funding free content.
• To earn affiliate commissions when you buy through our links. Legal basis: your consent to affiliate cookies where the law requires it; otherwise our legitimate interest.
• To answer your messages and requests, including privacy requests. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in responding to you, or our legal obligations.
• To comply with the law, enforce our terms and defend legal claims. Legal basis: legal obligation and our legitimate interests.

We do not use your information for automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

Advertising

We use Google AdSense to show ads on the site. Google and its partners are third-party vendors that use cookies and similar technologies to serve and measure ads.

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
• You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings. You can also opt out of some other vendors' use of cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info/choices or, in Europe, at www.youronlinechoices.eu.
• Google explains how it uses information from sites that show its ads in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services, and describes its advertising cookies in its advertising policy.

When personalized ads are off, Google may still show non-personalized ads, which are based on general context such as the page you are reading and your approximate location rather than your browsing history. Google may still use cookies for frequency capping, fraud prevention and aggregated reporting.

Some ads may be served by other ad networks working through Google's platform. Google lists the ad technology providers it works with in the EEA and UK, and you can review and control them through our consent message.

Visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland. Before any advertising cookies are set or personal data is used for ads, we show you a consent message from a Google-certified consent management platform that follows the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework. You can accept, reject or choose by purpose and by vendor, and change your mind at any time using the "Privacy and cookie settings" link in the site footer.

Visitors in US states with privacy laws. You can opt out of the use of your information for targeted advertising (which some states call "sale" or "sharing") using the "Privacy and cookie settings" link in the site footer. We also honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal: if your browser sends it, we treat it as a request to opt out for that browser.

Affiliate links

Some links on the site are affiliate links, including links to Amazon and Etsy. If you follow one and buy something, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Our Affiliate Disclosure explains this in full.

When you click an affiliate link, you leave our site, and the store or its affiliate network (for example Amazon, or the network that runs Etsy's affiliate program) may place or read cookies on your browser to know that you came from us. These partners, including Amazon and other advertisers, may serve content and ads, collect information directly from you and place or recognize cookies on your browser. Their use of your information is governed by their own privacy notices, for example the Amazon Privacy Notice and Etsy's Privacy Policy. We never receive your payment details or your name from these stores.

Who we share information with

We share personal information only as described here.

• Service providers who host and run the site for us. Cloudflare, Inc. hosts the site, its database and file storage and provides security and delivery. Service providers may only use the information to provide their services to us.
• Advertising partners. Google and the ad technology providers you allow through our consent message receive information such as your IP address, device information, cookie identifiers and the pages you visit, as described in the Advertising section above. Google acts as an independent controller for some of this processing.
• Affiliate partners. Stores and affiliate networks receive information when you click an affiliate link, as described above.
• The public. Your display name, profile photo, bio, comments and any article we publish with your byline are visible to everyone.
• Legal and safety. We may disclose information if we believe in good faith that the law requires it, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our readers, ourselves or others.
• Business transfers. If the site is sold or merged, personal information may pass to the new owner, who must continue to protect it in line with this policy.

We do not sell personal information for money, and we do not share it with data brokers.

International transfers

Our service providers and partners, including Cloudflare and Google, may process information in the United States and other countries whose data protection laws may differ from those where you live. When we transfer personal information from the EEA, UK or Switzerland, we rely on an adequacy decision (such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions, where the recipient is certified) or on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK equivalent. You can ask us for more information about these safeguards.

How long we keep information

• Account information: for as long as your account is open. When you delete your account, we delete your profile, photo, password hash, sessions, saved items and the private list of your comments straight away.
• Article submissions: unsent drafts and their images are deleted with your account. Articles you have already sent to our editors stay in our editorial system, and published articles stay on the site under the terms you agreed to when you submitted them. Ask us if you want a submitted article removed.
• Comments: published comments stay on the site until they are removed, including after you delete your account. You can ask us to remove or anonymize your comments.
• Sign-in sessions: up to 30 days, or until you sign out.
• Sign-in and sign-up attempt records: up to 24 hours.
• Messages: for as long as we need them to deal with your message and any follow-up.
• Technical and security logs held by our hosting provider: for the short periods set by Cloudflare's own retention policies.

We may keep information for longer where the law requires it or to deal with a legal claim.

Your rights and choices

Everyone. You can update your name, bio, photo and password, sign out of other devices and delete your account under Account settings. You can email us at privacy@doublecrochet.io to ask for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it.

EEA, UK and Switzerland. You have the right to access your personal information, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to our use of it, to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting earlier processing. You can object at any time to processing based on our legitimate interests. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority, such as the authority in your EU country, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) or the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). We would appreciate the chance to deal with your concern first.

California and other US states with privacy laws. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use and disclose it, to access and receive a copy of it, to correct it, to delete it, and to opt out of its "sale", "sharing" or use for targeted advertising. We will not treat you differently for using these rights.

In the past 12 months we have collected these categories of personal information: identifiers (such as name, email address, IP address and cookie identifiers); internet and network activity (such as pages viewed and interactions with ads); approximate location derived from IP address; and content you choose to post or submit. We collect it from you, your device and our partners, for the purposes described in this policy, and disclose it to the categories of recipients described above. Advertising and affiliate cookies may involve "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. We do not collect sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you.

How to make a request. Email privacy@doublecrochet.io with the subject line "Privacy request" and tell us what you would like us to do. To protect your information, we may ask you to confirm that you control the email address linked to it before we act. You can use an authorized agent; we may ask for proof that they are allowed to act for you. We will respond within the time the law allows, normally within one month in the EEA and UK and within 45 days in the United States. If we decline your request, you may appeal by replying to our decision with the subject line "Privacy appeal", and we will respond to your appeal within the time the law requires.

Children

The site is a general-audience publication for adults and teenagers who crochet. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account, comment or submit an article. If you believe a child has given us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Some of our patterns are for toys. Making a toy for a child is fine, but the person making it is responsible for its safety; see our Disclaimer.

Security

We protect your information with measures that fit the risks, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), salted and hashed passwords, hashed session tokens, cookies that page scripts cannot read, and limits on repeated sign-in attempts. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we learn of a breach that affects you, we will notify you where the law requires it.

Links to other sites

The site links to other websites, including stores, video sites and pattern designers. We are not responsible for their privacy practices, so please read their privacy notices.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example when we add a feature or a new partner. We will change the "Last updated" date at the top and, if the changes are significant, tell account holders by a notice on the site.

Contact us

If you have a question about this policy or how we handle your information, contact us at privacy@doublecrochet.io or write to DoubleCrochet io, BPM 374074, Zum Bürgerwehr 28, 54516 Wittlich, Germany. You can also use our contact page.