Privacy

What we store

Your email address, an optional display name, your timezone, and the writing log you enter — projects, drafts, word counts, session times, and notes. That's the product: we store it so we can chart it back to you. If you enter a contest, we also hold your entry text — winners' entries are kept and shown publicly; everyone else's are deleted when results publish. Pieces and notes shared in a writing group live only until their deletion date (see the terms; notes you leave keep their scheduled deletion date even if you leave the group first — shown without your name — while deleting your account removes them at once), with one exception: content flagged for moderation is copied into a moderation record so the report can be reviewed after the original is gone; the copied text is deleted once review completes. An email address typed into a buddy request is stored for up to 60 days — whether or not it matches an account — so the request can wait for its recipient, then it expires. We also show anonymous community totals — numbers like words logged across the whole site, computed over all writers together; they're only ever aggregates, never tied to a name, and any number covering fewer than ten writers isn't shown at all. Pledge seasons work the same way: joining one adds your writing to the season's communal counters (words written and words cut) as anonymous aggregates under the same ten-writer floor — never your name, never your standing against anyone else.

What we don't do

No analytics scripts, no ad tracking, no selling or sharing your data. The only cookie is the session cookie that keeps you signed in.

Who processes your data

The app and its database run on DigitalOcean in the United States. Resend delivers our email — account messages like password resets, and, only if you opted in, occasional product news. Sentry receives error reports when something breaks; those contain technical details, not your writing.

Marketing email is opt-in

You only get product news if you checked the box at registration or joined the list on our site. Every mailing includes an unsubscribe link, and deleting your account removes you too. Separately, if you're in a writing group we'll email you a reminder when a deadline is close and you haven't shared a piece that cycle — one per cycle at most; turn these off anytime in Settings. Email check-ins — a Monday recap of your week and an evening roll call on days you haven't logged — are off unless you turn them on in Settings, and every one carries a one-click off switch. A check-in may mention company — how many of your sharing buddies logged today, or how many writers were active site-wide last week — always as counts, never names, and only when the anonymous-stats floor is met.

The widget shows what you choose

The embeddable progress widget is off until you turn it on, and it only ever shows the fields you enable — hidden fields never leave the server. Revoking its key in Settings shuts it off.

Buddies and groups see what you choose

Sharing your numbers is off until you turn it on. When you do, the writers you've accepted as buddies see your current streak and today's word count, and any writing group you belong to lists your name in its roll call on days you wrote and counts your words into the group's cycle total. Those figures add up your writing across all your projects, not just work you share to a group — in a small group, a member could infer roughly how much you wrote. That's the whole audience — buddies and group mates, never the public. We don't store those shared figures anywhere; they're computed fresh from your own log, so flipping sharing off hides them immediately.

When a buddy finishes a draft or a project, you can send them a single cheer. We store who cheered whom and when — never any message text, because there is none. A cheer is shown to its recipient once, is never displayed as a running count, and is deleted when either account is.

Classrooms hold no student information

When a teacher runs a classroom assignment, each student gets a randomly generated handle and a passcode from us. That handle, the passcode, word-count totals, their timestamps, and the bookkeeping that keeps a sign-in working — a passcode version number and when each row was created — are everything we store about a student: no name, no email address, and no free text of any kind — students can only ever submit numbers. The teacher keeps the handle-to-student list in their own gradebook, so we never know who a student is. A student's browser gets the same session cookie the rest of the site uses, purely to keep them signed in. Everything in a classroom is permanently deleted 60 days after the assignment ends.

Your data is yours

Download your data anytime from Settings — your writing log as a spreadsheet-ready CSV, or everything on your account as JSON. You can also delete your account there — that permanently and immediately erases your account and everything you've logged.

Questions

Write to [email protected] about anything here, including your data.