Last updated 3 August 2026
Privacy
This is written to be read. A privacy policy that requires a lawyer to understand is a way of disclosing something without telling you, and that would be a strange thing to do on a site about not fooling yourself.
Two parts of this site behave very differently, so they are described separately: the
essays you are reading now, and the app at
/app/ where people keep a thirty-day journal.
The essays
Advertising
These pages carry advertising from Google AdSense. Google is a third-party vendor, and it uses cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
Specifically, and in the terms Google requires be disclosed:
Google uses cookies to serve ads
Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.
You can turn personalised advertising off
Opt out at Google Ads Settings. You will still see ads; they simply will not be based on your browsing.
You can opt out of other vendors too
Third-party vendors also serve ads on partner sites. Opt out of many at once at aboutads.info or Your Online Choices in the EU/UK.
We do not receive your browsing history from Google. We see aggregate earnings and page performance, nothing that identifies a reader.
Measurement
The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and does not track you across other sites. It records that a page was requested, roughly from where, and how quickly it loaded.
The email list
If you enter your address in the signup box, it goes to MailerLite, who send the letters on our behalf. We use it to send you those letters and nothing else. It is never sold, rented or passed on. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing deletes you from the list rather than hiding you in it.
The app
This part matters more, because the content is a journal.
There is no advertising anywhere in the app, and there will not be. No ad network can reach those pages — the security policy served with them names no advertising origin, so an ad script is refused by your browser rather than merely left out by us.
Your journal is stored on your device first
Everything you write is saved locally as you write it. If you are signed in, a copy is backed up to your account so a lost phone is not a lost month.
Nobody reads it
Journal content is not analysed, not used to train anything, not shared, and not sold. It is not sent to any advertiser or analytics provider.
There are no passwords
Sign-in is a one-time link sent to your email. Only a hashed form of the link and session token is stored, so a database breach cannot be replayed to sign in as you.
Usage measurement records steps, never text
We record which step of the process was reached — the page opened, the pre-registration locked, a day logged — plus a screen-size category, and when a form refuses to continue, which field blocked. Never what was typed in it. There is no third-party analytics script on those pages.
One exception, named rather than glossed: Cloudflare adds its cookieless analytics beacon to pages it serves, including the app's. It reads no page content and reports only that a URL was requested — which the company hosting the site necessarily knows already.
Taking your data, or deleting it
Export is free, complete, unthrottled and available at any moment from inside the app, including the parts we deliberately exclude from your results. It is plain JSON you can read in a text editor without our software. Charging for your own journal, or making it hard to leave, would be a way of holding it hostage.
To delete your account and everything in it, email atad87@gmail.com from the address you signed up with. Deletion removes the experiment, the daily log and the account row; it is a real delete, not a flag.
Cookies, plainly
Advertising cookies — essays only
Set by Google and its partners. Opt out with the links above.
A session cookie — app only
Set when you sign in, so the app knows it is you. HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite. Not used for tracking and not readable by any script.
No cookies for measurement
Our own funnel measurement uses a random identifier in your browser's local storage, not a cookie. Clearing site data removes it and it is never joined to your account.
Your rights
If you are in the UK, EU, California or anywhere with comparable law, you can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask for it corrected, or ask for it deleted. In the app the first of those is a button you can press yourself. For the rest, email atad87@gmail.com.
This site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who sees it, the date at the top changes and the change is described here rather than quietly absorbed.
Contact
Andrey Tadevosyan — atad87@gmail.com
Nothing on this site is medical, psychological, financial or legal advice. What the evidence does and does not support is set out on the sources page.