Last updated 11 October 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 runs no analytics product. There is no Google Analytics, no Cloudflare Web Analytics and no third-party measurement script on any page. The only record of your visit is the ordinary server request log our host keeps, which we do not join to anything about you.
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 Experience notebook
The Experience notebook is a free writing tool. It sends no entries to our server, has no ad or analytics scripts, and works without a connection after loading. A device copy is written only when you enable saving and press Save. This browser holds one copy; use JSON or text exports to keep more records. Loading an export is local and does not upload it.
Entries may be visible to other people using the same browser. Clearing browser storage can remove a saved copy. You can remove the device copy from the notebook. Original prediction timestamps use your device clock and are not independent verification. The notebook is separate from GROUNDED account backup.
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. The app pages are served with a second, stricter security policy that allows scripts only from this site. A browser applies every policy it is sent and obeys the strictest, so an ad script is refused there rather than merely left out by us.
One limit, said plainly, because it is easy to assume otherwise. The essays and the app are one website on one domain. That is what lets a single sign-in work across both. A browser treats a whole domain as one unit for stored data and for sessions. So the advertising script on an essay page is not held apart by your browser from what this domain has saved on your device, or from a request made with your signed-in session, the way it would be if the app lived on its own separate domain. What we can tell you is what we do: no journal text is sent to any advertiser, and no advertising or analytics script is loaded on the app pages themselves. If you would rather keep the two fully apart, read the essays in one browser, or a private window, and use the app in another.
Your journal is stored on your device first
The app keeps your journal on this device first. Submitted experiment entries and saved protocols can back up to your account when you are signed in and the connection succeeds. Check Account & backup for the status and to review available records before restoring them. Unsubmitted form text may not be backed up. Practice Studio notes save only when you choose Save and stay on this device; export them separately before clearing browser storage or changing devices.
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.
One exception, and it is the only one. When you press Check on a success criterion and the local checker finds a problem with the sentence, that one sentence can be sent to an external text-processing service to suggest a rewrite. Three things go with it and nothing else: the sentence you typed, the length of the experiment in days, and the list of problems the local checker found. Your name, your email, your other entries and the rest of your journal are never sent. The checker works without it — the advice you see first is computed on your own device — and nothing is sent unless you press that button.
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. Three other items are kept in the same place, on the public pages, and none of
them is sent to us: imr-1089 holds whatever you typed into the 1089 protocol
form, so the page can give it back to you; imr-listen-v1 holds which track
you were on and how far through it you were; and
imr.experienceNotebook.v1 holds your notebook entries. These stay in your
browser. Clearing site data deletes them, and because they live in your browser, anyone
who uses your browser profile can read them.
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.
11 October 2026
- Said plainly that the site runs no analytics product. An earlier version of this page said Cloudflare Web Analytics was in use. It was not, and no measurement script was ever served. Nothing was collected that this page did not already disclose; the sentence was simply wrong.
- Named the three items the public pages keep in your browser's local storage, and said what each one holds. This describes behaviour that already existed and was under-described.
- Corrected the description of the app's security policy. Two policies are sent with the app pages; the broader one does name advertising origins, and the stricter one, which the browser also applies, allows scripts only from this site. The protection is unchanged. The earlier wording was inaccurate.
- Added the disclosure that the Check button in the app sends the sentence you wrote to an external text-processing service for a suggested rewrite.
- Added the disclosure that the journal and the session cookie are scoped to the whole domain, so anything else served from it could read them.
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.