Privacy

Updated 2 October 2026.

The short version

No ads, no trackers, no analytics, no accounts. I don’t sell or share anything about you. A few rooms have to remember a little to work, and this page says exactly what, and where.

Walking around

The house is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, it sees your IP address so it can deliver the page and keep the site safe. I don’t keep visitor logs, and no page carries an analytics or tracking script. The lettering comes from Google Fonts, so your browser fetches those files from Google.

Light and dark

The house turns light and dark with the sun where you are. To know when, your browser asks the house once a visit for the rough place your connection already shows Cloudflare: a town at most, rounded to about ten kilometres. Your browser uses it to work out sunrise and sunset and forgets it when you close the tab. The house doesn’t keep it. If it can’t tell, it goes by your time zone.

What stays in your own browser

Light or dark, if you chose one, and how light the house was a moment ago, so the next page opens the same. In the Mirror, the Frequency Room and No Wrong Place, small notes so each one picks up where you left it, like how many free readings you’ve pulled, and your email if you typed it into the Mirror. All of it lives on your device, and clearing this site’s data in your browser erases it.

The Mirror

When you ask for a reading, the cards you drew and anything you wrote about your situation go to my reading service, which asks an AI model to write the reading. The reading itself isn’t kept. To count free readings, the service keeps a tally against your email if you gave one, or your IP address if you didn’t. Paid spreads are bought on Ko-fi, and your email is how an order is matched to you. That’s all the email is used for.

No Wrong Place

The game gives your browser a random ID in a cookie, so it knows you’re the same player next time. It isn’t your name and it isn’t an account. What you say to its characters goes to an AI model so they can answer, and the game keeps count of your talking time. A score goes on the board under whatever name you choose. Messages on the walls are built from the game’s own word list, so no free text is ever stored. Passes are paid through Stripe, and I never see your card.

The hidden rooms

Somewhere in this house there are rooms you have to find. In the ones where visitors leave something for each other, your browser gets a random ID cookie that only counts one a day, and nothing else. If your browser refuses cookies, those rooms count a scrambled, salted version of your address instead, which changes every day and cannot be turned back into it. What you leave there is chosen from a fixed set of words and stones, so nothing you type is ever shown or kept.

The weather in your head

One of the hidden rooms is a joke weather station for your moods. It only knows what you choose to show it. If you paste parts of your public profiles, add screenshots, or answer its questions, those go to Anthropic’s Claude, an AI model, so it can write your forecast, and the house keeps none of it. For a day it keeps the random ID your browser gives it and a scrambled, daily-changing version of your address, so it can hold to one forecast a day, and it counts how many it made. Anthropic deletes what its service receives within 30 days, unless it has to keep something longer to enforce its usage policy or obey the law (its policy). Your forecast and flow chart are drawn on your own screen, and if you download them, they’re yours.

Letters and shares

The letterbox opens your own email app, or Gmail or Outlook in your browser if you pick one, with your letter already in it, and letters to letters@thegreystrand.com come to me. The house itself sends nothing and keeps nothing. I keep them so I can write back. If you share your work in The Calling, the name, words and link you send are posted after I read them, because that’s what you sent them for. Ask and I’ll take them down.

Elsewhere

Subscribing happens on Substack, and tips go through Ko-fi. Book links go straight to Amazon with no tracking tag. Each of those sites has its own privacy rules.

Children

This house isn’t meant for children under 13, and I don’t knowingly keep anything from them. If you think I have, write and I’ll delete it.

Your say

Wherever you live, you can ask what I have about you, ask me to correct it, or ask me to delete it. Write to letters@thegreystrand.com and I’ll answer within 30 days, usually much sooner.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with it.