What we ask, keep, and show

Privacy

Lightf1ow is built to need almost nothing from you. The short version: no account, no tracking, and no email unless you ask for one. The longer version is three plain layers.

What we ask for

• Nothing that identifies you. No account, no login, no email address. The form never asks who you are.
• The one exception is the weekly letter, and only if you ask for it. If you sign up we store the address you typed and nothing else — no name, no IP, no profile. We email you once to confirm; until you click that link you are not on the list. Every issue carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing deletes nothing else because there is nothing else. We do not measure whether you open the letter: no tracking pixels, no click redirects, and no parameters added to the links. The letter is sent from our own server — no third-party mailing service ever sees your address.
• Only the report itself — what you witnessed, and optionally where and roughly when.

What we store

• Only what you write — and before it is stored, private information about other people (names of private individuals, phone numbers, addresses, emails) is stripped out. The account stays; the identifying detail is removed.
• An anonymous, rotated token derived from a salted hash — never your raw IP address. It exists only so the form can't be flooded, and it is rotated so it can't be used to follow you.
• No cookies for tracking, no analytics that profile you, no third-party trackers.
• We count page views ourselves, on our own server: which kind of page was opened, the domain that linked here, whether the screen was a phone or a desktop, and — on a report page — how long it was read. That is the whole list. We never store your IP address (your country is derived from it and the address is discarded in the same breath), we set no cookie, we keep no identifier, and nothing is sent to anyone else. Because we store no identifier, we cannot tell whether two page views are the same person — so we don't claim to count "unique visitors". We count views, and we say views.
• If you ask to be told when reporting opens, we store your email address and nothing else — no name, no IP, no device information, and it is never shared. You get one message when the channel opens, and then the address is deleted.

What we show

• Only what a human editor has released — nothing you submit appears publicly on its own.
• Locations are generalized before they are shown ("in my bedroom" becomes no pin; a town becomes an approximate area). You can never be found on the map through your own report.
• You can ask us to remove your report at any time, and we will.

We record that something was reported, and how far it traces — never who you are.