Privacy

It is short because the site does very little. Every statement here describes what the software actually does. Last updated 10 September 2026.

Asking a question anonymously

The question box is anonymous. We don't ask for your name, your email address, or any other identifying detail, and there is no account to create.

When you submit a question we store: the text exactly as you typed it; whether you ticked the box giving us permission to publish it, and the version of the wording you were shown; your browser's user-agent string, truncated; a one-way fingerprint of your IP address; the place you said the question is about, if you chose one; and the date and time.

That place is about the question, not about you. Choosing Hyderabad says the question concerns Hyderabad. It says nothing about where you were sitting, and we never work your location out from your connection.

We do not store your IP address itself. We set no cookie, no device identifier and no session, so there is nothing that lets us recognise you on a later visit.

We cannot tell who sent which question, and neither can anyone who obtains a copy of the database.

The cost of that: we have no way to find your question again on your behalf. If you later want it deleted, we cannot identify which one is yours. There is no honest way around this — the design that protects you also removes our ability to act for you individually.

Your IP address

We use it for one purpose: stopping the same source flooding the form. The limit is three questions per hour and ten per day.

Your IP address is never written to the database. Before it reaches storage it goes through a keyed HMAC-SHA256 fingerprint, using a secret key held outside the database in the hosting platform's secret store. The stored value is a fixed-length string that cannot be turned back into an IP address without that key.

The address itself exists only in memory for the moment it takes to compute the fingerprint, and in whatever ordinary connection logs our hosting provider keeps.

Publishing questions

The consent box on the form says, in full:

“You can rewrite my question and quote it in Clueless posts and on the Clueless website.”

If you tick it, that is what you are agreeing to. We rewrite questions to remove identifying detail before publishing, and a question naming a private individual or a small business is not published at all.

If you leave it unticked we still read your question, but we don't publish it. Nothing is published automatically: every submission arrives in a draft state and a person decides.

Because submissions are anonymous, there is no way to withdraw that permission afterwards — we could not identify which question to withdraw it from. If you would rather keep the option open, leave the box unticked.

The email list

The email box is a separate thing from the question box. It means one thing: send me Clueless findings.

We store the address, the community you said you were interested in if you chose one, the fact that it came from this page, and a random unsubscribe token.

Your email address is not linked to any question. They are separate records with nothing joining them. If you both asked a question and joined the list, we cannot tell — and deliberately did not build the ability to tell. Linking them would break the anonymity promise above.

We do not sell, rent or share the list. Submitting the same address twice returns exactly the same response as the first time, so the form cannot be used to test whether an address is on the list.

Unsubscribing

Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link. Following it deletes your row outright — no suppression list, no “unsubscribed” flag, no copy. You can also write to us and ask.

The unsubscribe page looks identical whether or not the link was valid, so it cannot be used to probe for real addresses.

Cookies, analytics and other people's code

This site sets no cookies. That is why you were never asked to dismiss a cookie banner.

There are no analytics, no tracking pixels, no advertising tags, no embedded social widgets, and no fonts, scripts or stylesheets loaded from anyone else's servers. The only JavaScript is our own, served from this domain, and the site works completely with JavaScript turned off.

The Instagram link is a plain hyperlink. It tells Instagram nothing until you click it. There is no chat widget, no WhatsApp channel and no phone line — the form above and the address below are the only ways to reach us.

The parties that unavoidably handle your data:

• Railway runs the site and hosts the database. Both live in Railway's US West (San Francisco) region, so the data described here is stored in the United States. Railway's servers keep ordinary connection logs, which include IP addresses.
• Meta sees only your activity on Instagram itself, if you go there. Our account is public.

We do not use an email delivery service yet. This page will be updated before the first email is sent.

How long we keep things

Plainly: there is no automatic deletion schedule. Questions and email records are kept until we delete them, and no process removes them on a timer. If a retention period is decided it will be stated here.

What you can actually get done today:

• Your email address — use the unsubscribe link, or write to us. It is deleted.
• A question you submitted anonymously — we cannot identify it, so we cannot delete it individually.
• Something we published that is recognisably about you — write to us and we will take it down.

Children

This site is for people running or working in businesses and is not directed at children. If we can tell a submission came from a minor, our moderation rules say we do not publish it.