The First 30 Days

Privacy

The short version: everything you save while reading stays on your device, and the only thing that leaves is a count of pages opened. The long version is below, because a promise nobody can check is not worth much.

What stays on your device

Every line you bookmark, every if-then plan you set, every wave you ride out, the days you have read, whether you are stopping or cutting back, and whether the lamp is on night or day — all of it is written to one key in this browser's local storage, called first30days, and read back from there.

Clearing your browser data clears it too. That is the trade for keeping it on the device — nothing to lose to a breach, and nothing to recover if you wipe the browser.

What leaves the device

This site counts page views with Google Analytics 4. What that sends to Google is the address of the page you are on, the address you came from, your rough location (country or region, from your IP - the full address is not stored), and coarse device facts like screen size and browser. It is set up to collect the minimum that still counts a visit: Google Signals is off, ad personalisation is off, and no event is ever sent for anything you do on the page.

Cookies. Analytics sets two, _ga and _ga_<id>, which do nothing but tell one visit from another. The site itself sets none. In the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein analytics storage starts denied, so no cookie is set there at all and the visit is counted without one. That is also why you have not been shown a consent banner: a modal is the wrong thing to put in front of someone reading this at 2 a.m., so the site does without the storage instead of asking for it.

Switching it off. Any content blocker, tracking protection or Google's own opt-out add-on stops it, and nothing on this site breaks when it is blocked - the reading, the timer, the pocket and the printed card all work exactly the same.

What this site does not do

If you are worried about someone seeing this

Reading here leaves the ordinary traces any website leaves on a shared device: an entry in browser history, and the saved pocket itself. A private or incognito window leaves neither — the pocket will not save between visits in that mode, and the site says so rather than failing quietly. If a device is not safely yours, that is the safer way to read this.

How the series itself is written, and what it is and is not, is set out on the about page.