A note on privacy.

Updated October 26, 2026

Everything you publish is public.

Commonplace stores your entry text, title, category, publication time, and an entry identifier. New entries publish immediately and appear publicly in the journal, individual entry pages, and public feed, and may be indexed by search engines. Pending, hidden and rejected entries are visible to authorized moderators and to someone holding the matching deletion receipt. Do not publish passwords, addresses, medical records, or other information you want kept private.

No posting account.

The journal does not ask you to register or provide an email address to post. It assigns an anonymous browser cookie to help limit repeated posting. That browser identifier is stored with entries but is not displayed publicly. Request quotas also use a secret-keyed daily digest of the network IP supplied by Cloudflare. This helps prevent cookie resets from bypassing limits. The application does not store the raw network IP in its database. Shared networks may share quota limits.

Drafts and deleting your writing.

Your draft and deletion receipts are saved in local storage on your device. A deletion receipt lets that browser remove the matching entry. The server stores a hash of the receipt, not the receipt itself. Clearing browser storage or changing devices can mean losing the ability to delete your entry yourself. Keep this in mind before posting.

Deleting an entry removes it from the live journal. Copies made by other people, feed readers, or search engines can remain outside our control.

Reports.

When you report an entry, the journal stores the entry identifier, reason, report time, and an anonymous reporter identifier. A daily secret-keyed network digest helps recognize duplicate reports; resetting cookies does not create another report for that entry on the same network that day. Reports are not publicly displayed. Reporting does not immediately remove content or guarantee a response time. Authorized owners review reports and moderation actions are recorded with their identity, reason and time. Audit records do not copy entry bodies.

Technical services.

The hosting platform and infrastructure providers may process connection information, such as IP addresses and request logs, to deliver and protect the service. The journal serves its fonts directly. Publishing and reporting use Cloudflare Turnstile, which processes browser and network signals for bot protection. Owner sign-in uses Cloudflare Access. Anonymous posting is not a guarantee that your activity cannot be traced.

Retention and limitations.

Entries remain until removed. Moderator hiding or rejection retains the submission privately for review; receipt-based author deletion removes the stored entry and its associated reports. Anonymous posting cookies last up to one year, while drafts and deletion receipts remain until you clear them. Rate-limit records expire within approximately 48 hours and are cleaned up as protected requests arrive. Reports and moderation audit records are retained for review; there is not yet an automated retention schedule for those records. We have not installed advertising trackers or audience analytics in this version.