tellrest
We count reads, not readers. No accounts to read. No emails. No names we ask for. No cookies. No tracking you across visits. We can't tell who you are, and we've built it so we can't. (Leaving a public study note is the one opt-in: a notebook name + a passkey you pick, and we keep only a one-way hash of the passkey — see §5.)
The data controller is Not Rest Inc., a Delaware, USA corporation and operator of tell.rest, at 3200 Park Center Drive, 14th Floor, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, USA. Contact: [email protected].
Anonymous usage events. So we can tell which stories are read and which are ignored, we log coarse, anonymous events — a page opened, a chapter viewed, an export, a donate-link click. Each event carries:
sid) that lives only for that visit — forgotten when you close the tab; it links your taps within one visit and is never tied to you or reused across visits;In one line: we count which site sent a visit (domain only) and which stories are read — never who you are.
Do Not Track is honored. If your browser sends a DNT signal, we record no events at all.
Retention. Raw event logs are deleted after 90 days (an automated nightly sweep). Only anonymous aggregate counts — totals with no identifiers of any kind — are kept longer, to see trends over time.
No email accounts or logins (the signup endpoint is disabled; a study notebook is just a public name you pick + a passkey we keep only as a one-way hash — not your identity, see §5) · no email addresses or real names · no cookies · no device or browser fingerprinting · no advertising identifiers · no cross-visit profile · no reading history tied to a person · no precise location · no donor identity (a donation reaches us as an anonymous Stripe event — see §6).
To remember your place in a story and which "tellings" you've chosen, the site uses your browser's local storage. This stays on your device and is never sent to us — clearing your browser data clears it.
You can leave a short study note on a chapter or a "tell the rest" telling, so the next reader sees it — notes are a public, shared layer, not a private message. Notes are written under a notebook: a name you pick plus a passkey you choose, so your notes can follow you from one device to another. Because notes are public, they work differently from everything above:
In short: a study note is the one place you choose to publish something. Keep it about the story, and keep yourself out of it.
The donation loop adds a few public surfaces. Like a study note (§5), each is something you choose to publish — so keep yourself, and other real people, out of it (a memorial dedication is the one deliberate exception, below).
How a donation connects to a wish. If you "light" a specific wish, the checkout carries only that wish's anonymous id, so the story gets built — tying the payment to a topic, never to you. Stripe collects and holds your payment identity under its own policy; what reaches us is an anonymous donation event (an amount, a currency, and a Stripe event id), deduplicated by that event id and stored with no donor PII.
Producing a story uses a few specialist providers. Each receives only what it needs to do its job — your topic prompt and/or the generated text — never any identity, because we hold none.
The providers above may process requests outside your country (for example, in the US). Because the only data involved is an anonymous request plus a coarse country, the exposure is minimal. Where required, we rely on an appropriate transfer mechanism such as Standard Contractual Clauses.
tell.rest is for teens and adults and is not directed at children under 13. We collect almost no personal data — the only identifier we hold is the salted one-way passkey hash behind a study notebook (§5), used solely to let you reclaim your own notes; we don't knowingly collect anything else from anyone.
Because we hold no information that identifies you, there is normally nothing to access, correct, or delete on request — there's no "you" in our logs to find. Where law gives you rights (e.g. GDPR/CCPA), you may still contact us and we'll respond honestly about what little exists. For donation records, payment data is held by Stripe; exercise rights there, or contact us and we'll point the way.
We minimize risk by collecting almost nothing. The anonymous logs live on the operator's own server behind Cloudflare; there is no database of users to breach. No method of storage or transmission is ever perfectly secure, but holding almost nothing is the strongest protection we can offer.
We'll note material changes on this page with a new date. Questions or corrections: [email protected], or the contact form.
The contact form. If you write to us through it, your message and the reply address you type travel as a single email to the librarian's inbox (delivered at our CDN's edge — our story server never sees or stores them). We use the address only to reply; it joins no list and builds no profile.