Your privacy

We keep your letter, the paper and handwriting you chose, and your first name or initials, age and country if you decide to add them.

If you enter a date of birth, it stays on your own device. It is only used to work out your age, and that is all we receive. The site is for adults aged 18 and over.

Letters that are approved can be read by anyone, so it's best to leave out anything that could identify you or someone else.

Every letter is looked over before it appears, by one of our moderators or by an automated filter that helps them. The filter only sees the letter and the name you sign it with, not your age or country.

To prevent misuse, we also keep a scrambled note of the internet address used whenever a letter is sent or changed, a letter is reported, a message is sent through the contact form, or a private link is asked for by email. It can't be turned back into your real address, and it is deleted after 30 days.

For the same reason, a quick check that you are a person runs when you send any of these.

Your unfinished letter, the letters you've opened and a couple of small preferences are remembered in your own browser, so the site works smoothly for you. They are never sent to us, and you can clear them whenever you like.

To show the helplines nearest to you first, the Support page makes a guess at your country from your visit or from your browser's language setting. The guess is only used to draw that page. It is never saved, and you can choose a different country at any time.

When you send a letter you'll be given a private link. Use it at any time to see how your letter is doing, change it or delete it for good. Keep it somewhere safe, as we don't know who you are and can't look it up for you.

For anything else, write to us through the contact form and we'll be glad to help. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights over your information, including the right to contact your local data protection authority.

Like most websites, we use a few trusted services to keep things running: hosting, secure storage for the letters, protection against automated programs and, when we use one, an automated filter. If you ask for your private link by email, we use your address once to send it and don't store it ourselves. The email service that delivers the message keeps its own delivery record for a short time.

These services only handle information to do their job for us. If you'd like to know which ones we use, just ask through the contact form.

Your letter stays on the wall until you delete it. Letters we decline are deleted 30 days after that decision. Letters still waiting to be read are kept until they have been read. Messages sent through the contact form, and any email address left for a reply, are deleted within 90 days of being answered.

Dear Jane Doe is an independent, volunteer-run project. We don't publish our names, but you can always reach us through the contact form.