Privacy policy.

Who is responsible

The controller for personal data collected through this website is the person named in the Impressum. Questions about your data can be sent to [email protected].

What is collected

The newsletter

If you subscribe, your email address is stored so the essays can be sent to you. Nothing else is requested, and the address is not used for any other purpose, sold, or shared for marketing. Every email contains an unsubscribe link; unsubscribing removes you from the list.

Server logs

The hosting provider records standard technical data when a page is requested — IP address, browser type, time of request, and the page requested. This is ordinary operation of a web server and is used for security and diagnostics, not to build a profile of you.

Cookies, analytics, and third-party requests

This site sets no tracking cookies and runs no advertising scripts. There is nothing to consent to, which is why you are not being asked to dismiss a banner.

Fonts are served from this domain rather than from Google Fonts, so loading a page here does not transmit your IP address to Google or to any other third party.

Shared meditation pages

Pages under /m/ play a single meditation from the Consciously Sober app — either from a link someone sent you, or from a QR code printed in the SOBER journal. Opening one records that the page was opened: which meditation it was, and whether it was reached from a shared link or from the printed book. That is all. No account, no cookie, and nothing that identifies you — the record is not attached to a person, and a shared link never reveals who sent it.

The Consciously Sober app

The app is free and asks for no account. It does not ask for your name, your email address, or your phone number, and it contains no advertising.

Who you are to us

When the app is first opened it creates an anonymous identity — a random identifier with nothing attached to it. It exists so your own data stays yours across launches. It is not linked to your name, your email address, or your device's advertising identifier, and it is not shared with anyone.

What the app stores

• Your sober date and any resets, if you choose to use the tracker. The day count is worked out from the date each time it is shown.
• Your time zone, so that day count is right where you are.
• Which meditations you have saved, and how far through each one you are.

Downloaded meditations are kept on your device only and are never uploaded.

Information about alcohol use is sensitive. The tracker is entirely optional — the app works without ever setting a date — and what is stored is a date, not a description of your life. There is no field anywhere in the app for writing about yourself, and nothing you could write is collected.

Usage data, which you can turn off

Unless you turn it off, the app records what it is being used for: that the app was opened, that a meditation was started, finished, downloaded or shared, and that a sober date was set or reset. These records hold counts, dates and which meditation — never anything you have written, and never your location or contacts.

You can switch this off in Settings, under Usage data. Switching it off stops the app sending anything, rather than sending it and asking for it to be ignored.

Getting your data, and deleting it

Settings has Download your data, which gives you everything the app holds about you as a file, and Delete account and data, which removes it. Deleting really deletes: your identity, your dates, your saved meditations, your progress and your usage records are erased, and the downloads on your device are removed. It cannot be undone, and there is no hidden copy kept behind a flag.

Service providers

Running a website and an app means other companies process data on our behalf. Currently:

• MailerLite — stores newsletter subscribers and sends the emails.
• Cloudflare — serves the pages and keeps server logs.
• Supabase — stores the Consciously Sober app's data and serves its audio. The database is hosted in Ireland, inside the EEA.

Some of these providers process data outside Switzerland. Where that happens, transfers are made on the basis of standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision.

How long data is kept

Newsletter subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe or ask for deletion. Server logs are kept for a short period by the hosting provider and then discarded.

App data is kept for as long as the app is installed and you want it there. Deleting your account in Settings removes it at once. Records of a shared page being opened are not attached to anyone and are kept as counts.

Your rights

Under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection — and, if you are in the EU or EEA, the GDPR — you may request access to the data held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, object to its processing, and request a copy in a portable format. Write to [email protected] and it will be handled.

For the app you do not have to write to anyone: Settings has Download your data and Delete account and data, and both work immediately.

You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. In Switzerland this is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). In the EU, it is the authority in your country of residence.

Changes

This policy will change as the site does. The date at the top always reflects the current version.