Privacy

Overlap is built to hold as little about you as possible. This page explains what we keep, why, and how to remove it.

Last updated October 13, 2026

The short version

You can read and search without an account. Searches aren't saved.
To share an experience you need an account, but we don't store your email address.
Your story is only published after a person reviews it, and you can withdraw it or delete your account at any time.
We don't sell data, show ads, or use analytics or tracking cookies.

The conditions you choose are used to find matching stories and aren't stored.
If you select “Share your experience” from a search, the conditions you were looking at are saved in your own browser for up to an hour so the form can fill them in, then deleted.
Your light or dark theme choice is saved in your own browser.

When you sign in, we use your email address once to send you a sign-in link through our email provider. We then keep only a one-way fingerprint of it, which lets us recognize you next time but can't be turned back into your address. This also means we can't email you later.
We set one cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. It's needed for the site to work and isn't used for tracking.

We store what you submit: the story, the conditions and perspective you chose, the name you chose (if any), content notes, and when you agreed to publication.
Stories describe health experiences, which are sensitive. We publish a story only after a moderator approves it, under the name you chose or as “Anonymous”. Moderators can add content notes or decline a story, but don't change your words.
Before review, stories are checked automatically for things like contact details or signs that someone may be in danger. This check may use an AI service (Anthropic). It only adds notes for the moderator; it never publishes or rejects anything by itself.
Published stories are visible to anyone who visits the site. Please leave out anything that could identify you or someone else.

On your account page you can withdraw any story, which deletes it, or delete your whole account and everything in it.
Deletion is immediate on the site. Copies may remain in our database provider's short-term backups until those expire.

To prevent abuse, we count recent sign-in attempts, submissions, and reports. These counts use scrambled values rather than your IP address or email, and are deleted after two days.
Our hosting provider may keep standard server logs, which can include IP addresses, for a limited time.

Each processes only what it needs for that job.

You must be 18 or older to create an account and share a story.

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page.