Privacy Policy
Effective date: October 12, 2026
WritingHabit is run by WritingHabit LLC (“WritingHabit”, “we”, “us”). This policy explains what we collect when you use writinghabit.app, studio.writinghabit.app and our browser extension and plugins, why we collect it, who else handles it, and the choices you have.
If your school gave you your account, read Schools and students below. Your school decides how your account is used, and it has extra protections.
The short version
- Your writing is yours. We store it so you can write; we don't read it, sell it, or use it to train AI.
- We never sell personal information.
- School accounts are never measured by analytics, never shown ads or upgrade offers, never sent marketing email, and never visible outside the school.
- You can download your writing and delete your account at any time.
What we collect
- Account details: your name, username and email address, and anything you add to your profile, such as a photo or bio.
- Your writing: projects, chapters, notes, plans, comments and feedback you write in WritingHabit.
- Writing activity: word counts, writing sessions, goals, streaks, sprints and challenges, which power your stats and the leaderboards.
- Payment records: if you subscribe, your plan and Stripe's reference numbers for your payments. Card details stay with Stripe.
- Messages to us: feature requests, bug reports and support emails.
- Technical information: your browser and device type, your IP address, and error reports when something goes wrong. Our hosting provider records requests in security logs, kept for 30 days.
- Analytics: how the site is used, if you are not in a school account. See “Cookies, analytics and advertising”.
How we use it
- To run WritingHabit: save your writing, sync it between devices, and let people you invite work with you.
- To show your stats, goals, sprints and leaderboard places.
- To take payment, if you subscribe.
- To answer you, and to send account email, such as sign-in links.
- To send newsletters and feature news, if you have them switched on. You can switch them off in Settings or from any email.
- To keep WritingHabit secure, find and fix problems, and stop abuse.
- To understand how WritingHabit is used and make it better (not for school accounts).
We don't read your writing. The exceptions are when you ask us to help with something in it, when we must investigate abuse or a security problem, or when the law requires it.
WritingHabit has no AI features today. If we add any, they will be off until you switch them on, your writing will never be used to train AI, and they will never be available to school accounts.
Who can see your information
- Your projects are visible only to you and the people you invite, until you choose to share one by link or list it publicly.
- Your name, username and profile are visible to other writers, along with your word counts on leaderboards, sprints and challenges you take part in.
- Comments and feedback are visible to the people who can see the project they are on.
Services that help us run WritingHabit
We don't sell personal information, and we share it only with the companies that run parts of WritingHabit for us. Each one gets only what its job needs, and may use it only to do that job for us.
| Service | What it does for us | Used for school accounts? |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud and Firebase (United States) | Hosting, our database, sign-in, file storage and the code that runs on our servers. Your writing is stored here. | Yes |
| DigitalOcean (United States) | The live-editing server that lets several people work on one document at once. It holds open documents in memory only and keeps no copy when they close. | Yes |
| Google Drive | Backups to your own Google Drive, only if you connect it. | Only if a student connects it |
| Stripe | Payments. Stripe holds your card details; we never see them. | No |
| Brevo | Sending email, and our newsletter if you subscribe. | No |
| PostHog, and Meta through PostHog | Analytics and ad measurement, as described under “Cookies, analytics and advertising”. | No |
| Discord | Our community server, and alerts to our team when something breaks. | No (error alerts leave out students’ names) |
| Datamuse | The synonym finder. The word you look up is sent to Datamuse, not your writing. | No |
We will also disclose information if the law requires it, for example in response to a valid court order, and we will tell you (or your school) first unless the law forbids it. If WritingHabit is ever sold or merged, your information would go to the new owner only on the promises in this policy, and a school's data only on the terms of that school's agreement.
Cookies, analytics and advertising
Analytics. We use PostHog, through our own address s.writinghabit.app, to understand how WritingHabit is used. If you allow analytics, a cookie holds an anonymous ID so that your visits to writinghabit.app and studio.writinghabit.app count as one person. If you don't, we still count page visits, but nothing is stored on your device and your visits can't be linked together.
Ad measurement. We advertise on Meta (Facebook and Instagram). If you arrive from one of our ads and allow ad measurement, we store the ad's click ID in a cookie (_fbc, 90 days). When you create an account, our analytics service tells Meta that a sign-up happened, with that click ID, your IP address, your browser type and an account ID, so we can see which ads work. We don't load Meta's tracking script, and we never share what you write.
Your choices. In Europe and the UK, these stay off until you allow them. Elsewhere, they are on unless you turn them off with the button below, and we honour your browser's Global Privacy Control signal as a request not to share your information with Meta. You can change your choice at any time.
What stays on your device. WritingHabit also keeps things in your browser that it needs to work: your sign-in, a copy of your writing so nothing is lost offline, and settings you choose, such as font and text size. These aren't used to track you.
Schools. Students in a school's WritingHabit account are never measured by our analytics and never shared with advertisers.
How long we keep it, and deleting it
We keep your account and writing while your account is open. You can download your writing at any time, and delete your account from Settings. Deleting your account removes your writing, your profile, your comments and your leaderboard history. Your entry in a group sprint stays for the other writers, as “Former member”.
Deleted information is gone from our database at once and from our backups within 7 days. Security logs are kept for 30 days. We keep payment records as long as tax law requires.
Keeping it safe
Everything you send us travels encrypted (HTTPS), and is encrypted where it is stored. Access rules on our database decide who can read each document, and are tested before every release. Only WritingHabit's administrators can reach other people's data, and every read of it is recorded in audit logs. No system is perfectly secure; if your information is ever exposed, we will tell you, and any school affected, promptly.
Schools and students
A school or district can set up WritingHabit for its students and teachers under a written agreement with us. This section applies to those accounts. Where the school's signed agreement says more than this policy, the agreement wins.
The school is in charge
Student information belongs to the school. We use it only to provide WritingHabit to the school, under the school's direction. Under the U.S. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), we act as a “school official” with a legitimate educational interest, and we follow the student privacy laws of the school's state.
What we collect from students, and why
- Name and username: so teachers and classmates know whose work is whose.
- School email address: to sign in, and for the school to invite the student.
- Writing, comments and feedback: the schoolwork itself.
- Word counts and writing sessions: for goals and the school's own leaderboards.
- Class membership and role (student or teacher): so each person sees the right classes.
We don't collect analytics, advertising identifiers, location or payment details from school accounts.
What we never do with student information
- Sell it, or share it with anyone except the services listed above as used for school accounts.
- Use it for advertising, or market anything to students, their families or school staff.
- Build a profile of a student for any purpose other than schoolwork.
- Send it to analytics, AI or other outside services.
- Show upgrade offers, or send newsletters or promotional email.
- Email a student's writing or personal details.
We may use totals that identify nobody, such as the number of words written across all of WritingHabit in a month, to run and improve the service. We never try to identify anyone from them, and never name a school in anything we publish without its written permission.
Who can see a student's work
Only people in the same school: teachers, and classmates where the school allows it. School accounts have no public profile and no direct messages, never appear on public leaderboards, and can't share work outside the school. The only people outside the school who can reach student information are WritingHabit's administrators, to keep the service running and to help the school; each time they open a school's data, it is logged.
Students 13 and older only
WritingHabit is for students aged 13 and older. A school agrees not to give accounts to younger students. If we learn that a student under 13 has an account, we will tell the school and delete the account.
Parents and students
Parents, and students who are 18 or older, can ask the school to see, correct or delete a student's information. If they ask us directly, we pass the request to the school and help it respond.
When the school's agreement ends
The school can download all of its students' writing and records at any time. When the agreement ends, the school has 21 days to do so; then we delete everything, finishing within 30 days of the end date, and it is gone from our backups within 7 days after that. We send the school a record of what was deleted and when. The school can ask us to delete sooner, or to return the data instead.
If something goes wrong
If student information is ever used or disclosed in a way the school did not authorize, we will tell the school within 3 business days of finding out: what happened, what information was involved, who received it, what we are doing about it, and how we will stop it happening again.
Questions from schools
Jed Grant is WritingHabit's student data custodian. Schools can reach him at jedgrant@writinghabit.app.
Children
WritingHabit is not for children under 13, including through a school account. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, contact us and we will delete it.
Your choices
- Download your writing from any project.
- Correct your details in Settings.
- Delete your account in Settings, or ask us to.
- Switch newsletters and feature emails off in Settings.
- Change your cookie choices with the Cookie settings button above.
- Ask us what we hold about you, wherever you live.
Changes to this policy
When we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If a change matters, we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect. We will tell schools in advance of any change to how student information is handled, and we will not reduce the protections for student information without the school's agreement.
Contact us
- By email: jedgrant@writinghabit.app
- Through the app: studio.writinghabit.app/requests