Privacy Policy

txtnode is an independently operated website run by Abhay Vachhani, offering a notes and task workspace plus a set of free developer tools. It is not a registered company. For anything in this policy, the contact point is abhay@txtnode.com.

This policy covers the txtnode.com website and the backend services behind it.

Every part of txtnode works without an account. Signing in is optional and opens your dashboard. The only way to sign in is with a Google account. Google handles the sign-in and tells us who you are, so we never ask for, see, or store your Google password.

Notes and tasks are not linked to accounts. Signing in does not make them private, and it does not attach your name to anything you write in them.

Your account details are visible only to the people who run txtnode, through an admin page.

• 01Notes and tasks. Whatever you type into a note or task list is sent to our server and stored there, so it can sync across devices and load again when you revisit the URL. It is stored as plain text, associated only with the URL you chose.
• 02Account details. If you sign in with Google, we store your name, email address, whether Google has verified that address, and the link to your profile photo. Alongside them we keep an account ID issued by Firebase, your role on the site, the date you signed up, and when you last signed in. The profile details come from Google and are refreshed each time you sign in.
• 03Contact form submissions. If you use the contact form, we receive the name, email address, and message you enter, so we can reply.
• 04Analytics data. Google Analytics records pages viewed, approximate location derived from IP address, device and browser type, and how you arrived at the site.
• 05Server logs. Our web server records standard request information, including IP address, timestamp, and requested URL.
• 06Ad views and clicks. When an ad has been on your screen for a moment, or when you click one, we add one to a running total for that ad, the day, where on the site it appeared, and whether the device was a phone or a computer. The totals hold no IP address, account, or anything else that points back to you. See Advertising below.

Files in your account are private until you share them. Sharing is by invitation: you enter an email address, or you create a link that anyone holding it can use. Either way, the contents stay unreadable until the person signs in and accepts, so access always belongs to an account rather than to a URL. The invitation page itself names the item and who shared it to anyone holding the link, and a chat app or mail service the link passes through may fetch that page to build a preview of it, before anyone has signed in.

Private means private from other users, not from us. The people who run txtnode can open the files in an account to look into a report of spam, abuse, or anything illegal, and to answer a lawful request for it. We keep our own record of every time that happens, and we do not tell you when it does, because an account being looked into would otherwise know to clear itself out first. We do not read your files for any other reason, and nobody outside the people running txtnode is given access to them.

When you accept something shared with you, the owner sees the name and email address on your account, and when you accepted. When you share something, the people you share with see your name and email address. That is how each side knows who the other is, and it cannot be turned off.

We store the invitation itself: the address it was sent to, the access it grants, when it was sent, and when it was accepted. An invitation sent by email is stored with its link held as a one-way hash; a shareable link is stored as it is, because you have to be able to copy it again. We send an email to the address you invite, to you when someone uses one of your links, and to anyone whose role you change after they have accepted. Taking someone's access away sends nothing.

Removing someone, or revoking a link, takes effect immediately. Anything they already read or copied while they had access is beyond our reach, as it would be anywhere else.

This is the most important thing to understand about txtnode. A note saved at a given URL can be opened by anyone who visits or guesses that URL. There is no password, no owner, and no access control on them. Anyone who reaches the URL can also edit or erase what is there.

Do not put passwords, personal details, financial information, or anything confidential into a note or task list. Treat every note as if it were published on the open web, because effectively it is. We do exclude these pages from search engines, but that does not make them private.

Articles on the blog are written by us and are open to everyone. Reading one needs no account, and we ask you for nothing to read it. There is no comment section, so there is nothing on the blog for you to submit and nothing of yours for us to collect.

We keep a count of how many times each article has been opened. It is a single number per article, kept so we can see what is worth writing more of. It is not tied to you, your account, or your address, and it is never shown to anyone but us.

Beyond that, reading the blog is covered by the same analytics described above, on the same terms as any other page.

Every developer tool on the site runs entirely in your browser. Text, passwords, and files you put into them are never transmitted to our server and we never see them. This is not a promise about our handling of that data; it simply never reaches us.

We store these items in your browser ourselves:

• Theme. Whether you chose light or dark mode, in local storage. It contains no personal information.
• Sign-in session. If you sign in, Firebase keeps your session in browser storage so you stay signed in. Signing out removes it.
• Dashboard sidebar. A cookie remembering whether you collapsed the dashboard sidebar. It contains no personal information.
• Ad frequency. A counter in session storage of how many pages you have moved between and when a full-screen ad was last shown, so we can keep them rare. It never leaves your browser and is erased when you close the tab.

The remaining cookies on this site are set by third parties:

• Google Analytics sets cookies to distinguish visitors and sessions.
• Google Sign-In sets a cookie that remembers whether you dismissed its sign-in prompt, and uses Google’s own cookies on Google’s domains while you sign in.

You can block or delete cookies and site storage through your browser settings. Notes, tasks, and the tools keep working if you do, but your theme will be forgotten and you will not be able to stay signed in.

• Google Analytics — traffic measurement. You can opt out across every site that uses it with Google’s opt-out browser add-on.
• Google Sign-In and Firebase Authentication — confirming who you are when you sign in. Firebase is operated by Google and keeps its own record of your account.

These services are provided by Google and covered by the Google Privacy Policy.

Some pages show ads. Most promote txtnode itself, and some are from businesses that pay us for the space. Every ad is labelled “Sponsored”. They appear under the tools, at the end of blog articles, on the games page, in the site footer, in the dashboard sidebar, in the side margins of very wide screens, and now and then as a card between pages that you can close straight away. They never appear while you are playing a game or in chat. While you are writing a note or a task list, only the side margins can hold one, never anything over or inside what you write.

• We serve them ourselves. No ad network, tracking pixel, or advertiser’s code runs on this site, and no ad sets a cookie.
• Nothing is targeted at you. Ads are chosen by where they appear on the site and at random among those running, never by your account, your notes and files, or your browsing. Signed in or not, everyone is shown ads the same way.
• Counting without profiling. To stop one person being counted over and over, which would overcharge an advertiser, your IP address is held next to the ad you saw or clicked for at most an hour, then erased. Beyond that we keep only the totals described under What We Collect.
• Advertisers get totals only. We may tell an advertiser how many times their ad was seen and clicked. We never give them anything about you.
• Clicking leaves txtnode. A click passes through our server to be counted and then opens the advertiser’s site, which runs under its own privacy policy, not this one.

If we start using an outside ad network such as Google AdSense, it would set its own cookies and could personalise ads. We will update this policy, and ask for your consent where the law requires it, before that happens.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not buy data about you from anyone. We do not email you unless you contacted us first, and we run no mailing list. We do not use your account, notes, or files to decide which ads you see.

Signing in with Google shares only your basic profile with us. We cannot read your Gmail, Drive, contacts, calendar, or anything else in your Google account.

Notes and tasks are kept until they are overwritten or we remove them. We do not currently run an automatic deletion schedule for them.

Account details are kept for as long as your account exists. There is no delete button yet, so email us from the address you signed in with and we will delete your account, both from our database and from Firebase.

Contact form messages are kept while we deal with your enquiry and for a reasonable period afterwards. Retention of analytics data is governed by Google, under Google’s own policies and settings.

Ad totals are kept for as long as we need them to bill and report to advertisers. The IP address used to avoid counting the same person twice is erased within an hour.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of your personal information, and to object to it. This includes residents of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom under the GDPR, and residents of California under the CCPA.

Notes and tasks are not linked to anyone, so we usually cannot tell which of them are yours. In practice this means:

• To see, correct, or delete your account details, email us from the address you signed in with.
• To have a note or task list deleted, email us its URL and we will remove it.
• To have a contact form message deleted, email us from the address you used.
• For analytics data, use the Google Analytics opt-out add-on above, which applies across every site using the service.

Write to abhay@txtnode.com and we will respond within 30 days.

txtnode is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

The site is served over HTTPS and we apply standard security headers. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and as noted above, notes and tasks carry no access control at all. Please do not store anything sensitive in them.

We may update this policy as the site changes. The effective date at the top of this page will be updated when we do. Continuing to use txtnode after a change means you accept the revised policy.

Email abhay@txtnode.com or use the contact form.