Privacy Notice

Short version: the rest of the story can be viewed without using the AI chat. If you use the chat, your question and up to eight recent conversation turns are sent through this website’s server to OpenAI to create and moderate a reply. Please do not enter secrets, health records, financial details, private messages, or information about another person.

Who operates this experience

The website and the Interactive Witness are operated by Nima Golshani. Privacy questions and requests may be sent to Favoranddecree@proton.me.

Information processed

• Chat content: the question you type and up to eight recent user-and-Witness turns, so a reply can use the immediate context.
• Session and security data: a randomly generated session value, a one-way hash derived from that session and network address, request time, usage count, and ordinary server-request information. These are used for rate limiting, security, and the free-answer allowance.
• Device preferences: the browser may store your AI-consent choice in witness-ai-consent-v1, an adult/blocked result (not your birth date) in witness-age-gate-v1, and your fire, rain, or stillness choice in witness-ambience. If optional measurement tools are activated, your analytics and advertising choice may be stored in favor-marketing-consent-v1.
• Reports you choose to email: the “Report this response” link opens your email application with a draft containing part of the reply and a reference identifier. Nothing is emailed until you choose to send it. A sent report is then handled by your email provider and Proton Mail.

The chat does not require a name, account, email address, precise location, payment information, microphone, or camera. No advertising or behavioral-analytics tag is active in the current release.

Cookies and local storage

When the chat is used, the server may set a strictly necessary, secure, HTTP-only, same-site cookie named witness_sid. It contains a random identifier, not your name, and expires after 30 days. The local-storage choices listed above remain until you clear this site’s browser data. They are not advertising identifiers. The birth date entered at the adult gate is compared locally and is neither saved nor transmitted.

Optional advertising and analytics

The site contains a consent-controlled measurement foundation for Google/YouTube, Meta/Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Microsoft/Bing, and Amazon Attribution. No provider tag or optional cookie is currently active. If one is activated later, it must remain off until you make a choice, and the footer’s “Privacy & cookie choices” control will let you reject or withdraw that choice.

Permitted campaign events are limited to a page view, reaching the gallery, Witness section, or book preview, and opening the Amazon purchase link. Campaign source labels may also be used. The system is designed not to send Witness questions or replies, birth dates, age-gate results, ambience choices, email content, or inferred religious or relationship interests to advertising providers.

Service providers and international processing

OpenAI (United States) receives chat content to run moderation and generate the answer. API requests are sent with Responses application-state storage disabled (store: false). OpenAI states that API data is not used to train its models by default. That setting does not mean immediate deletion: unless an account has separately qualified for Zero Data Retention or Modified Abuse Monitoring, OpenAI may keep abuse-monitoring logs containing prompts and responses for up to 30 days. See OpenAI’s API data controls and business-data commitments.

OpenAI Sites hosts the website and therefore processes ordinary network and delivery information needed to serve it. If you send a report, Proton Mail processes that email. External links—such as Amazon, museum records, Wikimedia Commons, and crisis-resource sites—receive data only if you choose to open them and are governed by their own notices.

What the site operator retains

The operator does not intentionally save chat text in an application database. With the current deployment, answer counters and hashed rate-limit keys are held transiently by the server runtime; they do not contain the message text. The browser cookie can remain for 30 days. Reports you voluntarily send by email may be retained only as long as reasonably needed to investigate and respond, or to meet legal obligations.

Hosting and security providers may retain their own access or abuse-prevention logs under their terms. OpenAI’s potential 30-day abuse-log period is described above.

Purpose and legal grounds

Chat content is processed only after you affirm that you are an adult and choose to continue, so the requested AI feature can operate. Security and rate-limit data are processed to protect the service and prevent misuse. Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, these purposes correspond to consent/your request for the chat and the operator’s legitimate interest in service security. You can withdraw from future chat processing at any time by not using the chat and clearing this site’s browser data.

If optional analytics or advertising tools are activated, they will be used only with the choice recorded through the site’s privacy controls where consent is required. Their purpose is to measure campaign performance and visits to the book’s Amazon page. Rejecting optional tools does not restrict the story, the book preview, or the Witness.

Adults only

This experience is intended for people aged 18 and older. It discusses marriage, intimacy, abuse, and difficult relationship situations and is not designed for children. Do not submit information about a child.

Your choices and rights

• Do not use the chat; every non-chat part of the site remains available.
• Review or change optional analytics and advertising choices. Optional tools remain off unless they are configured and you allow them.
• Clear this site’s cookies and local storage in your browser to remove the device identifier and saved preferences.
• Depending on where you live, you may request access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, or objection, and may complain to your local data-protection authority.

Because no account or verified identity is collected, the operator may be unable to locate or link transient, pseudonymous data to you. We will explain what can and cannot reasonably be identified when responding to a request. This website does not sell personal information. Optional advertising technology, if activated, may be treated as “sharing” or cross-context behavioral advertising under some laws; it will be governed by the choices described above.

AI and professional advice

The Interactive Witness is an AI and can make mistakes. It is not therapy, counselling, medical, legal, financial, or crisis advice. See the Safety & Crisis Protocol.