Effective July 17, 2026. Material changes are announced in the changelog, like everything else.
1. Overview
Califa collects as little data as possible. This is partly a philosophy and partly an architecture: storage is centralized in one place, and that place is busy.
2. What we collect
- Things you send us. Messages typed into the chat widget are answered first by an automated support model (Claude, by Anthropic). Anything it hands off goes to a human, who reads it. Form submissions go straight to the same human.
- Operational logs. The servers keep standard request logs for a short period. We look at them when something breaks and at no other time.
- Preferences. The site remembers your theme and whether you dismissed the announcement bar. It stores these in your own browser, where they remain your property and your problem.
3. What we don't collect
We do not run ads, embed tracking pixels, fingerprint your device, or follow you around the internet. Keeping track of one person is already a full-time commitment; it is, in fact, the product.
We have never sold user data. We have also never been asked, which we choose not to take personally.
4. Retention
Data you send us lives in two systems: a small database, which is periodically cleared, and Joel's memory, which is not configurable. Retention there is indexed by how interesting your problem was. Ticket numbers are dropped almost immediately. A good org-design question from 2019 is still cached.
5. Third parties
A small number of infrastructure vendors host this site and relay chat messages. They see what they need to route bytes, and nothing else. None of them are advertising companies. We keep the list short because every additional vendor is a meeting.
6. Your rights
- Access. You may ask what we know about you. You will get an honest answer, occasionally more honest than requested.
- Correction. Point out the error. If you're right, the record is corrected and the fact that you were right is retained indefinitely.
- Deletion. We will delete your data from our systems promptly. Deletion from human memory is supported on a best-effort basis; historically it happens on its own schedule.
- Portability. Your data is small enough to export by hand. We will read it to you if asked.
7. Security
In the event of a breach, affected users will be notified promptly and in plain language. We consider the risk modest: the attack surface is small, and the most valuable thing stored here is opinions, which are already given away on the blog.
8. Children
The Service is not directed at children under 13. Feedback from users under 13, where it has occurred, has been noted as unusually actionable.
9. Contact
Open the chat in the bottom-right corner of any page and ask for Joel. A human reads it. That is the entire privacy program, and we would put it up against most of the industry's.