Privacy & archive requests

Last updated: September 11, 2026

This is a read-only archive of the public What the Tech forum. It does not accept registrations, posts, private messages, or profile changes.

Information in the archive

The archive retains material that was intentionally public: display names, public posts and topic titles, timestamps, forum organization, aggregate poll results, and verified public attachments or downloads.

The migration excluded private messages, passwords and password hashes, session and authentication data, account email addresses, post and account IP addresses, moderation-only areas, signatures, and other non-public account fields. Public text and supported attachments were scanned for incidental email addresses, IP addresses, names, and similar personal details; findings were redacted, anonymized, excluded, or individually reviewed according to context. No process can guarantee that decades of user-written material is perfect, which is why the request process below remains available.

Requests, local storage, and search

The application does not include advertising or third-party analytics scripts. It stores one optional preference in your browser’s local storage when you choose light or dark mode. The archive does not set advertising or tracking cookies. The archive's AI client does not create an application cookie or persistent browser ID. Cloudflare may process request metadata and apply essential security controls when delivering the site.

Cloudflare may use strictly necessary security cookies, including cf_clearance, to remember successful verification and prevent repeated challenges. Our challenge-passage setting is seven days. We use these controls to protect the requested service, not for advertising or cross-site profiling. See Cloudflare's security-cookie documentation. This policy does not claim that the whole site is cookie-free.

Search terms are sent to a Cloudflare edge function and matched against a D1 full-text index. This application does not write search terms into the archive database. Cloudflare may retain operational or security logs according to the site’s Cloudflare account configuration and its own service terms.

Ask AI

New answer requests are verified by Cloudflare Turnstile. Your question and selected public posts are sent to OpenAI when an answer needs generating; a follow-up may also include your previous question and answer. Do not include personal or sensitive information in a question.

Cloudflare Turnstile may use browser storage for verification; its processing is separate from the temporary conversation state described here. Cloudflare processes network addresses and browser/device signals to distinguish people from bots and also to improve its bot-detection capabilities. Its published purpose is security, not identifying, profiling, or targeting people for advertising. See the Turnstile Privacy Addendum and Cloudflare's privacy policy. The archive uses verification and network limits to prevent abuse and protect service availability. Strictly necessary security storage does not require opt-in consent; other personal-data obligations still apply.

Questions and answers are cached for up to 355 days from generation. Reading an answer does not extend its lifetime. Model, prompt, or archive updates may invalidate cached answers sooner; daily cleanup removes expired records. The transcript stays only in page memory (RAM), not localStorage or sessionStorage. Reloading clears it; there is no saved conversation history or persistent browser quota. A follow-up in either order can use the previous exchange through a signed context receipt that expires after 24 hours. Answer and feedback requests omit browser credentials. An older AI identity cookie, if present, is expired when a request carrying it reaches the application; it is no longer used to restore history or identify a visitor.

The limits are 30 accepted requests per network address and 100 provider attempts across the site per day, resetting at midnight UTC. Accepted failures and shared cache hits count toward the network allowance; each generation or validation retry counts toward the provider allowance. Cache hits need no provider attempt. Short-term rate limiting also applies. Quota counters use pseudonymous, secret-keyed network-address hashes that change each UTC day and are retained for seven days; raw network addresses are not stored in the AI database. People sharing a network address share its allowance.

Feedback is kept as daily totals without personal identifiers for 90 days. Signed feedback receipts expire after 24 hours; duplicate-check records are removed by daily cleanup. OpenAI's data handling follows its service terms and provider account settings, separately from the archive's cache. See About Ask AI for limitations, provider data handling, daily allowances, feedback, and retention details.

External content

External images do not load automatically. Historical third-party links are either user-initiated links or visible text, based on an offline safety and availability review. Locally published attachments, downloads, and emoticons are restricted to manifest-verified files.

Request a correction, anonymization, or removal

If you are identifiable in archived content and want it corrected, anonymized, or removed, use the form below. Include the archived URL, the display name or material involved, your requested outcome, and enough information to establish your relationship to the content. Do not send passwords, identity documents, or other sensitive records.

Requests are reviewed case by case. Depending on context, the response may correct a factual error, anonymize a display name, redact part of a post, remove a post or file, or explain why the public historical record is being retained. Approved changes are applied to both static pages and the D1 search index so removed material does not remain searchable.

Submitted form fields are delivered by Cloudflare Email Service to the archive operator for review. They are not inserted into the public archive or its D1 search database. Email and Cloudflare operational retention follow the relevant service and account settings.

About this project

For the community history and the sources used to reconstruct it, see About What the Tech. Technical details of the privacy review and archive build are published in the linked migration toolkit.