Your data stays yours.

The trackers on this site - lab results, medications, symptoms, and your settings - run entirely in your browser. Everything you enter is saved in your browser's own local storage, on your phone or computer. It is never sent to us, and we couldn't read it if we wanted to.

That has a practical consequence worth knowing: we can't back it up for you. If you clear your browser data or lose your device, the data goes with it - so use the export options (CSV, Excel, PDF) to keep your own copies. Exports are files created on your device; they don't pass through us either.

We don't use tracking cookies, advertising pixels, fingerprinting, or social media embeds. The site stores a small number of settings in your browser (things like your preferred units) so it remembers them next time - that data stays on your device and identifies nothing.

We use Plausible, a privacy-friendly analytics tool, to see which pages people find useful. It is cookieless and collects no personal data - just aggregate counts like total page views, with no way to identify you or follow you around. It does not track you across other websites, sets nothing on your device, and no data is ever sold or shared. It is the only third-party script on the site, and you can block it with any ad blocker without breaking anything.

Changed in August 2026: we now run our own copy of Plausible on our own server rather than using Plausible's hosted service. Nothing about what's collected has changed - it's the same cookieless, anonymous counting - but the numbers now stay on infrastructure we control instead of passing through another company.

The only time we receive any data from you is when you choose to submit something - a story, a reply, or a fundraiser listing. What we receive is exactly what you type: the text itself and, if you give one, a first name. We don't collect your email address, and we don't store your IP address with your submission.

Submissions are screened by an automated AI check (Anthropic's Claude, which processes the text you wrote to flag spam and safety issues) and then read by a person before anything is published. Stories and replies are published anonymously. Please don't include anything in a submission that could identify you or someone else - if you do, we'll remove it before publishing or won't publish at all.

Changed your mind about something you submitted, or want a published story taken down? Use the same "share your story" form and tell us it's a removal request - it reaches the same person who reviews every submission, and we'll take the story down. No questions, no fuss.

Like every website, this one is delivered by a hosting provider, and delivering a web page technically involves processing your IP address for the moment it takes to send you the page. Our host may keep standard, short-lived security logs (the kind that stop attacks), but we don't use them to identify or profile visitors, and we don't combine them with anything else - there's nothing to combine them with.

ThyroidTools is an independent, patient-led project based in the UK, so UK data protection law (UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018) applies. You have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, and to object to how it's used. In practice, unless you've submitted a story, the honest answer to "what do you hold about me?" is: nothing.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk (opens in a new tab).

If we ever change how the site handles data, this page changes first - and we'll say what changed rather than quietly rewording things. The principles at the top aren't changing: no accounts, no cookies, no personal tracking, your health data stays on your device.

Last updated: August 2026