Privacy policy

What we store

• The links, questions and puzzles you submit (including a puzzle's picture), the article text we fetch, and the explanations and solutions written for them. Explanations can be opened by anyone who has their link.
• A random visitor id in a cookie (simplify_vid, kept for a year), so your recent articles list is yours. It contains nothing about you.
• A salted hash of your IP address, used to limit how many new explanations one visitor can start per day and to keep feedback honest. We don't store the address itself.
• Feedback you give with the buttons on an explanation, and any note you type with it.
• If you sign in with Google: your name, email address and profile picture, and a session cookie. We send one welcome email when you first sign in, and no other email.
• Your theme and layout choices, kept only in your browser.

How long we keep it

Stored items are deleted automatically 30 days after anyone last opened them. Explanations listed on our topic pages are public and kept while they're listed. Our hosting provider also keeps short-lived server logs, which include IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting.

Who processes it

• Anthropic runs the AI model. It receives the article text, your question or puzzle, and searches the web for questions. See Anthropic's privacy policy.
• Google Cloud hosts the site and its database, in the United States.
• Google provides sign-in, when you choose to use it.
• Resend delivers the welcome email. It receives your name and email address for that. See Resend's privacy policy.

We don't sell your data, and we don't use it to train AI models.

Advertising

Simplify shows ads from Google AdSense to cover its running costs. Google and its partners use cookies to show ads based on your visits to this and other sites, and to measure them. You can turn off personalized ads in Google's ad settings, or opt out of many third-party vendors at aboutads.info. Learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are asked for consent before any ad cookies are set, and can change their choice at any time from the privacy settings link on the page.

Children

Simplify is a general-audience site and isn't directed at children under 13. The “kid” reading level is a style of explanation, and children should use the site with a parent or teacher.

Your choices

You can clear the visitor cookie at any time in your browser. To have something you submitted deleted sooner, or for any other privacy question, write to our contact address.