HoneyPot FAQ: Data, Discretion and What Cannot Be Proven

It gets the message itself, because a server has to read your words to write a reply. Alongside that it receives the ordinary technical details every website receives: an address that identifies your internet connection, the browser and device type, and the time of the request. This is standard for any hosted service, from a news site to a bank. The part that varies between companies is not what arrives but what is kept afterwards.

Some personalisation is unavoidable in a companion app, because remembering what you said last week is the feature people are paying for. That memory is a profile in the ordinary sense of the word. What you can influence is its size: switch off optional personalisation and marketing features, avoid feeding in details you would not want stored, and keep the account separate from your main email address.

The link between your browser and the site is encrypted, which is what the padlock in the address bar indicates. It means nobody sharing your network, such as a household router or a public hotspot, can read your messages as they travel. It does not mean the operator cannot read them at the other end. Those two ideas get confused constantly, and the difference is the whole point of this page.

Open a private or incognito window before you visit. Such a window keeps history, logins and cached files only until you close it, then discards them. Nothing is saved for the next person who sits down. If you have already visited normally, go into your browser settings, delete the site from your history, and clear its stored site data. Both steps are entirely on your side and involve the company not at all.

Email is the likeliest leak, not the chat itself. A receipt or a marketing message landing in a shared inbox says more than any browser history would. Register with an address only you read, and switch off optional email in the account settings during your first session. If browser notifications are offered, decline them, since they appear on screen whoever is holding the device.

It removes it from what you can see. Whether a copy remains on the operator's side afterwards is not something an outside reader can determine, so we will not claim either way. Treat in-app deletion as tidying your own view, and treat the browser cleanup described above as the step that actually protects you locally. If you want the whole account gone, send a deletion request through the contact page instead.

Because we do not know, and inventing a number would be worse than admitting it. Retention periods, storage locations, which staff can look at what, and whether anything is shared with other companies are all internal matters. An outsider can read a stated policy and note whether it is specific or vague, but cannot confirm that practice matches the text. Any page giving you confident figures is guessing at best.

Only partly, and only if you can see the document rather than a logo. Independent audits check that a company follows the processes it has written down; they do not promise that those processes are the ones you would have chosen. We make no claim here about whether this service holds any such certification, because we have no way to check one. The absence of proof is not evidence of misbehaviour, and it is not evidence of good behaviour either.

Reverse the question. Instead of asking how much a company can be trusted, decide what you would be relaxed about it holding, and keep your messages inside that boundary. Then handle the part you fully control: a separate email address, a private browser window, optional features switched off, and a cleanup afterwards. That approach survives a change of provider, a change of policy, and a change of mind.