Privacy Policy

Daily Holmes is a daily deduction puzzle, free to play, with an optional paid membership, Inspector membership (called The Inspector's Desk until September 2026). The page you're reading explains what data we collect, why, and what you can do about it. Plain language, no legalese where I can help it. The data controller is Offbeat Tech, LLC, 1209 Mountain Road Pl NE, Ste N, Albuquerque, NM 87110, United States.

What we collect

You don't need an account to play the daily case. Played anonymously, most of what runs stays on your device: your game state, settings, and revealed hints sit in your browser's localStorage and never leave the device unless you specifically submit something to us.

If you create an account, we hold your email address and, where you signed in with Google, the fact that Google is your sign-in method and the basic profile Google returns. Passwords are stored only as a hash by our authentication provider; we never see them. Alongside your account we keep a profile record with your display name, your membership tier, your founding member number if you have one, and, for members, the customer and subscription references issued by our payment processor.

When you play with an account we store your results: the case, your deduction text, your pin notes, your score, the time you played, and, if you arrived on a tagged or referred link, which link brought you. This is what makes your record, your streak, and the archive history work across devices. Which link brought you is recorded on every submitted reading, with or without an account, and it is how we know which places send us players.

When you submit a case, a tip, or a public deduction, we receive the text you typed (and the pin notes you dropped on the photograph, if any). If you provide a handle or email along with a submission, we store those too. Email is never shown publicly; we use it only if we need to ask a clarifying question before publishing.

Our server keeps standard request logs (your IP address, user-agent, the path you hit) for a short rolling window to prevent abuse.

Payments

Memberships, whether a subscription or the one-time founding seat, are sold and billed through Stripe, on Stripe's own hosted checkout and billing pages. Your card number, expiry, and security code go to Stripe and never reach Daily Holmes servers. We never see them and cannot store them. What comes back to us is a customer reference, a subscription reference where one exists, the plan, the status, and any renewal date. Stripe processes your payment data as its own controller under its privacy policy, and it may use device and transaction signals for fraud prevention.

How we use what we collect

Deduction text and pin notes are sent for scoring to the API of one of our two AI providers, OpenAI or Anthropic (the maker of Claude), whichever runs scoring at the time. If you dictate a reading with the voice tool, the audio is sent to OpenAI's API once, for transcription only: we do not store the recording anywhere, and only the resulting text comes back to your reading box. If you are a member and ask for Holmes's note on a reading, that reading, the case's answer, the case photograph and a short summary of your recent readings are sent to the same providers to write it; the note and any questions you ask about it are kept with your account until you delete it, and you can still read them if your membership ends. Holmes also keeps a file on how you read: the habit he is watching, the exercise he set and the notes, all of it shown on your Desk, where you can start a fresh file at any time. If you pass a point to the Bureau under one of Holmes's answers, the Bureau reads your question, his answer and your reading to reply. Per their API terms, neither OpenAI nor Anthropic uses data submitted through the API to train their models. Account and profile data run your login, your record, and your membership. Payment references run billing and let us confirm whether an account is entitled to membership benefits. Your email is used for account mail (receipts, renewal notices, password resets, service notices), and, only if you asked for it, for the Bureau's newsletter, which you can leave from the link at the foot of every one of those emails. Subscribing to the daily case by email takes a confirmation: we send one message with a link, and nothing more reaches that address unless you confirm. Aggregate page views and feature usage tell us what's working and what isn't.

Third parties we send your data to

Supabase hosts our database and runs authentication. OpenAI and Anthropic provide the AI models behind scoring, the verdicts and Holmes. Vercel hosts the site. PostHog provides our analytics and, after you consent, session replay. Stripe takes payments and runs the billing portal. Brevo sends our email and holds our contact lists. Google provides Analytics and, if we run ads, AdSense. Discord hosts our community server; if you join, your Discord account is subject to Discord's own terms and privacy policy, and we see only what a server operator sees. YouTube (Google) serves the videos on the Training page: their thumbnails load from YouTube's image servers, which are not told the page, and an embedded video loads from YouTube's privacy-enhanced domain only after you press play. Each of these has its own privacy policy.

Cookies, analytics, and ads

We use essential storage to keep you signed in, to hold your game progress, and to remember your consent choice. That is the part the site cannot work without, and it runs regardless of the banner.

Everything else waits for you. Until you accept analytics, PostHog counts your visit without storing anything in your browser: its servers derive a hash from your connection that changes every day, so one day cannot be tied to the next, and nothing is recorded. Accept analytics and PostHog keeps an anonymous id in your browser and records how the page was used, with everything you type, every reading and every address masked; Google Analytics loads then too. Advertising, if we run it, comes from Google AdSense and loads only after you accept ads. Reject, or simply ignore the banner, and no analytics id is stored and no ad script is fetched. You can change your mind at any time through Cookie settings in the footer.

Paying members (Inspectors) are not shown advertising and no advertising script is loaded for them, whatever the consent banner says.

We also keep our own anonymous counts of how the game is used: how many people opened a case, started an answer, or saw a result on a given day. Each row names a day, an event name, a case kind (classic, an interaction mode, or an article slug), a broad source, a device class (mobile or desktop), a cohort (new, returning, or member), sometimes which case, and a count, with no cookies and no identifiers, no IP address, and no free text, so it cannot be tied to you. These counts run whether or not you accept analytics, because nothing in them identifies anyone. They exist so we can see where a case loses players without watching any one player.

How long we keep things

Account and play records are kept while your account exists, and are removed when you delete it. Request logs roll off within days. Newsletter contacts are removed when you unsubscribe.

Billing records are the exception. Invoices, receipts, and the tax records behind them must be retained for a number of years under tax and accounting law, so deleting your account does not erase them. What remains is the financial record of a transaction, held for that legal purpose alone, not a playable account or a marketing contact.

Where your data goes

Our providers are largely United States based, so data about you is processed there and in other countries where they operate. We rely on the safeguards those providers offer for international transfers.

Your rights (GDPR and CCPA)

You can ask us what we have about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, request deletion, object to a use, or opt out of analytics and ads at any time. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising beyond the ad consent you give in the banner. Email bureau@dailyholmes.com with the subject "Privacy request" and tell us which one. We aim to respond within seven days. You may also complain to your local data protection authority.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself, from your profile page. We cancel any active subscription first, so nothing renews after you're gone, then remove your account, your profile, your saved cases, and every marketing record we hold about you, including your newsletter subscription and our record of the emails we sent you. Access ends immediately, including for any part of a paid term still running, so cancel and play out the term instead if that matters to you. A founding seat has no subscription to cancel; deleting the account ends its access the same way, and the 14-day refund window in the Terms is the road back if you just bought it.

Two things outlive the deletion, and we would rather say so than let you find out later. Your past readings and scores stay in the game with no person attached to them, so a reading you left in the Common Room remains there without your name, and the site's statistics stay correct. Billing records kept for tax purposes also survive, as described above.

Children

Daily Holmes isn't directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect data from minors, and accounts and subscriptions are not for them. If you believe a child has created an account or submitted something, email us and we'll remove it.

Changes

If we change this policy in a material way, we'll show a banner on the site for at least two weeks before it takes effect, and account holders get an email. Continued use after that counts as acceptance. If a change adds a new use of your data that needs consent, we will ask for it rather than assume it.

Contact

Offbeat Tech, LLC, 1209 Mountain Road Pl NE, Ste N, Albuquerque, NM 87110, United States.

bureau@dailyholmes.com

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