Privacy
A journal only works if you write like nobody is reading.
Which puts the burden on me to be straight with you about where your writing actually goes, and to look after it once it gets there. Here is how that works, in plain language.
Where your journal lives
On a server I run
Looking Back runs on an account. You sign in, and your entries are stored in a database on Supabase so your laptop and your phone show the same journal. Every row is fenced to your user id, so no other account can reach your writing through the app.
In your browser as well
The app keeps a working copy in the browser so it stays quick and keeps going when the connection drops. Photos sit in the browser's own database on the device you added them from. On a shared computer that copy stays behind after you sign out, until the site data is cleared.
In a file, whenever you want one
Export gives you a single archive: your writing as data, the same journal again as plain readable text, and every photo as an ordinary JPEG. It opens anywhere. Your journal should outlive this app.
How it is looked after. Your entries travel over an encrypted connection and are stored encrypted on Supabase's managed database. Access is fenced to your account in the database itself, so no other account can reach your writing through the app, and a lost or stolen laptop is a sign-in away from being locked out rather than an open journal. What Looking Back does not do is encrypt entries in your browser before they are sent, which is the step that would put them beyond the reach of whoever administers the server. Today that is me alone, and I don't read them. I would like to add it, and I am not going to promise a date I cannot keep.
Who else touches it
Three companies handle your data in running Looking Back. Here is what each one actually handles:
Netlify
Hosts the site and serves every page. It sees the usual web request logs, including your IP address.
Supabase
Runs the managed Postgres database your entries are stored in, and handles signing in. Your email address and your writing both live there, encrypted at rest.
Anthropic
Answers when Looking Back reads your journal back to you. The section below covers exactly what gets sent.
There is no analytics in Looking Back. No tracking pixels, no product telemetry, no advertising, and nothing that follows you once you leave.
What the AI sees
Looking Back reads your entries back to you, which means the relevant text has to reach the model that does the reading.
Where the text goes
The reading runs on Looking Back's own API key, so there is nothing for you to set up. When you ask for a reading, Looking Back sends the entries needed for that reading through its server to Anthropic and returns the answer to you. The server does not save the request or response to a database, and the app has no screen or feature for me to inspect them.
How it is used
Your journal is read for one reason: to hand the patterns back to you. It is never used for advertising, never fed into a recommendation system, and never used to train a model. Anthropic does not train on API traffic.
Getting it back out, or getting rid of it
Export is in the menu under Export & backup, and it doesn't ask for anything in return.
Delete my account is in Settings. It removes every entry, review, goal and setting on your account, every photo you uploaded, and the account itself. There is no undo and no grace period, so export first if you want to keep anything. If the button ever fails, mail me and I'll do it by hand.
What this is, and what it isn't
Looking Back is a journal. It is not a health service, it is not a therapist, and nothing it says is professional advice. The AI reads what you wrote and tells you what it noticed. That is the whole of it.
Nobody is watching. I do not read your entries, and there is no monitoring or alerting of any kind. If you write something serious here, no one is notified. That is deliberate, because a journal you suspect is being read is not a journal. It does mean this is the wrong place to reach for help.
If you need help now, talk to a person rather than a page. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Anywhere else, findahelpline.com lists the number for your country. In an emergency, call your local emergency services.
This is a free thing made by one person for a small number of people. It comes with no guarantee that it works, that it stays available, or that your writing survives a mistake on my side. Take an archive from the Backup tab now and again. It opens without this app, and it is the copy that does not depend on me.
Questions about your data, including deleting all of it, go to mathiastpoulsen@gmail.com.
Last updated 11 September 2026