What the intake form does with your words.

1. What the form collects

1. A first name or handle — what to call you. Not your legal name.
2. An email address — the only way I reach you.
3. A category from a fixed list (the kind of working, or the design tier).
4. A description, 20 to 1,200 characters, written by you.

The system adds the date received, a short random reference such as THW-7K4Q2M, a status I set, and this notice's version string. That is the whole record. The form has no field for a legal name, address, telephone number, date of birth, payment card, medical record, court document, file, photograph, or anyone else's identifying details. Do not put those in the description; if I take the case, that stage happens off this website.

2. What is never collected

The site sets no analytics, no advertising pixels, no third-party scripts, and no tracking cookies. Fonts are served from this domain. The intake route does not record your IP address, browser, or referring page in the database. A one-word color-mode cookie (thornwork-theme, set only if you use the light/dark toggle) is the only thing the public site keeps in your browser, and it holds nothing about you.

3. Who processes it

• Vercel hosts the site and runs the code that receives your request. Its systems see the request in transit and keep short operational logs (route and status code, one day) that do not contain what you wrote.
• Neon stores the record in a managed Postgres database in the United States (AWS us-east-1), encrypted at rest with AES-256, reached only over TLS.
• Amazon Web Services supplies the underlying infrastructure to both.
• Me. Dana Batista, the only person with a login to the desk. Thornwork Rituals is a trade name of DB Consulting (Dana Batista), Cameron, North Carolina; invoices and card charges carry the DB Consulting name.

No email provider, payment processor, CAPTCHA vendor, or analytics company receives anything from this form. Invoices are sent separately, by email, after I have read your request; at that point Stripe receives your email address and payment details under its own privacy policy (I never see your card number), and correspondence travels through my email provider like any email. If you dispute a charge with your bank, I may send Stripe the date and reference of your intake, the invoice, and the record that your written document was delivered. Never the contents of your request.

4. What "encrypted" means here, and what it does not

Your request travels over HTTPS and rests in a database that encrypts its storage. It is not end-to-end encrypted. I can read it — that is the point — and the hosting and database providers' systems handle it in plaintext while doing their work. I do not claim encrypted communication, encrypted case records, or anything the system does not do.

5. How long it is kept

Thornwork deletes declined, withdrawn, and incomplete intake records from its active database 30 days after the decision. A limited, provider-controlled recovery history may retain recoverable copies for up to six additional hours. No online system can promise absolute deletion from every backup, log, or lawful provider record.

If I accept a request, I may retain the information necessary to perform and document the work in separate records under my control. Those records are not stored in this website's intake database. Once I have moved what I need, the original request is deleted from the website's database within 30 days, unless I document a specific reason to hold it longer.

A request I have not decided within 30 days of receiving it is marked incomplete and deleted in the same pass — 30 days total, not 60. After any deletion, the database keeps a deletion ledger holding only the reference, the desk, the date received, the date deleted, and the reason — nothing you wrote, and nothing about you. Ledger rows are removed after 12 months. The desk's own security log (event type and time only, nothing about any client) is removed after 90 days.

6. Your choices

To withdraw a request, email intake@thornworkrituals.com with your reference; I mark it withdrawn and the 30-day deletion clock starts. To ask what the record holds, or to have it deleted sooner, use the same address. I answer status questions by email; there is no lookup on the site.

7. Changes

If this notice changes, the version string changes and the form will not accept a request agreed under an old version. The current version is privacy-2026-10-a.

privacy-2026-10-a (October 15, 2026): added the trade name invoices are issued under, and what I may send Stripe if you dispute a charge. privacy-2026-10-a (September 2026): first published version.