The short version
There are no accounts, so there is nothing to sign up for and nothing to sign in to. We don't ask for your name or anything that identifies your child. Two things can be saved in your own browser and neither one leaves it unless you send it: your answers to the questions on the home page, and a wish list if you make one. There are no cookies and no advertising. Two things are counted, and neither one identifies you: how many times each page is viewed, and which product links get followed. If you send us a product, or review one that is already here, you can leave an email address so we can tell you what happened to it. That address is the one personal detail this site ever asks for, it is optional, and it is deleted as soon as that one message has been sent.
What is stored in your browser
If you answer the questions on the home page, your answers are saved in your browser's local storage under the name wwfu.child-context.v1, so that coming back does not mean answering them again. That entry can hold:
- the diagnosis option you picked, if any
- an age band, never a date of birth
- what you said you were working on
- a sensory preference, if you gave one
- the browse address those answers produced, and whether you have hidden the reminder bar
If you add anything to a wish list, that list is saved under the name wwfu.wish-list.v1: the product codes you added, whatever note you typed against each one, the title you gave the list, and whether you turned on the line saying what each item helps with. There is no account behind it and no copy of it on our servers — which is also why it is only in this browser, and why clearing your site data deletes it.
A share link contains the whole list. When you ask for a link, the list is packed into the address itself rather than stored here, so the link is the only copy. Anyone who has it can open it, it is marked so search engines will not index it, and it can be forwarded. We cannot switch one off for you, because there is nothing at this end to switch off. Changing your list gives you a different link; one you already sent keeps opening the version you sent.
Both entries stay on your device. Neither is sent to our servers, neither is readable by anyone else, and we cannot see either one. You can clear it at any time: choose Start fresh on the home page, Delete this list on your list, or clear site data in your browser settings. The site works perfectly well without either. If your browser blocks storage entirely, nothing breaks except that a list cannot be kept, and the page says so rather than losing it quietly.
Cookies
This site sets none, and there is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to. Nothing stored on your device identifies you between visits except the two entries described above, both of which you put there.
Counting page views
While you are reading, your browser talks to whatworkedforus.com and to nothing else. Every page, font, script and measurement is served from this one domain and goes back to it, so no third party learns that you visited. The two forms are the exception, and the only one: a page where you are writing something loads the are-you-human check described below, which comes from Cloudflare. Nothing else on this site reaches outside it.
The counting is run by Vercel, who host this site, which means they process it for us. The script doing it is served from this domain and posts back to this domain, so your browser never contacts theirs, but the measurement ends up with them.
What it records is the page you looked at, the page you came from, and the browser and country the request came from. No cookie is set, nothing is written to your device, and none of it identifies you personally. It cannot recognize you on a later visit or follow you to another website.
Which links get followed
When you follow a product link to Amazon, we record that the link was followed. This is how the site learns which products are worth listing and which ways of browsing actually help, and it is the only measure of that we have.
Three things are stored, and the third is the one that matters:
- which product you clicked
- the filtered page you were looking at when you clicked, as an address like
/browse/autism/fine-motor. A click from a wish list records only that it came from one, never which list or what was on it - a one-way salted hash standing in for your connection, so nine clicks from one household read as one household rather than nine families
Your IP address is not stored, only that hash, built the same way as the one described below. It cannot be turned back into an address, and changing the salt makes every stored hash meaningless at once. No cookie is involved and nothing is written to your device, so this cannot follow you between visits.
The click is counted after you have already left. The link in the page points straight at Amazon and the browser follows it immediately, so nothing is routed through us on the way and nothing waits for us to finish counting.
Server logs
Like any website, the server that delivers these pages records ordinary request information for security and for keeping the site running: the page asked for, the time, and the browser's IP address. We don't use it to build any profile of you, and it is not combined with anything else.
If you send us a product
The form at add something that worked asks for no account and sets no cookie. It stores the link you pasted, reduced to Amazon's product code so the link itself is thrown away, along with the name you gave it, the skill it helped with, a rough age band, a diagnosis if you chose to give one, and what you wrote.
What you write will be public. If the product is listed, your words appear on its page as a parent's account of what happened, with no name on them. Not yours, and not your child's. Please don't put your child's name in it. We take names out when we find them, and it is safer if they were never typed.
The email address is optional and used once. It is there so we can tell you whether the product went up, or did not and why. It is never published, never shown to anyone else, and never used for anything else, and there is no mailing list to be added to. It is deleted from our database the moment that message is sent, so it exists only while your submission is waiting to be read. If we cannot send the message, the address stays until we can.
Your IP address is not stored. What is stored is a one-way salted hash of it. A counter uses that hash to see how many submissions have come from one connection in the last hour, and it is kept alongside the submission so that a hundred junk entries from one source can be recognized as one source. A hash cannot be turned back into an address, we hold nothing that would let us look one up, and changing the salt makes every stored hash meaningless at once. The counter's records are deleted after a week.
If you review a product
Every product page has a form asking whether it worked for your child. It asks for no account and sets no cookie. It stores your answer to that question, what you wrote, a rough age band, and a diagnosis if you chose to give one. It does not ask who you are, because there is nowhere to put it.
A review is public and carries no name. Once it is approved your words appear on that product's page with nothing attached to them: no name, no initials, no account. Please don't put your child's name in it. We take names out when we find them, and it is safer if they were never typed.
The optional address and the salted hash of your connection work exactly as they do for a product you send us, described just above, and are counted against the same hourly limit.
The are-you-human check
The two forms on this site, the one for sending us a product and the one for reviewing a product that is already here, are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile. It is there because the alternative is a queue filled by whatever found the form first, and a moderator reading spam instead of parents.
It sets no cookie. We verified that on the live form: the submission page stores nothing on your device at all. Loading it does fetch the check from Cloudflare, which is the one request this site makes to anybody else, and it happens only on those two pages. Nothing you typed is passed to them, and neither is your email address.
Cloudflare decides whether you look like a person from the request itself and from how the page behaves, and tells us yes or no. We never see more than that answer.
Following a link to Amazon
When you follow a product link, you leave this site and Amazon's own privacy policy takes over. We don't pass anything about you to Amazon beyond the ordinary fact that you followed a link. On our side the click is counted as described above, which counts clicks rather than people.
What is coming, and what will not change
Accounts are planned and do not exist yet. Reviews do exist, and work the way submissions do:
- Reviews are public and anonymous. Anything you write in one is visible to anyone on the internet, with no name attached to it. Not a display name, not a username, nothing. There is no account to carry one, and we would rather there never were.
- We will never ask for a child's name or birthday. Age is always a band. A review may optionally note a child's condition, because that is what makes the site useful, and that note is public too.
- Saved child profiles will be private rows tied to your account and readable by nobody else, labeled with a name you choose that should not be your child's.
- No photographs, of children or of products in use.
This page is updated before anything new opens, rather than afterwards.
Children
This site is for adults. We don't knowingly collect anything from children, and there is nothing here for a child to sign up to.
Questions
Write to hello@whatworkedforus.com about anything on this page, about something you sent us, or about a page you want taken down. The terms of use cover what may and may not be posted.