Privacy

Outside Now is a small, free, one-person project. It has no advertising and nothing to sell. This page says exactly what it keeps, including what it measures.

What it keeps

You can read the whole thing without an account. If you never sign in and never save anything, nothing that says who you are is stored.

• If you sign in with Google: your name, your email address, and your profile picture, as Google supplies them. That is all that is asked for. Outside Now cannot read your Gmail, your contacts, your calendar, or anything else in your Google account.
• If you save a card: which card, and when you saved it. Your saved list is yours; nobody else can see it.
• If you sign up for the morning email: your email address and your five-digit zip code. You get one short welcome note from Michael, then the morning email. Every email has a link to turn it off.
• If you give your zip (when you sign up, from the email’s link, on your Saved page, or when you set your town while signed in): the five-digit zip, kept with your email or your account, so we know which towns want this next. Nothing more precise than that is asked for.
• If you type a zip we don’t cover yet into the town picker without signing in or leaving an email: only the five-digit zip and the time, with nothing that says who you are: no email, name, device, or address. It is counted so we know where people are waiting.
• If you sign up through a friend’s share link: that the signup came through a share, and a short code for whose link it was, so shares can be counted. The code is not their email address and cannot be used to reach them.
• How you first found the site, if you sign up: when you arrive from a link, your phone keeps the link’s campaign tag (for example “ig” for Instagram) and the name of the site that sent you, such as l.instagram.com, never the full address of the page. If you then sign up for the email, those go in with your address, so we can count which apps bring readers. If you never sign up, they stay on your phone and are never sent.
• If you rate the day or leave a note: the score and the note, tied to your account. Notes are not shown to other readers. The person who makes Outside Now reads them in a private inbox on this site.
• If you tap a number in the morning email: the number, the date of that email, and a note if you add one on the page it opens. It is filed under a one-way code made from the private link in your email, not under your address. While the page opens, that private link is held in a cookie for one hour so the page can send your number, and then it expires. The person who makes Outside Now reads the numbers and notes, and can tell which address a note came from so he can reply. A second tap the same day replaces your number.
• If you answer “Did you notice it?”: which card and which answer. This is how the feed learns whether the things it points at are actually findable.
• If you use the contact form: what you write, which kind of message you picked, and your email address only if you give one. It is kept in this site’s database, in the same private inbox as email, so it can be read and answered. A cookie that lasts an hour counts how many times you have sent, so a stuck button cannot send the same note over and over.
• If you email hello@outsidenow.site: your address, the name your email app sends with it, the subject and the text of your message. It is kept in this site’s database so it can be read and answered, and the person who makes Outside Now may also get a copy in his own email. Attachments and formatting are not kept. Messages, and notes left with a rating, are also read by an AI assistant (Claude, made by Anthropic) that helps draft replies. Nothing is sent to you unless a person has read it and pressed send.

What it does not do

• No advertising, and no advertising networks.
• No advertising pixels, and nothing that follows you to other sites.
• Nothing is sold, rented, or shared with anyone for marketing.
• No location tracking. The app never asks your phone where it is; the town or place you pick is remembered on that phone.
• No email unless you ask for it. There is no newsletter you get signed up for.

Visitor numbers

Since 13 September 2026 this site uses Google Analytics to count visits: which pages are opened, roughly where in the world from, and what kind of device. It is there to answer one question, whether anyone is reading this, and it is switched off everywhere except the live site at outsidenow.site.

It is not connected to your account, and nothing you save or notice is sent to it. Google sets a cookie to tell repeat visits apart. If you would rather not be counted, any browser setting or extension that blocks analytics will block it, and the site works exactly the same.

The morning email’s numbers

Since 27 September 2026 the morning email counts two things for each reader, with the time each happened: whether it was opened, through a tiny image at the bottom that loads when your email app shows pictures, and which of its links were tapped, because links to the site pass through outsidenow.site on the way. Each count is tied to your subscription, so the person who makes this can see how many readers find the email useful and which parts they use.

Nothing else is recorded: no location, no device, nothing from your inbox. If your email app blocks images, the open is simply not counted, and every link still works the same.

Children

Outside Now is written for families and is meant to be read together. It is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly keep information from them. Nothing here requires a child to have an account.

Where it lives

The site runs on Vercel and the data sits in a Postgres database hosted by Neon, both in the United States. Sign-in is handled by Google; this site never sees your Google password. Email is sent and received through Resend.

Zip code places from GeoNames, CC BY 4.0.

Getting rid of it

Email hello@outsidenow.site and ask, and everything tied to you is deleted. No form, no account settings to hunt through, no waiting period. You can also just stop using it; nothing follows you anywhere.

Changes

If what the app collects ever changes, this page changes with it, and the date below moves. Last updated October 20, 2026.