What this site stores

Signing in

Signing in uses Google. Your browser sends Google's sign-in token to this site, which passes it to Google to confirm it is genuine and unexpired. The site then checks three things: that the token was issued for this site, that your email is verified, and that the account belongs to the school’s Google Workspace.

If any of those fail, you are turned away and nothing is kept. No account is created for you here, and there is no password to set.

Your sign-in cookie

On success you get a cookie called portal_session. It holds your email address and an expiry date, signed so it cannot be edited. It is HttpOnly (scripts cannot read it), Secure (HTTPS only), SameSite=Lax, and it expires after 30 days.

That cookie lives in your browser. There is no user table, no server-side copy of who has signed in, and no log of what you clicked. The only things the site keeps on a server are what people put on Sticky Notes and Section Olympics, below.

What stays on your device

Ticking something off the checklist saves a yes/no flag in your browser's local storage. It never leaves your device, so your ticks are yours alone — they do not sync between your laptop and your phone, and nobody else can see them.

The search box filters the page in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.

The Global Study Trips page keeps your ranking, your notes and the countries you tick in this browser's local storage, and any sample schedule you attach in this browser's own file store (IndexedDB). None of it is uploaded, and nobody else can see it; Erase my order & notes on that page removes the lot.

The Guess Who game keeps your current game (its code or link, the faces you have flipped and the questions you asked), the classmates you switch off under Who's in and your sound setting in this browser's local storage. The two phones in a game never talk to each other or to the server: the code or link only tells the other phone which faces to deal, and each phone works out the same secret cards from it. The tiles show classmates' names, photos, where they grew up and are coming from, their college and their jobs, taken from the class contact card without emails, phone numbers or bios. Solo games (the daily challenge, practice and games against the computer) run entirely on your phone, and their scores stay in the same local storage; sharing a daily result only happens if you tap Share, and it says how many questions you took, never who the classmate was.

The Course Planner keeps your courses, grades, grade breakdowns, checklist answers and to-dos in this browser's local storage, and nowhere else. They never reach the server, and they do not follow you to another device. They also stay after you sign out, so on a shared or borrowed computer use the planner's Clear everything when you are done. Browsers can clear local storage on their own, Safari after about a week without a visit, which is why the planner offers exports.

Sticky Notes: the one thing kept on a server

Sticky Notes is shared by design — your card has to reach your classmates — so unlike everything else here it is kept on a server, in a database run by Upstash through Vercel, in the eastern United States.

What is kept. For each board: its name, the first name of whoever started it, and when it closes. For each person who joins: their school email, and the name and photo the class contact card has for them (or, if they are not on the card, a name they type). For each ask: its text, its topic and the optional date. For each note: its text, who wrote it, and whether it has been peeled or thanked. Also which asks each person has noted or passed on, which deals the asks and counts toward the three-note rule; which asks someone may not note again because the owner removed their note (kept until the board closes, even if they leave); the boards you have joined, and for a day, any you left, so a screen still open on one can say you left it; and daily counts of boards started, notes taken back (by hand or by leaving) and wrong codes tried. If leaving a board takes back more notes than a day allows, a flag that you can’t rejoin that board is kept until the next day.

Who sees what. Everyone on a board sees its asks and how many notes each one has. Whose ask it is, the name and photo, is shown only to its owner and to people who have stuck a note on it; until then the server sends neither, nor any id that could be matched to a person. A note’s text and its writer’s name and email go only to the card’s owner, and only after they have stuck notes on three classmates’ cards and peeled it. That rule is enforced on the server, so until then the note never reaches their phone at all. Nobody else on the board ever sees a note. The writer sees their own notes, and whether each was thanked.

How long. Every board closes 30 days after it opens, and everything on it is deleted then. Each record carries its own expiry, so there is no cleanup job to forget. Your list of boards, and any name you typed, go 31 days after you last joined one; the count of boards you started goes after two days.

Email when a note lands. When a classmate sticks a note on your ask, Sticky Notes emails your school address, at most once every six hours per board. The email repeats your own ask and says how many notes are waiting; it never says what a note says or who wrote it, because that stays behind the three-note rule. It is sent through Resend, which receives your address and your ask for each email, under its own policy. Emails are on when you pin an ask; untick the box on the ask form, switch them off in the menu, or use the link at the foot of any email.

Deleting it sooner. You can take your ask down (its notes go with it), remove a note from your ask, or take back a note you wrote, unless it has already helped you peel your own. Leave on a board’s menu deletes your card, the notes on it and every note you wrote there, at once. Whoever started a board can close it for everyone, which deletes all of it. Sticky Notes also remembers your sound setting, the tab you were on and whether you have seen How it works in this browser’s local storage, and keeps a note you have started but not stuck in this tab’s session storage until you close the tab.

Section Olympics

Section Olympics is a live scoreboard the whole class shares, so it is kept in the same Upstash database as Sticky Notes, under its own records.

What is kept. The day itself, as the organizers set it up: the events, times, rules and the scores and finishing orders the referees post, with the school email of whoever posted each result. For each person who uses the page: the section they chose and the events they signed up for, filed under their school email. When a section’s organizers load its team roster sheet, the teams it puts each person on (the event, and whether they are captain, playing or a backup), filed under the school email matched to their name on the sheet; for a name the class contact card doesn’t have, the school email the organizer typed for it; and, when the sheet was linked rather than pasted, its link, so it can be read again. A linked sheet is read from Google only when an organizer or section rep asks, and only if it is shared with anyone who has the link. The lists of organizers and section reps are kept as school emails, with each rep’s section. Short-lived counters stop any one person sending too much at once.

Who sees what. Everyone signed in sees the scores and the schedule. Sign-up lists show the names and photos the class contact card has for the people on them, so captains can see their squad. When a section wins a medal in an event, the people on its sign-up list for that event are shown as medalists, by the same name and photo, on the leaderboard and in the medal ceremony. The teams a roster sheet puts you on are shown to you alone, as Your day; the organizer loading the sheet sees its names as the class card spells them. Nobody sees anyone else’s email address.

How long. Every record is deleted 120 days after it was last changed, and each carries its own expiry, so there is no cleanup job to forget. Organizers can also clear results or sign-ups for everyone at once, which is how test data is removed before the day, and forget a section’s teams at any time. To remove a sign-up, tap I’m out; to have anything else of yours removed sooner, mail wap@stanford.edu. The page also remembers the tab you were on in this browser’s local storage.

What this site does not do

• No analytics, no tracking pixels, no cookie banners, no advertising.
• No selling, sharing, or transferring of anything to anyone.
• No email from this site, with one exception: Sticky Notes tells you when a note lands on your ask (below). Nothing else, and never marketing.
• No profile of you, and no record of which links you followed.

Others involved

Google handles the sign-in, so Google sees that you signed in, as it would for anything you use a Google account for. Google Fonts serves the typefaces, so loading a page fetches from Google's font servers. Vercel hosts the site and keeps ordinary server logs, which include things like IP addresses, under its own policy. Upstash holds the Sticky Notes and Section Olympics database, and Resend sends its emails, as described above, each under its own policy. The insurance links on the MyHealth card go to Wellfleet and Ameritas, the plan administrators, which have their own sign-in and their own policies; nothing is sent to them until you click through. Sign-up links go to the organizers' own tools — Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, Qualtrics, YouCanBook.me and Training The Street — under their policies. App links go to Apple's App Store and Google Play. The meal plan portal is run by Atrium Campus for campus dining. CareerHub, the careers portal, is run by 12twenty, so the CareerHub links land on its servers under its policy. The school's student directories are hosted by BrightCrowd, which asks you to sign in with your school account. Residence maintenance tickets go through ServiceNow, which runs the university ticketing system, and the residences room booking link hands off to Mazevo. The HKS Treks card links to a WhatsApp group, so joining it happens in WhatsApp, which Meta runs under its own policy. Other members of a WhatsApp group can usually see your phone number. The Course Planner's Excel import and export load a spreadsheet library from cdnjs, run by Cloudflare, which sees the request but none of your plan; the file is checked against its published hash before it runs. Its Copy the Google Sheet button puts a copy in your own Google Drive.

The Bechtel drop-in hours link on the international card registers you through Zoom, under its own policy; nothing is sent to it until you click through. The two exam-software links on the checklist are TinyURL short links, which pass you on to documents on Google Docs; TinyURL sees the click and nothing else from this site. The Halloween Bash row links to Eventbrite, where tickets are sold, and the health card links to TimelyCare, a virtual care service; each has its own policy, and nothing is sent to either until you click through. Every portal you click through to — Axess, Canvas, Vaden and the rest — is a separate university service with its own privacy terms. This site only points at them.

Ending it

Sign out clears the cookie immediately. What sits in your browser stays until you remove it: the Course Planner's Clear everything removes your plan, and clearing your browser's site data for this domain removes that, your checklist ticks and any Guess Who game. On the server: what you put on Sticky Notes, where Leave on a board deletes it now and every board deletes itself 30 days after it opens; and what you did on Section Olympics, which deletes itself 120 days after it last changed.

Questions, or something here that looks wrong? wap@stanford.edu.

Plainly

This is a student's side project, not a university service, and it is not affiliated with the university or the school. It is offered as-is. Verify anything that matters against the official school email.