Privacy

Last updated: August 24, 2026

The short version

You can use MindButler without telling us who you are. No account, no sign-up, no cost.

What you type into Sage is never stored. Not in our database, not in our logs, not in our analytics. It exists for as long as your search is happening and then it's gone.

We do collect some anonymous information about how the site is used — which pages get visited, which feelings get selected, whether people find what they came for. None of it identifies you.

If you choose to give us your email — for the newsletter, a donation, or a Therapist Advisory Board application — we have that, because you gave it to us on purpose.

That's the whole thing. The rest of this page is the detail.

What we don't collect

Your searches. When you tell Sage what's going on, that text is used to find matching resources and then discarded. It is never written to our database, never saved in a log file, never sent to our analytics. We verified this in the code, not just as a policy. (The one exception — sending it to Anthropic to be categorized — is explained plainly below, in "How Sage understands what you write.")

Your identity. No accounts exist for searching. No sign-up, no login, no profile.

Your IP address or device fingerprint. Our application code doesn't capture either. Note that our hosting provider maintains standard server logs the way essentially all web hosting does — that's infrastructure-level and outside what we control or access for any purpose beyond keeping the site running.

What we do collect

Anonymous usage analytics. We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used in aggregate — pages visited, whether people reach results. We also keep our own anonymous, categorical logs of the same kind of activity in our database — which feeling, community, or support type was selected, whether a resource link was clicked, how many results were shown — tied to a temporary identifier that's discarded when you close your browser tab, never to your identity. We keep these logs for 24 months, then delete them automatically — long enough to compare year over year, not indefinitely. We also record when a crisis resource is shown, as a bare count only — no pattern, no context, no record of what was typed.

Partner referrals. If you arrive via a link from one of our partners, we set a marker so we can measure how many people that partner sends us. It expires automatically after 30 days, and it never contains anything about you personally — just which partner referred you.

Anonymous resource feedback. When you mark a resource helpful or unhelpful, we store that vote alongside an anonymous identifier generated by your browser. It isn't tied to your name, email, or IP, and it doesn't follow you anywhere else. You can clear it by clearing your browser data.

Information you give us on purpose:

• Newsletter — your email address, stored with our newsletter provider. Unsubscribe any time using the link in any email.
• Donations — processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. We can see your name and email in Stripe's dashboard so we know who to thank.
• Therapist Advisory Board applications — name, email, license information, and what you wrote in the form. Used only to evaluate the application.

How Sage understands what you write

When you describe what's going on, we need to understand it well enough to point you somewhere useful. To do that, your message is sent to Anthropic, an AI company, which reads it and tells us which categories it fits — things like "anxious," "looking for a therapist," "a parent or caregiver."

Some things worth being clear about:

We still don't store it. Your message isn't saved to our database or our logs. That hasn't changed.

But it does leave our systems now. Anthropic receives the text in order to categorize it. That's a real change from how this used to work, and we'd rather say it plainly than bury it. Here's what we can say for certain: your message is retained by Anthropic for 30 days — during which it may be accessed by Anthropic for safety and security purposes — and then deleted. It is never used to train Anthropic's AI models; that's a contractual guarantee, not just a setting we chose. For Anthropic's complete policies, see trust.anthropic.com.

The AI doesn't choose your resources. It only sorts your message into categories. Every resource you see was screened by a person and comes from our own catalog. No AI writes advice, generates a response, or recommends anything to you.

Crisis detection doesn't use AI at all. It runs first, on our own servers, using fixed patterns we wrote and can audit. It doesn't depend on any outside service working.

Who else is involved

MindButler runs on services provided by other companies, each of which has its own privacy practices:

We don't sell your information. We don't share it with advertisers. There are no advertisers.

If you're under 18

MindButler is free to search for anyone, at any age. We think a teenager looking for help should be able to find it without asking permission or creating an account.

Because of that:

• No accounts exist for anyone under 18. Our paid features are 18+ only.
• We don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has sent us personal information, email us and we'll delete it.
• Searching stores nothing regardless of age, so a teenager using MindButler leaves no record with us.

Your choices

• Searching requires nothing from you and stores nothing about you.
• Analytics can be blocked with any standard browser privacy setting or extension. The site works normally either way.
• Resource votes can be cleared by clearing your browser data.
• Partner referral marker — clear your cookies to remove it early, or it expires on its own after 30 days.
• Prefer not to have your message sent to Anthropic? Use "Browse on My Own" instead of typing — it never sends free text anywhere.
• Newsletter — unsubscribe from any email.
• Anything else — email us and ask. If we have information about you, we'll tell you what it is and delete it if you want.

A word about crisis resources

If you're in immediate danger, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).

Those are independent organizations, not MindButler. When you contact them, you're covered by their privacy practices, not ours. We never see, log, or know that you reached out.

MindButler is a resource discovery platform. We are not a licensed mental health provider, not a crisis line, and not a substitute for professional care.

Changes

If we change how any of this works, we'll update this page and the date at the top. Anything that materially changes how your information is handled will be called out clearly rather than folded quietly into a revision.

Contact

Questions about anything here: hello@mindbutler.ai

MindButler™ is a product of Choose Joy Enterprises LLC, Fort Mill, SC.