Your account and its security

What protects your account, and what happens to your work if you close it.

Signing in

Email and password, or Google. Both reach the same account when the address matches — signing in with Google to an address that registered with a password gets you into that account.

Two-factor authentication

You can require a code from an authenticator app as well as your password. Turn it on in settings: scan the QR code, enter a code to prove the app has the secret, and save the ten recovery codes you are shown.

Save the recovery codes. They are shown once and are the way back in if you lose the phone. Each works once, and you can generate a new set at any time — which invalidates the old ones.

Two-factor applies to every way into the account, Google included. Turning it off needs your password.

Sessions

Settings lists every device signed in to your account, with when it was last used, and marks the one you are on. You can sign out one device or all the others, and it takes effect immediately rather than whenever a token happens to expire.

Signing out ends the session properly — the token stops working, not just the cookie in that browser.

When we email you

Anything that changes how your account is reached gets an email: password changed or reset, two-factor turned on or off, recovery codes replaced, other devices signed out.

We never ask for your password or a code by email. A message that does is not from us.

Passwords

Checked against a list of the passwords that actually get broken, after allowing for the usual decorations — P@ssw0rd! is on it. Nothing about your password leaves the server to be checked.

Changing your password signs out every other device.

Closing your account

Erasure removes your account, the projects you created, and everything in them, including your notes and your reading history. Your membership of projects other people created is withdrawn.

It does not remove what you contributed to other people's projects. That work belongs to those project owners — see permissions. Your name comes off it: contributions stop being linked to you, and comments keep their text and lose their byline.

Write to us to start either an export or an erasure. Both are handled by a person, and we answer within a month.