Staying safer while you use this site
Plain answers, including the limits of what any website can do for you.
Legal Stylus is not an emergency service, and nobody reads what you write here in real time. In immediate danger? Call 911.
For 24/7 support: National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233 (text START to 88788) · 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988 · RAINN sexual-assault hotline 1-800-656-4673 · StrongHearts Native Helpline 1-844-762-8483.
These are US numbers.
This guide is for anyone who thinks another person may be watching their device, their accounts, or their mail. If that is not your situation, you can skip it. If it is, read it before you start. One thing first: if the person you are documenting shares your home, your phone, or your email, a paper log kept where they cannot reach it may still be the better choice today. This site is not built to hide from someone who can see your device or read your inbox. The limits below say why.
The “Leave this site” button — and its limits
Once you are signed in, every screen has a Leave this site button, at the foot of the menu. On a phone a Leave button also sits at the top of every screen, and with safety features on it does on a computer too. The public pages of this site, this guide among them, have no such button: to leave one, close the tab or type another address.
Click it — or, on a keyboard, press the Shift key three times — and this tab jumps to a weather website right away. On a phone, use the button; there is no key for it. Practice it once so your hands know it. The button also signs you out: it clears this device at once, and asks our sign-in provider to end the session as the tab leaves. Without a connection that last step cannot be confirmed, so when you have time, sign out yourself as well, and close the tab. The app also tells your browser not to keep its pages, so Back asks us for them again rather than showing them from memory.
What it cannot do: erase where you’ve been. Your browser history, your internet provider’s records, and any monitoring software still show the visit. No button on any website can change that.
If someone might check your device
The best option is a device the person has never had: a library computer, a trusted friend’s phone, or, if the person you are documenting is not your employer, a work computer. Legal Stylus is a website — there’s no app icon to find and nothing in an app store history — so it works from any of those.
Your browser history will show that you visited Legal Stylus: the addresses name the site. With safety features on, the app titles its pages “Notes” while you are signed in, so its tabs do not. The sign-in page and the site’s public pages, this guide among them, are not covered.
A private or incognito window keeps this visit out of that browser’s history. It does not hide your activity from monitoring software already on the device, or from whoever controls the network.
One thing advocates warn about: don’t wipe your whole history. A suddenly empty history can itself raise suspicion. If you clear anything, clear only the entries you need to, and leave ordinary browsing in place.
About signing in
You sign in with your email address and a password.
If you forget the password, we email you a code to set a new one. So someone who can read that inbox can get into your account, unless you have turned on two-step verification. They would have to change your password first, and then your old password would stop working — so you would notice. Use an address only you can read.
Two-step verification adds a second step at sign-in: a 6-digit code from an app on your phone. With it on, your inbox is not enough to get into your account. Turn it on in Settings, under Sign-in and security, with an authenticator app on a phone only you use, and keep its backup codes somewhere private.
The same page lists the devices signed in to your account. If you see one you do not recognize, change your password there, and keep “Sign out of all other devices” checked: every other device is signed out at the same time.
About unfinished entries
While you write, an unfinished entry is kept on the device you are using, and so are changes to an entry that you have not saved yet. Only your account is offered them. Signing out and the Leave button both erase them, including an entry you were partway through. Closing the tab does not. On a shared device, sign out or use the Leave button before you step away.
About photos and where you were
A photo from a phone can carry hidden data, including where it was taken. When you upload a JPEG or PNG, you can tick “Remove location data from photos”: the picture itself is unchanged, the file is not, and the record keeps the fingerprint of each and notes the removal. Otherwise we keep every file exactly as you uploaded it, so that data stays in the file and goes wherever the file goes: your export, and anyone you invite to the case. We cannot remove it from other formats yet. Share links never include files. If where you were must stay unknown to the other person, the surest step is still to turn off location for your camera before you take the photo, and to leave the “where” field blank or hide it before you share. If AI tools are on, the place you type is sent to the model provider when you run a tool.
Writing with less risk
Entries can be seen by you and by anyone you invite to a case, and by nobody else until you share. A share link shows only the fields you left visible, with anything you redact removed on our servers before the recipient sees it, and it stops working when it expires or when you turn it off. A person you invite to a case sees the whole record until you remove them.
The limit: anyone who can sign in as you can see everything, and today that means anyone who can read your email (see “About signing in”).
Still, be thoughtful about when and where you write: a few calm minutes on a device the person cannot see beats a rushed entry on one they can. Approximate times are fine — an honest “around 9 PM” is stronger than a precise guess.
About email from us
We never email anyone about you unless you ask us to. An invitation or a share link you send does not name you or your case. It says that someone invited them to a case, or shared a document with them, through Legal Stylus; they see what it is when they sign in or open the link. Every other email is a switch in Settings; answer “never” and no routine mail is sent. If someone else can read your inbox, do not use that address here. Use one only you can read, or wait until you have one.
Your record is yours — including the right to remove it
You can export a complete copy of everything (every entry, every version, every file with its fingerprint) from Settings, free, any time. You can also delete your account there: your records are removed from your account and our database at once, and from the database’s backup copies within 180 days. Both work whether or not you ever pay us anything.
The limit: a deleted file leaves the app at once, but not our systems at once: our file storage deletes its copy after 90 days, and the independent backup within 180. Until then the people who run the service could still recover it.
Finding people who can help
Local domestic-violence advocates (find them via thehotline.org), legal-aid clinics (find legal aid), and womenslaw.org (plain-language legal information for any gender) can advise on your situation the way a website can’t. Legal Stylus isn’t a law firm and doesn’t give legal advice — we’re the record you bring to the people who do.