Blogging
Write.as privacy rating
Minimalist hosted blogging service from Musing Studio, focused on distraction-free writing and anonymous publishing, with federation over ActivityPub.
Summary
Write.as scores 50 out of 100 (grade D) on the blogging criteria. It meets 2 of 8 criteria: no ads or data sales and TLS configuration. It partly meets open source, no trackers or telemetry and transparency report. It does not meet independent audit, tells users about requests and security headers. It is based in the United States: Five Eyes member; subject to the US CLOUD Act. Automated tests: SSL Labs grade A and Mozilla HTTP Observatory grade D-.
Score 50 out of 100. How scoring works
Criteria
-
Partial
Open source Weight 3 of 3
Is all the source code needed to run the product public?
Write.as runs on WriteFreely, which is AGPL-3.0, but the code for Write.as Pro features beyond WriteFreely is not published.
-
Partial
No trackers or telemetry Weight 3 of 3
Are the website and apps free of third-party trackers, with any analytics anonymous and any telemetry off by default?
Uses self-hosted Matomo analytics with cookies, which respects Do Not Track and can be opted out of. The Android app has no trackers.
-
Yes
No ads or data sales Weight 2 of 3
Is the product funded without advertising, ad targeting or selling user data?
Funded by paid plans with no ads, and the privacy policy states data is never shared for advertising.
-
No
Independent audit Weight 2 of 3
Has an independent security or privacy audit been published within the last three years?
No independent audit is published.
-
Partial
Transparency report Weight 2 of 3
Does the provider regularly publish how many government and legal requests it receives and how it responds?
The privacy policy states requests are reviewed and require a warrant, and a quarterly warrant canary is published, but no request counts.
-
No
Tells users about requests Weight 1 of 3
Does the provider promise to tell users about requests for their data, unless a court forbids it?
No published policy on notifying users about data requests.
Automated tests
-
Yes
TLS configuration Weight 2 of 3
Does the website pass the Qualys SSL Labs test with a grade of A or better?
Grade A
-
No
Security headers Weight 1 of 3
Does the website pass the Mozilla HTTP Observatory test with a grade of A or better?
Grade D- (25/100+)
-
Not tested yet
Modern web standards Weight 1 of 3
Does the website score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl website test?
Not tested yet.