# Write Freely privacy rating

Minimal, federated blogging platform built on ActivityPub, self-hosted or offered as managed hosting by its developer, Musing Studio.

## Summary

Write Freely scores 53 out of 100 (grade D) on the blogging criteria. It meets 2 of 8 criteria: open source and no ads or data sales. It partly meets no trackers or telemetry, transparency report and TLS configuration. 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 B and Mozilla HTTP Observatory grade D-.

- Website: https://writefreely.org
- Source code: https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely
- License: AGPL-3.0
- Jurisdiction: United States. Five Eyes member. Subject to the US CLOUD Act.
- Home page trackers: none found
- Category: [Blogging](https://privacyratings.com/blogging/)
- Grade: D (53/100)

## Criteria

| Criterion | Answer | Note | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Open source | Yes | AGPL-3.0. | https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely/blob/develop/LICENSE |
| No trackers or telemetry | Partial | The software has no telemetry, but the developer's websites use self-hosted Matomo analytics, which respects Do Not Track and offers an opt-out. | https://write.as/privacy |
| No ads or data sales | Yes | Funded by paid hosting, app sales and donations, with no ads. | https://writefreely.org/fund |
| Independent audit | No | No independent audit is published. |  |
| Transparency report | Partial | The developer publishes a quarterly warrant canary and a policy of reviewing every legal request, but no request counts. | https://write.as/canary.txt |
| Tells users about requests | No | No published policy on notifying users about data requests. |  |
| TLS configuration | Partial | Grade B | https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=writefreely.org&hideResults=on |
| Security headers | No | Grade D- (25/100+) | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/observatory/analyze?host=writefreely.org |
| Modern web standards | Not tested yet | Not tested yet. |  |

Source: https://privacyratings.com/blogging/write-freely/
Edit: https://github.com/privacyratings/privacyratings.com/edit/main/ratings/blogging/write-freely.md