Anonymity & security
How we protect your anonymity
An anonymous question service is only worth something if people can trust it. Here, without unnecessary jargon, is what we do, what each party can see, and the limits you should know about.
Who sees what
| Your management | Your colleagues | |
|---|---|---|
| The text of a private question | Yes | No |
| The text of a public question | Yes | Yes |
| Who wrote a question or a message | No | No |
| Whether two questions come from the same person | No | No |
| Who supported a question (▲) | No, only the total | No, only the total |
| The exact time something was sent | No, only the day | No, only the day |
| Who has an account (name, email, active or deactivated) | Yes — to manage access and billing | No |
| When people sign in, or how active they are | No | No |
| Who the management profiles are (name, job title, email) — some may be HR profiles | Yes | Yes, always |
Technical measures
- Management can never link a question to an account. Nothing visible to your organisation identifies the author. In our database, the author is recorded only as a cryptographic fingerprint (HMAC-SHA256) computed with a secret key kept outside the database. When email notifications are on (the default), the service also stores your account identifier for that question, encrypted (AES-256-GCM): it is used solely to send you the notification email and is never shown to anyone. Turning notifications off deletes it.
- Encrypted content. Titles, questions, replies and notification links are encrypted (AES-256-GCM) before being stored. The encryption key is not stored in the database.
- Blurred timestamps. Dates are stored to the hour and displayed to the day, to prevent cross-checks such as “she was the only one online at 10:02”.
- Delayed, content-free notifications. Emails to managers are sent with a random delay of 10 to 60 minutes and never contain the text of the question.
- No named activity log. The application does not record who posted what, or from which IP address.
- Delegated sign-in. You sign in with your Google work account: we never receive your password or access to your email or documents — only your name and email address.
- Web security. Mandatory HTTPS, secure cookies, CSRF protection on every form, a strict content security policy (no third-party scripts, self-hosted fonts), rate limiting, no trackers or analytics tools.
Our commitments
- We never disclose to an organisation, or to anyone, the identity of a person who asked a question, except under a binding legal obligation (court order). Even then, we can only hand over what we hold, and the content remains encrypted and unlinked to any account in our tables.
- We forbid ourselves any re-identification attempt, and contractually forbid it to client organisations (see the terms).
- We do not sell, rent or use any data for advertising purposes.
Limits you should know about
No system offers absolute anonymity. To be upfront with you:
- Your employer may know you have an account. Google Workspace administrators can see which applications employees sign in to. They cannot see anything you write here.
- What you write can give you away. A precise detail (your role, a three-person meeting, a date) may be enough to recognise you. Re-read before sending.
- Small teams. In an organisation of a few people, anonymity is mechanically weaker. We warn you when few accounts are registered.
- Notifications. Reply notifications go to your work address. They contain no content and carry a neutral subject (“New activity”), but someone with access to your work mailbox could see that you use the service. If that bothers you, turn notifications off: you will just need to come back to check for replies.
- We operate the service. As the technical host, we administer the servers and keys. That is exactly why the service is operated outside any client organisation and bound by the commitments above: no client company — including the one its founder runs — has access to the servers, the database or the keys.
What this service is not
Like a Jester is not a whistleblowing system within the meaning of the law, nor a channel for reporting harassment. If you witness or experience serious misconduct, contact your company's designated officers, your employee representatives, occupational health, the labour inspectorate or the relevant public authority.
A question about security, or a vulnerability to report? Write to contact@likeajester.com.