About Porch Moth

Who runs Porch Moth

Porch Moth is run by one person: Preston Johan, trading as Porch Lamp Studio.

To get in touch, write to 40_sunroof.hoedown@icloud.com.

There is no company and no team behind Porch Moth, and nothing is sold, so no postal address is given here.

What Porch Moth stores, and where

Porch Moth keeps its data in this browser, on this device. Porch Moth has no accounts, no cookies and no payments, and no server or analytics of its own.

What is stored

• A log of what you do in Porch Moth. Each entry has its time, and the time zone your device was set to then. The entries are these.
• Pauses. Each time the pause page is shown and for which app. Each “I’m out”. Each “Open it anyway”, with your reason if you pick one. With each of those two, the time of the pause it answers, so that two pauses open at once are kept apart. Your answer if Porch Moth asks whether an app is still set up.
• Moves and minutes. The “instead” moves you tick, and each one-minute wait you finish or stop early.
• Check-ins. Your check-ins, with the note if you write one.
• Check-ups. Each check-up, whether you answered it or passed it over, with the answers you gave: the time you typed in, the number of nights, and the three answers from 1 to 5. Beside the time, how many apps were on your list then (a number, not their names). Whether you opened or passed over the look back at about two months.
• Phone changes. Which phone changes you ticked in the setup guide, and when you went over that list again or passed that over.
• Plans. The plans you make or pass over: a rule for the next month in your own words and a phone change to leave on; what you will do in a rough week, with the name of someone to message if you give one; and which of your moves to reach for at your commonest reason and hour.
• Bedtime. Your bedtime plan, in your own words: where your phone goes and what you will do instead; and your answer, the morning after, to whether your phone was out of reach.
• Your own reason. Your own reason for doing this, if you write one, and how sure you are of keeping at it, from 0 to 10.
• Where the time went. Now and then, on a Monday, your one-tap answer to where the time went when you stayed out of the feeds (something better, another app, or not sure), or that you passed it over.
• Changes to the pause, and holidays. When you make the pause shorter or the cooldown longer, the old and new figures, and your answer if Porch Moth asks on a Monday whether to put it back. When holiday mode goes on or off.
• Your settings. The apps you chose, your goal, your “instead” moves and which are for the night, your bedtime and check-in time, how long the pause and the cooldown last, how you get to the pause, which look the pause has, your site address if you set one, how Morris looks and moves, whether your notes are kept covered, whether Quiet mode is on, and whether the “Perfect run” badge is shown.
• A little memory for the pages. Which of Morris’s lines you have seen lately, the last pause style, the last milestone marked, and when you last exported a backup.

The log keeps the most recent 25,000 entries. Older ones are dropped.

A move or an app you remove stays named in the entries already logged, and in backups, until you use Delete everything. If Porch Moth ever finds its stored data unreadable, it sets that copy aside in the browser, so it could be recovered by hand; Delete everything clears that too.

What the host sees

These pages are hosted by Cloudflare. Cloudflare sees ordinary page requests, as the host of any website does: which page was loaded, the time, and your device’s internet address. So its records could show when a pause or a check-in was opened. They do not show for which app: the pause page’s address carries a short tag for the app, such as “tiktok”, after a “#”, and a browser does not send that part to a host. If you use the desktop extension, the address of the Short or Reel you were heading for travels after the “#” as well. Both do stay in that browser’s own history.

The host never receives your log, your notes, your check-ins or your settings.

Cloudflare keeps its records under its own privacy policy. The person who runs Porch Moth can also see Cloudflare’s reports on the site’s visits, mostly totals, such as how many requests and visitors it had. Porch Moth does not use Cloudflare’s optional visitor tracking, which would add a script to every page.

The built site also carries a browser rule (a Content Security Policy) that blocks its scripts from making network connections.

If you choose to say how it is going

Porch Moth can put together a short summary for you to send to the person who runs it. It is made on your device. It holds counts (days, wins, dodges and opens, urges ridden out, instead moves done, check-ins, and your weekly streak), your goal, how your pauses come (on a computer, the browser extension or a bookmark; on a phone, an icon or an automation), the answers you picked in a check-up (the nights and the three answers from 1 to 5), and a last line saying which copy of Porch Moth made it. Nothing you typed is in it: no note, no time typed into a check-up, no names of apps. Nor are the dates or times of anything you did. You see the whole of it before anything else happens.

Porch Moth never sends it to anyone. If you share it or copy it and send it yourself, the person who runs Porch Moth receives that text and whatever your own mail or message app adds, such as your email address or phone number.

What the person who runs Porch Moth holds

Only what you choose to send: an email, or a summary you share or copy yourself. It arrives with what your mail or message app adds, such as your name and your email address or phone number, and any words of your own.

• Why. To read it and reply, and, for a summary, to learn how Porch Moth is going. The law calls this “legitimate interests”: you chose to send it, and this is what you sent it for.
• How long. About a year, and often less.
• Who else. The email or message service it arrives through keeps it, as any such service does. Nobody else is sent it.
• Your rights. You can ask to see what is held about you, to have it corrected or deleted, or to have its use limited, by writing to the address under Who runs Porch Moth. You can also object to it being kept at all.

Your browser can clear it

A browser can clear the data a site has stored. Safari especially can do this once you have used Safari for a week without touching the site. Porch Moth asks the browser to keep its data, but the browser decides. That is what Export is for.

Export, import and delete

In Porch Moth, open Settings and find “Your data”.

• Export data makes a backup file. Where your phone offers its share sheet, Porch Moth hands the file to that, and where it goes next is your choice; otherwise the file is saved to your device. The file includes your notes, and the time zone of each entry, which roughly shows where you were. Settings also shows how long ago you last made one.
• Import data reads a backup file back in. In a browser where Porch Moth has not been set up, the same field is called “Restore a backup”.
• Delete everything removes Porch Moth’s log, settings and memory from this browser. There is no undo, and Porch Moth holds no other copy.

Delete everything reaches only what Porch Moth itself stored. Backup files you have already exported stay where you put them. The desktop extension keeps its own few settings until you remove it from the browser. Any icon, shortcut or automation stays on your phone until you remove it. If you built the iPhone automation, it keeps one small file of its own, holding the time of your last “Let me in”, in the phone’s Shortcuts folder, which is in iCloud Drive where that is switched on. Porch Moth can neither see that file nor remove it. And your browser’s own history lists each pause page you opened, with the short tag for the app in its address and, as its title, words the page showed: “Hang on: TikTok”, or in some browsers the last words it showed, such as “TikTok it is.”; Porch Moth cannot see or clear that either.

If you use an automation app on Android to open the pause, such as MacroDroid, that app belongs to someone else and has privacy terms of its own. Nothing on this page covers it.

The desktop extension

A new install starts with porchmoth.com as its site address, so its pauses open on this site, and Cloudflare sees each one opened, as described above; you can give it the address of another copy instead, or clear it. The extension keeps its own few settings in the browser on that computer: your site address, the cooldown, and the time a “Let me in” ends; and, while a tab is open, how often that tab was sent on, never where. It makes no network requests of its own and keeps no record of what you visit. In Chrome, a website could tell that the extension is installed (its pause page has to be open to every site so that a link from anywhere can reach it); it cannot see your settings or anything you did. Porch Moth on a computer and Porch Moth on a phone are separate copies, and share nothing.

Who Porch Moth is for

Porch Moth is built for adults and older teens. It is fine to use from 13. It is not designed for under-13s. Porch Moth never asks your age.

What Porch Moth claims

Porch Moth helps people who want to scroll less build the habit of pausing first.

Porch Moth is a habit tool. It does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition.

Porch Moth itself has not been tested on real people yet. The research behind it comes from studies of other tools.

What we know and don’t

If scrolling is part of something bigger, there are people who can help.

If it’s more than a habit

What is free

The pause is free. Nothing in Porch Moth is sold, and nothing is behind a payment.

Accessibility

What has been done

• Porch Moth works with your device’s reduced-motion setting.
• Settings has “Morris’s movement”. Choosing “Still” there keeps Morris from moving, and stops the page’s own slow movement round him as well: the ring on the pause page, and the swell of the one-minute wait.
• Buttons, fields and links that stand alone are at least 44 pixels tall.
• Colour is not the only signal anywhere. On Insights, the two bars for each of the last 14 days are a solid bar for “Dodged” and a hollow one for “Opened”, with their totals in words beside them.
• The pages are readable at a width of 360 pixels, in light and in dark.
• This page, “If it’s more than a habit”, “What we know and don’t” and “Questions and answers” work with JavaScript off. The rest of Porch Moth needs it.

What has not been tested yet

• Nothing has been tried on a real phone yet: not the Home Screen icon, the iPhone automation or the Android one.
• Porch Moth has not been gone through with a screen reader on a real phone.
• Nothing has been tried in Safari.

So far Porch Moth has been checked in Chrome and in Firefox on a computer, mostly at phone size. The extension has been tried in both on the real YouTube and Instagram. Edge has not been tried.

Reporting a problem

If something in Porch Moth does not work for you, write to the address under Who runs Porch Moth and say what you were using and what happened.

How to complain

To complain, write to the address under Who runs Porch Moth.

If your complaint is about personal data, you will be told within 30 days that it has arrived. If you are in the UK, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (the ICO).

Terms

• Porch Moth is free, and it is provided as it is. Whether and how you use it is your choice.
• There is no promise that it will always be available, or that it will work on every phone or browser.
• Your data is yours. What Porch Moth stores stays in this browser unless you choose to send or export it.
• Keep your own backup. Use Export data now and then.
• Porch Moth is not responsible for a loss it did not cause, or for one nobody could reasonably have expected. A browser clearing what Porch Moth stored, or a phone’s automation not running, are examples.
• Nothing here takes away a right the law gives you, and nothing here limits responsibility where the law does not allow it to be limited.