Privacy Policy — Populate.ai

1. The short version

Populate.ai is built privacy-first. You can use it anonymously — your documents are processed only to extract your data, are not stored on our servers, and the result stays in your browser. If you choose to sign in, we store your account email and your documents so you can access them across devices. You can delete your documents or your entire account at any time.

2. Two ways to use Populate.ai

Anonymous: No account. Documents are processed for extraction and not retained on our servers; structured results are stored only in your browser's local storage.
Signed in: We store your email address (for authentication) and your uploaded documents and their extracted data, so they're available across your devices.

3. What personal data we collect (signed-in users)

Account email address (for sign-in and account-related communication).
Documents you upload and the data extracted from them, while your account exists or until you delete them.
Authentication metadata (e.g. login timestamps) needed to operate accounts securely.

4. Lawful basis (GDPR)

We process signed-in users' data on the basis of (a) performance of our service to you (storing and showing your documents), and (b) your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by deleting your data or account.

5. How your documents are processed

To extract, clean, spell-check, and translate content, document text and image data are sent to our AI processing gateway and underlying model providers solely to fulfil your request. These providers do not retain your files and do not use them to train models.

6. Data retention

Anonymous: nothing retained on our servers.
Signed in: documents and extracted data are retained until you delete them or delete your account. Inactive accounts may be deleted after 6 months of inactivity, with prior notice to you via your registered email.

7. Your rights

If you have an account, you can: access and export your data, correct it, delete individual documents, and delete your entire account and all associated personal data. Under GDPR/UK GDPR you also have rights to restrict or object to processing and to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. To exercise any right, use account settings or contact us.

8. Sub-processors

We rely on third-party services to operate: an AI processing gateway and model providers (for extraction — including Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI), hosting/storage infrastructure (for signed-in documents), and authentication. These process data only to provide their service to us.

9. Anonymous usage telemetry

We record an anonymous "visit" event per browser session and a "doc" event when a document finishes processing, including a random on-device visitor ID and a two-letter country code. No file contents, filenames, or IP addresses are stored in these events.

10. Cookies & local storage

We use browser local storage to hold anonymous users' documents and a random visitor ID for the landing-page counters. Signed-in sessions use authentication cookies/tokens necessary to keep you logged in. We do not use advertising cookies.

11. Data security

Documents and account data for signed-in users are stored using industry-standard encryption in transit and at rest. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your data.

12. Contact

Questions or requests about your data? Contact us.