Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect information that you provide directly to us when using SandDune AI:

• Account information (email, name)
• Uploaded handwritten notes and images
• Generated transcriptions, and your edits to them
• Questions you ask and the AI-generated answers
• Timelines — your recurring questions, the AI-generated answers and titles of each entry, and your edits
• Feedback ratings (thumbs up/down) you give on answers and Timeline entries
• AI processing records (see Section 4)
• Notebook titles, descriptions, and cover images you upload
• Automatically derived writing statistics (pages, words, writing days) used to generate your monthly artifact
• Payment and subscription information
• Support-chat conversations — messages you send in the “Ask Sandy” chat on our public pages, and the email address if you choose to leave one (see Section 9)
• Usage data and preferences
• Analytics data about how you use our service

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected information for the following purposes:

• Provide AI-powered transcription and question-answering (Ask) with citations to your source notes
• Generate and maintain your Timelines — recurring questions answered over time
• Use your feedback ratings to evaluate and improve answer quality
• Generate monthly artifacts that summarize your writing activity using data derived from your notes
• Process and maintain your subscription
• Monitor and enforce usage limitations
• Improve our services and develop new features
• Communicate with you about your account and updates

3. Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored securely using industry-standard encryption. We use trusted third-party providers for authentication and database services (described in Section 5), and your files are stored in secure cloud storage. We implement rate limiting and other security measures to protect your data.

4. AI Processing

We use artificial intelligence to transcribe your handwritten notes, answer questions about them with citations, and generate Timeline entries and their titles. Here is exactly what that means for your data:

• Your notes are processed by third-party AI providers under agreements that prohibit them from training AI models on your data. We never train models on your data either.
• We retain records of AI processing runs — the text inputs, retrieved note excerpts, and outputs of transcription and Ask/Timeline runs, tied to your account — so we can evaluate and improve quality. Your note images themselves are not duplicated into these records.
• These records are private to your account, never shared, never used for training, and deleted when your account is deleted.

AI-generated output can contain errors; you can review and edit transcriptions and Timeline entries at any time.

5. Service Providers

We work with a small set of trusted service providers, each of which sees only what its job requires:

• Authentication and database hosting — stores your account data, transcriptions, and Timelines
• File storage and search infrastructure — stores your note images, markdown copies of your transcriptions, and AI processing records
• AI processing — receives note images (for transcription) or transcribed text (for answers) per request, under no-training agreements
• Payment processing — sees your payment details, never your notes
• Product analytics — sees feature-usage events, never your note content
• Rate limiting — sees request counts tied to your account, never your content
• Support-chat hosting — a European cloud provider hosts our self-managed support inbox; it stores support conversations, never your notes (Section 9)

6. Payment Information

Payment processing is handled by secure third-party payment processors. We do not store your complete payment information. We only maintain records necessary for subscription management and billing purposes.

7. Data Storage and Retention

We store your uploaded images and transcriptions in secure cloud storage. Images are processed and stored with unique identifiers to ensure security. Your notes, transcriptions, and Timelines are kept for as long as your account is active. AI processing records (Section 4) are kept for quality evaluation until your account is deleted. Monthly artifact images and their associated writing statistics are retained until you request account deletion.

You can request deletion of your account and associated data at any time. Upon deletion, we will remove your images from both temporary and permanent storage. Note that some information may be retained for legal or legitimate business purposes.

8. Usage Tracking

We monitor usage patterns and enforce rate limits based on your subscription status. Both free tier and paid tier accounts have specific monthly limits for transcriptions and questions about your notes (including Timeline entries). These limits are strictly enforced to maintain fair usage of our services. Product analytics tracks feature-usage events — which features you use and when — never the content of your notes. Usage data is also collected to inform the direction of our product development. Please refer to our Pricing Page for current usage limits applicable to your subscription tier.

9. Support Chat (“Ask Sandy”)

Our public pages offer an “Ask Sandy” support chat. Sandy is an automated assistant that answers only from our published documentation; when it can’t help, a human teammate takes over in the same conversation. Here is what that means for your data:

• Conversations are stored. Messages you send in the chat, and the email address if you choose to provide one, are stored in our support inbox — self-managed infrastructure hosted with a European cloud provider — so a human can pick up where the assistant left off and reach you if you step away.
• The assistant cannot see your notes, your account, or your payment details — it only knows our public documentation and what you type into the chat.
• We retain records of the assistant’s answer runs for quality evaluation (as in Section 4); these records never contain your email or IP address.
• Support conversations are never used to train AI models. We periodically delete stale conversations, and you can request deletion of your support-chat history at any time via support@sanddune.ai.

10. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access your personal data
• Correct inaccurate data
• Request deletion of your data
• Export your data — the “Export your data” button in Settings downloads all your transcriptions as plain markdown files plus your notes and Timelines metadata; original note images remain individually downloadable in the note viewer, and bulk image export is on the roadmap
• Opt out of communications

11. Updates to Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the “Last updated” date at the top of this policy.

12. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at support@sanddune.ai