Privacy policy

Who we are

Copytone is run by Owen Fisher, a sole trader based in Thailand. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean Owen Fisher, trading as Copytone.

For anything about your data, email support@copytone.co. It is the address for privacy and data requests.

Two kinds of data

Most of this policy is about data we decide how to use: your account, payments, analytics, server logs and emails. For that data we are the controller.

What an organisation uploads to Copytone is different. That means its guides, what its customers said, and the copy it wants checked. The organisation decides how that data is used, so it is the controller and we are its processor. Our data processing agreement sets out how we handle it.

If you wrote a review of a company that uses Copytone, that company decides how your review is used, so ask it first. If you ask us, we pass your request to the company and help it answer.

What we collect

• Your account. Your name, your work email address, your organisation, your role in its account, and when you sign in. You sign in with a password, which we keep only in a scrambled form that cannot be turned back into the password, or with a link we email you.
• Payment. Stripe takes payment. Your card details go straight to Stripe, and we never see or store your full card number. We see what Stripe shows us: your plan, what you paid and when, and the billing details you gave.
• What your organisation uploads. Its guides, such as a tone of voice guide or a brand guide. Exports of what its customers said, such as reviews, and screenshots, PDFs and Word files of what they said. Screenshots are read on our own server with Tesseract, open-source text recognition, so no image is sent to an AI model or any other service. The copy it wants checked: the public pages of its website, which Copytone reads, and the emails and documents it uploads. We hold all of this for your organisation, as its processor.
• What your team does in the studio. The drafts and changes people make to sentences of copy, with who made each one and when. What people say to each other there: comments on sentences, messages in the team chat, who has claimed which page or section, and each person's list of sentences for today, with who wrote each one and when. Deleting a comment or a message deletes its words. While someone has the studio open, the team can see which page they are on; we keep that for ten minutes at most. We hold all of this for your organisation too.
• People your organisation sends a page to for sign-off. Their name and email address, the comments they leave, and their sign-off with its time. We hold these for your organisation as part of its studio, and delete them with it.
• The free brand voice checker. If you paste reviews or testimonials into it, they are sent to our server, where names and contact details are taken out and the phrases two or more of them share are counted. If you also give your homepage's address, Copytone reads that public page and compares its wording with those phrases. The answer is sent back to you, and nothing you pasted is kept: it is not saved or logged, it is not sent to anyone else, and it does not go to an AI model. We note that the tool ran, and which homepage it read, as described under usage records below. To stop abuse, we count requests from each IP address for up to an hour, under a scrambled form of the address.
• The free check. If you ask for a free check of a web page, Copytone reads that public page and checks its wording. It also looks for reviews and testimonials on up to 12 more pages of the same site, takes names out of them, and counts the words customers use. Those reviews, with names taken out, are sent to our AI model provider with the page's sentences, to pick the phrases that are specific to you and find where the page says the same thing in other words, unless the site asks for no AI. If you ask for a version of a sentence in your customers' words, that sentence is sent too. We keep the answer from the last check of each page that worked for 30 days, so that if the site is slow to answer the next time the page is checked, that answer is shown, with the day it was made. It holds sentences from the page and from the reviews on the site, with names taken out. We note that the check ran, as described under usage records below. To stop abuse, we count requests and free checks from each IP address, and which site each address checked, for up to a day, under a scrambled form of the address.
• How Copytone is used. When a page on copytone.co opens, your browser tells our server which page it was, the site that sent you, and any campaign tags from our own emails and posts. Campaign tags marked as paid, such as cpc, ppc, paid, paid social, display or affiliate, are never recorded. Our server passes that to PostHog, our analytics provider, with your browser, system and device type, and a random ID that lasts only while the tab is open. When a link in one of our emails names a company's website, such as copytone.co/score?site=example.com, we pass on that website's name, and nothing else from the address. We also count when someone asks for a free check, with the name of the website they asked about, and when someone makes an account. PostHog never receives your IP address, your name or your email address. Codes in an address, such as an invite code, are taken out first. The studio sends nothing. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, nothing is sent at all, and you can turn analytics off on this page.
• Usage records. Our own server notes when certain things happen in Copytone, such as a free check, an account being made, a studio being built, or a plan starting, changing or ending. Each note says what happened and when, with counts and settings, such as how many lines a build read or which plan started. A note about a free check names the website checked, whether the check worked and, if not, a short technical reason, whether it started from a link in one of our emails, and whether it seemed to come from a person's web browser or an automated program. A note about a free tool's run says which tool was used and when, never what you typed or pasted. A note about a new account names the website that link named, if you came from one, and the free tool whose sign-up link you used, if any. The notes never hold your IP address, your email address, or anything a customer wrote. A note about something you did is linked to your account. They stay on our server and are not sent to anyone.
• Server logs. Our server records each request it receives: the IP address, the page asked for, the time and the browser. We use these records to keep Copytone secure and working.
• The human check. To stop bots, sign-up can ask Cloudflare Turnstile to check that you are a person. When it does, Cloudflare sees your IP address and details of your browser.
• Emails with us. If you email us, we keep your message, your email address, anything you send with it, and our reply. Email to copytone.co is kept in our inbox, which SiteGround hosts on its servers in London.
• People we email about Copytone. See If we emailed you about Copytone, below.

What stays in your browser

The studio keeps a copy of your work in your browser's own storage, so a reload does not lose it. Each organisation and each person has a separate copy, and signing out removes yours.

Text you paste into the playground stays in that browser tab, and is cleared when you close the tab. It is not sent to us, and it is not saved on our server. The examples on our homepage run in your browser in the same way.

Why we use it, and the law we rely on

UK data protection law asks us to name a lawful basis for each use of personal data. These are ours.

Running your account and Copytone

Our contract with your organisation. For the people on its team, our legitimate interest in providing the service the organisation bought.

Taking payment and keeping records

Our contract with your organisation, and our legal obligation to keep financial records.

Keeping Copytone secure

Our legitimate interest in stopping bots, misuse and attacks. This covers server logs, request counts and the human check.

Understanding how Copytone is used

Our legitimate interest in making Copytone better. UK law lets analytics used only for that run without asking first, as long as you are told and can object. See Turning analytics off.

Answering your emails

Our legitimate interest in replying to you.

Emailing people at companies

Our legitimate interest in telling businesses that could use Copytone about it. See If we emailed you about Copytone.

What organisations upload

We are the processor. The organisation that uploads the data names its own lawful basis.

Health data in uploads

Reviews of health services often mention someone's health. Under UK GDPR, information about health is special category data, and it has extra protection.

The organisation that uploads it is the controller. Before it uploads, it must have a lawful basis and a condition under Article 9 of UK GDPR. Copytone does not choose that condition for your organisation, because it depends on who you are and why you hold the data.

This is how Copytone handles it.

• Capitalised names, email addresses, links, social handles, phone numbers in UK, US and Australian formats, and long numbers come out on arrival, before anything else is done with an export.
• Copytone also takes out place names and named health conditions, both from set lists, and phrases about self-harm and suicide. An age becomes child, teen or adult.
• This happens before any of the text is sent to our AI model provider.
• We keep what customers wrote, with names and contact details taken out, and the word counts made from it. The studio shows only sentences that had nothing taken out.
• Raw uploads are deleted as soon as Copytone has read them. The copy of each export with names and contact details taken out is kept, because the studio is rebuilt from it.
• We never use this data to learn about one person, and we never try to find out who wrote a review.
• We never use it to train AI models. Our AI model is run by Anthropic, which may not use it to train models either. Anthropic deletes what we send and what it answers within 30 days. Only if something is flagged under its usage policy may it keep that for up to 2 years.

Automatic removal can miss things, such as a name written without a capital letter. So we treat everything we keep from an upload as personal data, and protect it in the same way until it is deleted.

If we emailed you about Copytone

We email people at companies in the UK, the United States and Australia to tell them about Copytone, often with a free check of one public page of their website.

To do that we use your name, your work email address, your company and your job title. We find these in public places, such as your company's website, and each email says where we found your address.

In the UK we only email people at limited companies, public limited companies and limited liability partnerships this way. We do not email sole traders or partnerships about Copytone unless they ask us to. In Australia we only use an address that you or your company published, with no request not to be contacted, and only about your work. For now, we do not email people in the European Union.

Our lawful basis is legitimate interests. Our interest is telling businesses that could use Copytone about it. We weighed that against yours: we write to your work address, about your work, and every email tells you how to stop them.

Reply “no”, or use the opt-out in any email, and we stop at once. We then keep only your email address, on a list of people not to contact, so that we never email you again. If you do not reply, we delete your details 12 months after our last email.

What we never do

• We never sell personal data.
• We never use your data, or anything your organisation uploads, to train AI models.
• We never share what your organisation uploads, except with the providers on our sub-processors page so they can do their part in running Copytone, or where the law requires us to.
• We never publish your copy or your data. Copytone suggests changes, and a person on your team applies each one.

Where your data is

Copytone runs on a server rented from Hetzner Online GmbH, in its data centre in Helsinki, Finland. Finland is in the European Economic Area, which UK law recognises as giving adequate protection.

We run Copytone from Thailand, and reach the server from there to run and support it. Some of our providers are based outside the UK and the European Economic Area too. When personal data leaves the UK for a country without that recognition, we rely on a safeguard UK law allows, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Each provider, what it does, where, and its safeguard, is listed on our sub-processors page.

How long we keep it

Raw uploads

Deleted as soon as Copytone has read them. Any left behind when the server stops part way are deleted when it starts again. They are never copied into a backup.

What the studio needs to work

The word counts, the kept sentences, your organisation's rules, and the sentences being checked with their verdicts, suggestions, drafts and changes, and the team's comments, chat messages, claims and lists for today. The copy of each export with names and contact details taken out is kept, because the studio is rebuilt from it. From uploaded emails and documents we keep their lines of text, with email addresses, phone numbers and titled names such as “Dr Smith” taken out. They are your organisation's own writing, so its own names stay. An owner can delete all of it from Settings when no plan is running. Otherwise we delete it within 30 days after the subscription ends. If your organisation never starts a subscription, its data stays until an owner deletes it from Settings, or you ask us to delete it.

Your account

Deleted within 30 days after the subscription ends, or at once when an owner deletes the organisation, unless you also belong to another one. If your organisation never subscribes, or you belong to none, your account stays until you ask us to delete it.

Payment records

For as long as tax and accounting law requires. Stripe keeps its own records under its own privacy policy.

Server logs

Request logs are deleted within 30 days of rolling over. The app's own log keeps only its latest 30 MB.

Request counts

Kept under a scrambled key, and deleted after the time they count is up.

Free check answers

The last answer for each page is deleted 30 days after the check that made it.

Usage records

Kept so we can see how Copytone is used over time. When an account or organisation is deleted, its records stay, no longer linked to it.

Analytics

PostHog keeps events for one year on its free plan and seven years on paid plans, and does not let us set a shorter time. None of it holds your IP address, name or email address.

Emails with us

Up to two years after the conversation ends, unless we need them longer for a contract or a legal claim.

People we emailed

Deleted 12 months after our last email if there is no reply. If you ask us to stop, we keep only your email address, so that we never email you again.

Backups

A nightly backup, encrypted, kept on the same server for up to six months. Data deleted from Copytone can stay in a backup for up to six months, where nobody uses it, and is then gone. Raw uploads are never backed up.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• correct it, if it is wrong
• delete it
• stop using it while a question about it is settled
• give you the data you gave us in a common format, so you can take it elsewhere

You can also object to any use we base on legitimate interests. If you object to emails about Copytone, we stop at once.

To use any of these rights, email support@copytone.co. We reply within one month, as the law requires.

If your request is about data an organisation uploaded, such as a review you wrote, we pass it to that organisation, because it decides how that data is used, and we help it answer. Names and contact details are taken out on arrival, so we often cannot link what we keep to one person. When that is the case, we say so.

Copytone checks sentences of writing, never people. We make no automated decisions about people that have a legal or similarly serious effect on them.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first, so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK regulator, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Cookies and similar storage

Here is what Copytone uses.

• Signing in. A cookie that keeps you signed in. Copytone cannot work without it.
• Your work in the studio. A copy kept in your browser's own storage, as described above.
• Analytics. Nothing, unless you turn analytics off, when your browser keeps a note of that choice.
• Payment and the human check. When the payment form or the human check loads, Stripe or Cloudflare may set cookies of their own, to stop fraud and bots.
• Fonts. Pages that show the studio, including the examples on our homepage, load their fonts from Google Fonts. To fetch them, your browser sends Google your IP address and browser details.

We do not use advertising cookies.

Turning analytics off

You can object to analytics at any time, for free. Turn it off here and this browser sends nothing more. The choice stays in this browser until you clear its storage or turn analytics back on.

Checking this browser's analytics setting.

Keeping it safe

Every connection to Copytone is encrypted, and so are its backups. Only people who need access to run Copytone can reach personal data. The steps we take for uploads are in our data processing agreement.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we change the date at the top. If a change affects how we use your data, we email account owners before it takes effect.

Contact

Email support@copytone.co.