Privacy policy

Who we are

Copytone is run by [Owen to confirm: the legal name of the business that runs Copytone, any trading name, and its postal address]. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean that business.

For anything about your data, email hello@copytone.co. [Owen to confirm: that hello@copytone.co is the address for privacy and data requests]

[Owen to confirm with a lawyer: whether Copytone needs a representative in the UK under Article 27 of UK GDPR, which depends on where the business is based]

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, whether you own its account or were invited, and when you sign in. You sign in 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. 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 lines of copy, with who made each one and when. We hold this for your organisation too.
• How Copytone is used. Our analytics provider, PostHog, records the pages people visit on copytone.co, what they click, and their browser and device type. [Owen to confirm: whether analytics names signed-in people, whether session recordings are on, and whether analytics runs inside the studio, where customer data is shown]
• 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. When you sign up, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you are a person and not a bot. It sees your IP address and details of your browser.
• Emails with us. If you email us, including to ask for a free page score, we keep your message, your email address, anything you send with it, such as the page to score, and our reply.
• People we email about Copytone. See If we emailed you about Copytone, below.

What stays in your browser

The studio also keeps a copy of your work in your browser's own storage, so a reload does not lose it.

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.

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 and the human check.

Understanding how Copytone is used

Our legitimate interest in making Copytone better. [Owen to confirm with a lawyer: whether analytics may run without consent under the cookie rules (PECR), and whether PostHog runs with a cookie or without one]

Answering your emails

Our legitimate interest in replying to you, and in sending the page score you asked for.

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. [Owen to confirm with a lawyer: which condition under Article 9 of UK GDPR customers are expected to rely on when they upload health data]

This is how Copytone handles it.

• On arrival, before anything else is done with an export, Copytone takes out names, email addresses, phone numbers, postcodes, links, social media handles, and long order and reference numbers.
• It 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.
• What we keep is counts of the words customers use, and some of their sentences, each kept apart from the review it came from. A sentence is only kept if nothing had to be taken out of it.
• Raw uploads are deleted [Owen to confirm: how many days after they arrive]. [Owen to confirm: how long the copy of each export with identifying details taken out is kept, now that the raw file is deleted as soon as it is read]
• 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. Anthropic, our model provider, may not train models on what we send it. Its commercial terms say so.

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 UK companies to tell them about Copytone, often with a free score 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.

We only email people at limited companies and limited liability partnerships this way. We do not email sole traders or partnerships about Copytone unless they ask us to.

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 [Owen to confirm: how long after the 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 [Owen to confirm: the country of the Hetzner data centre].

Some of our providers are based outside the UK, or handle data outside it. When personal data leaves the UK, we rely on a safeguard UK law allows: a country the UK recognises as adequate, the International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. [Owen to confirm with a lawyer: the safeguard for each transfer out of the UK, including any transfer to the business that runs Copytone, which depends on where it is based]

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

How long we keep it

Raw uploads

Deleted [Owen to confirm: how many days after they arrive]. [Owen to confirm: how long the copy of each export with identifying details taken out is kept, now that the raw file is deleted as soon as it is read]

What the studio needs to work

The word counts, the kept sentences, your organisation's rules, and the lines being checked with their scores, suggestions, drafts and changes. Kept while the subscription runs, and deleted [Owen to confirm: how many days after the subscription ends]. [Owen to confirm: what is kept from uploaded emails and documents once the raw file is deleted]

Your account

Kept while your organisation subscribes, and deleted [Owen to confirm: how many days after the subscription ends].

Payment records

As long as the law requires. [Owen to confirm: the period, which depends on where the business is based]

Server logs

[Owen to confirm: how long server logs are kept]

Analytics

[Owen to confirm: how long PostHog keeps analytics data for Copytone]

Emails with us

[Owen to confirm: how long emails are kept]

People we emailed

Deleted [Owen to confirm: how long after the 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

[Owen to confirm: whether there are backups, whether stored data and backups are encrypted, and how long deleted data can stay in a backup]

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 hello@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 scores lines of writing, not 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. PostHog, as described above. [Owen to confirm with a lawyer: whether analytics may run without consent under the cookie rules (PECR), and whether PostHog runs with a cookie or without one]
• 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.

Keeping it safe

Every connection to Copytone is encrypted. 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 hello@copytone.co, or write to [Owen to confirm: the legal name of the business that runs Copytone, any trading name, and its postal address].