Privacy Policy
This policy explains what Pingen, operated by Dawson Geist, a sole proprietor doing business as Pingen ("we", "us"), collects about you, why, and who else sees it. In short: only what's needed to run your account; no advertising, no analytics, no tracking cookies; we don't sell personal data; and the language models that power Pingen run on our own computer, so nothing you type is sent to an AI company.
Pingen is offered to people in the United States only.
What we collect
- Account: your username, your email address, a one-way hash of your password (we can't read your password), your plan and its status, when you signed up and last signed in, and whether you're an operator.
- Your work: boards, pins, notes, outlines, stories and assistant answers you create. They're private to your account.
- Alerts: your alert settings, what you follow, and a record of the alerts and emails we sent you.
- Reports: when you report a relationship or a match as wrong, what you reported and that it came from your account.
- Searches: the claims you search are stored in our application's database without your account id, to cache the models' verdicts and count how often a claim is searched. To count different people, each search keeps a short code computed from your account with a secret key. That code is pseudonymous, not anonymous: we can't read your account from it, but someone holding our key could check whether a given account made a search. A claim is listed as a "popular search" for others only after at least three different people have searched it. See also technical logs below: they can link a search to an IP address for 7 days.
- Usage: how many seconds of language-model time your account used per day (for plan limits and capacity), plan and board events (for example a plan change or a board unlocked), and which guided tours you've seen.
- Payments: handled by Stripe and Link; we never see your card number. Link collects your payment details and email at checkout. We store your Stripe customer and subscription ids, your plan and the subscription's status.
- Technical logs: our web proxy records each request: IP address, time, the address requested (which includes the text of searches), and browser type. We use them to protect the service from abuse and to fix problems, and they are deleted after 7 days. Our application doesn't keep its own request logs.
- Cookies: one sign-in cookie, needed to keep you signed in. No tracking or advertising cookies. A few display preferences are kept in your browser's local storage. Because we don't track you across sites, there's nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to turn off.
Language models and AI
Stance verdicts, summaries, board stories, the board assistant and entity matching are produced by models that run on our own computer. Your searches, boards, notes and questions are not sent to any outside AI provider, and we don't use them to train or fine-tune models.
People named in articles and public records
Pingen also handles information about people who don't use it: the people and organizations named in news articles and in public records. We collect it for research and reporting on public affairs, and we don't sell it or use it for advertising.
- News articles from openly available pages, and facts about people and organizations from Wikidata. Names that appear in the articles are matched to entities automatically; a name mentioned often can get its own page listing those articles.
- Court records from CourtListener (Free Law Project): for a new case, only the parties we track (organizations), the court, the docket number, the type of suit and the judge. The full text of court opinions that name an organization we track is kept and searchable; opinions are public, and they name the people in the case.
- Company filings (SEC): officers, directors and large shareholders who report trades, and executives' pay as companies report it.
- Government and politics: members of Congress and state legislatures and their committees, bills and votes; campaign money between committees and candidates (never individual donors); lobbying and foreign-agent registrations (organizations only, never individual lobbyists or agents); nonprofit returns (people only when they are public figures); federal contracts; Federal Register documents.
- Treasury sanctions lists (OFAC): an entry is shown only when it matches an organization, or a person with a Wikidata entry whose name, birth year and citizenship all match. Other listed people are not stored.
Matching is automatic and can be wrong. Anyone can flag a record shown on the wrong entity (the ⚑ button), and we review each report. If you are named in something Pingen shows and want a wrong match corrected, or want us to remove or limit something about you, email dawson@pingen.ai. We'll answer within 30 days. We weigh the request against the public interest in the record or article: we always fix a wrong match, and we'll consider removing other material, such as a court opinion naming a private person in a matter of no public interest.
How we use it
To run the service for you: sign-in, your boards and alerts, your plan and billing, fair sharing of capacity between users, security, and fixing problems. We don't use your data for advertising and we don't sell or "share" it (as California law uses that word, for cross-site advertising).
Who else sees it
Only these, for the purpose given, and no one else unless the law requires it (for example a valid court order) or it's needed to protect the service or people from harm:
- Stripe and Link (payments): see Stripe's privacy policy.
- Resend (sending our emails): your email address and each message's content, for example an alert's article titles. See Resend's privacy policy.
- Akamai (Linode), which hosts our web proxy: all traffic to the site passes through it, and the 7-day technical logs are kept there. Account data and your work are not stored there.
- CrowdSec, a shared security blocklist: the IP address, time and type of attack when an address attacks the service. Ordinary visits are not shared.
Where it's kept, and security
Your account and your work are kept on our own computer in the United States, which isn't reachable from the internet except through the proxy above. We protect it with encrypted connections (HTTPS), salted one-way password hashing, an encrypted disk, encrypted backups, sign-in rate limits, access limited to the operator, and a weekly security audit. Backups are kept on an encrypted drive for up to 12 months. If a breach exposes your personal information, we'll tell you without unreasonable delay, and as the law requires.
How long
- Account data, your work and alerts: while your account exists.
- After you delete your account: removed at once from the live service; copies leave our backups as they age out (up to 12 months).
- Reports you filed: kept for the review record, without your account, after you delete it.
- Plan and board event counts: kept for our records under a random code, not your account, after you delete it.
- Technical logs: 7 days. Search counts: kept, without your account.
- Articles and public records: kept as part of the archive while they're useful for research; a record is removed when its source withdraws it (for example a delisting from a sanctions list ends that relationship) or after a request we accept.
- Emails: Resend keeps its own copies for a limited time under its policy.
Your rights and how to use them
- Access and portability: on your account page, Download my data gives you everything we hold about your account as one file (JSON), which you can take elsewhere.
- Deletion: on your account page, Delete my account removes your account and everything you made, at once; a paid plan is cancelled with it.
- Correction: you can change your email address and password on your account page. For anything else, email us.
- Objection and limits: you can turn off alert emails in your alert settings, and ask us to stop any other processing you object to.
- Opt-out of sale, sharing or targeted advertising: we don't do any of these, so there's nothing to opt out of.
Email dawson@pingen.ai for anything you can't do on the account page, or if you can't sign in. We'll confirm the request comes from the account's owner (usually by email to the account's address), and answer within 30 days (45 at most, if we tell you we need longer). You can ask through an authorized agent. If we turn a request down, we'll say why, and you can ask us to reconsider by replying with "appeal". We won't treat you differently for using any of these rights.
Children
Pingen isn't for people under 18, and we don't knowingly collect their data. If you think a child has an account, email us and we'll delete it.
Changes
We'll post changes here and, for material ones, tell you by email or on your account page before they take effect.
Contact
Dawson Geist, a sole proprietor doing business as Pingen
dawson@pingen.ai