I'm Anton Shubin, and I run this website and the demo of Seed at app.seedsaas.com so you can try it. This page says what each keeps about you and why.
This website
seedsaas.com sets no cookies. The server keeps request logs, with your IP address, to run and fix the site. If you subscribe, it keeps your email address and when you confirmed it.
The blog and its RSS feed work the same way and keep nothing more. A post's pictures may load from another site, which then sees your IP address, as any site you visit does.
Visitor statistics
This website counts visits with Umami, which I host myself, so the numbers reach no other company. It sets no cookies and stores nothing that names you: no IP address, no email address, and nothing that follows you to other sites.
For each page it records the address of the page, the site you came from, your browser, operating system, device type, screen size and language, your country, region and city, worked out from your IP address, and how fast the page loaded. It also counts clicks on the main buttons and links, newsletter sign-ups, plans chosen on the pricing page and how much of the video was watched.
If your browser sends Do Not Track, nothing is counted. Known bots are not counted. The page a newsletter link opens is not counted, so the link's code never reaches the statistics. The demo counts nothing.
What the demo stores
- Your account: the username, the password as a salted hash only (never the password itself), the email address and the name if you add them, the profile picture if you upload one, and the second-factor secret if you turn it on. A replaced or removed picture is deleted from the app's file store, at once or within a day.
- If you try the app without an account: a guest account, with no address and no password. Its sign-ins are recorded like any other account's. To keep one network from making more than five an hour, the server counts new guest accounts per network address for an hour. A guest account that stays empty is deleted after 7 days, and one unused for a year is deleted with everything in it.
- What you create: groups, who is in them, invitations, notes, their tags and the images and PDFs attached to them. Attached files are kept in the app's own file store. A removed file is deleted from it, at once or within a day.
- A record of each sign-in, with the time, your IP address and your browser's user agent, and a record of changes with the time, so problems and break-ins can be traced.
- Each device you are signed in on: a device name taken from your browser's user agent, your IP address with its last part hidden, and when it was last used. Your profile lists them and lets you sign the others out.
- Your display preferences: the theme, the region format, the time zone and the clock you pick on your profile, so every device you sign in on shows dates the same way, and which widgets of a group's overview you hid and in what order you put them. The time zone and region format of the device you first signed in on are kept too, as the ones you signed up with. The operators of the demo see your preferences and that first time zone on your account; deleting the account deletes them.
- What the people in your groups see of you: everyone in a group sees your name, your profile picture, your role there and the group's notes. The group's owner and its admins also see the address you sign in with and when you were last active.
- A group's activity log: who did what in the group and when. The group's owner and its admins can read it.
- Your notifications inside the app. One you have read is deleted 90 days later.
- API tokens, if you create any: the name, the group, what the token may do, when it expires and when it was last used. The token itself is kept only as a keyed hash, and an expired token is deleted 30 days after it expired.
- Your browser's push address, only if you allow notifications. Turning them off removes it.
- Your email address, if you subscribe to the newsletter.
- If billing is on and you choose a paid plan, Stripe takes the payment. The demo keeps only Stripe's customer and subscription numbers, never your card.
Mail, such as sign-in codes, reset links, invitations and the newsletter, goes out through an email provider. The servers keep request logs to run and fix the service. If an error tracker is set up, the app and the server send it a report when they crash; the app's report carries the page's address without anything after the ? and without an invitation's token.
Cookies and your browser
The demo sets two cookies when you sign in. Signing out removes them; otherwise they last as long as the session: two months, or for a guest account one year, counted again from each day you use it.
- A signed session cookie that scripts cannot read. It keeps you signed in.
user_id, which holds your account number and which the app's scripts can read, so the app knows who is signed in before it asks the server.
The demo has no advertising cookies, no analytics and no tracking. So that the app opens without a network, it also keeps in your browser's own storage: who is signed in, a copy of your notes and groups, the group you last selected, the position the realtime connection reached, so it picks up where it left off, whether you dismissed the offer to install the app, and the device's time zone if you chose to keep yours instead. Signing out forgets that zone.
What it does not do
It does not sell your data and shows no ads. Outside the app, your data goes only to the providers named above. Inside it, the people in your groups see what is listed above.
A copy of your data
To get a copy of your data, choose Download my data in your profile. The app prepares a ZIP of JSON and CSV files with your profile, settings, sign-in methods, sessions, the groups you belong to, the notes and tags you wrote in them and the list of files you attached, and tells you by e-mail and in the app when it is ready. You can ask for one file a day, and each file is deleted after 7 days. It holds nothing other people wrote. The owner of a group can also export the whole group to a file from the group's page.
Do not keep anything important in the demo: it is a demo, and its data may be reset.
Deleting your data
You can delete your account from your profile in the app. It asks for your password, and for your authenticator code if 2FA is on. The account is hidden at once and deleted for good 7 days later; signing in during those 7 days brings it back. A group you own that other people still use, or a paid plan that is not cancelled, stops the deletion until you hand the group over or cancel the plan.
Deleting the account removes the groups you own with their notes and attached files, your sessions, your profile and settings, and your push addresses. What you wrote in a group someone else owns stays there, shown as written by "Deleted user". To leave the newsletter, use the unsubscribe link in any of its mails.
Questions
Ask through antonshubin.com or an issue on GitHub.