Privacy policy.

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following categories of information:

• Account information: Email address provided during sign-up via magic link or Google OAuth, and the town you select to ask questions about.
• Subscription data: Billing information processed securely through Stripe. We do not store credit card numbers on our servers.
• Usage data: Questions you ask Townline and the conversation history they belong to. We count questions per account to enforce free-tier limits and surface usage in your account page.
• Technical data: Browser type, IP address, and device information collected automatically for security and performance monitoring.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To provide the Service — answering your questions about your town using AI grounded in official municipal records.
• To process subscription payments and manage your account.
• To send transactional and onboarding emails (e.g. sign-in magic links, billing receipts, occasional product updates).
• To improve the Service through aggregated, anonymized usage analytics.

3. Third-Party Services

Townline AI integrates with the following third-party services, each governed by their own privacy policies:

• Supabase -- Database hosting, user authentication, and data storage.
• Stripe -- Payment processing for subscription billing.
• Anthropic (Claude) -- AI model provider for the Ask Townline chat. Your questions and relevant retrieved passages are sent to Anthropic for processing under their commercial API terms. Anthropic does not use commercial API inputs to train its models.
• Voyage AI -- Text embedding generation used to retrieve relevant municipal records for each question.
• Resend -- Transactional email delivery (sign-in magic links, billing receipts, account notifications).
• Loops -- Email platform used for onboarding and occasional product updates.
• Google (Gemini) -- Server-side transcription of public council and committee meetings when captions are unavailable. Used for indexing only — your queries are not sent to Gemini.
• Google Analytics 4 -- Anonymized usage analytics to help us understand how the Service is used and improve the user experience.

4. Data Retention

Retention varies by data type:

• Account profile (email, selected town): retained while your account is active. On deletion, your profile is anonymized immediately and hard-deleted within 30 days.
• Conversation history: retained while your account is active to power follow-up questions. Deleted within 30 days of account deletion.
• Billing records: retained for up to 7 years for tax and accounting compliance, even after account deletion.
• Audit and security logs: retained for up to 24 months.
• Aggregated analytics (e.g. usage trends with no personal identifiers): may be retained indefinitely.

5. International Data Transfers

Townline's providers store and process data in the United States: Supabase (US East), Anthropic (US), Voyage AI (US), Resend (US), Loops (US), Stripe (US), and Google (US/global). If you access the Service from outside the United States, your data will be transferred to and processed in the US. We do not currently offer a non-US processing region.

6. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures including: encrypted data transmission (TLS), row-level security policies on our database ensuring users can only access their own data, server-side authentication verification, and secure webhook signature validation for payment processing. In the event of a data breach affecting your information, we will notify affected users without undue delay and as required by law.

7. Cookies & Local Storage

Townline AI uses browser cookies for authentication session management (provided by Supabase Auth). We use localStorage to persist your Ask Townline chat history locally on your device.

We use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to collect usage data such as page views, feature adoption, and session duration. GA4 may set cookies on your browser to distinguish unique users and sessions. Under the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), use of GA4 may constitute “sharing” personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising even though we do not sell data and do not use advertising pixels. To opt out of GA4 you may (a) install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, (b) enable the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal in a supported browser — we treat GPC as a valid opt-out request — or (c) email hello.townline@gmail.com with the subject line “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information.”

8. Your California Privacy Rights (CCPA / CPRA)

California residents have the right to:

• Know the specific categories and pieces of personal information we collect about you.
• Access a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate personal information.
• Delete your personal information.
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (see Section 7 for opt-out methods).
• Non-discrimination for exercising any of these rights.

Categories of personal information we have collected in the last 12 months: Identifiers (email address, IP address, account ID, town selection); Customer Records (billing details processed by Stripe — we do not store card numbers); Internet/Network Activity (questions you ask, your conversation history, page views, browser/device metadata).

Sources of personal information: directly from you, from Google (if you sign in via OAuth), and from Stripe (billing status).

Purposes: providing the Service, billing, security, fraud prevention, and product analytics.

Automated decision-making: Townline does not use automated decision-making to evaluate or profile users. AI is used only to answer your questions about public records.

To exercise any right, email hello.townline@gmail.com from the email address associated with your account. We respond within 45 days as required by law.

9. Children's Privacy

Townline AI is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are between 13 and 16 and a California resident, you (or your parent or guardian) have the right under the CCPA to opt in before any sale or sharing of your personal information; we do not currently sell or share data of users under 16.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated via email to registered users at least 30 days before they take effect. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was most recently revised.

11. Contact

For privacy-related inquiries, please contact us at hello.townline@gmail.com.