What we collect, and why.

Who is responsible for your data

Topic Squad (topicsquad.com and app.topicsquad.com) is operated by Local Ventures and Investments LLC, trading as ratio.dev, of 5764 N Orange Blossom Trl, PMB 91711, Orlando, FL 32810, United States. We decide what is collected and why, and we are the people to hold to account for it. You can reach us at tony@ratio.dev.

What we collect

If you create an account

• Account details: your email address. If you sign in with Google, Google also gives us your name and profile picture. We never see your Google password or anything else in your Google account.
• Sign-in sessions: when you sign in we record the session with your IP address and browser type, so you stay signed in and so we can spot misuse.
• Your questions and answers: the conversations you have, the answers and quotes we show you, and any feedback you give on an answer.
• Sign-up checks: to stop people claiming free questions over and over, we keep a simplified form of your email address and a scrambled code (a keyed hash) made from your network's IP address, not the address itself.
• Topic requests: squads you request and the requests you vote for. Other signed-in users see the text of a request, but not who wrote it.
• Your plan and usage: which plan you're on and how many questions you've used. Card details go straight to Stripe and never reach us.

When you visit any page

• Analytics: Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views, the page or site you came from, your rough location and your kind of device and browser. It uses no cookies and doesn't follow you across sites.
• Logs and error reports: Cloudflare, who run our servers, record request data including IP addresses for a short time to keep the service running and stop abuse. When something breaks, an error report with the technical details of the failed request goes to Sentry.

We don't run advertising, build profiles, sell or rent your information, or make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

Why we use it

• To run your account: sign you in, answer your questions, keep your history, and count your questions against your plan.
• To take payment for paid plans and send you account and billing emails.
• To keep the service secure and stop abuse, such as bots and automated scraping.
• To understand whether the site works and whether answers are good, using page counts and the feedback you give.

If you're in the UK or the European Economic Area, our legal bases are: performing our contract with you (your account, questions and billing); our legitimate interests in running a secure, working service (security, sign-up checks, logs, analytics and error reports); and legal obligations (tax and accounting records).

What happens when you ask a question

First, your question (and your previous question, if it's a follow-up) goes to TypeSafe, which checks that it's a real question about the squad's topic. The text of a topic request gets a similar check. We don't send your name, email address or account ID.

Answers are written by AI models working from the transcripts of the squad's public videos. To get an answer, we send your question and the earlier messages in that conversation to Blort, the service that holds the transcripts and runs the AI models. Blort uses AI model providers, such as Anthropic's Claude models, to write the answer. We don't send your name, email address or account ID with your question.

Because your question itself is sent, please don't put sensitive personal details in it. Blort's copy of a conversation is deleted when you delete the conversation, or after 30 days without activity. Our copy stays in your history until you delete it.

We don't use your questions to train AI models.

If you share an answer

Sharing is your choice. It makes that question, its answer and its quotes public: anyone with the link can read them, and the page doesn't show who asked. We count how many times the link is viewed. Stop sharing whenever you like, and the link stops working. Please don't share an answer if your question contains something personal.

Who else handles it

We use a small number of companies to run Topic Squad. They process data on our instructions and may not use it for their own purposes.

• Cloudflare: hosting, sign-in emails, the bot check on the sign-in form (Turnstile), page analytics, and server logs.
• Neon: hosts our main database (accounts, conversations and usage).
• Blort, and the AI model providers it uses: process your questions to write answers, as described above.
• TypeSafe: checks questions and topic requests, as described above.
• Autumn: manages plans and question allowances. It receives your email address and account ID.
• Stripe: takes payments and handles your card details under its own privacy policy.
• Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google.
• Sentry: receives error reports when something goes wrong.

When our mobile apps launch, purchases made in them go through Apple or Google and are managed by RevenueCat. We'll update this page before that happens.

We're based in the United States, and most of our providers are US companies, so your information is processed there. If you're in the UK or the European Economic Area, that's a transfer out of your region, and we make it under the safeguards the law requires, such as standard contractual clauses.

Cookies and browser storage

• The website sets no cookies. It keeps your light or dark choice in your browser's local storage.
• The app sets one sign-in cookie, which keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. It's essential, so we don't ask for consent.
• Cloudflare Turnstile, the bot check on the sign-in form, and Stripe's checkout pages may set their own essential cookies.

How long we keep it

• Conversations: until you delete them or your account. Blort's copy goes after 30 days without activity.
• Account details and sign-up checks: while your account is open. When you delete it, we delete your details and conversations within 30 days. Topic requests stay, without your name, so their votes still count.
• Billing records: as long as tax and accounting law requires, which can be up to seven years.
• Logs and error reports: a short period, usually weeks.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy;
• correct anything that's wrong;
• delete it;
• restrict what we do with it, or object to it;
• send it to you, or to someone else, in a portable form.

You can delete individual conversations in the app. For anything else, including deleting your account, email tony@ratio.dev. We'll deal with it within one month, free of charge.

If you're in California, the CCPA gives you the right to know what we've collected, to have it deleted or corrected, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. There's nothing to opt out of: we don't sell or share personal information as the CCPA defines those terms. We won't treat you differently for using any of these rights.

If you're in the UK or the European Economic Area, you can also complain to your data protection authority if you're unhappy with how we've handled a request.

Security

Everything is served over HTTPS. Sign-in uses email links or Google, so we hold no passwords. Access to user data is limited to the people who need it, and we keep the number of places your data exists small.

Children

Topic Squad isn't meant for anyone under 16, and we don't knowingly collect information from them. If you think a child has given us their details, email us and we'll delete them.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that affects you, the date at the top changes too. We'll tell account holders about significant changes by email or in the app before they take effect.