Birchnote Privacy Policy
Effective date: [EFFECTIVE DATE]
This policy explains what personal data Birchnote collects, why, where it is kept, for how long, and what rights you have. It applies to the website birchnote.ch, the web app, and the Birchnote apps for Windows and Android.
1. Who is responsible
The controller of your personal data is [OPERATOR NAME], [COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE] ("we", "us").
Contact for any privacy question or request: hello@birchnote.ch.
2. What we collect
Account data. Your email address, the name you enter at sign-up, your interface language and time zone, and the dates you created the account, confirmed your email and last signed in. Your password is never stored: we keep only a salted scrypt hash.
Your content. Notes, notebooks, tags, saved searches, shortcuts, settings, version history (paid plans), and the files you attach. To make attachments searchable, our server extracts text from images (OCR) and PDFs and stores it with the attachment. This processing happens on our own server; your files are not sent to any third party for it.
Devices and sessions. For each device you sign in on: a random device ID, a device name (on the web it is built from your browser and operating system, e.g. "Chrome · Windows"), platform, app version and when it was last active. For each session: the time it was created and last used, and the first 255 characters of your browser's User-Agent string.
Sharing. If you share a note or notebook, we store the email addresses you invite and the role you give them. If someone asks you for access, we store their request and the optional message (up to 500 characters).
IP addresses. We do not store IP addresses in our database. To stop password guessing and abuse, we keep a one-way hash of the IP address or email together with a request counter; these records are deleted within 2 days. Our web server does not write access logs.
What we do not collect. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixels in emails, no third-party scripts, no fonts or libraries loaded from external CDNs.
3. Why we process it (legal bases)
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Providing the service: account, storage, sync between devices, search, sharing, import and export | account data, content, devices, sessions, sharing data | performance of the contract (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Service emails: confirming your address, password reset, sharing invitations, access requests, import results, account deletion | email, name | performance of the contract |
| Security and abuse prevention: rate limits, session management, device limits | hashed IP/email, sessions, devices | our legitimate interest in keeping the service and accounts safe (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Backups and recovery after failures | everything stored on the server | legitimate interest in not losing your data |
| Complying with the law and answering lawful requests | as required | legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
We do not sell your data, do not use it for advertising, and do not use your notes to train any AI model. We do not read your notes, except when strictly necessary to fix a problem you report and you ask us to, or when required by law.
4. Cookies and local storage
We use only strictly necessary cookies, so no consent banner is needed:
| Name | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| notes_session | keeps you signed in (HttpOnly, Secure) | 60 days |
| bn_lang | remembers the language you chose | 1 year |
The web app also keeps data in your browser's local storage: a device ID, your basic account info (so the app can start offline), your language, and a local copy of your notes database for offline work. The desktop and Android apps keep a similar local copy on the device. Signing out of a device or removing it from your account deletes that local copy.
5. Who else processes data
- Infomaniak Network SA (Geneva, Switzerland): hosts our server and sends our emails. Your data is stored in Infomaniak data centres in Switzerland.
- Let's Encrypt (ISRG, USA): issues our HTTPS certificates. It receives no personal data about you.
- People you share with: they see the notes and notebooks you share with them. Anyone who has a public link to a note can open it; such pages are excluded from search engines.
We will add payment providers to this list before paid plans start, and tell you about it.
6. Where data is stored and international transfers
The live service runs in Switzerland. Switzerland is recognised by the European Commission as providing adequate data protection.
An encrypted-in-transit backup copy is also kept on equipment controlled by us in [COUNTRY WHERE THE BACKUP PC IS]. [IF THIS COUNTRY IS NOT IN THE EU/EEA AND HAS NO ADEQUACY DECISION, DESCRIBE THE SAFEGUARD HERE, OR MOVE THE BACKUP.]
7. How long we keep data
| Data | Kept |
|---|---|
| Account and content | while your account exists |
| Notes in the Trash | until you delete them forever or delete your account |
| Sessions | until you sign out, or 60 days of inactivity |
| Email confirmation / password reset links | 24 hours / 1 hour, then deleted the next day |
| Pending sharing invitations | 30 days |
| Rate-limit records (hashed) | up to 2 days |
| Export files you create | 7 days |
| Server backups | up to 8 weeks |
| Off-site backup copies | up to 12 months |
When you delete your account, all your notes, attachments, settings and sessions are deleted from the live service immediately and cannot be restored. Copies remain only in backups until those backups expire (see the table above); we do not restore deleted accounts from them.
8. Security
All connections use HTTPS. Passwords are hashed with scrypt; session and one-time tokens are stored only as hashes; links to attachments are short-lived and signed. Backups are readable only by the system administrator.
Your notes are not end-to-end encrypted: they are stored on our server in a form the server can read, which is what makes server-side search, OCR and sharing possible. Do not store information in Birchnote that you would not trust to a provider at this level of protection.
9. Your rights
Under the GDPR and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP) you can:
- get a copy of your data: use Settings → Export (whole account in ENEX, Markdown or HTML), or write to us;
- correct your data: most of it you can edit in the app;
- delete your data: Settings → Account → Delete account, or write to us;
- restrict or object to processing based on legitimate interest;
- receive your data in a portable format (the export above);
- lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: in Switzerland the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC, edoeb.admin.ch), or the authority of your EU country.
We answer requests within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm the request from the email address of the account.
10. Children
Birchnote is not intended for children under 16. If you are under 16, use it only with the consent of a parent or guardian. If we learn that a child under 16 created an account without such consent, we will delete it.
11. Changes
If we change this policy, we will publish the new version on this page with a new effective date. If the change is significant, we will also notify you by email or in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect.