Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to the Annotated public web application, the Annotated Chrome side-panel extension, and this legal-information website. Annotated is currently offered worldwide as a free beta.

It does not apply to the websites, publishers, media platforms, or identity providers you interact with outside Annotated. Those services are governed by their own privacy policies.

Annotated is operated by Matt Mahood through The CB & Cooper Limited Liability Company, a South Carolina limited liability company.

For questions about this policy, or to make a privacy request, email matt@cbandcoop.com.

Account and identity information

When you create an account, we receive information from your identity provider. Authentication currently uses Google. Account information may include an identity-provider identifier, email address, name, username or public handle, and a profile image supplied by you or by the provider.

X authentication is currently disabled and unconfigured, and is not available. See the conditional disclosure in this section below.

Profile information

Your profile may include your display name, username or public handle, avatar or profile image, and identity details supplied by your sign-in provider. Profile information is generally public.

Annotation and source information

When you create an annotation, we collect the content you submit and the context needed to attribute it. This may include selected article text, source URLs, source titles, publishers, selected media ranges, and your written commentary.

Hosted-media information

If you annotate audio or video, we process the range you selected. Selected hosted media ranges are between 1 and 90 seconds. Only the user-selected excerpt is used as media-processing and transcription input.

Raw captured source media is private, is not offered as a download, and must be deleted before an annotation is successfully published. A hosted-media annotation remains a private draft until processing is complete, the excerpt transcript is ready, and raw-media deletion is confirmed.

Optional recorded audio commentary

You may optionally record spoken commentary to accompany an annotation. Recording is initiated by you. If you record commentary, the recording and any resulting processed output are handled as part of your annotation content.

Comments, follows, and votes

We collect the comments you post, the accounts you follow, and the votes you cast. Comments and aggregate social information may be publicly visible. Your individual follow and voting records are not published as such merely because aggregate counts are displayed.

Communications and support requests

If you email us, we receive your message, your email address, and any information you include, and we keep it as needed to respond and to maintain a record of the request.

Technical, security, and diagnostic information

Operating the service generates technical information. Our hosting and security providers may process an IP address, device and browser characteristics, request and error logs, and security or abuse-prevention signals. An IP address may inherently indicate a broad region, but Annotated does not request precise location and does not intentionally collect or infer your location. We use this information to keep the service running, secure, and reliable.

Conditional disclosure regarding X authentication

X authentication is currently disabled and unconfigured. If X sign-in is enabled later, Annotated may receive an X account identifier, display name, username, profile image, and confirmed email address when X makes those fields available. That information would be used only to authenticate you, establish or restore the correct Annotated account, prevent fraud, and maintain account security.

Annotated does not intend to request access to tweets, direct messages, follows, likes, contacts, advertising information, or permission to publish to X. Annotated does not use X data for advertising or model training. Annotated will update this policy and complete required configuration and testing before making X sign-in publicly available. These practices are conditional and are not active today.

Additional identity providers may be offered later, with appropriate notice and policy updates.

The Annotated Chrome extension is designed to access the active page or to perform a capture that you initiate. It is not designed to collect general browsing history, and it does not continuously read every page you visit or monitor unrelated browsing.

Extension capabilities include:

• a side panel for creating and reviewing annotations;
• active-tab access to the page you are annotating;
• local and session storage for drafts, preferences, and session recovery;
• on-demand scripts that run when you act on a page;
• identity, to sign you in;
• tab capture and offscreen recording, used only when you initiate capture of selected source media; and
• recording capabilities, where applicable, when you initiate optional recorded audio commentary.

Annotated does not continuously monitor your browsing activity. Information collected through the extension is the information described in this policy: what you select, what you write or record, and the source context needed for attribution.

We receive information from:

• you, when you create an account, annotate, comment, record, or contact us;
• your identity provider, when you sign in;
• the pages and media you choose to annotate, limited to the passage or range you selected and its source context; and
• our own systems and service providers, through technical, security, and diagnostic records generated in the course of operating the service.

We use information to:

• create and maintain your account and authenticate you;
• create, process, store, publish, and display your annotations, excerpts, commentary, and comments;
• process and transcribe the excerpt you selected;
• preserve source attribution and original-source links;
• operate social features such as profiles, comments, follows, and votes;
• respond to your questions, support requests, and privacy requests;
• maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse, moderate content, and enforce our Terms;
• diagnose problems, monitor reliability, and improve the service; and
• comply with legal obligations and protect rights, safety, and service integrity.

Where a law such as the GDPR or UK GDPR applies to you, we rely on the following legal bases:

• Contractual necessity — to create and maintain your account and to deliver the service functions you request, including publishing your annotations.
• Legitimate interests — to operate, secure, and improve the service, prevent fraud and abuse, moderate content, and provide support, balanced against your rights and expectations.
• Consent — where an optional feature or your jurisdiction requires it. You may withdraw consent at any time; withdrawal does not affect processing already carried out.
• Compliance with legal obligations — where we are required to retain or disclose information.
• Protection of rights, safety, and service integrity — including vital interests where applicable.

Annotated is a public annotation service. Public profiles, published annotations, attributed excerpts, source links, commentary, comments, and aggregate social information may be publicly visible.

Public content may be indexed, copied, quoted, linked, or reshared by third parties beyond Annotated's control. Deleting content from Annotated does not delete copies that others have already made.

Individual follow and voting records are not published merely because aggregate counts are displayed. Please consider carefully what you include in public content.

Annotated uses AI only to process or transcribe the excerpt you selected. Only the user-selected excerpt is used as media-processing and transcription input.

Annotated does not use user content to train models.

A processed excerpt and an excerpt-only transcript may remain with the annotation until deletion, removal, or the end of the applicable retention purpose.

We use a small number of service providers to run Annotated. They process information only for the relevant service functions described below, and they are governed by their own contractual and privacy terms.

• Supabase — authentication, database services, and storage.
• Google — authentication and cloud-processing infrastructure.
• OpenAI — transcription of selected excerpts.
• Lovable — hosting for this separate legal-information website.
• Other narrowly scoped hosting, security, monitoring, and communications providers that may be added as the service evolves.

We do not claim that every provider holds a specific certification or offers a specific contractual provision. We may also disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with law or valid legal process, to enforce our Terms, to investigate abuse or security incidents, or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or transfer of the service or business, in which case this policy continues to apply to the transferred information until it is updated.

• Annotated does not sell personal information.
• Annotated does not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• Annotated does not use targeted advertising.
• Annotated does not send marketing communications without a separate opt-in. We may still send service and security messages related to your account.

Essential cookies, local storage, or session storage may be used for authentication, security, drafts, preferences, and session recovery. No advertising cookies are intentionally used, and this legal-information website does not intentionally set nonessential cookies.

Blocking or clearing this storage may sign you out or discard unsaved drafts and preferences.

We keep information for as long as needed for the purpose it was collected, and then delete it or retain it only where a legal, security, or dispute-related reason applies.

• Account and profile information is retained while your account is active and for a reasonable period afterward.
• Raw media from abandoned or incomplete uploads is generally deleted after 24 hours.
• Processing may retry for no more than 72 hours, followed by no more than 24 additional hours for a deliberate retry, before raw media is deleted.
• Raw captured source media must be deleted before an annotation is successfully published, and it is never offered as a download.
• A processed excerpt and excerpt-only transcript may remain with the annotation until deletion, removal, or the end of the applicable retention purpose.
• Technical, security, and abuse-prevention records are retained for a limited period appropriate to their purpose.
• Backups are overwritten on a routine cycle, so deleted information may persist briefly in backups after removal from the live service.

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards to protect information. Public clients do not contain privileged database or service credentials. Provider access tokens, signed upload URLs, signed playback URLs, and transient media-delivery URLs are not intentionally exposed publicly or logged.

No system can guarantee absolute security. If you believe your account or content has been compromised, email matt@cbandcoop.com.

Annotated is operated from the United States. Information may be processed in the United States and in other locations where our service providers operate. Laws in those locations may differ from the laws of your home jurisdiction.

Where legally required, appropriate safeguards will be used for international transfers. We do not claim a specific transfer certification or framework.

You may email matt@cbandcoop.com to request, as applicable:

• confirmation of processing;
• access to your information;
• correction of inaccurate information;
• a portable export;
• account deletion;
• content deletion;
• restriction of processing;
• objection to processing;
• withdrawal of consent; and
• appeal of a denied privacy request.

Identity verification may be required. We target completion of verified deletion requests within 30 days. Authorized agents may submit requests where applicable, subject to verification.

Exceptions may apply, including for:

• legal obligations;
• fraud and security records;
• dispute preservation;
• public-content context;
• content already reshared by others; and
• routine backup overwrite.

You may also complain to your applicable local privacy or data-protection authority. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer, an EU or UK representative, or a California agent.

Several U.S. states give residents privacy rights. This section describes our practices for those residents. We do not claim that Annotated necessarily meets every state statute's applicability threshold; where a law applies, we honor it.

Categories collected: identifiers (such as an identity-provider identifier, email address, name, and username), profile and account information, user content (annotations, selected article text, source information, commentary, optional recorded audio commentary, comments), social information (follows and votes), audio or visual information contained in a selected excerpt or recorded commentary, and internet and device activity related to your use of the service (including an IP address processed by hosting and security providers, which may inherently indicate a broad region).

Purposes: providing and securing the service, authenticating users, processing and publishing annotations, transcription of selected excerpts, support, moderation, fraud and abuse prevention, service improvement, and legal compliance.

Categories of recipients: authentication, database, and storage providers; cloud-processing infrastructure providers; transcription providers; hosting, security, monitoring, and communications providers; and, where required, legal or governmental recipients. Public content is also disclosed to the public by design.

No sale or targeted advertising: Annotated does not sell personal information, and does not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Your rights: depending on your state, you may have rights to access or confirm processing, correct inaccuracies, delete personal information, obtain a portable copy, opt out of sale, targeted advertising, or certain profiling, limit use of sensitive personal information, and appeal a denied request. Some rights depend on your jurisdiction. We will not discriminate against you for exercising them. Submit requests and appeals to matt@cbandcoop.com.

If you are in the EEA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, or a jurisdiction with similar law, you may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, and data portability, and the right to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent. Our legal bases are described in section 7.

To exercise these rights, email matt@cbandcoop.com. You may also lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. We have not appointed an EU or UK representative, and this policy does not claim formal certification of compliance with any particular framework.

Annotated is for adults. The minimum age is 18. Annotated is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will terminate it and delete associated information as appropriate. If you believe a minor has created an account, email matt@cbandcoop.com.

Annotated links to original sources and works alongside the websites and media platforms you annotate. Those sites, their publishers, and your identity provider are independent of Annotated and are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. We do not control their practices, and this policy does not apply to them.

We may update this policy as the service evolves. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date above. Material changes are posted prospectively and take effect going forward, not retroactively, and we will provide additional notice where required or appropriate, such as before enabling a new identity provider. Where applicable law requires consent to a material change, we will request your consent before that change applies to you.

Annotated is operated by Matt Mahood through The CB & Cooper Limited Liability Company, a South Carolina limited liability company.