Privacy Policy

Operator and source of the content

The website and applications are developed and operated by Vacilando BV.

The service uses data from the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, maintained by the Union of International Associations (UIA). Encyclopedia data is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.

The short version

• No account or login is required.
• The service does not display advertising.
• Personal data is not sold.
• Users should not include personal, confidential, or sensitive information in their questions.

Information that may be processed

• Questions and conversation context. The text a user submits, together with relevant preceding messages needed to understand the question, is processed to provide an answer.
• Locally stored chat data.The Android and iOS applications store up to 40 chat messages locally on the user's device. The website stores its current chat conversation in the browser's session storage so that it can be preserved while the user navigates within the current browser tab.
• Technical request data. Like most online services, the service and its infrastructure providers necessarily receive technical data such as IP address, user agent, request time, requested route, and response status.
• Pseudonymous abuse-prevention identifiers. A one-way hash derived from the requesting IP address and user agent is used temporarily for rate limiting and repeated-request detection. It is not used to create an advertising profile.
• Aggregate website usage information. The website uses Plausible Analytics to understand aggregate traffic and page usage without advertising cookies or cross-site profiling.
• Contact information. If a user contacts the project, the information included in that message is processed so the project can respond.

How AI questions are processed

Questions and relevant conversation context are transmitted securely over HTTPS to the AskTheFox.org /api/ai endpoint. The endpoint uses the question and context to search relevant Encyclopedia material and, as needed, sends the question, relevant context, and selected public source excerpts to OpenAI.

OpenAI processes this material to create query embeddings and generate AI answers. The resulting answer and its source metadata are then returned to the website or application.

According to OpenAI's API data controls, OpenAI does not use API inputs or outputs to train its models unless the API customer explicitly opts in. OpenAI also states that API abuse-monitoring logs may contain prompts, responses, and associated metadata and are normally retained for up to 30 days, unless longer retention is legally required.

Purposes and legal grounds

Information is processed only as needed to:

• receive a question and provide the requested AI answer;
• retrieve relevant Encyclopedia sources and display source references;
• preserve the user's current conversation locally on their device;
• prevent abuse, enforce rate limits, and protect the availability and security of the service;
• cache recent answers to improve performance and avoid unnecessary repeated AI processing;
• understand aggregate website usage and maintain or improve the service;
• respond to enquiries and comply with legal obligations.

Where the GDPR or similar law applies, these activities are based on providing the functionality requested by the user, Vacilando’s legitimate interests in operating, securing, and improving the service, and compliance with applicable legal obligations.

Retention

• Application chat:up to 40 messages remain on the user's device until they are removed by clearing the chat, clearing the application's storage, or uninstalling the application, subject to the device operating system and any user-controlled backups.
• Website chat: the current conversation is kept in browser session storage. Clearing the chat removes that locally stored conversation. Browser session storage is also normally removed when the browser tab or browsing session ends.
• Rate limiting: the pseudonymous request identifier used for the main rate-limit window normally expires after five minutes. A marker used to detect an immediately repeated question normally expires after 30 seconds.
• Cached AI results: generated answers, warnings, and source metadata may be cached for up to 24 hours. The cache key is derived from a one-way hash of the normalized conversation and does not contain the conversation as plain text.
• OpenAI: API abuse-monitoring data may normally be retained by OpenAI for up to 30 days, unless a different approved retention control applies or longer retention is legally required.
• Analytics: Plausible uses a daily-changing pseudonymous identifier for aggregate visitor measurement. Its rotating salt is deleted every 24 hours; aggregate statistics may be retained for longer.
• Infrastructure records: hosting, security, and cache providers may retain limited technical logs for their configured operational, diagnostic, security, and legal retention periods.
• Contact messages: enquiries are retained only as long as reasonably necessary to answer them and meet any related legal obligations.

Clearing a chat removes the conversation stored locally by the website or application. It cannot retroactively remove information already processed by the API, a temporary cached result, provider security logs, or an OpenAI abuse-monitoring record. Those copies expire according to the periods described above.

Service providers and other recipients

The following providers or categories of provider may process only the information needed for their role:

• OpenAI, for embeddings, answer generation, and API safety and abuse monitoring.
• Vercel and related hosting or security providers, for website and API delivery, content distribution, request routing, security, and operational logging.
• Cache infrastructure providers, for temporary rate-limit records and cached AI results.
• Plausible Analytics, for privacy-oriented aggregate website statistics.
• Apple and Google, when a user obtains or updates the application through their app stores. Their handling of app store account, download, payment, or diagnostic information is governed by their own privacy policies.

Providers may process data in countries other than the user's country. Where required, appropriate contractual or other legal safeguards are used for international transfers.

The service does not sell personal data, share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, or use questions to display advertising.

Security and user choices

The service uses HTTPS encryption in transit and limits the data processed to what is needed for answering questions, maintaining the service, and preventing abuse. No online transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

Do not submit personal, confidential, or sensitive information in a question. This includes passwords, authentication details, financial information, health information, private correspondence, or information about another person that should not be disclosed.

Users can clear the locally stored conversation at any time by using the chat's clear function. Because no account or login is required, Vacilando may not be able to associate pseudonymous technical records or cached results with a particular person without additional information.

User rights

Depending on the user's location and applicable law, users may have rights to request access to, correction of, deletion of, or restriction of their personal data; to object to certain processing; and to receive portable data where applicable. Users may also lodge a complaint with their local data-protection authority. In Belgium, this is the Data Protection Authority.

These rights may be subject to legal limitations. Vacilando may need enough information to verify the request and determine whether relevant personal data can be identified.

Contact

Privacy questions or requests can be submitted through the Encyclopedia contact form. Please identify the message as an AskTheFox.org or “Ask the Fox” privacy request so it can be directed appropriately.

Changes to this policy

This policy may be updated when the service or its providers change.