Privacy Policy

1. Overview

The Brief ("we," "us," or "our") is an AI-powered news briefing platform. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding that data.

2. Data We Collect

Account Information

When you sign up, we collect your email address and display name through our authentication provider (Supabase Auth). If you sign in with a third-party provider (e.g., Google), we receive your name and email from that provider.

User Preferences

We store your chosen topics, preferred news sources, brief style preferences (length, tone), theme setting (light/dark), and font size preference.

Usage Data

• Bookmarked articles
• Saved briefings and brief history
• Reading history (which articles you've viewed)

Technical Data

• IP address (used for rate limiting; not stored persistently)
• Browser type and version (collected by Sentry for error tracking)
• Error and performance data (collected by Sentry)

Local Storage

We use browser localStorage to store your theme preference and authentication session token. These are not transmitted to our servers beyond normal authentication flows.

3. How We Use Your Data

• Generate briefings: Your topic and source preferences determine which articles are fetched and summarized.
• AI processing: Article titles, descriptions, and excerpts are sent to Google Gemini to generate your briefings. We do not send your personal information to Google Gemini — only article content.
• Caching: Generated summaries are cached (in-memory and in our database) to improve performance. Cache entries expire after 6 hours.
• Error monitoring: We use Sentry to track errors and performance issues. Sentry may collect your IP address, browser information, and anonymized usage data.
• Rate limiting: IP addresses are used for in-memory rate limiting to prevent abuse. They are not stored persistently.

4. Third-Party Services

We rely on the following third-party services to operate The Brief:

• Supabase — Authentication and database hosting (stores your account, preferences, bookmarks, and briefs).
• Google Gemini — AI model used to generate briefing summaries from news article content.
• NewsAPI — Source of news articles aggregated into your feed.
• Sentry — Error tracking and performance monitoring.
• Vercel — Application hosting and deployment.

Each of these services has its own privacy policy. We encourage you to review them.

5. Data Sharing

We do not sell your personal data. We do not share your data with third parties except as described in Section 4 (services required to operate the platform) or when required by law.

When you share a briefing via a share link, the summary text and associated topics are stored and made publicly accessible via that link. Shared briefs do not contain your name or account information.

6. Data Retention

• Summary caches expire after 6 hours.
• Shared briefs are stored until manually deleted or expired.
• Your account data, preferences, bookmarks, and brief history are retained as long as your account exists.
• Sentry retains error data according to its own retention policies (typically 90 days).

7. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights:

• Access: Request a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Correction: Update or correct inaccurate data.
• Deletion: Request deletion of your account and all associated data.
• Portability: Request an export of your data in a machine-readable format.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at the email address below.

8. Security

We use row-level security policies on all user database tables, enforce HTTPS, and apply security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security. API routes are rate-limited to prevent abuse.

9. Children's Privacy

The Brief is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have collected such information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Continued use of The Brief after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or want to exercise your data rights, please contact us via the in-app bug report form or email us at privacy@ai-brief.io.