Privacy Policy

Accounselor collects the minimum necessary to function:

• Session data — your business description, the questions asked, and your answers. By default this is stored only in your browser's localStorage. Plain text of your input is sent to our API routes when you submit each turn.
• AI requests — when you submit a description or answer, the text is forwarded to a third-party AI provider to generate a response.
• Email address — only if you choose to unlock and receive your plan. We use it to (a) deliver the plan, (b) send up to four follow-up “advisor” emails over 21 days from [email protected] (a check-in two days after, a content email at five days, a soft pitch for the Operator subscription at day 10, and an optional free second check-in at day 21 if you replied to the first), and (c) send a trial-ending reminder if you start an Operator subscription. Every follow-up email carries a one-click unsubscribe link and a List-Unsubscribe header.
• Saved plans — when you unlock or share a plan, we store the generated report, your business description, and your email on our servers for up to 30 days, after which it is automatically deleted.

• No account or registration is required to generate a free plan
• No payment information is stored by us (Stripe handles checkout end-to-end)
• No analytics, tracking pixels, fingerprinting, marketing cookies, or behavioral profiling

We use a small number of strictly-necessary cookies. None are used for analytics or advertising.

• Operator session — set when you sign in. Our authentication library (BetterAuth) stores an opaque session token in a better-auth.session_token cookie, alongside a short-lived better-auth.session_data cookie that caches your signed-in state so pages load without a database round-trip. In production both names carry a __Secure- prefix. Both are HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax, and Secure in production. The session token lasts up to 30 days unless you sign out — at which point both are cleared — while the cache cookie is refreshed roughly every five minutes as you browse.
• Cloudflare Turnstile cookies (e.g. __cf_bm, cf_clearance) — set by Cloudflare on form submissions to distinguish humans from bots. Short-lived (typically 30 minutes for __cf_bm) and governed by Cloudflare's own privacy policy.

These cookies are needed for the site to function (auth + abuse prevention) and are exempt from consent requirements under most privacy regimes (GDPR strictly-necessary, CCPA service-provider). If your browser blocks them, sign-in and form submission will fail.

Your conversation is processed by a third-party AI provider (currently DeepSeek, with Anthropic as a secondary provider for the final report). When you use Accounselor, your input is transmitted to their API to generate responses. Their use of this data is governed by their own privacy policy.

Apart from the saved-plan retention window described above, we do not retain your raw conversation on our servers after the session ends.

The data you provide is used solely to generate your business plan, deliver it, and (if you save or share it) host the plan for 30 days. We do not sell, trade, or share your data with third parties except as described above (AI provider, email provider, payment provider when you upgrade).

We share your personal data only with the service providers that help us run Accounselor, each processing it on our behalf:

• DeepSeek — AI processing of your inputs to generate your advice (primary provider).
• Anthropic — AI processing for the final report (secondary provider).
• Stripe — payment and subscription processing. Stripe is the system-of-record for billing; we do not store card details.
• Our own infrastructure — self-hosted email (Mailcow) and hosting (OVH).

International transfers. To run the service, your inputs and account data may be processed outside your own country — including by AI providers in the United States (Anthropic) and China (DeepSeek), by our payment processor Stripe, and on our hosting and email infrastructure. Where we transfer the personal data of EU/UK residents to a country without a UK or EU adequacy decision, we rely on appropriate safeguards — such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or a recognized transfer framework — where we are legally required to do so. Email [email protected] for details of the safeguards that apply to a specific transfer.

We do not otherwise disclose your personal data except where required by law.

We keep each kind of data only as long as we need it, then delete it on an automated schedule. In detail:

• Browser session data — your in-progress business description, the questions asked, and your answers live in your browser's localStorage and stay there until you clear your browser data or use “Start over.”
• Guest & free plans — a saved or shared plan (the generated report, your business description, and the email you gave us) is automatically deleted 30 days after it is created. Unfinished drafts are removed after 30 days of inactivity, and failed generations after 14 days.
• Operator plan content — while your Operator subscription exists, your saved plans and audit history stay available to you; cancelling on its own deletes nothing. When you delete your Operator account, we schedule erasure for the end of your current paid period, and a background job then erases your personal content in place — the report, your business description, AI output, deep-audit results, your saved answers and session state, the IP address recorded when the plan was created, and any label you added — and scrubs the text of your audit chat messages.
• Anonymized billing shell — after that erasure we keep a minimal, anonymized skeleton (a tombstoned subscription record and an emptied plan row) that still holds your prior email address, solely so we can match a later chargeback or payment dispute to the right account. This shell is permanently deleted 24 months after account deletion.
• Email address & advisor emails — we keep your email address and a record of which advisor follow-up emails we sent, so we can deliver the sequence and honor your choices. Unsubscribing stops all further emails immediately and marks the address as opted-out, which we retain as a suppression record so we do not email you again. Deleting an Operator account erases your email address and this history entirely (apart from the anonymized shell above). If you don't have an account, email [email protected] to have your address erased.
• Marketing / waitlist — if you joined the advisors waitlist, that entry (your email and how you found us) is erased when you delete your Operator account, or on request.
• Sessions & short-lived security data — sign-in sessions expire on their own schedule. Pending email-change requests are removed 7 days after they are used (or 24 hours after they expire unused), and used checkout records after 7 days. Internal abuse-prevention and diagnostic logs (rate-limit counters, error records, and the Stripe webhook de-duplication log) are purged on rolling schedules of up to 90 days.

Payments. We do not store card details. Stripe processes payments and is the system-of-record for billing, invoice, and tax records; it retains them under its own policies and applicable law. Our local billing skeleton exists only to correlate chargebacks and disputes, as described above.

Lawful bases (EU/UK). Where the GDPR applies, we rely on performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) to generate and deliver your plans and run your Operator subscription; our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) for advisor follow-up emails, security and abuse prevention, and keeping the anonymized billing shell for dispute defense; and your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) where required, which you can withdraw at any time.

If you want a plan removed sooner than the windows above, email [email protected] with the share URL.

You can delete your browser-side session at any time using “Start over” or by clearing localStorage. To delete your stored plan, email address, or any other personal data, email [email protected] — we will action requests within 14 days.

Users in the EU/UK have rights under the GDPR including access, rectification, erasure, and portability. California residents have analogous rights under the CCPA.

We do not sell or share your personal information. Accounselor does not sell your personal information, and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA); we have not done so in the preceding 12 months. Because there is no sale or sharing, there is no “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” choice to exercise, and a Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal has nothing to opt out of. California residents keep the rights to know, access, correct, and delete their personal information — email [email protected] to exercise them, and we will not discriminate against you for doing so.

Right to complain. If you are in the UK or EEA and believe we have mishandled your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO, ico.org.uk); in the EEA, the authority for your country of residence. California residents may contact the California Privacy Protection Agency (cppa.ca.gov) or the California Attorney General. We'd appreciate the chance to put things right first — please email [email protected].

Accounselor is intended for business owners and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us personal data, email [email protected] and we will delete it.

All data is transmitted over HTTPS. Stored plans live in a managed Postgres database with row-level security and access limited to server-side API routes. We take reasonable technical measures to protect data in transit and at rest.

We may update this policy as the service evolves. The updated date at the top of this page reflects the latest revision.

Questions or data requests? Email [email protected].