Privacy Policy

Effective September 21, 2026

This policy explains what The Analyst (operated by PolyApps AI, "we") collects, why, and what you can do about it. We keep it short because we collect little.

1. What we collect

• Account: your email address and a hashed password (we cannot read your password).
• Billing: your card details go directly to Stripe and never touch our servers. We store only Stripe's customer and subscription identifiers, your subscription status and renewal dates.
• Email preferences: whether you opted in to the weekly digest.
• Feeds you add: any custom outlet you connect.
• Anonymous statistics: we count visits to our public pages and the steps of signing up (for example "landing page viewed", "account created", "trial started") to understand what works. These are plain daily counters plus a one-way hash, rotated every day, used only to count unique visitors. It cannot be turned back into your IP address or browser, and it cannot follow you from one day to the next. We store no IP address in these statistics and use no cookies for them. Signup also records a short label of where you came from (such as the website that linked to us).
• Rating disputes: if you send one, we store your text and the optional email you give us.
• Technical data: your IP address and browser details appear in our hosting provider's server logs and in short-lived, in-memory counters used to limit abuse.

What stays on your device: your reading history, saved stories and notification settings (the data behind "My News Bias") are stored in your own browser and are not sent to us.

2. Cookies and similar storage

We use only what the Service needs: a sign-in session cookie, your preferences in local storage, and a service worker cache that lets the app open quickly. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies or analytics scripts.

3. How we use it

• To run your account, sign you in and keep it secure.
• To take payment and manage your subscription.
• To send account emails: email confirmation, password reset, and billing notices such as trial-ending, renewal and failed-payment messages.
• To send the weekly digest, only if you turn it on. You can unsubscribe in one click from any digest.
• To prevent abuse and fix problems.

4. The AI assistant

When you use an AI feature, the text you type and the headlines and summaries of the stories involved are sent to our AI provider (Anthropic, or Google if configured) to generate the answer. We do not store your questions or the answers on our servers. Please do not enter personal, sensitive or confidential information into the assistant.

5. Who we share data with

We do not sell your data. We share only what is needed with the providers that run the Service: Stripe (payments), Resend (sending email), Anthropic or Google (AI answers, when you use them) and our hosting provider. Market prices are requested from Yahoo Finance by our server, not by your browser, so Yahoo does not receive your details; if you click a market headline, you go to Yahoo's site under its own privacy policy. We may disclose information if the law requires it or to protect the Service and its users.

6. How long we keep it

Account data is kept while your account exists. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymise your personal data within 30 days, except records we must keep for tax and accounting (which Stripe also holds). We keep rolling database backups for up to 14 days, so deleted data can remain in a backup until it ages out.

7. Security

Traffic is encrypted (HTTPS), passwords and sign-in links are stored only as one-way hashes, sessions expire, and sign-in and email actions are rate-limited. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password.

8. Your choices and rights

You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, or delete your account, and you can turn off the weekly digest yourself in Settings. Depending on where you live (for example California, or the EU and UK), you may have additional rights, including to object to or restrict processing. Write to support@polyapps-ai.com and we will respond within 30 days. You may also complain to your local data-protection authority.

9. Children

The Service is not for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect data from children.

10. Changes

If we make material changes to this policy we will tell you by email or in the app before they take effect.

11. Contact

Privacy questions or requests: support@polyapps-ai.com.