Privacy Policy

What we collect and why

Identity & access

To sign up for Serenity Notes no personal information like an email is needed. Our build platform Expo tracks your device ID, but this information is not connected to any personal information and can't be used to identify you.

When you sign up for a Newsletter, we typically ask for identifying information such as your name and email address. That's just so you can personalize the newsletter, and we can send you updates or other essential information.

When you pay for Serenity Notes, we typically ask for identifying information such as your credit card, name, email address, company information and billing address. That's just so we can send you invoices, updates, or other essential information. By setting up a paid account meta data, like how many notes you have or who you collaborate with, automatically gets connected to your personal information.

We'll never sell your personal info to third parties, and we won't use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.

Billing information

Your credit card is directly handled by our payment processor Paddle and doesn't ever go through our servers. We store a record of the payment transaction and subscription information.

Information we may share

The app does use third parties to provide some of our services. These providers are bound by their Privacy Policies to safeguard that information.

Links to privacy policy of third party service providers used by the app or website

No Tracking

We do not track any information when you visit the website nor do track user behaviour in the application. Be aware that we might analyze the meta data and encrypted data in our database to create anynomized charts and metrics for internal usage and public presentations.

Cookies

We do not have any tracking or marketing cookies.

When signing into the billing account on the website we do set a cookie to authenticate your session.

Voluntary correspondence

When you write Serenity Notes with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including the email address, so that we have a history of past correspondences to reference if you reach out in the future.

We also store any information you volunteer like surveys. Sometimes when we do customer interviews, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We only do so if you give your express consent.

Information we do not collect

We don't collect any characteristics of protected classifications including age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or physical and mental abilities or disabilities. You may provide these data voluntarily, such as if you include a pronoun preference in your email signature when writing into our Support team.

We also do not collect any biometric data.

When we access or share your information

Our default practice is to not access your information. The only times we'll ever access or share your info are:

To provide products or services you've requested. We do use some third-party services to run our applications and only to the extent necessary process some or all of your personal information via these third parties. You can see the list of third-party services we use above in the section "Information we may share".
To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your account to help you with a Support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding.
To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. Accessing a customer's account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We have an obligation to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us. We do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we do discover you are using our products for a restricted purpose, we will report the incident to the appropriate authorities.
When required under applicable law. If the appropriate law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring we share data, we have to comply. Otherwise, we flat-out reject requests from local and federal law enforcement when they seek data. And unless we're legally prevented from it, we'll always inform you when such requests are made.

How we secure your data

Most of your data e.g. notes and contact names is end-to-end encrypted and can't be decrypted by us. In addtion there is unencrypted meta data e.g. creation datetime of a note update in our database since it needs to be ready to send to you when you need it. The database backups are also encrypted. All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your app or browser. We cannot guarantee absolute security, but we try our best.

Your rights with respect to your information

At Serenity Notes, we apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Currently some of the most privacy-forward regulations in place are the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) in the US. Serenity Notes recognizes all of the rights granted in these regulations, except as limited by applicable law. These rights include:

Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
Right to Correction. You have the right to request correction of your personal information.
Right to Erasure / “To be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, all of our service providers. Fulfillment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using Serenity Notes because our applications may then no longer work. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account.
Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority. To identify your specific authority or find out more about this right, EU individuals should go to https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en (opens in a new tab).
Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of sale of personal information. (Again: we never have and never will sell your personal data).
Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
Right to not be subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object and prevent any decision that could have a legal, or similarly significant, effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited, however, if the decision is necessary for performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
Right to Non-Discrimination. This right stems from the CCPA. We do and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights (such as the right “to be forgotten”) may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.

Many of these rights can be exercised by signing in and directly updating your account information. If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us hi@serenity.re or at Nikolaus Graf, Johann Knoll Gasse 9, 1210, Vienna, Austria. To identify your specific authority to file a complaint or find out more about GDPR, EU individuals should go to https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en (opens in a new tab).

What happens when you delete data your user account

When you delete your user account all your data will be removed from our database. This includes encrypted as well as unencrypted data. Data that is encrypted and already has been sent and decrypted by collabrators can't be removed by us.

We also have some backups of our application databases, which are kept for up to another 30 days. In total, when you trash things in our applications, they are purged within 90 days from all of our systems and logs.

When your paid account is cancelled we are keep the information about your subscription and invoices. In the future we plan to also automatically clean up this data.

Location of Site and Data

Our products and other web properties are operated in the European Union. If you are located in the United States or elsewhere outside of the European Union, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to the European Union. By using our site or app, participating in any of our services and/or providing us with your information, you consent to this transfer.

Updates to this Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time and release it on this page. Thus, you are advised to review this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of our apps and website confirms your acceptance of our updated Privacy Policy.

This policy is effective as of 2023-12-23

Contact Us

If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us at hi@serenity.re.

This Privacy Policy has been adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies (opens in a new tab) / CC BY 4.0 (opens in a new tab)