Privacy Notice

Before you send us anything

Remove names, personal data, prices and confidential project details from any enquiry text you paste. The preliminary audit is not the place for material you would not want leaving your organisation.

Who is responsible for this data

Specify decides what is collected here and why, which makes Specify the controller of it under the GDPR. Specify is a trading name. The business is not yet incorporated, so there is no registered company name, company number or registered office to publish, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. This section will name the entity as soon as one exists.

Write to tpg@specify.digital about anything in this notice, including a request to see, correct or delete what we hold. Two founders read that address and one of them answers.

What is collected

• Contact details you supply when you write to us or apply to the founding-partner programme: name, work email, company, optional website and role.
• If you send a consulting brief, also: a phone number if you give one, any links you paste, what you want help with, the systems you use today, your timing, the kind of engagement and number of hours you have in mind, who takes part on your side, and whether you want a confidentiality or written agreement first.
• The enquiry text you submit, exactly as you wrote it.
• Your consent selections.
• If you join the founding-partner list: your work email and how you describe what you sell.
• If you apply to be a founding partner: your company, the request you describe, your answers about how enquiries reach you, why you would be a valuable partner, and what you would use the credit for.
• The name and role of the person you nominate as able to approve what your business can deliver. If that is not you, they have not visited this site, so tell them their details were shared and that they can ask us to remove them.
• If you send a technical, security or procurement question: your name, work email, role and organisation, the category you choose, the question itself, and any decision or deadline behind it.
• If you ask to see a demonstration: the website you name, your company's name if you give it, the email address we send the confirmation link and, later, the demonstration to, and when you first open the demonstration from that email, and the language of the page you used, so that those emails are written in it. If you answer the questions about your business, also your trade, what your customers do when they order, the goal you pick and the sentence about it as you leave it. With the request we keep which page of this site you first arrived on, the campaign named in the link that brought you there, if there was one, and which button took you to the form. These name a page or a campaign, never you. The request is kept as any other enquiry to us.
• If you tell us a demonstration store we built for your business is wrong, or ask us to take it down: your name, your email, whether it is a correction or a take-down, what you tell us, and which store it is about. A take-down request is read by one of the founders, not handled by an automatic process. The request is kept as any other enquiry to us.
• If you answer the question at the foot of a page we built to show your business its demonstration store: whether the demonstration was good, fine or bad, anything you write about what it was missing, a score out of ten if you give one, and which store it was about. It is not linked to your name or email address.
• If you write to us as an investor: your name, work email, firm, role and location, the type of investor you are, the stage and cheque size you work at, the sectors you cover, a profile link, how you came across us, and what you tell us about your interest, what you could contribute and what you want to ask.
• If you create a store: the store's name and web address, the country and currency it trades in, a contact email we send a code to and ask you to enter back, your acceptance of the terms, and the identifier of the store that was created. If you chose a plan on our pricing page first, also that plan and whether you meant to pay monthly or yearly, so that it is already selected when you come to pay. If the link you followed came from a demonstration store we built for your business, also which store that was, so that we can offer what we built to your new store and count that the demonstration led to it. With the sign-up we keep which page of this site you first arrived on, the campaign named in the link that brought you there, if there was one, and which button took you to sign up. These name a page or a campaign, never you.
• If you create a store, or confirm your email address to start one: which of our service emails we sent you and when, and, if you unsubscribe, your email address, which email you unsubscribed from and when.
• If you work on a store in the Specify admin: for each screen of the guided setup, how many times it was opened, roughly how long it was worked on and whether it was finished, and for pages, products and specifications, how many times something was saved and how often the same thing was saved again within a few minutes. This is counted for the store, not for the person, and never includes what you type, what you changed or which item it was. Saves made by the assistant are not counted.
• If you tell us about Specify from inside the admin: what you write in its feedback form; your answer when it asks how a feature is working or how likely you are to recommend Specify, and anything you add; and, if you say why you are cancelling, the reason you choose and anything you write. Each is kept with your store, your account and when you sent it. All of it is optional, and the people who work on your store can see it too.
• If you write to us while Specify's input window is open: what you write, up to five times per store in each window, kept with your store but not with you. If you open something you wrote for follow-up, it is also linked to your account, for people at Specify only, until 60 days after the window closes or until you take it back. The people who work on your store can see what the store sent, but not who sent it.
• If you use the assistant in the Specify admin: each conversation, kept with your store and your account. That is everything you write to it, its replies, and what it reads from your store or proposes to change there along the way. For each conversation we also keep when it took place, which screen it started from, how many steps it took and what it cost, none of which includes anything that was said. The people who work on your store can see its conversations.
• If you send an unsolicited application: your name, email, where you are, your current education or role, any links you supply, and your written answers about what you would add, one piece of your work, and whether you can work on site.
• Standard technical logs produced by hosting.

We do not ask for special category data, meaning health, racial or ethnic origin, religion, political opinion, trade union membership, sex life, sexual orientation, genetic or biometric information. Do not put any of it in free text. If it arrives anyway we delete it rather than keep it.

Why it is collected, and on what legal basis

Each purpose names the lawful basis it relies on. Where the basis is consent you can withdraw it, and where the basis is our legitimate interest you can object.

• To assess a consulting brief or a founding-partner application, and to reply to you. Basis: taking steps at your request before entering a contract.
• To tell you when we open your sector, if you joined the founding-partner list. Basis: your consent. Withdraw it by replying to any message from us, or by writing to the address above.
• To consider an application for work and reply to it, including the ones we decline. Basis: taking steps at your request before entering a contract. Applications are not used for anything else and are not shared outside the two founders.
• To understand where Catalogue Blind Spots and Capability Gaps are commercially significant across early enquiries. Basis: our legitimate interest in learning which problems are worth building for. This is done on aggregated and redacted material, and it does not require knowing who anyone is.
• To consider an approach from an investor and reply to it. Basis: our legitimate interest in raising investment for the business.
• To answer a technical, security or procurement question and reply to the person who asked it. Basis: our legitimate interest in answering questions from the people evaluating Specify.
• To build and send a demonstration you asked for, once you have confirmed your address. Basis: your request, which you withdraw by asking us to delete it.
• To offer the goal you gave with a demonstration request back to a store you later create with the same email address, where you can accept it, change it or turn it down. Basis: our legitimate interest in not asking you the same question twice.
• To count which of our pages, campaigns and buttons lead to demonstration requests and to stores being created, in totals of at least five businesses that never name one. Basis: our legitimate interest in knowing which of our own marketing works. You can object as described under Your rights.
• To create and run the store you asked us to create, and to contact you about it. Basis: performance of the terms you accepted when you signed up.
• To send the few service emails described under Emails from Specify below, and to stop sending them to anyone who unsubscribes. Basis: our legitimate interest in helping somebody who opened a store, or started to, finish what they began. Unsubscribing is your objection, and it is checked before every one of these emails is sent.
• To correct a demonstration store, or take it down, when its business tells us to, and to reply. Basis: our legitimate interest in the demonstration stores we publish being accurate. A take-down request is your objection to a store you never asked for, and we review it.
• To learn from the answers given on the pages we build to show a business its demonstration store, and to decide what to say to that business next. Basis: our legitimate interest in making demonstrations that are useful to the businesses they are built for.
• To notice where setting up or editing a store is harder than it should be, and to offer help before you have to ask. Basis: our legitimate interest in making the product work for the stores that use it. Only people at Specify see it, and you can object to it as described under Your rights.
• To learn from what you tell us about Specify, inside the admin or through its input window, and to decide what to fix or build next. Basis: our legitimate interest in making the product work for the stores that use it. What we take from it across stores is counted rather than quoted, except that the issues an input window raises are given back to every store, worded so that they point at no store. You can object to it as described under Your rights.
• To contact you about something you sent through the input window and opened for follow-up. Basis: your consent, which you can withdraw in the admin at any time before the link to you ends, or by writing to us.
• To answer you and make the changes you ask the assistant for in your store. Basis: performance of the terms you accepted when you signed up. Which conversation made which change, and who started it, is kept to operate and secure the service, on the basis below.
• To operate, secure and debug the service, and to keep a record of what we sent you. Basis: our legitimate interest in running a service that works and is not abused.

Withdrawing consent, or objecting to a legitimate interest, does not undo anything done lawfully before you did so. There is no automated decision-making that produces a legal or similarly significant effect on anyone.

Emails from Specify

Besides the sign-in codes you ask for and the notices about your store that you can switch off in its settings, we send three service emails, and no series follows any of them. When you create a store, its owner gets a welcome. If the store has not gone live a few days later, its owner gets one reminder. If you confirm your email address to create a store and stop before creating it, you get one reminder about a day later. Resend delivers them for us.

Each of the three has a link to unsubscribe. Using it stops those emails and anything like them. It does not stop sign-in codes, because those are how you sign in, or notices about your store that you have not switched off.

Two lists of email addresses are the exception to the retention periods below: each is kept for as long as we send email at all, and each is kept even if you ask us to delete everything else we hold about you, because it is the only way we can know not to write to an address again. The first is the unsubscribe list. If you unsubscribe, it keeps your email address, which email you unsubscribed from and when, and nothing more. The second is the suppression list. If an email sent through Specify to an address bounces permanently, or its recipient marks it as spam, it keeps that address, which of the two happened and when, and nothing more. An address on the suppression list gets no further email through Specify except the sign-in codes its owner asks for, because without those nobody could sign in.

We send no newsletters, announcements or other marketing email today, to store owners or to anyone else. If we ever do, it will go only to people who have said yes to it. When you create a store, the box that asks is unticked, and you can change your answer at any time in your account in the Specify admin. Every marketing email would carry its own link to stop. Stopping marketing email does not stop the service emails above, and unsubscribing from the service emails stops marketing email too. We keep each yes and no you give, with where you gave it, the wording you were shown and when, as the record of what you agreed to. That record holds no email address, and it is kept even if your account is closed.

Who can access it

Submissions are visible to the two founders. Apart from the providers below, which process them for us, they are not shared with other companies, and they are not published or used publicly without separate written permission.

Six categories of provider process data on our behalf, under each provider's written data processing terms:

• OpenAI, for the preliminary analysis and for the assistant in the Specify admin. The enquiry text you submit is sent to OpenAI to produce the preliminary result. If you do not want text leaving our systems, do not use the paste or describe options; the worked locker example runs entirely in your browser. Once an input window has closed, OpenAI also groups the words stores sent in it into issues: it receives the words only, never the store or the person who sent them, and a person at Specify checks every grouping. If you use the assistant in the Specify admin, each turn of the conversation is sent to OpenAI so that its model can reply: what you write, the conversation so far, and what the assistant has read from your store.
• Resend, for notification email. Resend receives the message and the address it goes to.
• Microsoft Azure, for hosting, the database, file storage and the site measurement described under Cookies below. Everything else sits here.
• Stripe, for connecting a store to payments. When a store owner connects payments, we ask Stripe to create a Stripe account for the store and send it the store's name, the country it trades in and our identifier for the store. The owner then gives their business and identity details to Stripe on Stripe's own pages, not ours.
• HubSpot, for our list of the businesses we build demonstrations for. Once you have confirmed a request for a demonstration, we record it there: the company, website and email address you gave, your trade if you chose one, and the day you confirmed. Our notes on the demonstration we build for you, and on what we send you and when, are kept with it.
• Anthropic, for building demonstration stores. When we build a demonstration you asked for, we send Anthropic the company name and website you gave us and what that website publishes, and its models draft the store's product text, the film's narration and the message we send you with it. Your email address is not sent.

These terms commit each provider to process the material only on our instructions and to keep it secure. There is no seventh category. Nothing is sold, nothing is shared with advertisers, nothing is used for advertising and nothing is passed to a data broker.

Stripe also receives data in a second role, in which it does not act for us: as the payment provider of the stores themselves. When a shopper pays for an order at a store on Specify, they pay on Stripe's payment page, on the store's own Stripe account, and the money goes to the store without passing through Specify. We send Stripe the amount, the order's reference and the shopper's email address, and the shopper gives their card details to Stripe directly. No card details reach Specify or the store.

One more party receives data, and not on our behalf. When a shopper at the checkout of a store on Specify chooses Denmark as the delivery country, what they type in the address field is sent from their browser, as they type it, to Adressevælger, the Danish address register run by Klimadatastyrelsen, a Danish public authority. It is sent so the checkout can suggest the matching address and fill in the postcode and city. The register receives the typed text and, as any website does, the browser's IP address. No name, email address, order or cookie is sent with it, and the request does not say which store it came from. Nothing is sent for any other country, and a shopper who ignores the suggestions places the same order as before.

Where it is processed

Hosting, the database and file storage are in the European Union. The specific regions, resource configuration and network detail are shared under a technical review rather than published, which is the same position taken on the Technical page and is about not handing an attacker a map.

Three of the six providers process some data outside the European Economic Area. OpenAI processes API requests in the United States. Anthropic's API requests are processed outside the European Economic Area as well. Resend delivers email from the United States. All three transfers rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission, incorporated into the data processing terms we have accepted with each of them. Ask and we will send you the relevant terms. HubSpot keeps what it receives in its data centre in the European Union, and its data processing terms say when its own staff and subcontractors may reach it from elsewhere. Where Stripe processes what it receives is set out in Stripe's own data processing terms. We will send you HubSpot's and Stripe's terms too.

Model training

Submitted customer and company information is not used to train general-purpose models.

OpenAI does not use material submitted through its API to train its models. It holds API content for a limited period for abuse monitoring and then deletes it. Anthropic does not use material sent through its API to train its models either, and it too deletes it after a limited period. We train no model of our own, on your submissions or on anything else.

How long it is kept

At the end of a period below the record is deleted, not archived under a different name.

• Enquiry submissions to the retired Enquiry Audit, including the preliminary analysis shown to you at the time: 24 months from submission. Nothing new is collected this way.
• Contact details from a consulting brief or any other enquiry to us: 24 months from our last exchange with you.
• If you asked for a demonstration and then asked us not to contact you again: we keep what we hold about your request, with the date you asked, for as long as we contact businesses at all, because that record is how we know not to write to you again. You can still ask us to delete it, as described under Your rights.
• Answers given on a page we built to show a business its demonstration store: 12 months from the last activity on that store's page, unless the business becomes a customer.
• Founding-partner applications: 24 months from the decision on them. If we have not decided on an application 12 months after you sent it, we treat it as declined on that day, so it is deleted no later than 36 months after you sent it unless it has become a partnership.
• The founding-partner list: until you ask to come off it, or until we stop running the programme, whichever is first.
• The details of a person nominated as able to approve capability: deleted with the submission they arrived on, or sooner if they ask us directly.
• Unsolicited applications for work where we do not proceed: 6 months from our decision. Longer only if you tell us in writing that we may keep yours on file, and then for a further 12 months. If we have not decided 12 months after you sent yours, we treat that as not proceeding, so it is deleted 18 months after you sent it.
• Standard technical logs produced by hosting: 90 days.
• Correspondence with a customer or a partner: for the length of the relationship and 24 months after it ends.
• What is counted while a store is set up or edited: for as long as the store exists, and then deleted with the rest of its data.
• What you tell us about Specify from inside the admin or through its input window: for as long as the store exists, and then deleted with the rest of its data. If you opened something you sent through the input window for follow-up, the link to you ends 60 days after the window closes.
• Conversations with the assistant: what was said is deleted 90 days after the conversation's last turn. The record that the conversation took place, who started it, which changes it made and what it cost, which holds nothing that was said, is kept for as long as the store exists.

Ask us to delete something earlier and we will, unless we are required to keep it. Once there is a company with accounting obligations, invoices and the records attached to them will be kept for the period the law requires, and that period will be named here rather than left to inference.

Job applications

An unsolicited application is read by the two founders and nobody else. It is not shared with other companies, it is not used to train anything, and it is not used for any purpose other than considering you.

There is no automated screening and no scoring model. Two people read each application. If we do not proceed, the retention period above applies and you can ask us to delete it sooner.

Cookies, analytics and browser storage

This site measures how many people read it, which pages they read and roughly where in the world they are. That runs on Azure Application Insights, a Microsoft service already used for the platform itself. It runs no advertising, no profiling and no third-party tracking scripts. Nothing collected here is shared with advertisers, sold, or used to build a profile of you, and none of it is joined to anything you submit through a form.

Page views are counted whether or not you agree to anything, because counting a page needs no identifier and records nothing about the reader. Recognising your browser across pages and visits does need one, and that is what the banner asks about. Agreeing sets two cookies, so that several visits can be counted as one reader rather than several. The first, ai_user, holds a random identifier for your browser and the time it was created, and expires after a year. The second, ai_session, holds a random identifier for the current visit and the times the visit began and was last active. It expires after 30 minutes without activity, and no visit lasts longer than 24 hours. Declining sets no cookie and keeps nothing in your browser for measurement. It keeps the page counts, and is remembered so you are not asked again. Ignoring the banner is the same as declining until you answer it.

Once you agree, the measurement script also uses your browser's storage. While a page of this site is open, it keeps there the measurements it has not yet delivered, each carrying the two identifiers above, and which page you are on and when you opened it, so that the time spent on a page can be measured. These are kept for that tab only and are gone when you close it. The script may also keep the current visit's identifier and its times, which can stay after you close the tab, so that the visit can carry on if its cookie is missing. Clearing site data for this domain removes all of it.

If you arrive here from a demonstration store we built for your business, the link tells this site which store that was, and we count that a sign-up was started and completed from it. That count names the store's address only. It does not carry your email or your company name, and it needs no cookie.

Your IP address reaches Microsoft as part of making the request at all. It is used to work out an approximate city and country and is then discarded rather than stored, which is Application Insights' default behaviour and is not changed here. Approximate location, browser and device type are kept; the address itself is not. Measurement data is stored in the European Union and kept for 90 days.

A partly completed form is saved in your own browser's storage so that you can leave and come back without retyping it. That stays on your device and reaches us only when you press submit. Clearing site data for this domain removes it. Card details entered during signup are validated in your browser and discarded, and no card number, expiry, security code or cardholder name is stored anywhere.

Signing in to the Specify platform sets a session cookie, which is strictly necessary to keep you signed in. It does no tracking and is used for nothing else.

Your rights

The GDPR gives you the following rights over what we hold about you. They are not conditional on having bought anything.

• Access: a copy of what we hold, and what it is used for.
• Rectification: correction of anything inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erasure: deletion of what we hold, unless we are required to keep it.
• Restriction: a pause on our use of it while a question about accuracy or basis is resolved.
• Portability: the data you gave us, in a machine-readable form, for you or for another provider.
• Objection: to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests, including the aggregated learning described above.
• Withdrawal of consent: at any time, for anything we do on the basis of consent.

Write to tpg@specify.digital. We answer within one month. There is no charge and we will not ask you why.

We may ask for enough information to be confident it is your data we are about to hand over or delete. That is the only reason we would ask, and we will not use anything you send for it beyond answering the request.

Complaints

If you think we have handled your data badly, tell us and we will try to put it right. You do not have to come to us first. You can complain to the data protection authority in the country where you live, where you work, or where you think the problem happened, and you can do that whatever we say about it.

Specify is not yet incorporated and therefore has no established lead supervisory authority. This section will name it once there is one.

Changes to this notice

The date at the top of this page is when it last changed. If we change something that affects data already collected, we will say so here, and where the change is significant we will tell the people affected directly rather than relying on them rereading the page.