Privacy notice and terms.

These are our retention periods for records held or controlled by Colleague. We remove personal data earlier when it is no longer needed or an applicable deletion request requires it.

When your account closes or access expires, you have a 30-day period to request an export of your Colleague-held working files and memory. We delete assistant content from active systems within that same 30-day period, after providing any export requested in time. The export window does not add another 30 days to deletion. Contact lou@colleague.ac to arrange export before deletion.

If you explicitly ask for deletion, we do not wait for the export window to end. We delete the requested content from active systems without undue delay and within 30 days of receiving a valid request. Where an institution or another organisation controls the data, its authorised return or deletion instructions apply.

Deleted content in backups is kept out of ordinary use until the backup expires. If a backup is restored, the relevant deletions must be reapplied before that content returns to ordinary use.

We may retain particular records beyond these periods where a legal obligation, an ongoing security investigation, complaint or dispute makes this necessary. We limit the records retained to that purpose, restrict their use and delete them when the reason ends. This is not a reason to keep all assistant content indefinitely.

Colleague is designed for normal professional use by individual researchers and small academic teams. Very large document-processing jobs, automated bulk processing, scraping or unusually high-volume use may need a separate agreement or a narrower task.

Colleague uses the information you provide to deliver the assistant service: understand requests, remember relevant working context, work with files you choose to share and help with academic drafting, editing, planning, analysis and admin.

We require your name and email address to set up and administer your Colleague account. If you do not provide them, we cannot activate your account. For a paid subscription, we also require your billing name and address to issue invoices; without them, we cannot set up the paid subscription. If you pay by bank transfer, you do not need to provide card details to Colleague.

Connecting external accounts and sharing files are optional. Without them, Colleague cannot carry out tasks requiring that access. Share only the information needed for the tasks you choose.

Colleague receives information directly from you and through documents, messages, calendars and other services you authorise it to access. Tasks may also involve information from public websites or publications. This material may include professional information about other people, such as names, work contact details and correspondence.

Where we process this information on behalf of your institution or another controller, that controller is responsible for the lawful basis and required privacy information, and we assist under the processing agreement. Where Colleague acts as controller, those responsibilities remain ours.

Share personal information about other people only where you have authority and a lawful basis for sharing it with Colleague and its disclosed providers. Limit it to what is needed for the task, and remove unnecessary names, contact details and other identifiers. Publicly available professional information is still personal data.

Where your institution or another organisation is controller, its policies, privacy information and processing agreement must cover this use. Where Colleague would act as controller for other people's task content, contact us before sharing it so we can establish the appropriate lawful basis and privacy information.

Colleague can work from messages, instructions and material you choose to share. The Google Workspace account gives you a familiar way to share documents, folders, calendars and email context with the agent. Other personal-account connectors are optional and should be enabled only when you deliberately want that mode of work.

Telegram is the current chat channel for Colleague; the optional connectors are the extra services you choose to add around it.

Colleague does not sell your data. We will not use your content in public examples, demonstrations or marketing without separate, specific permission. Permission must also cover any third-party material or personal data included in the example.

Colleague may retain useful working context as memory. Memory-search indexing and retrieval can send memory text or search queries to an external embedding model, as well as sending task context to an AI model for inference.

Colleague currently sends model requests for its users through an operator-managed ChatGPT Pro account. The account's “Improve the model for everyone” setting is switched off. OpenAI states that this setting also applies to Codex tasks on personal ChatGPT plans. Memory-search embeddings use a separate API connection. These are different arrangements, and the Pro subscription should not be assumed to have the same contractual protections as OpenAI's business or API services.

The training setting does not mean that OpenAI never stores, reviews or otherwise processes content. OpenAI's own terms and privacy information describe its handling of that content: UK terms, privacy policy and data controls.

We use usage counts, model and token usage, estimated costs and operational metadata to understand costs and reliability, rather than routinely reviewing individual files or prompts. Our human access to customer content is limited to what is necessary for requested support or a specific security incident. We do not use customer content for our own model training.

When a model or connected tool is needed, Colleague aims to send only the context required for the task. The practical rule is simple: share the material that lets the agent do useful work and keep the rest outside the task.

If you request early access or contact Colleague through the website, we collect the information you provide, such as your name and email address. We also collect your IP address and submission details for anti-abuse checks. Requests are stored in Colleague's database and, where operator notifications are enabled, the enquiry details, including name, email and IP address, are sent to our operator's Telegram chat.

We use this information to respond to your enquiry, manage your access request and prevent spam or abuse. We do not use your details for marketing updates.

We delete enquiry records within 90 days after the enquiry is closed. We review active waiting-list records at 12 months and remove them if no longer needed. The limited exceptions in the retention section apply where particular records remain necessary for a security issue, legal obligation or dispute.

The website may use Cloudflare Turnstile or similar anti-abuse checks. These services may process technical information, such as request metadata, to help distinguish genuine submissions from spam or automated abuse.

Depending on the circumstances, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the use of your personal data and to receive a portable copy of personal data you provided. You may also be able to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests on grounds relating to your particular situation.

To exercise these rights, contact lou@colleague.ac. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

The table below describes processing for which we act as a controller. Contract applies to necessary processing of the contracting individual's personal data; it does not automatically cover personal data about other people in shared material.

Where Colleague acts as controller, we process personal information about you in your messages, shared files and working memory where necessary to provide the assistant service you have agreed to use. Our lawful basis is performance of our contract with you. This does not automatically cover information about other people or processing for unrelated purposes.

Where we process customer content solely on behalf of a controller, that controller determines the lawful basis and we process the content on its instructions. The controller may be your institution rather than you personally. This processing requires an appropriate data processing agreement; this notice does not replace one.

Colleague is designed for lower-risk academic and professional work. If material outside that scope is shared by mistake, stop the task, remove sharing permissions where possible and contact us. Material may already have been processed by a model or stored in working files or memory before the issue is identified. Do not send further sensitive details while reporting it.

Colleague does not make solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you. It produces drafts, suggestions, analysis and task assistance for human review.

Colleague uses third-party providers to run the service, connect to user-approved tools, deliver AI functionality and keep the platform reliable.

Providers' data protection roles depend on the service and the applicable agreement. This list identifies services that may receive data; it does not establish that every provider acts as a contracted subprocessor. In particular, we have not established that OpenAI's business data processing agreement applies to the current Pro subscription.

Colleague uses Hetzner for its runtime workspace, memory and service infrastructure. Material shared with the agent's Google Workspace is stored by Google. Files in connected personal accounts remain with their provider unless you ask Colleague to work with them; for that task, relevant copies or excerpts may be synced into the Colleague runtime workspace and sent to a model or tool provider as needed.

Some providers used by Colleague may process data outside the UK or the EEA, including in the United States. The locations and arrangements depend on the provider, service and account used.

Colleague is operated by Louise Foley, a sole trader trading as Colleague, at 13 Greater Foxes, Fulbourn, Cambridge, CB21 5EZ. Our ICO registration reference is ZC160382.

We act as a controller for enquiries, customer relationships and our own business operations. Where we process customer content solely on a controller's instructions to provide the service, we act as a processor. These roles depend on the particular processing, not simply on who pays for the account.

For privacy questions, deletion requests or concerns, contact lou@colleague.ac.