Overview
Harbor Light is an AI-powered email monitoring and protection service delivered via Telegram and SMS. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding your data.
We built Harbor Light with the same care we'd want for our own family. Your privacy and safety are at the core of everything we do.
Information We Collect
Account Information
When you are enrolled in Harbor Light (by invitation from an administrator, family member, or staff), we collect:
- Display name
- Phone number (for SMS users, used to deliver text messages to you) or Telegram chat ID (for Telegram users)
- Timezone and city/state (for scheduling and weather)
- Date of birth (optional, for personalization)
- Language preference
Email Account Access
When you connect an email account, we request access through OAuth — the same secure sign-in protocol used when you sign in to apps with Google or Microsoft. For Gmail and Outlook accounts, your email password is never sent to or stored on our servers. For other email providers (such as Yahoo, iCloud, or work email) that do not support OAuth, we store your IMAP/SMTP credentials encrypted at rest using industry-standard encryption.
We request only the permissions necessary to provide the service:
- Read your emails — to analyze incoming messages for threats
- Move emails — to quarantine dangerous messages into a separate folder or label
- Send replies — only with your explicit approval (Grace always asks before sending)
- Access your calendar — to read and create events from email invitations
The specific permissions requested are shown during the sign-in process by Google or Microsoft, and you can review them before granting access.
Conversation History
Messages you exchange with your AI companion (Grace, Sam, or Sandy) are stored for conversation continuity. Conversations are capped and automatically summarized to maintain context while managing storage.
Email Analysis Data
When we analyze your incoming emails, we store analysis results: threat scores, summaries, sender information, and metadata. Full email content is not permanently stored — only analysis results and content hashes used for deduplication.
Harbor Light staff and administrators cannot read your emails. Our system is designed so that only you can view your email content through your personal, verified dashboard or Safe Reader. Staff can see limited metadata (sender and subject) for emails that were flagged or quarantined, solely for the purpose of troubleshooting false positives.
Account Security Monitoring
As part of our threat protection, we monitor for signs that your email account may have been compromised. This includes two layers:
- Email-based detection — analyzing incoming emails for security signals such as password change confirmations, two-factor authentication changes, and unusual login notifications
- Account settings monitoring — for Gmail and Outlook accounts, we periodically check your account settings (forwarding rules, email filters, and send-as aliases) through the same secure API access you granted when connecting your account. A baseline of your settings is captured when you first connect, and changes are monitored going forward to detect unauthorized modifications.
We store a record of your account settings baseline and any detected security signals for alerting and pattern analysis. IMAP accounts (Yahoo, iCloud, etc.) do not support settings monitoring — only email-based detection is available for those providers.
Memories & Contacts
Facts learned during conversations — such as your bank name, doctor, pharmacy, or family members — are stored as "memories" for personalization and scam detection. You can ask your companion to forget any memory at any time. Contacts (trusted senders, blocked senders) are maintained with trust levels.
Calendar Event Cache
Calendar events extracted from emails are temporarily cached for duplicate detection, with a 90-day retention period.
Digest History
Your daily morning digest summaries are stored for up to 365 days so your companion can reference past summaries when you ask.
How We Use Your Information
- Threat analysis — Analyzing incoming emails for scam indicators, phishing attempts, and account takeover signals
- Account security monitoring — Detecting signs of email account compromise by analyzing incoming security notifications
- Daily digests — Generating your personalized morning email summary
- Conversational assistance — Answering your questions about your email, calendar, and contacts
- Calendar management — Adding appointments from emails to your calendar and sending event reminders
- Safe Reader — Providing a secure, browser-based interface for reading your email, with link safety checks on URLs before you click them
- Protection reports — Generating on-demand summaries of emails analyzed, threats detected, and protection activity
- Family alerts — Sending protection summaries and threat alerts to family members you designate
- Platform security — Anonymized threat pattern analysis across the platform to improve detection for all users (no personal information is shared between users)
Third-Party Services
We use the following third-party services to provide our product:
AI Processing
Your conversation messages and email content (including the body of incoming emails during threat analysis) are sent to a third-party AI service (Anthropic) for processing. Anthropic's usage policies prohibit training on API data. Your data is processed and discarded — it is not retained by the AI provider for model improvement.
URL Safety Checking
URLs found in your emails are checked against industry threat databases. Only the URL is sent — no email content, sender information, or personal data.
Phone Reputation Services
When you ask about a phone number, we check it against spam and fraud databases. Only the phone number is sent — no personal information.
Telegram
If you use Telegram, messages are delivered through the Telegram Bot API. Telegram's privacy policy applies to message delivery.
Twilio
If you use SMS, messages are delivered through Twilio. Twilio's privacy policy applies to message delivery. Your phone number is shared with Twilio solely for the purpose of delivering messages and is not used for marketing by Twilio. You can opt out of SMS messages at any time by replying STOP.
Google OAuth / Microsoft OAuth
We use Google and Microsoft's standard OAuth 2.0 flows for authentication only. We request only the scopes listed above.
Data Storage & Security
- All data is stored on a dedicated, private server — not in a shared cloud database
- OAuth tokens and IMAP credentials are encrypted at rest using industry-standard encryption
- All connections use HTTPS with modern TLS encryption
- User sessions expire after inactivity
- CSRF protection on all state-changing operations
- Staff and administrators cannot access your email content — only you can view your emails through your verified dashboard
- Daily automated database backups with 7-day retention
- Weekly full-server backups
In the event of a security breach that affects your email account credentials or personal data, we will notify affected users without unreasonable delay and in accordance with applicable law.
Data Retention
| Data Type | Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Conversations | Rolling cap, automatically summarized and pruned |
| User memories | Limited per user, periodically reviewed for staleness |
| Email analysis logs | Up to two years, for ongoing threat pattern analysis |
| Account security signals | Up to two years, alongside email analysis logs |
| Protection reports | Generated on demand from analysis logs; not separately stored |
| Digest history | Up to one year |
| Calendar event cache | Temporary, periodically cleaned up |
| OAuth tokens | Until you disconnect or token expires |
| Security advisories | Auto-expired and cleaned up |
Your Rights
- Disconnect email accounts — You can disconnect any email account at any time by asking your companion or through the admin dashboard
- Revoke OAuth access — You can revoke Harbor Light's access directly from your Google Account or Microsoft Account settings
- Request data deletion — Contact us to request deletion of your data. We will remove your account information, conversations, memories, and analysis logs within 30 days of your request
- Data export — Contact us to request an export of your stored data
- Forget memories — Ask your companion to forget any specific memory at any time during conversation
- Opt out of SMS — Reply STOP to any SMS message to immediately stop text message delivery
Children's Privacy
Harbor Light is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so we can delete it.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you through your messaging channel (Telegram or SMS) before the changes take effect. Continued use of the service after notification constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
Contact Us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or want to exercise any of your rights, contact us at:
Email: [email protected]
Website: harborlight.io