Privacy Policy
Effective 26 September 2026 · Version 1.1
What changed in 1.1: signing in to the client portal now uses your email and a password, instead of a one-time link. The sections on portal accounts, how long we keep things, our providers and security describe how passwords are handled. Nothing else changed.
We collect very little, we do not sell anything about you, and there are no tracking cookies on this site. The rest of this page explains exactly what "very little" means.
Every statement on this page describes how the software actually works, checked against the running code on 7 September 2026 — not a template. If the code changes, this page changes with it.
Who we are
Emberline Studio ("Emberline", "we") builds and hosts websites and business software for small businesses, operating from Ohio, United States.
Questions about this policy or your data: [email protected]
Two roles, and the difference matters
This policy covers information we hold as our own business — people who visit this site or enquire about our services.
We also process information on behalf of our clients. If you booked a table, sent an enquiry or clocked in on a website Emberline built, that information belongs to that business, not to us. We hold it for them, under their instructions. To have it corrected or deleted, contact that business — or contact us and we will pass your request to them and tell you we have.
When you visit this website
We use our own analytics, built so that identifying an individual is not possible rather than merely discouraged:
- Nothing is written to your browser. No cookies, no localStorage, no fingerprinting.
- Your IP address is never stored. It is used at the moment of the request to compute a salted hash, and the salt changes every day — so yesterday's visitors cannot be linked to today's.
- Your browser's user-agent string is not kept, only a coarse device class: phone, tablet or computer.
- Location is city-level at most, read from our hosting provider's own request headers. We never call a geolocation service.
- We record the page visited, the referring site, and whether an action happened — such as tapping a phone number.
- We honour Do Not Track. If your browser sends the signal, the script collects nothing at all.
There is no advertising network, no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel and no third-party tracker on this site.
When you contact us
We collect what you type: your name, your business name if you give one, your email address and/or phone number, what you are trying to achieve, any services you shortlist, and anything you write in the message.
We collect this to reply to you about your project. That is the only reason.
Consent to be contacted, and consent to be marketed to, are separate
- Replying to you about your enquiry is what sending the form asks for.
- Marketing is a separate box, and it is never pre-ticked. It is recorded only if you tick it yourself, with the date and where it came from. Sending an enquiry never adds you to a mailing list.
We do not collect payment details on this website.
If you are a client with a portal account
Your name, email address, business details, and what you create in the portal — change requests, edited website text, and the data of whichever features you use.
We never store your password itself. We keep only a scrambled fingerprint of it: salted, run through a deliberately slow function, and mixed with a secret key held apart from the database, so a copy of our database on its own is not enough to work out anyone's password. We cannot see or recover your password. If you forget it, we email you a link to choose a new one, which works once and expires in 15 minutes, and choosing a new one signs out every other device.
How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Enquiries that do not become clients | 90 days after the last activity, then deleted automatically |
| Enquiries that become clients | Kept as a record of the work |
| Client account and project data | For the life of the relationship, then per your handover agreement |
| Links to set or reset a password | Expire in 15 minutes; deleted within a day |
| The password fingerprint | For the life of your account; replaced whenever you choose a new password |
| Sessions | Deleted within 7 days of expiry |
| Website analytics | Already non-identifying — there is no individual record to delete |
| Security and audit logs | Kept on a separate schedule; they are what an access or pay dispute is settled with |
Data we hold for a client is kept according to that client's instructions. Some of it they are legally required to keep — employee time and pay records, for example — and we do not delete those on our own schedule.
Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We never have, and nothing about how this business makes money depends on it.
Two service providers help us operate:
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Hosting, DNS, our database, security | United States / global |
| Resend (delivering via Amazon SES) | Sending password links and notification email | United States |
That is the whole list. We will also disclose information if the law requires it — a subpoena or court order — and where we are permitted to tell you first, we will.
Your choices
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- See what we hold about you
- Correct anything that is wrong
- Delete it
- Stop marketing to you — every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and it is honoured permanently
Email [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days, we will not charge you, and we will not make it difficult. We will never treat you differently for asking.
Children
Our services are for businesses. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13, and we delete it if we learn that we have.
Security
We maintain a written information security program. In plain terms: passwords are kept only as salted, slow, keyed fingerprints, sign-in attempts are limited, everything is encrypted in transit, access is limited to as few people as possible, public forms are rate-limited against abuse, and each client's data is separated from every other client's at the database level.
No system is perfectly secure and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach affects you, we will tell you as the law requires, and we will tell you what actually happened.
If you have found a security problem, please tell us: security.txt.
Changes
We will post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will say so clearly rather than quietly editing this page.
Contact
[email protected]
Emberline Studio · Ohio, United States