Privacy Notice

Who we are

HelpLayer is run by Jeric Guillermo, trading as HelpLayer. For the personal data of our customers and visitors of helplayer.app, we are the data controller. For privacy questions or requests, write to [email protected].

Help centers on HelpLayer: each help center belongs to one of our customers. For the people who read it (search, ask the AI, sign in to a private help center, leave feedback), that customer is the data controller and we process the data for them. Questions about that data are best sent to the company whose help center it is.

What we collect, and why

• Account details: your name, email, password (stored only as a hash), team memberships and settings. To give you an account and run HelpLayer: our contract with you.
• Billing details: your plan, invoices, and the name, email and country you pay with. Paddle collects your payment details; we never see your card number. To bill you and keep records the law asks for: contract and legal obligation.
• Your content: articles, images, videos, voice recordings, screen captures, and what we read from the repositories and websites you connect. To provide the service you use it for: contract.
• Readers' activity in help centers: searches, questions asked to the AI and its answers, article views (with the referring page and browser type), feedback, and the email of readers who sign in to a private help center. To run the help center and show its owner what readers look for: on the owner's behalf.
• Technical data: IP address, browser and device details, and logs of requests and errors. To keep HelpLayer secure, stop abuse and fix problems: our legitimate interests.
• Visits to helplayer.app: we count page views per day, page and where the visit came from (the site that linked to us, or the campaign in the link), without cookies and without anything that identifies you. If you sign up, where your visit came from is saved with your account. To know which pages and channels work: our legitimate interests.
• Email: messages about your account, billing and changes to HelpLayer: contract. Our newsletter, only if you sign up for it: your consent, which you can withdraw with the link in every email.

We don't sell personal data, and we don't use it for advertising.

Who we share it with

Only with the services that run HelpLayer, under agreements that let them use the data only to provide their service to us:

• Hetzner (Germany): servers and the database.
• Cloudflare: network, security and file storage.
• OpenAI: writing and updating articles, AI answers, translations, transcription and voice-overs. Data sent through its API isn't used to train its models.
• Amazon Web Services: making tutorial videos.
• Resend: sending email.
• Google: generating images, where you use that feature.
• GitHub: reading the repositories you choose to connect.
• Paddle: our reseller and Merchant of Record. It handles checkout, payments, taxes, invoices and refunds, and is a controller of the payment data it collects (Paddle's privacy notice).
• Professional advisers (such as accountants and lawyers), and authorities when the law requires it.

International transfers

Some of these providers process data outside the UK and the European Economic Area, mainly in the United States. Where they do, the transfer is protected by an adequacy decision (such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) or by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, for the UK, the International Data Transfer Addendum.

How long we keep it

• Account details and your content: while your account exists, then deleted within 30 days.
• Backups: overwritten within 30 days.
• Billing records: as long as tax and accounting law requires, usually up to 10 years.
• Readers' activity: as long as the help center exists, unless its owner deletes it sooner.
• Logs: up to 90 days.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, and always if you're in the UK or the European Economic Area, you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you, and get a copy of it;
• have it corrected if it's wrong;
• have it deleted;
• restrict how we use it;
• receive it in a portable format, or have it sent to another service;
• object to how we use it, including where we rely on our legitimate interests;
• withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it;
• complain to your data protection authority.

Write to [email protected] to use any of them. We answer within 30 days. You can also change or delete most of your data yourself in your account.

Security

We protect personal data with encryption in transit, hashed passwords, access limited to what each person and service needs, and regular backups. If a breach puts your data at risk, we'll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Cookies

HelpLayer only uses cookies it needs to work: to keep you signed in, to remember readers signed in to a private help center, and for security. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.

Children

HelpLayer isn't meant for children under 16, and we don't knowingly collect their data.

Changes

When we change this notice, the date at the top changes; for important changes we'll also tell you by email. See also our Terms of Service and Refund Policy.