Your data, your call.

Aqvil (aqvil.com, its browser extension and related services) is operated by Its Hive, Inc., a Delaware corporation in the United States. We are the controller of the personal data described here.

Questions, requests or complaints about privacy: [email protected].

• Account details: your email address and a password stored only as a one-way hash (bcrypt). If you sign up or connect with LinkedIn: your LinkedIn member ID, name, email and profile photo, which we copy so it keeps showing after LinkedIn’s link expires.
• Your profile: what you choose to add, such as name, handle, headline, bio, job title, location, photo, website, social links, expertise and certifications.
• What you publish: articles, case studies, projects, business profiles and job posts, with their revision history. If you import posts from a LinkedIn data export, we read the file to turn your posts into drafts.
• Your private Study data: pastes, highlights and marks, reading progress, bookmarks, saved jobs and follows. These are private to you; a paste becomes visible to others only if you turn on a share link.
• Likes: the articles you like. Authors and readers see how many likes an article has, never who gave them.
• Verification: the domain and token you use to prove you own a website, and whether the check passed.
• Support and reports: messages you send our support desk, and reports you file about content (with who filed them).
• Usage analytics: page and profile views, outbound link clicks, shares and the referring page. Each is tied to a salted hash of your connection and browser that changes every day, never your IP address, so we can count visitors without recognising you from one day to the next.
• Technical data: your IP address and browser details reach our servers with every request. We use them briefly for rate limiting and security; we don’t store IP addresses in our database.

• To run the service you signed up for (performing our contract with you): your account and sign-in, publishing your work, Study and pastes, business profiles and jobs, support, and the emails the service needs, such as verifying your email, resetting your password, a welcome email, support replies, and notices about moderation of your content or business.
• To keep Aqvil safe and working (our legitimate interests): preventing spam and abuse, bot checks, screening content against our guidelines, handling reports, moderation, fixing problems, and understanding which pages are read so authors and businesses can see their stats.
• Because you asked us to (your consent): connecting LinkedIn, using the writing assistant and Mira, and using the browser extension. You can stop at any time; disconnecting LinkedIn is in your settings.
• When the law requires it (legal obligation): for example, responding to valid legal requests.

We don’t sell your personal data, show ads, or use advertising trackers. We don’t use your data for automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

• Your public profile and anything you publish are visible to everyone and may appear in search engines once they meet our indexing rules. Your email address is never shown publicly.
• Business profiles and job posts are public, including the application link or email you give for a job.
• Pastes, highlights, bookmarks, reading progress and saved jobs are private. A shared paste can be opened by anyone with its link (and its password, if you set one) until you stop sharing it or the link expires.
• Moderators can see reported and flagged content, including shared pastes, to enforce our guidelines.

We share personal data only with service providers that process it for us, under contracts that limit what they can do with it:

• Cloudflare: delivers the site, protects it from attacks, and (when switched on) runs the Turnstile bot check on sign-up, sign-in, password reset and reports.
• Resend: sends our emails, so it receives your email address and the message.
• Google (Gemini API): powers Mira, the site assistant, and the writing tools in the editor. It receives the text you send to those features, such as your message or the draft being checked.
• LinkedIn: only if you choose to sign in with or connect LinkedIn.
• Our hosting and database providers: store the service’s data on our behalf.

Some images on Aqvil, such as profile photos or certification badges added by link, load directly from the site that hosts them, which then sees your IP address. We may also disclose data if the law requires it, to protect people’s safety or our rights, or as part of a merger or sale of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply.

Mira and the editor’s writing tools send what you type, or the draft you ask them to review, to Google’s Gemini API to generate a reply. We don’t keep your Mira conversations. Don’t put sensitive personal information into AI features, and check what they suggest before you publish it.

We use only cookies that the site needs to work. No advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

• aqvil_session: keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days or until you sign out.
• A short-lived LinkedIn sign-in cookie (10 minutes) that protects the LinkedIn sign-in from forgery.
• paste_…: remembers for 12 hours that you entered the password for a protected paste link.
• Cloudflare may set security cookies to tell people from bots.

Your browser’s local storage keeps small preferences, such as your Study pen colour or an unsent draft, on your device only.

The Aqvil Pastes extension for Chrome only sends something to Aqvil when you ask it to: saving a selection, link or page, saving a paste from its popup, or copying and sharing one of your pastes. It doesn’t read your browsing history or pages you don’t save from.

• What it saves (the text, and the address and title of the page it came from) goes to your pastes, the same as pasting it on the site.
• It signs in with your existing Aqvil session cookie and stores no password or token. Your unsent draft and settings stay in your browser.
• Its popup loads its fonts from Google Fonts, which sees your IP address when the fonts are fetched.

Its Hive, Inc. is based in the United States, and our service providers may process data in the United States and other countries. When we transfer personal data from the EU, the UK or Switzerland, we rely on adequacy decisions, the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent safeguards offered by our providers.

• Your account: for as long as you have it.
• When you delete your account (in Settings): your pastes, Study marks, reading progress, bookmarks, likes, saved jobs, follows, sessions and stored photos are deleted straight away. Your profile is anonymised and your email address replaced. Articles, case studies and projects are taken down and kept in an archive under the anonymised account, so moderation history stays intact; ask us to erase them too.
• Analytics events: 13 months, then deleted.
• Sign-in sessions: up to 30 days. Email verification and password reset links expire and can only be used once.
• Support messages, reports and moderation records: for as long as needed to handle them, enforce our guidelines, and deal with legal claims.

You can view and edit your profile, content and settings at any time, disconnect LinkedIn, stop sharing any paste, and delete your account yourself.

Depending on where you live, including under the GDPR, UK GDPR and US state privacy laws such as the CCPA, you also have the right to access a copy of your personal data, correct it, delete it, receive it in a portable format, restrict or object to how we use it, and withdraw consent. Email [email protected] from the address on your account and we’ll respond within 30 days. We may need to confirm it’s you first. We won’t treat you differently for using these rights.

If you’re in the EU or UK, you can also complain to your local data protection authority. We’d appreciate the chance to sort it out with you first.

Aqvil runs over HTTPS. Passwords and paste share passwords are stored as one-way hashes, and sign-in and email tokens are stored hashed, so a copy of our database can’t be used to sign in as you. Access to personal data is limited to the people who run Aqvil. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we’ll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Aqvil is for people aged 16 and over. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone younger; if you believe a child under 16 has an account, contact us and we’ll delete it.

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. If the change is significant, we’ll also tell you by email or on the site before it takes effect. The terms of service explain the rest of the agreement between us.