Privacy policy

Who we are

Headband is a search platform at headband.dev, operated by ZVN DEV LLC (“we” and “us” in this policy). Privacy questions and requests go to support@headband.dev.

Signing in with GitHub or Google

You sign in to Headband with your GitHub or Google account. We ask only for your basic profile and email address. From the provider we receive and store:

• Your name.
• Your email address.
• The address of your profile picture.
• Your account id at that provider.

We use these to create your account and organization, to recognize you when you sign in again, and to show who is signed in. We never see your GitHub or Google password. We do not keep the access tokens the provider issues at sign-in, and we do not read your repositories, files, contacts or calendar.

Headband's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or use it to train AI models.

Signing in sets a session cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days.

Data we process

• Account and organization: the profile details above, your organization's name, and your projects.
• Documents and indexes: the documents you or your app send to an index, its settings, and the search index the engine builds from them.
• API keys: each key's name, prefix, permissions, expiry and when it was last used. Not the key itself, see below.
• Search analytics: for each search on an index, the query text, filters, number of results and response time, plus the session id, experiment and variant if your app sends them, and the conversions your app reports.
• Usage: counts of searches and document writes, stored data and always-warm memory, used for plan limits and billing.
• Billing: your plan, subscription status and Stripe customer id. Card details go to Stripe and never reach us.
• Messages to us: what you send through the contact form or by email, and your email address if you sign up for the newsletter.
• Operational data: logs and error reports needed to secure, debug and improve the service.

We do not sell your data or use it for advertising. We do not use your documents or your searches to train AI models.

Where your documents are stored

Documents you send to Headband are stored in the search engine that holds the index.

• Engines we host run on two dedicated servers we operate. The servers are rented from ReliableSite and Hostkey in the New York area, and their disks are encrypted. Each engine lives on one of them.
• Backups of each hosted engine are encrypted on the server, then stored in Cloudflare R2.
• Bucket storage: some hosted engines keep their data in Backblaze B2 as compressed, encrypted chunks, and use the server's disk as a cache.
• Engines you bring: if you connect your own engine, your documents stay on it. We store only its address and credentials, encrypted.

Keys and credentials

• API keys are shown once, when you create them, and stored only as non-reversible hashes.
• The address and credentials of an engine you bring are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.
• Codes for signing in the Headband CLI are stored as hashes and expire after 15 minutes. The CLI keeps its key on your computer.

Analytics

We use Little Friend for privacy-friendly analytics. It sets no cookies and does not store IP addresses. To connect the pages you view in one visit, it keeps a random id in your browser tab's session storage. The visit ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, and the id is gone when you close the tab. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, your visit is only counted, never connected.

Some visits are recorded as a copy of the pages you view. We chose to show the text on our pages in these recordings, and recordings are deleted after 7 days. Recordings also show what you type or choose in forms in our app, except passwords, payment details and fields we mark as private. Email addresses and phone numbers that appear on our pages stay visible in recordings. Card numbers are always hidden. The dashboard hides your project names, documents, search queries and results, API keys and engine credentials, so recordings never show them. The Documents and Search pages of a project are never recorded at all, and neither are its Keys, API and Settings pages, or the pages for keys, settings, billing, analytics, CLI sign-in and invites.

When you sign in, we link your visits to your name, email address and organization, so we can fix problems and support you. Little Friend also receives error reports from the site and our servers, and how long our servers take to answer, without the contents of your requests. Our servers also tell it when an account signs up, runs its first search, and starts, changes or cancels a paid plan, with the plan and the amount charged. Little Friend runs only on headband.dev.

The site's code includes PostHog and Sentry, but both are switched off on headband.dev, so neither receives any data. The code also includes Resend for newsletter sign-ups, which is switched off too: a sign-up today is kept only in our server logs at Vercel. If we turn any of them on, we will update this policy first.

Service providers

These providers process data so Headband can run:

• Vercel: Hosts the website, the dashboard and the API.
• BataData: Hosts the database: accounts, organizations, projects, key hashes, usage and search analytics. BataData is also operated by ZVN DEV LLC.
• ReliableSite and Hostkey: Rent us the two dedicated servers our hosted engines run on, in the New York area. We operate the servers ourselves.
• Cloudflare R2: Stores the encrypted backups of hosted engines.
• Backblaze B2: Stores hosted engine data as compressed, encrypted chunks.
• Stripe: Payments, subscriptions and invoices. It receives your billing details and card.
• GitHub and Google: Sign-in. Each returns the profile details listed above.
• JustEmail: Delivers our account emails to you (welcome, usage, payment and key notices) and contact form messages to our inboxes, and hosts our support and sales mail.
• Little Friend: Analytics, session recordings and error reports on headband.dev. For signed-in users it receives your name, email address and organization.
• Engines you bring: your documents and searches go to that engine, under your agreement with whoever runs it.

How long we keep data

• Account and organization: while your account exists.
• Documents and indexes: until you delete the index or its engine.
• Search analytics: hourly totals per query, 13 months. Individual experiment events, 14 days. Deleting a project deletes its analytics.
• Backups of a hosted engine: a rolling set covering up to the last 14 days. Deleting the engine deletes its backups.
• CLI sign-in codes: 15 minutes. Approvals nobody claimed are removed daily.
• The session cookie: up to 30 days.
• Session recordings at Little Friend: deleted within 7 days.
• Other records, backups and provider logs: while an account or organization is active, and as needed for security, billing, legal and backup obligations.

Deleting your data

• Deleting an index removes it from its engine and from your project.
• Deleting a hosted engine removes its data from our servers and deletes its backups. A backup that cannot be removed right away is retried by a scheduled job. Its chunks in bucket storage are removed by an hourly cleanup job after a 24-hour grace period.
• A project can be deleted once its indexes and engines are gone. Delete those first; then deleting the project removes it with its API keys and branches, and nothing is left running or billed. Its search analytics are deleted with it.
• To delete your account and organization, or to get a copy of your account data, email support@headband.dev from the address on your account.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, we update the date at the top of this page. The current version always lives at headband.dev/privacy.

Contact

Privacy questions and account requests go to support@headband.dev, or use the contact form.