1. Two different roles, and which one applies to you
SentientMail handles personal data in two distinct capacities, and almost every question about privacy here depends on which one is in play.
We are the controller of account data
When you sign up, sign in, pay us, or write to support, we decide how that data is used. This policy governs it, and sections 2, 3, and 9 are the ones you want.
We are a processor of your contact data
The contacts you import, the campaigns you send, and the engagement they generate are yours. You decide what to collect and why. We only act on your instructions, and we never mine your contact data, sell it, rent it, use it to build profiles, or use it to train AI models. Our obligations there are set by the Data Processing Addendum, which takes precedence over this policy on anything to do with that data.
2. What we collect as controller
You give us
- Account details: name, email address, password (stored only as a hash), company name, and phone number where you use phone verification.
- Billing details: billing name, address, and tax identifiers. We never see or store your full card number; our payment processor handles the card and returns only a token and the last four digits.
- Support correspondence: what you write to us and what we write back.
- Marketing opt-in: your email address, if you ask for our product updates.
We generate or observe
- Usage and audit records: which features you used, what changed in your account, and who changed it, including the actor and timestamp for security-relevant actions.
- Technical logs: IP address, browser and device information, request timestamps, and error diagnostics.
- Deliverability signals: aggregate bounce and complaint rates for your account, which we are obliged to monitor.
We do not buy personal data about you, and we do not track you across other websites. The marketing site runs no analytics and no advertising trackers.
3. Why we use it, and our lawful basis
| Purpose | Data | Lawful basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Provide the Service | Account details, usage records | Performance of a contract |
| Bill you | Billing details, plan usage | Performance of a contract |
| Support you | Correspondence, account details | Performance of a contract |
| Keep the platform secure and prevent abuse | Technical logs, deliverability signals, audit records | Legitimate interests, and legal obligation where anti-spam law applies |
| Send you product updates | Email address | Consent, withdrawable at any time |
| Send service notices you cannot opt out of | Email address | Performance of a contract |
| Meet tax, accounting, and legal obligations | Billing records | Legal obligation |
We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are used in California and other US state privacy laws. We have never done so.
We do not use your data to train AI models. One of our AI providers may. By default, when you use the AI assists included with your plan (other than the in-app assistant), the text of the request goes to DeepSeek, in China, to generate a response. DeepSeek's terms allow it to keep that text and use it to improve its models, and it offers no way to opt out of that for requests like ours. It receives what you write or upload for that task, which means copy, templates and briefs, audience descriptions for segment building, your brand kit and asset names, emails you upload to SentientSplit, aggregate performance figures, and your account's AI notes and learned insights (these can include a teammate's name, email address and comment when they reject a draft). It never receives your contact list, contact records or data extension rows. Anything you type or paste into an AI assist is sent as written. Where you route an assist to your own provider key or endpoint in Settings, that traffic goes to your provider under your agreement with them instead, and DeepSeek receives none of it. SentientSplit follows the same routing.
The in-app assistant runs on Anthropic, as does any AI assist your account chooses to run on Anthropic in Settings; with your own Anthropic key those run under your agreement with Anthropic instead. The quality check on finished poster images always runs on SentientMail's Anthropic key. Anthropic processes that content only to provide the service, keeps it for a limited period for abuse and safety review, and does not train on it. The assistant can read what your role lets you see, including contact records, so those can appear in what it sends to Anthropic. Where Anthropic processes it is on our subprocessor list.
Generated images come from SpaceXAI (xAI) unless your account picks another image provider with its own key, and SpaceXAI also runs any AI assist your account chooses to run on xAI in Settings. Any other AI provider you pick, such as OpenAI, Google Gemini or Perplexity, runs only on your own key or endpoint, under your agreement with it. When your account uses its own xAI key, that traffic goes to xAI under your agreement with xAI instead. For images SpaceXAI receives the text of the prompt: we attach no contact records, but whatever the prompt says is sent as written, so keep personal information out of image prompts and out of what you ask the assistant to picture. SpaceXAI does not train on what it receives and deletes it within 30 days.
4. If you received an email sent through SentientMail
You are almost certainly looking for the sender, not for us. They chose to contact you, they hold your data, and they are the controller of it. We only carried the message.
- To stop the mail: use the unsubscribe link in the message. It works without a login and takes effect at once. That is faster than any request to us.
- To access or delete your data: ask the sender, whose identity and postal address are in the footer of every message.
- If the sender will not act, or you never opted in, or the mail looks like phishing: write to abuse@sentientmail.com. We will route the request to the sender, and we act on senders who mail people without permission.
You can also write to privacy@sentientmail.com and we will help you reach the right party.
6. International transfers
We are based in the United States and our infrastructure runs there, including the Amazon Simple Email Service that delivers your messages, with one exception: a fallback mail server we operate runs on a machine in France, so recipient addresses and message content are processed there while a message routed to it is being sent. A second exception: the text of a platform AI assist request is processed by our AI provider, DeepSeek, in China. China has no European Commission adequacy decision, and our arrangement with DeepSeek does not include Standard Contractual Clauses. To keep your data out of China, route each AI assist, SentientSplit included, to your own provider key or endpoint, or do not use the platform AI assists at all. A third: Anthropic, which runs the in-app assistant, processes principally in the United States and may use other locations under the Standard Contractual Clauses in its Data Processing Addendum. A fourth: SpaceXAI, which generates images and runs any AI assist your account routes to xAI, processes principally in the United States and may use other locations under the Standard Contractual Clauses in its Data Processing Addendum. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, using the Service means your personal data is transferred to the United States.
For those transfers we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, with the UK Addendum where the UK GDPR applies, together with supplementary technical measures including encryption in transit and at rest. The clauses are incorporated into our Data Processing Addendum, which you can execute without negotiating with us.
7. How long we keep it
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account data | For the life of the account. After closure: 30 days to export, deleted from active systems within a further 30 days, and from backups within 90 days. |
| Customer contact data | For as long as you keep it, on your instructions. Contacts in a terminal state are purged after 90 days, though suppression of the address is kept permanently so it can never be re-mailed by mistake. |
| Billing records | Seven years, as required by tax and accounting law. |
| Technical logs | Up to 90 days, then deleted or aggregated beyond identifiability. |
| Abuse and suspension records | Up to two years, so a suspended account cannot simply be recreated. |
| Support correspondence | Three years from the last message in the thread. |
| Inactive free accounts | Deleted after 12 consecutive months of inactivity, following notice. |
8. Security
We protect personal data with measures including:
- Database-enforced tenant isolation. Row-level security in the database keeps each customer's data separated at the storage layer rather than relying only on application code to get it right.
- Encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest, with provider API keys encrypted separately.
- Passwords stored only as salted hashes, never in a form we can read.
- Two-factor authentication and idle-session timeouts on accounts.
- Audit records of security-relevant actions, showing who did what and when.
- Least-privilege access for our own staff, granted only where needed to operate the Service or answer your support request.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data we will notify you and the relevant supervisory authority within the timeframes the law requires, which under the GDPR is 72 hours from becoming aware of it.
9. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you, and get a copy.
- Correct data that is wrong or incomplete.
- Delete your data, subject to what we must keep by law.
- Port your data to another provider in a machine-readable format.
- Object to or restrict processing based on legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent at any time, without affecting processing already carried out.
- Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights. Our prices and service do not change because you made a request.
Write to privacy@sentientmail.com. We respond within 30 days, or sooner where the law requires, and we may need to verify your identity first. Exercising these rights is free unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
You may also complain to your data protection authority. In the EEA that is the authority for your country of residence; in the UK it is the Information Commissioner's Office. We would rather you came to us first, but that is your right, not a precondition.
11. Children
The Service is for businesses and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to privacy@sentientmail.com and we will delete it.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. For a material change we will give at least 30 days' notice by email to account owners and update the "last updated" date above. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated policy. If you do not, you can close your account before the effective date. Previous versions are available on request.
13. Contact us
Privacy questions and rights requests:
privacy@sentientmail.com
Abuse reports: abuse@sentientmail.com
Formal legal notices: legal@sentientmail.com
SentientMail, Inc.
16192 Coastal Highway
Lewes, DE 19958
United States