Privacy policy
Effective 13 August 2026; updated 24 September 2026. This page applies to ace-bl.tech, the Ace application for macOS, and Ace BL for iPhone and iPad.
Michael Barber is the merchant offering and selling Ace.
In plain English
Your working files and raw microphone audio stay on your Mac. To reason, Ace sends your request and the context you choose directly to the ChatGPT or Claude account you connected. The Ace operator does not receive that provider traffic.
Normal conversation turns are stored locally in transcript.md. Private Mode reads are not stored.
Our hosted account records are limited to fulfilment, licence, billing, security and consent data. The complete categories and retention periods are listed below.
Public marketing pages use limited PostHog analytics, described below. No advertising cookies or session recordings are used.
This summary is for orientation only. The numbered terms below are the agreement.
1. Who is responsible
Michael Barber is the merchant offering and selling Ace. The individual merchant and data controller is Michael Barber, contactable at privacy@ace-bl.tech. Under UK and EU data protection law Michael Barber is the data controller for the information described below. A postal address for formal correspondence is available on request and is included in the footer of every marketing email we send.
2. What we collect
| What | Why | Lawful basis (UK/EU GDPR) | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email address, account record, licence key and status, and plan | To identify your account, send sign-in links, fulfil access and provide support | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) | While the account exists; transaction records required for legal, accounting or dispute purposes may be retained for up to 6 years |
| Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, subscription/payment status, first-week purchase date, renewal date and cancellation state | To provision Ace, show billing status and honour cancellation. Card details are handled by Stripe and never reach us | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); legal obligation where applicable | While the account exists; transaction records required for legal, accounting or dispute purposes may be retained for up to 6 years |
| Device identifier and device name, licence-bound date, last lease date and lease count | To apply the one-Mac licence and diagnose activation | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | While the licence record exists, unless erased earlier where the law permits |
| Free and trial allowance counts: for each Command+Shift task or slice of Partner time counted against a free or trial allowance, a random request identifier, its time and the Partner seconds used (never what the task was); one-way hashes of the email address and Mac identifier that claimed a free or trial allowance | To apply the free allowance and trial limits, and to stop one allowance being claimed twice | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | While the licence record exists; the one-way claim hashes are kept so the same email or Mac cannot claim a second allowance |
| Purchase acknowledgment version and timestamp | To record the subscription terms disclosed and accepted at purchase | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); legal obligation and legitimate interests | Up to 6 years for transaction and dispute records |
| Daily email consent source and text, timestamp, confirmation timestamp and a one-way hash of the IP address used to sign up | To prove consent and send only what was requested | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) | Until consent is withdrawn, then reduced to the suppression record |
| Email suppression record and suppression timestamp | To honour an unsubscribe and prevent accidental re-enrolment | Legal obligation and legitimate interests | Retained as long as needed to honour the suppression; it is not used for marketing |
| Short-lived sign-in, anti-replay and rate-limit records | Account security and abuse prevention | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | Sign-in links and anti-replay markers expire after 15 minutes; rate-limit records automatically expire after their security window |
| Short-lived device-link request code, one-way hash of its polling secret, Mac identifier and name, selected licence, and device-bound signed lease | To let you approve the Mac from your signed-in browser without typing a licence key into Ace | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | The request expires after 15 minutes and is removed by device-link cleanup after a further 24 hours; the separate one-Mac licence binding remains while the licence record exists |
| Aggregate download counters not attached to an email address | Abuse prevention and delivery health | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | Up to 400 days |
| Server logs at our hosting provider | Security and abuse prevention | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | Retained by Cloudflare per their policy; we do not build a profile from them |
We do not collect special-category data, buy data about you, or enrich your record from third-party sources. A deletion request removes records that are no longer required; it does not erase a suppression entry whose purpose is to make sure we do not email you again.
3. What we never receive
This is the section that matters most, so it is stated as plainly as possible. The Ace application runs on your Mac and works on your own files. We do not receive, store, transmit or process:
- your documents, code, notes, or any file Ace works on;
- the text of anything you say to Ace, or any audio recording of it;
- screen contents, screenshots, or anything captured from your display;
- your ChatGPT or Claude credentials or API keys;
- usage telemetry — which modes you use or what you do in them. On a free or trial plan the only usage we receive is the allowance count listed above: one entry per Command+Shift task or slice of Partner time, with its time and length, never its content.
When Ace reasons, it sends your request directly from your Mac to your own ChatGPT or Claude account. That traffic does not pass through us and we could not read it if we wanted to. What happens to it at that point is governed by your provider's privacy policy and your agreement with them — read theirs, because it is the one that applies to the contents of your work. The fixed connections, direct provider path and task-specific destination rules are documented here.
4. What Ace stores on your Mac
Normal conversation turns are appended to an owner-readable file named transcript.md in your local Application Support folder. That file remains on your Mac until you remove it. Private Mode reads are not stored. Raw microphone audio is used for on-device speech transcription and is not retained as a recording after the request is served.
Other local records—such as settings, approvals, account credentials and Partner data—remain in private local storage controlled by your macOS account. Local storage does not mean provider processing is local: the request and selected context still go directly to the AI provider when Ace reasons.
If you choose Connect with Google for Gmail, Ace's sign-in service exchanges and refreshes Google authorization tokens over an encrypted connection. Those tokens are returned to the app and stored in your Mac's login Keychain; the sign-in service does not retain them. Your mailbox contents travel directly between the app and Google. Website Google sign-in alone does not grant Gmail access.
5. Cookies
The ace_session cookie is set only after you sign in, so the site knows it is you. It is strictly necessary for a service you explicitly requested, which is why it needs no consent banner under the ePrivacy Directive and the UK PECR. It is HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax, and expires after 30 days. Installer downloads require a sign-in within the last ten minutes. Google sign-in and Gmail connection also use separate, strictly necessary state cookies that expire after ten minutes and are cleared when the callback succeeds.
There is no analytics cookie, no advertising cookie, no third-party pixel, no session recorder, and no tag manager. Public pages use the limited PostHog analytics described below.
6. Who we share it with
The account and website processors include PostHog for public-page analytics, as described below, and:
- Cloudflare — hosts this website, stores subscriber records and delivers our email. It receives the address and message content needed for email delivery. Data is held in Cloudflare's global network.
- Stripe — takes payment. Stripe receives your card details directly; we never see or store them. Stripe is the controller of that payment data under its own policy.
Your connected ChatGPT or Claude provider receives requests directly from your Mac under your own account and its own terms. That traffic is not shared by the Ace operator.
We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not disclose it for any other party's marketing. We have never done so. Under the CCPA/CPRA definitions, we do not "sell" or "share" personal information, so there is no "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" mechanism to offer — because the activity it opts you out of does not happen here.
We will disclose information if compelled by valid legal process. Because we hold so little, what could be produced is the account, licence, device, billing and consent information described in the table above — not your work.
7. Your rights
Wherever you live, we apply the same rights to everyone rather than sorting people by jurisdiction. You may ask us to:
- Access — send you a copy of everything we hold about you;
- Correct — fix anything inaccurate;
- Erase — delete your record, subject to tax records we must keep by law;
- Port — receive it in a machine-readable format;
- Object or restrict — including opting out of marketing at any time;
- Withdraw consent — for the daily email, at any time, with one click.
Write to privacy@ace-bl.tech. We respond within 30 days, usually the same week, and we will not charge you or ask why. We will not ask you to create an account or complete a form to exercise a right.
If you are in the UK or EU and you think we have handled this badly, you may complain to your national supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first.
8. International transfers
Our processors operate globally, so your email address may be processed outside the UK/EEA. Cloudflare and Stripe each rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and the applicable UK addendum for those transfers.
9. Children
Ace is sold to adults and is not directed at children under 13 (or under 16 in the UK/EEA). We do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us their address, tell us and we will delete it.
9. Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Sign-in uses a single-use link rather than a password, so there is no password of yours for us to lose. Sign-in and subscription tokens are HMAC-signed; the IP addresses recorded for consent are stored one-way hashed rather than in the clear. No system is perfect, and we will tell you directly if a breach affects you rather than waiting to be asked.
10. Changes
If this policy changes materially we will say so on this page and, if you are on the daily list, in an email. The effective date is at the top.
Public-page analytics
We use PostHog to measure visits and purchase, signup, and contact actions on public marketing pages. A random identifier is stored in sessionStorage for the browser tab session. Events contain the public page path without query strings, referring hostname, browser user agent, viewport width, and action or form identifier. Form submission events record an attempt, not a completed purchase or delivered message. We do not send form values, names, email addresses, document contents, private account pages, or recordings of your session through this measurement. PostHog receives the network request; IP-based geolocation and person profiles are disabled. Global Privacy Control, Do Not Track, and this browser opt-out disable public-page measurement.
Ace BL for iPhone and iPad
Ace BL lets you talk to, message, view and control Ace running on your own Mac.
What it uses on your device
- Camera: to scan your Mac's pairing code and, when you choose (World, or a call with the camera on), to show Ace on your Mac what you're looking at.
- Microphone and speech recognition: speech is transcribed on your device; only the text is sent to Ace on your Mac. Raw audio never leaves your device.
- Local network: to find your Mac nearby and create an encrypted link.
- Notifications: to tell you when Ace on your Mac needs you, and to ring for Ace calls.
Where your content goes
Messages, transcribed speech, camera frames you send, and the taps, scrolls and text you send to control your Mac go only to Ace on your own Mac. Nearby, they travel over an encrypted local link. Away from home, they pass through our relay (Cloudflare Workers), end-to-end encrypted with a key contained in the pairing code you scan; the relay cannot read that content and does not store it. Ace on your Mac then handles your request as described in the rest of this policy, for example by sending it to the AI provider you connected on your Mac. Ace BL asks for your permission before anything is sent for the first time, and you can withdraw it in the app.
What our relay stores
A hashed pairing token, your device's notification tokens (used only to deliver alerts and calls) and room metadata, kept until you disconnect, the pairing is revoked, or it expires (at most 30 days after your Mac last renews it). Notifications are delivered through Apple Push Notification service.
What stays on your device
Recent call history, your voice choice, drafts and scheduled requests are stored only on your device and are removed when you delete the app.
Subscription
Purchases in Ace BL are processed by Apple. We receive confirmation of your access, never your payment details. Manage or cancel in your Apple Account settings.
Your choices
Choose Disconnect Mac in the app to stop notifications and remove the pairing from your device and our relay. To ask us to delete any remaining relay data, email privacy@ace-bl.tech.
Ace BL does not track you or sell your data, and it contains no advertising or analytics SDKs.