Privacy policy
What Swingback knows about you, why, who else handles it, and how to have it changed or erased. We keep what the product needs to work, sell nothing and show no ads.
In effect since 21 October 2026.
Who is responsible#
Swingback is run by Elie Baier, Rue de la Paix 19, 1020 Renens, Switzerland (“we”). We're responsible for the personal data this policy describes, under Switzerland's Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, for people in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Write to support@swingback.dev about anything on this page.
Our two roles#
- Teams that use Swingback, the people who sign in to its dashboard, are our customers. We decide what we do with their account, and this policy covers it.
- Their customers, who post, vote and comment in a workspace's portal or widget, give their data to that workspace. The workspace decides what it collects and why, and we store and process it on its behalf, as its processor. The workspace's own privacy policy applies, and questions about that data go to it first: we help it answer them. This policy says what we do with that data for the workspace.
What we collect, and why#
On this website#
We count visits with our own copy of Rybbit, an analytics tool that uses no cookies. For each visit it keeps the page, the site you came from, your browser, operating system, device type and screen size, and your country or region, which it works out from your IP address without keeping the address. To count each visitor once, it keeps a short code made from a coarse part of your IP address and your browser. We use these counts to see which pages people read, and for nothing else: that is our legitimate interest. Our servers keep no log of the addresses that visit.
In the dashboard#
- Your account: your email address; your name and picture if you set them, or if you sign in with GitHub, which then gives us both; the language you choose, and the languages your browser asks for. We need them to sign you in and to run the service you signed up for.
- Your sessions: the browser (user agent) and IP address of each session. They protect your account, and let you see where you're signed in.
- Your work: the boards, posts, comments, internal notes, changelog entries, uploads and settings of your workspaces, and the services you connect to them. They are what the service is for.
- Billing: when an owner subscribes, Stripe receives the workspace's name and that owner's email address. Card details go to Stripe directly and never reach our servers. We keep Stripe's references to the customer and to the subscription, and keep billing records for as long as Swiss law requires, 10 years.
- Emails: sign-in codes, invitations, and notifications about your workspaces, each kind of which you can turn off on your account page.
In a portal or a widget, for its workspace#
- Who you are: your name, email address and picture, if you sign in, or if the workspace's own app tells us who you are, with an id, your company, and the details it chooses to send. As a guest, the name and email address you choose to give, if any; Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you're a person.
- What you do: your posts, votes, comments and follows, your language, and your email preferences.
- Your sessions: the browser and IP address of each, which the workspace's team can see.
Your name and picture show next to what you write, unless the workspace hides them; your email address never shows. Portals can be found by search engines.
When you write to us#
Your email address and your message, to answer you. We keep them as long as the conversation needs, and no longer than two years after it ends.
The AI#
The AI features that run by themselves (tags, duplicates, moderation and translation) are off until a workspace's admin turns them on. A draft (a changelog entry, an issue, a post from a Slack message, the matching of a CSV file's columns) is written only when someone asks for one.
Then the texts the AI needs go to Anthropic or TypeSafe AI: a post's title and text, comments, the notes a draft is made from, or a CSV file's column names and first three rows. We add no names or email addresses, though the texts may contain some. Neither company trains its models on them, and Anthropic deletes them within 30 days.
The AI may hold a post or a comment for the workspace's team to review. It never deletes, merges, publishes or emails anything: a person decides. Finding similar posts takes no outside service: it runs on our own servers.
Who else handles personal data#
These services handle personal data for us, under data processing agreements, and for no other purpose:
| Service | What for | What it receives | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| netcup | Our servers | Everything we store | European Union |
| Cloudflare | Our backups (R2), our domain names, and the check that someone is a person (Turnstile) | Backups of the database and the uploads; for Turnstile, the browser's IP address and user agentTurnstile uses what it receives only to tell people from bots. | Backups in the European Union; Turnstile worldwide |
| Postmark | Sending our emails | The recipient's address and the messageKeeps messages for 45 days. | United States |
| Stripe | Payments | The workspace's name, the email address of the owner who subscribes, and the payment details, which go to Stripe directlyAlso uses them for its own duties, such as preventing fraud: see stripe.com/privacy. | Ireland and the United States |
| Anthropic | The AI features | The texts the AI reads or drafts fromDoesn't train its models on them, and deletes them within 30 days. | Wherever Anthropic runs its models, mostly the United States |
| TypeSafe AI | Some AI features: tags, duplicates and moderation | The texts of posts and commentsDoesn't train its models on them. | United States |
We sell no personal data, show no ads, and share it with no one else, unless the law requires us to.
The services a workspace connects (GitHub, Linear, Slack, Discord, its own webhooks, the AI agents it gives a key, an import from Canny) receive what the workspace sends them, under their own terms. The issues and announcements we send them carry no customer's name or email address. Pictures from GitHub or Google load from their servers.
Where data is stored#
Our servers and our backups are in Switzerland or the European Union. Some of the services above are in the United States, or work worldwide. Their transfers are covered by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, with the changes Switzerland requires, or by the service's certification under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Frameworks.
How long we keep it#
- An account: until you delete it. Its sign-in records go with it, and your name, email address and picture are erased from the workspaces you belonged to: what you wrote there stays, without your name.
- A workspace: until its owners delete it. It is erased 30 days later, which leaves them time to change their minds.
- A workspace's customers: as long as the workspace keeps them. They are erased when they or the workspace ask; a guest who left no post, vote or comment, after 30 days.
- Sessions: they end after 30 days without use, and after 90 days at most. A sign-in code works for 10 minutes.
- Activity: the activity log, 180 days; notifications, 90 days; the log of the emails we sent, 30 days; a webhook's deliveries, 30 days; an export, 7 days.
- Backups: every 15 minutes, kept 3 days, and every day, kept 90 days. Something erased leaves the backups when they expire.
- An address an email couldn't reach: we keep it, so as not to write to it again.
Cookies#
This website sets no cookies. The dashboard, the portals and the widget set these, only to sign you in and to
remember your choices; on our servers their names start with __Host-:
| Cookie | Where | What for | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| s_session | Dashboard | Keeps you signed in | 90 days |
| s_oauth | Dashboard and portals | Completes a sign-in with GitHub | 10 minutes |
| s_last_workspace | Dashboard | Opens the workspace you used last | 1 year |
| s_slack_install | Dashboard | Completes connecting Slack | 10 minutes |
| s_github_install | Dashboard | Completes connecting GitHub | 10 minutes |
| s_github_choice | Dashboard | The GitHub accounts you choose among when connecting it | 10 minutes |
| s_linear_install | Dashboard | Completes connecting Linear | 10 minutes |
| s_theme | Dashboard and portals | Light or dark, as you chose | 1 year |
| s_portal_session | Portals | Keeps you signed in to a portal | 90 days |
| s_portal_email | Portals | Remembers, as a hash, the address that asked for a sign-in code | 15 minutes |
| s_portal_sso | Portals | Completes a sign-in through the workspace's own website | 10 minutes |
| s_widget_session | Widgets | Keeps you signed in to a widget, on the website that shows it | 90 days |
| s_lang | Portals | The language you chose | 1 year |
A portal also keeps, in your browser, which changelog entries you've seen, and remembers a choice until you close the tab. We use no cookies for ads or tracking, so none asks for your consent. When a portal checks that you're a person, Cloudflare Turnstile may store what that check needs.
Your rights#
You can ask to see the personal data we have about you, and to get a copy; to have it corrected or deleted; to restrict or object to how we use it; and to take it elsewhere. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it.
Much of this you can do yourself:
- Members: change your name, or delete your account, on your account page.
- A portal's users: download your data, or delete your account, on the portal's account page; and turn off its emails with the link in each notification and digest.
- Owners: export a workspace, or delete it, in its settings.
For anything else, write to support@swingback.dev: we answer within 30 days. About your data in a workspace's portal, ask the workspace first: it decides about it there, and we help it.
If you think we got something wrong, you can complain to Switzerland's Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), or to the data protection authority where you live, in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom.
Security#
Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS). Sign-in codes and tokens are stored as hashes, and the secrets of the services you connect are encrypted. A workspace's data is open only to its team, by role, and backups are kept away from our servers. No system is perfectly safe: if a breach puts your data at risk, we tell you, and the authorities, as the law requires.
Children#
Swingback isn't meant for children under 16.
Changes to this policy#
When we change this policy, we publish the new version here with its date. If a change matters to you, we email account holders before it applies.