Privacy Policy

What data we collect

You can read the public notes without signing in. When you sign in with GitHub, we collect and process the following.

• Account data: your GitHub username, your numeric GitHub account id and your avatar address, plus the id and settings address of the GitHub App installation you choose. Sign-in is handled by a shared ZoomBuzz identity service, which also keeps an account record for you that can include the email address your GitHub account shares with us
• Authentication tokens: the GitHub App access token (valid for 8 hours) and refresh token (valid for 6 months) that let us act on GitHub on your behalf. Both are stored encrypted and are never sent to your browser
• Your last repository: the host, owner, repository and branch you last opened, so we can return you to it next time
• Repository content: files you open or save pass through our servers to and from GitHub, using your own token. We do not store them in a database. A short-lived copy can stay in server memory (up to 500 entries per server process, for up to an hour) so that repeat requests are quicker
• Technical data: our servers log requests (page address, time, a request id and, when you are signed in, your account id) and count requests to limit abuse. That count is held in server memory, and when a request is refused the address is reported only as a keyed hash. If something breaks in your browser, an error report (error kind, message, stack trace, page address and browser user agent) is sent to our server and recorded in our logs and in New Relic

What data we do not collect

• We do not store your notes or repository content in our database: they stay in your GitHub repository and in your browser
• We never see your GitHub password: you sign in on GitHub itself
• We run no advertising or remarketing pixels, and we do not use your data for advertising or profiling
• We run no third-party monitoring agent in your browser: New Relic runs on our servers only. The one third-party script is the optional Google Analytics described under Cookies and analytics, which loads only if you accept it
• We do not sell your personal data

Why we collect this data

We collect data only to provide the service:

• Account data: to identify you and keep you signed in
• Authentication tokens: to open, save and commit your files on GitHub on your behalf
• Your last repository: to return you to where you left off
• Technical data: to keep the service secure, to limit abuse and to find and fix faults
• Analytics, only if you accept: to understand how the sites are used so that we can improve them

How we protect your data

• GitHub tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, so a copy of the database without the key is unusable, and you can revoke them at any time
• Tokens are never sent to your browser and are used only by our servers
• The two cookies used during sign-in are HttpOnly and expire after 10 minutes

Third-party services

We use the following services to operate NoteGit:

• GitHub: sign-in, and reading and writing your repositories with your permission
• Supabase: the shared ZoomBuzz sign-in service and the database that holds the account and token data above
• DigitalOcean: hosting of the application and its server logs
• Cloudflare: domain name service for notegit.com and notethink.com, and the redirect from each bare domain to its www address. DigitalOcean serves our pages through Cloudflare's network, which may cache public pages and sets a bot-management cookie (see Cookies and analytics)
• New Relic: monitoring of our servers, including errors and logs
• Google Analytics 4: aggregate web analytics, on the live sites only and only if you accept (see Cookies and analytics)

Cookies and analytics

These cookies are essential to signing in, and are always active when you sign in:

• A sign-in session cookie from our identity service, named sb-<project>-auth-token (and split into numbered parts when large). Scripts on the page can read it, which the page uses to send a signed-in visitor on to the app
• notegit_oauth_state and notegit_pkce_verifier: two short-lived HttpOnly cookies that protect the GitHub sign-in round trip, and expire after 10 minutes
• Your browser also stores, on your device only, your analytics choice (the local storage key dulcet-analytics-consent), your unsaved edits until you save them to GitHub, and a cache of GitHub file contents (in IndexedDB). None of these is sent to our servers

One more cookie is set by Cloudflare, whose network serves our pages on behalf of our hosting provider, and is not set by us:

• __cf_bm: a strictly necessary HttpOnly cookie that lasts about 30 minutes and is used to tell people from automated traffic

Optional analytics: with your explicit consent we use Google Analytics 4, one property for each of notegit.com and notethink.com. Nothing is requested from Google until you accept, declining sends nothing to Google, and your choice is remembered for 365 days. Advertising storage, advertising data and ad personalisation stay denied. Once you accept, Google receives the full address of each page you view; on a repository page that address includes the owner, repository and file path you opened, even if the repository is private. If that concerns you, decline.

Your rights

• Deletion: sign in, open the Accounts menu and choose Delete account. This revokes our access to your GitHub account, permanently erases the token record we hold, and signs you out of NoteGit in this browser. It does not remove your shared ZoomBuzz sign-in, because other ZoomBuzz apps use it, so you stay signed in to them, and if you sign in to NoteGit again you start with a clean NoteGit account. Your repositories on GitHub are not touched
• Browser data: deleting your account does not clear what is stored in your browser. Visit the /reset page on this site to clear it
• Revocation: you can revoke our access at any time in your GitHub settings, under Applications
• Access and portability: your notes are plain files in your own GitHub repositories, so you always have them, and we hold no copy

Data retention

• Token record and last repository: kept until you delete your account. The tokens stop working after 8 hours (access) and 6 months (refresh), after which you sign in again, but the stored record remains until you delete your account. Your shared ZoomBuzz sign-in record is held by the shared service for as long as the other ZoomBuzz apps need it, and Delete account does not remove it
• Server logs and error reports: kept by DigitalOcean and New Relic under their own retention periods
• Request counts: held in server memory only and gone when the server restarts
• Browser data: stays on your device until you clear it or visit /reset; your analytics choice is asked again after 365 days

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

Zoom Buzz Limited is the controller of the personal data described on this page.

To erase your data, use Delete account in the Accounts menu. To clear what is stored in your browser, visit the /reset page on this site.