Who we are
Cove is run by Jeremy Ong ("we", "us"). This policy explains how Cove handles personal data when you use the Cove website, the Cove apps for iPhone and Mac, and the Cove connector in AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude.
Questions about privacy go to cove@lifeplainly.com. We answer every request.
What we collect
Your account
When you sign in with Google, Google tells us a stable account identifier, your email address and whether the address is verified. We use the identifier to recognise you and the address only to contact you about your account. We never receive your Google password.
What you put in Cove
Projects, tickets, reminders, comments, documents and files you attach, the history of changes to them, journal entries if you write any, and Profile records and their original files if you add any. Profile files are stored encrypted. This is the content you create, and Cove exists to store it for you.
Google Calendar, if you link it
If you link a Google account for calendar access, we store an encrypted Google refresh token (AES-GCM) so Cove can read and change your calendars when you or a connected assistant ask. Event details are fetched from Google at the time of the request and are not stored by Cove.
Devices and connections
If you turn on notifications, we store the push address your browser or device gives us so reminders can reach you. When you connect an assistant or app, we store the connection (its name, the permissions you approved and when) so you can see and revoke it. Personal API tokens are stored only as a one-way hash.
The waitlist
If you join the waitlist on the home page, we store the email address you give us so we can invite you. We do not send it anywhere else.
Service records
To run and secure the service, our hosting provider processes technical request data such as IP addresses. Cove's own logs record events and bounded identifiers, never the text of your records or journal.
How we use it
- To provide Cove: store your records, show them to you and to the apps and assistants you connect, and send the reminders you set.
- To keep it safe: authenticate you, prevent abuse, enforce limits and investigate problems.
- To contact you about your account, security or important changes to Cove.
We do not use your content for advertising, we do not build profiles of you, and we do not use your content to train AI models.
AI assistants you connect
When you connect Cove to an assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude, the assistant can use Cove only with the permissions you approve on Cove's consent page: work items, journal, calendar and Profile access, each ticked separately and each read or read and write. What the assistant reads from Cove becomes part of your conversation with that assistant and is handled under that provider's own privacy policy.
An assistant you connect with work access can send you a short notification. It goes only to your own devices that you turned notifications on for, never to anyone else. We keep each one in your Cove inbox with the assistant's name, its title and text, and whether it reached your devices. The title and text can appear on your lock screen. You can mute any assistant, or turn assistant notifications off, on your account page; muted ones are still kept in your inbox.
You can disconnect an assistant at any time from the assistant's settings, and revoke its access from your Cove account page.
Who processes it
We share personal data only with providers that run parts of Cove for us, and only as needed:
- Cloudflare hosts Cove and stores your data and daily backups.
- Google provides sign-in and, if you link it, Google Calendar.
- Apple and browser push services (from Apple, Google, Mozilla or Microsoft, depending on your device and browser) deliver notifications to your devices, including the title and text of notifications from your assistants.
We do not sell or rent personal data, and we share it with no one else unless the law requires it.
Google user data
Cove's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use Google Calendar data only to show and change your calendars at your request, we do not transfer it except as needed to provide that feature or as required by law, and no person at Cove reads it unless you ask us to for support or the law requires it.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and content for as long as your account exists.
Notifications from your assistants are kept in your inbox for 6 months and then deleted. They are included when you export your account, and they are not part of the daily backups.
Cove makes a private backup of each workspace every day. Something you delete in Cove can stay in those backups for as long as your account exists. When you delete your account, your workspace and all of its backups are deleted, normally at once and always within a day.
If you join the waitlist, we keep your email address until you ask us to remove it, or until we no longer need the waitlist.
Your choices and rights
- Export your whole workspace as a file from your account page.
- Delete your account and workspace from your account page. This also revokes your connected assistants and apps and your Google Calendar link.
- Revoke any connected assistant, app or token whenever you like.
- Ask us to access, correct or delete your data, or object to how we use it, by writing to cove@lifeplainly.com.
Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to complain to your data protection authority.
Security
Connections to Cove are encrypted. Access is protected by OAuth with per-permission consent, sign-in sessions and tokens can be revoked, Google refresh tokens are encrypted, and each person's workspace is stored separately from everyone else's. No system is perfectly secure, and we will tell you promptly if a breach affects your data.
Children
Cove is not meant for children under 13, or the minimum age for consent to online services where you live if that is higher. We do not knowingly collect their data.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will say so on this page and tell you by email or in the app before the change takes effect.