Privacy Policy
Last updated: 2026-09-30 (version 2026-09-30)
Binder is for adults (18 and over) at university. It keeps your classes, files, handwriting, notebooks, recordings and questions so that you can study. It stores them with Google. When you ask Gemini something, the pages you choose go to Google. I do not sell your information, show ads, track you across sites, or use your content to train AI. You can ask for a copy or for deletion at any time. This box is a summary; the numbered sections are the policy.
1. Who is responsible
Binder AI ("Binder") is run by Owen Homick, an individual in Ontario, Canada ("I", "me"). I am the person accountable for your personal information under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and I am the person in charge of the protection of personal information under Québec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector. Contact: Owen Homick, owen@homick.com.
2. What Binder collects
Account. If you sign in with Google, I receive your name, email address and profile picture link from Google. If you sign up with email, I receive your email address, your name, and a scrambled (hashed) version of your password that I cannot read. Sign-in services also record technical details such as your IP address and browser.
Your content. Everything you put into Binder: PDFs and photos you upload (lessons, homework, answer keys, worksheets), your handwriting and marks on them, notebook pages, typed text, audio and page recordings you make, and the classes, units and lessons you set up.
What Binder makes for you. Notes, quizzes, flashcards, checked homework and lists of things you keep getting wrong, when you choose to keep them. Binder does not save the back-and-forth of a Gemini chat after you close it.
What you ask Gemini. The question you type, plus the page, image, PDF or text you attach to it. See section 5.
Technical information. Your IP address and browser details in the logs of the services that run Binder (section 4), and a short list of settings stored on your device (section 9).
What Binder does not collect. No advertising identifiers, no analytics or tracking scripts, no location, no contacts, no photos other than ones you choose to upload, and no information about you from other sources.
3. Why, and on what consent
I collect and use this information only to run Binder for you: to sign you in, store and show your work, send pages to Gemini when you ask, keep the service secure and working, and contact you about your account. I also use it where the law requires.
Under PIPEDA I rely on your consent. The things that matter most are in this policy in plain words: what is collected, who else receives it (section 4, including Google and Gemini), why, and the risks of storing it outside Canada (section 7). The first time you sign in, I ask for your agreement in a step of its own, separate from the Terms of Service. By agreeing you accept the collection and use described here. You can withdraw consent by deleting your content or your account (section 10). Some features will not work if you withdraw consent, because Binder cannot run without storing your work.
4. Who else handles it (service providers)
Binder does not run its own servers. These companies handle information for me.
| Service | What it does for Binder | What it receives | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Firebase Authentication | Signs you in with Google or email and password | Name, email, profile picture link, hashed password, IP address and browser details | United States |
| Google Cloud Firestore | The database: classes, file list, handwriting, notebooks, quizzes, cards, settings | Your content and what Binder makes for you | United States (Iowa, region us-central1) |
| Google Cloud Storage for Firebase | Stores the PDFs, photos, recordings and backups you upload | Your files | [TODO for Owen: confirm the Cloud Storage bucket region in the Firebase console and name it here. It is believed to be the United States.] |
| Google Firebase Hosting | Delivers the Binder website and app files | Your IP address and browser details, in request logs | Google's network, including servers outside Canada |
| Firebase App Check and reCAPTCHA Enterprise | Checks that requests come from the real Binder in a real browser, not from a script. This runs on every page. | Signals from your browser and device, and your IP address. It sets a cookie called _GRECAPTCHA. | Google's network |
| Google Gemini, through Firebase AI Logic | Reads pages and handwriting, writes notes and quizzes, answers questions | The question and the pages, images, PDFs or text you attach | Google's global service. The processing location cannot be chosen and may be outside Canada and the United States. |
Two more services are involved only if you use a particular feature, and they are not under my control:
- Picture search. If you search for a picture inside Binder, your search words go from your browser to Wikimedia Commons and Openverse, and the pictures load from their servers or from the sites that host them, which can see your IP address.
- Dictation. If you use the Speak button, your browser or device sends the audio to its own speech service (typically Google in Chrome and Apple in Safari) to turn it into text. Binder does not receive the audio through this feature.
Google acts as my service provider for Firebase, Cloud Storage, App Check, reCAPTCHA Enterprise and Gemini under Google's cloud terms, and may use its own sub-processors. Google's Firebase privacy information is at firebase.google.com/support/privacy. If you use Google to sign in, Google's own privacy policy applies to your Google account.
5. Gemini and your content
When you ask Gemini about a page, or use a feature that reads your handwriting or a file, Binder sends that material to Google over an encrypted connection. Under the Google Cloud terms that cover this service, as I read them on 2026-09-30:
- Google does not use your prompts or Gemini's answers to train or fine-tune its AI models without your permission, and I have not given that permission.
- Google may keep inputs and outputs in temporary memory for up to 24 hours to speed up repeat requests.
- If Google's automated systems flag a request as possible abuse, Google may log that prompt for up to 90 days, and authorized Google staff may review it.
- Google does not store your prompts or answers outside my account for longer than needed to produce the answer, unless I tell it to. I do not.
Because the service runs on Google's global network, I cannot promise that Gemini processing stays in Canada or in any one country. Gemini can be wrong; see the Terms.
No automated decisions about you, and no profiling. Binder does not locate you, profile you, or make decisions about you using automated processing alone, with one exception: App Check uses a score from reCAPTCHA Enterprise to decide whether a request to Binder's services is accepted. If you think it blocked you wrongly, email me and I will look at it by hand.
6. What I do with it, and do not do
- I do not sell or rent your information.
- I do not show advertising, and I do not build advertising profiles.
- I do not use your content to train AI models, and I have not allowed Google to.
- I do not share your content with other Binder users, and I do not share it with your university or instructors. There is no sharing feature.
- I do not read your content. As the operator I can technically reach it, and I look only to help with a problem you raised, to look into a security problem or a copyright complaint, or where the law requires it.
- I email you only about your account: sign-in and password emails, access codes you asked for, security notices, and changes to these policies. If I ever want to send anything else, I will ask first and make it easy to say no.
7. Where your information is kept, and who can reach it
Your information is stored and processed in the United States, and in the case of Gemini possibly in other countries where Google operates. That is outside Québec and outside your province. If you live in Québec, this means your personal information may be communicated outside Québec. Before relying on these services I assessed the privacy risks of that transfer, and I have a written agreement with Google, as Québec law requires. The laws of those countries apply to your information there, and courts, law enforcement and national security authorities in those countries may be able to get access to it under those laws.
8. Who Binder is for
Binder is for people who are 18 or older. You confirm this when you sign up. I do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and I will close an account and delete its content if I learn it belongs to someone under 18.
Binder is a personal tool that you choose to use. It is not a university product or an institutional service, and it has no connection to any university. I do not share your content, or information about how you use Binder, with your university, your instructors or anyone else. If your university or an instructor asks you to use Binder, the university is responsible for that choice under its own privacy rules. I will answer a university's privacy and accessibility questions and work with it on reasonable terms.
9. Cookies and local storage
I chose to cover this here rather than in a separate notice.
Binder sets no cookies of its own. It stores information on your device in other ways, all of which stay on your device until they are cleared or you delete them:
| What | Where | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in state | Firebase's storage in your browser (IndexedDB) | Keeps you signed in |
| A copy of your data | Firestore's cache in your browser (IndexedDB) | Makes Binder fast and lets you read and write without a connection |
| A journal of unsent writing | IndexedDB (binder-journal) | Holds handwriting not yet saved, so it is not lost if you go offline |
| Device-only mode | IndexedDB (binder-local) | Only if you choose "Try Binder on this device only". Then your work stays on your device and nothing syncs. |
| Sheets you keep for offline use, and the app's own files | Cache Storage (binder-sheets-v1, binder-shell-...) | Lets Binder open without a connection |
| A service worker | The file /sw.js | Keeps the app files on your device and opens them quickly |
| Your settings | localStorage, keys beginning binder. | Theme, pen and paper choices, which tips you have seen |
One third-party cookie. Google's reCAPTCHA Enterprise, which runs as part of App Check (section 4), sets a cookie called _GRECAPTCHA. It is used for security and abuse prevention. There are no advertising or analytics cookies.
You can clear all of this in your browser's site settings. Clearing it signs you out and removes the offline copy and any unsent writing, so sign in and let Binder finish saving first.
10. How long it is kept, and deleting it
- Your account and content are kept while your account is open.
- When the purpose ends. Once your account is closed, I destroy your information or make it anonymous, apart from the short periods below.
- Deleting content yourself. Settings, Data, "Delete everything in my account" removes your classes, files, handwriting, notebook pages and saved results. It does not delete your sign-in record.
- Deleting your whole account. Settings, Data, "Delete my account" deletes your sign-in record and everything stored under it, straight away. A record that your account once held access (an account number and a code fingerprint, nothing you wrote) is kept so a code cannot be reused. If you cannot sign in, email owen@homick.com from the address on the account and I will do it and confirm to you within 30 days.
- After deletion, your information is removed from Binder's live systems promptly. Google says it deletes data from its active systems within about two months and from its backups within a maximum of 180 days.
- Logs. Google keeps sign-in IP logs for a few weeks and Hosting request logs for a few months.
- Records I must keep. I keep a record of any privacy breach for 24 months, as the law requires, and I may keep the minimum needed to deal with a legal claim.
11. Your rights
You can ask me:
- for a copy of the personal information I hold about you, and how it is used;
- to correct information that is wrong;
- to delete your information;
- for the information you gave me in a structured, commonly used format, so that you can take it elsewhere;
- to explain something in this policy, or to withdraw your consent.
I will answer within 30 days. There is no charge for ordinary requests. I may need to confirm that you are the account holder. Settings, Data, "Download a backup" gives you most of your own content straight away, in a zip file that holds a JSON file and your original files.
Complaints. Write to me first at owen@homick.com. I will reply within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with my answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca. If you live in Québec, you can also complain to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec at cai.gouv.qc.ca.
12. Keeping it safe, and what happens if something goes wrong
Each account can reach only its own information: Binder's database and storage rules deny access to everything else. Data travels over encrypted connections, and the services I use encrypt stored data. No system is perfectly safe.
If a breach of security safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to you, I will report it to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and tell you, as soon as feasible, with what happened, what information was involved and what you can do. If you live in Québec and a confidentiality incident creates a risk of serious injury, I will also notify the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, and tell you promptly. I keep a register of every incident, and I take reasonable steps to reduce the harm and to stop it happening again.
13. Changes
I will update this policy when Binder or the law changes. The date is at the top. If a change matters, I will tell you in Binder or by email before it takes effect, and I will ask for your agreement again where the law requires it.
14. Contact
Owen Homick, Ontario, Canada. Email owen@homick.com. To report a security problem, see /.well-known/security.txt.