privacy policy
idealab is a place to capture ideas and, if you choose, share them with others on your terms. Your ideas are private by default. This policy explains what we collect, why, and who can see it.
What we collect
- Account details — your email address. If you sign in with Google, we also receive your name and profile photo from Google.
- What you create — the ideas you save (your original text plus the generated title, summary, category and tags), notes you add, and the settings you choose for each idea.
- Collaboration activity — access requests you send or receive, any message attached to them, and a timestamped record when you agree to an idea's terms.
- Counts — we keep running totals, such as how many ideas have been processed, overall and per account. These are numbers only, not the ideas themselves.
- Abuse prevention — to limit how many ideas can be processed per hour, we briefly count requests per account, or per IP address if you're signed out. These counts are short-lived and routinely cleared.
We don't use advertising or third-party analytics trackers.
Processing an idea
When you hit “process idea”, the text you typed is sent to our AI provider (Groq) to generate a title, summary, category and tags. This happens whether or not you're signed in. If you don't save the idea, we don't store its text.
Who can see your ideas
- Private ideas (the default) are visible only to you.
- Discoverable ideas show their title, category and tags to other users. If blur is on, the summary stays hidden until you approve someone's request.
- Approved requesters can see the full summary of that idea.
- When you request access to someone else's idea, the owner sees your username, profile details and any message you include.
Cookies and local storage
We use cookies only to keep you signed in. If you process an idea before signing in and choose “save to my board”, the idea is held temporarily in your browser's local storage so it can be saved once you sign in, then removed.
Services we rely on
We share data with these providers only as needed to run idealab:
- Supabase — database and sign-in
- Vercel — hosting
- Groq — AI processing of idea text
- Google — sign-in (if you choose Google) and web fonts
We don't sell your personal information.
Keeping and deleting your data
We keep your account and ideas until you delete them. You can delete an idea from its page at any time. To delete your account and everything in it, email us at so939@nyu.edu.
Deleting an idea removes it from your board and from discover, along with its notes and settings. Ideas nobody requested leave nothing behind.
The one exception is agreement records. Once someone requests access to a discoverable idea, we keep a record of who agreed to its terms, when, and exactly what they were shown (the title, category and tags, plus the summary if it was revealed to them). This record stays even if the idea, the request or either account is deleted, because it exists to protect idea owners. Your original idea text and notes are never part of it.
Deleted data can remain in our backups for a limited time before those backups are replaced.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit, and access to your private ideas is restricted to your account. Hidden summaries are withheld by our server, not just blurred on screen. No service is perfectly secure, so please don't store anything you couldn't afford to have exposed.
Children
idealab isn't intended for anyone under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information.
Changes
If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top of this page.
Contact
Questions or requests: so939@nyu.edu