LegalPrivacy Policy

The short version

Accounts are optional. If you create one, we keep your email address, your purchases and your search credits. The only cookies OpenGlyph sets are the ones that keep you signed in. We don’t run analytics, advertising or tracking. Payments are handled by Polar, and we never see your card details.

1. What we collect today

• Searches. When you search for a character or a work, the subject you entered is stored together with the research result, so the same search can be answered again without repeating the research. Stored searches are not linked to your IP address or to any account, with one exception: when you pay for a search with a credit, your credit history records the subject it was spent on.
• IP addresses, briefly. To enforce the daily search limit and to protect the site from automated abuse, we record your IP address together with a count of your recent requests. These records expire automatically within about a day.
• Your account, if you create one. Your email address and your password, which is stored only in hashed form, never as readable text. We also keep a record of your purchases, of your search credits (each credit added, used, or returned), and of the dossier and artwork files you download, which is how the refund rules in our Terms are applied. To apply your daily allowance of free searches, we count your new searches against your account; those counts expire within about a day.
• Purchases. Payment details (card number and billing information) go directly to Polar, our merchant of record, and never reach us. From Polar we receive what you bought, the order number and amount, and the email address on the order, so the purchase can be added to your account.
• Hosting logs. Our hosting provider keeps standard request logs to run and secure the site.

We don’t run newsletters or marketing email, and we don’t sell or share your information for advertising. The emails an account receives are the ones it needs: confirming your address and resetting your password.

2. What may change

Planned features, such as privacy-respecting analytics to understand traffic, would collect more than we do today. This policy will be updated, with a new revision date, before any of that ships.

3. Service providers and third-party links

OpenGlyph relies on these providers to run the service:

• Vercel hosts the site and stores the files offered for download.
• Upstash provides the database that holds stored searches and their research, curated entries, and the short-lived IP and search-count records described above.
• Supabase runs accounts and sign-in, and stores your email address, hashed password, purchases and search-credit history.
• Polar (Polar Software, Inc.) is our online reseller and merchant of record. It processes payments and taxes under its own privacy policy.
• Anthropic performs the research for new character searches. The subject you enter is sent to Anthropic’s Claude API, which searches the web and returns the findings OpenGlyph shows you.
• Resend sends the account emails described above. It also sends OpenGlyph’s operator an email when a new subject has been researched; that email contains the subject searched, and nothing about who searched it.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution. Art searches are sent to their public collection APIs to find matching works.

Every character record links out to its primary sources — court records, news coverage, archives. Those are independent sites with their own privacy practices; this policy only covers OpenGlyph itself.

4. Cookies

OpenGlyph sets only essential cookies. When you sign in, cookies keep you signed in as you move around the site; they are removed when you sign out. We don’t use advertising or analytics cookies.

5. Children’s privacy

OpenGlyph is not directed to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. By using OpenGlyph, you represent that you are at least 13 years old.

If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 without any legally required parental consent, we will take reasonable steps to delete that information and, where appropriate, disable the account or access associated with it.

If you believe that a child under 13 has provided personal information to OpenGlyph, please contact us at contact@theopenglyph.com so that we can investigate and take appropriate action.

Nothing in this section is intended to limit any rights or obligations under applicable children’s privacy laws.

6. Changes to this policy

We’ll update the revision date below whenever this policy materially changes.

7. Your account data

To get a copy of your account data, or to close your account and delete it, write to us from the email address on the account at contact@theopenglyph.com. Records of payments may be kept where the law requires it.

8. Contact

Questions about this policy: contact@theopenglyph.com.

Revision: 2026-10.