Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 26, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how CiteScan ("we," "us," or "our") accesses, collects, stores, uses, and shares your personal information when you use our services (the "Services"), including when you:

Visit our website at citescan.ai or any website of ours that links to this Privacy Policy
Use CiteScan. CiteScan generates SEO, AEO, and GEO ranking analysis for any domain, providing recommendations to improve rankings and make domain content more citable to AI engines.
Engage with us in other related ways, including marketing or events

Questions or concerns? Reading this Privacy Policy will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at hello@citescan.ai.

Summary of Key Points

This summary provides key points from our Privacy Policy. You can find more details about each topic in the relevant section below.

What personal information do we process? When you visit, use, or navigate our Services, we may process personal information depending on how you interact with us, the choices you make, and the features you use.

Do we process sensitive personal information? No. We do not process sensitive personal information such as racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs.

Do we collect information from third parties? No. We do not collect personal information from third parties.

How do we process your information? We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, prevent security and fraud issues, and comply with applicable law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent.

With whom do we share personal information? We share information only in specific situations and with specific categories of third parties, such as our hosting providers, payment processors, and AI service providers. See Section 4 for details.

How do we keep your information safe? We have implemented appropriate organizational and technical measures to protect your personal information. However, no electronic transmission or storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

What are your rights? Depending on your location, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of your personal information. See Section 11 for details.

How do you exercise your rights? Contact us at hello@citescan.ai. We will consider and act on any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

What information do we collect?
How do we process your information?
What legal bases do we rely on?
When and with whom do we share your personal information?
Do we offer artificial intelligence-based products?
How do we handle your social logins?
Is your information transferred internationally?
How long do we keep your information?
How do we keep your information safe?
Do we collect information from minors?
What are your privacy rights?
Controls for Do-Not-Track features
Do United States residents have specific privacy rights?
Do we make updates to this policy?
How can you contact us?
How can you review, update, or delete your data?

1. What information do we collect?

Personal information you disclose to us

In short: We collect personal information that you provide to us.

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you register on the Services, express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products, participate in activities on the Services, or otherwise contact us.

Personal information provided by you. The personal information we collect may include:

Names
Email addresses
Usernames
Passwords (stored as hashed values, never in plain text)

Domain and scan data. When you submit a domain for analysis, we process the domain name and publicly available content from that domain. We retain scan results and associated reports in your account history.

Sensitive information. We do not process sensitive personal information.

Payment data. We may collect data necessary to process your payment if you choose to make purchases, such as your payment instrument number and the security code associated with your payment instrument. All payment data is handled and stored by Stripe. You may find their privacy policy at stripe.com/privacy.

Social media login data. We may provide you with the option to register using your existing Google account via OAuth. If you choose to register this way, we will collect certain profile information from Google, as described in Section 6.

All personal information you provide must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes.

Information automatically collected

In short: Some information — such as your IP address and browser characteristics — is collected automatically when you visit our Services.

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate the Services. This information does not reveal your specific identity but may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, country, location, and information about how and when you use our Services. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Services and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

The information we collect includes:

Log and usage data. Service-related, diagnostic, usage, and performance information our servers automatically collect when you access or use the Services. This may include your IP address, device information, browser type, settings, pages viewed, searches, and other actions taken.
Device data. Information about your computer, phone, tablet, or other device used to access the Services, including IP address, device identifiers, browser type, hardware model, internet service provider, operating system, and system configuration.
Location data. Approximate location based on IP address. We do not collect precise GPS location data.

2. How do we process your information?

In short: We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, prevent security and fraud issues, and comply with law.

We process your personal information for the following purposes:

To facilitate account creation and authentication. We process your information so you can create and log in to your account and keep your account in working order.
To deliver and facilitate the Services. We process your information to provide you with the requested service, including running domain scans and generating reports.
To respond to user inquiries and provide support. We may process your information to respond to your questions and resolve any potential issues with the Services.
To send administrative information. We may process your information to send you details about our products, changes to our terms and policies, and other similar information.
To send marketing communications. With your consent, we may process your personal information to send you marketing communications. You may opt out at any time.
To request feedback. We may process your information to request feedback and contact you about your use of our Services.
To protect our Services. We may process your information as part of our efforts to keep our Services safe and secure, including fraud monitoring and prevention.
To comply with our legal obligations. We may process your information to comply with our legal obligations, respond to legal requests, and exercise, establish, or defend our legal rights.

3. What legal bases do we rely on to process your information?

In short: We process your personal information only when we have a valid legal reason to do so under applicable law.

If you are located in Canada

We process your information when you have given us specific permission (express consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose, or in situations where your permission can be inferred (implied consent). You can withdraw your consent at any time.

In some exceptional cases, we may be legally permitted under applicable law to process your information without your consent, including:

If collection is clearly in the interests of an individual and consent cannot be obtained in a timely way
For investigations and fraud detection and prevention
For business transactions, provided certain conditions are met
If disclosure is required to comply with a subpoena, warrant, court order, or rules of the court relating to the production of records
If it was produced by an individual in the course of their employment, business, or profession and the collection is consistent with the purposes for which the information was produced
If the information is publicly available and is specified by the regulations under PIPEDA

If you are located in the EU or UK

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on to process your personal information. We may rely on the following legal bases:

Consent. We may process your information if you have given us permission to use your personal information for a specific purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
Performance of a contract. We may process your personal information when we believe it is necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations to you, including providing our Services or at your request prior to entering into a contract with you.
Legitimate interests. We may process your information when we believe it is reasonably necessary to achieve our legitimate business interests and those interests do not outweigh your interests and fundamental rights and freedoms.
Legal obligations. We may process your information where we believe it is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations.
Vital interests. We may process your information where we believe it is necessary to protect your vital interests or those of a third party.

4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?

In short: We share information in specific situations described in this section and with the following categories of third parties.

We may share your personal information with:

Service providers and infrastructure partners. We share information with vendors that help us deliver the Services, including:
- Supabase (database and authentication)
- Vercel (frontend hosting)
- Railway (backend hosting)
- Cloudflare (domain and DNS)
- Stripe (payment processing)
- Google (OAuth authentication, if you choose to sign in with Google)
AI service providers. We share information with AI providers to power our analysis features. See Section 5.
Business transfers. We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business.
Legal obligations. We may disclose your information where we are legally required to do so to comply with applicable law, governmental requests, judicial proceedings, court orders, or legal process.
Vital interests and legal rights. We may disclose your information where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potential violations of our policies, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, or as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

5. Do we offer artificial intelligence-based products?

In short: Yes, we offer products powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and similar technologies.

As part of our Services, we offer products, features, and tools powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, or similar technologies (collectively, "AI Products"). These tools are designed to enhance your experience and provide insights into how your content appears across search and generative AI surfaces.

Use of AI Technologies

We provide the AI Products through third-party AI service providers, including Anthropic and OpenAI. As outlined in this Privacy Policy, your input, output, and personal information may be shared with and processed by these AI service providers to enable your use of our AI Products for the purposes outlined in Section 4. You must not use the AI Products in any way that violates the terms or policies of any AI service provider.

Our AI Products

Our AI Products are designed for the following functions:

AI-powered visibility analysis across SEO, AEO, and GEO surfaces
Generation of citation-readiness recommendations for domain content
Automated insights and reporting

How We Process Your Data Using AI

All personal information processed using our AI Products is handled in line with this Privacy Policy and our agreements with AI service providers. We do not permit AI service providers to use your data to train their models.

6. How do we handle your social logins?

In short: If you register or log in to our Services using a Google account, we may have access to certain information about you.

Our Services offer you the ability to register and log in using your Google account via OAuth. If you choose to do this, we will receive certain profile information about you from Google, typically including your name, email address, and profile picture.

We will use the information we receive only for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. We do not control, and are not responsible for, other uses of your personal information by Google. We recommend that you review their privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy.

7. Is your information transferred internationally?

In short: We may transfer, store, and process your information in countries other than your own.

Our servers are located in the United States and Canada. Our infrastructure providers (Supabase, Vercel, Railway, Cloudflare) operate data centers in multiple regions, and your information may be transferred to, stored by, and processed in any of these locations.

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom (UK), or Switzerland, please note that these countries may not have data protection laws as comprehensive as those in your country. However, we will take all reasonable measures to protect your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law, including the use of Standard Contractual Clauses where required.

8. How long do we keep your information?

In short: We keep your information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless otherwise required by law.

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements).

Specifically:

Account information is retained for as long as your account is active and for up to 3 months after account termination, after which it is deleted or anonymized.
Scan data and reports are retained for the duration of your account.
Payment records are retained for 7 years to comply with Canadian tax and accounting obligations.
Backup archives may persist for up to 90 days after deletion from active databases.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible, we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

9. How do we keep your information safe?

In short: We aim to protect your personal information through a system of organizational and technical security measures.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. These include encryption in transit (TLS), encryption at rest, hashed password storage, OAuth-based authentication where possible, and access controls on backend systems.

However, despite our safeguards, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. We cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Services is at your own risk.

10. Do we collect information from minors?

In short: We do not knowingly collect data from or market to children under 18 years of age.

We do not knowingly collect, solicit data from, or market to children under 18 years of age, nor do we knowingly sell such personal information. By using the Services, you represent that you are at least 18 or that you are the parent or guardian of such a minor and consent to the minor's use of the Services. If we learn that personal information from users under 18 has been collected, we will deactivate the account and take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data. If you become aware of any data we may have collected from children under age 18, please contact us at hello@citescan.ai.

11. What are your privacy rights?

In short: Depending on your location, you may have rights that allow you greater access to and control over your personal information.

In some regions (like the EEA, UK, Canada, and certain US states), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include:

The right to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information
The right to request rectification or erasure
The right to restrict the processing of your personal information
The right to data portability (where applicable)
The right not to be subject to automated decision-making
The right to object to the processing of your personal information

You may exercise these rights by contacting us at hello@citescan.ai. We will consider and act on any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

Withdrawing your consent

If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at hello@citescan.ai. Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal, nor will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

Opting out of marketing communications

You can unsubscribe from our marketing and promotional communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the emails we send, or by contacting us at hello@citescan.ai. You will be removed from marketing lists, but we may still contact you for service-related messages, account administration, and other non-marketing purposes.

Account information

If you would like to review or change the information in your account, or terminate your account, you can:

Upon your request to terminate your account, we will deactivate or delete your account and information from our active databases. However, we may retain some information to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with investigations, enforce our legal terms, or comply with applicable legal requirements.

12. Controls for Do-Not-Track features

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems include a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage, no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online.

13. Do United States residents have specific privacy rights?

In short: If you are a resident of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, or Virginia, you may have specific rights regarding your personal information.

Categories of personal information we collect

In the past twelve (12) months, we have collected the following categories of personal information:

| Category | Examples | Collected | |---|---|---| | A. Identifiers | Name, email address, IP address, online identifier, account name | YES | | B. Personal information under California Customer Records statute | Name, contact information, financial information | YES | | C. Protected classification characteristics | Gender, age, race, national origin | NO | | D. Commercial information | Transaction information, purchase history, payment information | YES | | E. Biometric information | Fingerprints, voiceprints | NO | | F. Internet or network activity | Browsing history, search history, online behavior | YES | | G. Geolocation data | Approximate device location (from IP) | YES | | H. Audio, electronic, sensory information | Call recordings, images | NO | | I. Professional or employment information | Job title, work history | NO | | J. Education information | Student records | NO | | K. Inferences from collected information | Profile or summary about preferences | NO | | L. Sensitive personal information | (See definition under CPRA) | NO |

Your rights

US state data protection laws may give you the following rights:

Right to know whether we are processing your personal data
Right to access your personal data
Right to correct inaccuracies
Right to request deletion of your personal data
Right to obtain a copy of your personal data
Right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights
Right to opt out of the processing of your personal data for targeted advertising, sale, or profiling

How to exercise your rights

To exercise these rights, email us at hello@citescan.ai. We will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law.

Sale and sharing of personal information

We have not sold or shared any personal information to third parties for a business or commercial purpose in the preceding twelve (12) months. We do not sell or share personal information belonging to website visitors, users, or other consumers.

California "Shine the Light" law

California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits California residents to request, once a year and free of charge, information about categories of personal information (if any) disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, contact us at hello@citescan.ai.

14. Do we make updates to this policy?

In short: Yes, we will update this policy as necessary to stay compliant with relevant laws.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated "Last updated" date at the top of this Privacy Policy. If we make material changes, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

15. How can you contact us about this policy?

If you have questions or comments about this policy, you may email us at hello@citescan.ai or contact us by post at:

CiteScan Mississauga, Ontario L5M 0Y4 Canada

16. How can you review, update, or delete the data we collect from you?

Based on the applicable laws of your country or state of residence, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, details about how we have processed it, correct inaccuracies, or delete your personal information. You may also have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal information. These rights may be limited in some circumstances by applicable law.

To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, please email us at hello@citescan.ai.