Privacy Policy

Signing in

You sign in to GoHelm with Google. That sign-in gives us your name, email address and profile picture, and nothing else. It grants no access to your mail or calendar. We also keep a session record (a session token, when it expires, and the IP address and browser your sign-in came from) so you stay signed in.

GoHelm is invitation-only: signing in works only for accounts at the companies it is built with, and people invited by name. If you sign in with any other account, nothing about it is kept beyond a record that a sign-in from its domain was refused. When you join, GoHelm's administrator is told by email (your name, email address and when you joined), so they know who is using it. The administrator also sees how much each person uses GoHelm, as counts and times only: when you were last active, how many tasks you made and finished, how many emails you sent through GoHelm, how often you asked AI, and which features you have started using. Never your messages, their subjects, your task titles or what you asked. If the administrator invites you from GoHelm, it keeps your email address, the name they typed, who invited you, when, and how many times the invitation was sent, so they can see who has joined; the invitation's words are not kept.

GoHelm emails you about GoHelm itself, from its administrator's own Gmail address, so replies go to a person: on Mondays, a short note of what changed that week, only in weeks when something did; and, once they are switched on, a few tips in your first weeks. To decide what to send, GoHelm uses only your name, sign-in address, time zone, when you joined, and counts of what you already use (such as how many tasks or mailboxes you have), never your mail. Each email has a one-click link to stop it, and Settings › Email from GoHelm turns each kind on or off. GoHelm keeps a record of which of these emails went to you and when, not their words.

You may add another of your Google accounts as a way to sign in, from Settings, if it is already one of your connected mailboxes and is on the invitation list. GoHelm then keeps that sign-in as it keeps your first, with the same minimal access: it grants nothing more, and you can remove it there at any time.

Connecting a mailbox

Mail and calendar access is a separate step, one Google account at a time, and only for accounts you choose to connect. For each connected account GoHelm asks Google for:

• Gmail access (gmail.modify), to list and display your mail, and to change it when you ask: mark messages read or unread, archive or move them back to the inbox, star them, apply or remove labels, and create labels. It also applies rules you have explicitly turned on to newly arrived mail. It also sends messages you write in GoHelm and choose to send, from the mailbox you pick; GoHelm never sends anything on its own. A message you schedule to send later is kept as a draft in that mailbox's Gmail Drafts until its time; GoHelm stores only which draft and when to send it, never its words or recipients. When you ask, it moves mail to Gmail's Trash (which Gmail empties after 30 days) or to Spam; it never deletes mail permanently. When you press Unsubscribe, it unsubscribes the way the sender's message offers: by a one-click request from GoHelm's server to the sender, by an unsubscribe email from your mailbox to the address it shows you first, or by opening the sender's page in your browser. When you answer an invitation that Google has not added to your calendar, GoHelm adds it with your answer, as Gmail does, and sends the organizer the standard calendar reply email from your mailbox, saying that you accepted, declined or might attend, with any note you write to go with your answer. Accounts connected before these features keep read-only access (gmail.readonly) until you reconnect them.
• Calendar events (calendar.events), to show your day, check invitations for conflicts, and answer an invitation when you press Accept, Maybe or Decline. Answering changes only your own response to that one event, and Google tells the organizer, as answering in Gmail does. On the Plan tab, when you ask, GoHelm also creates, moves, edits and cancels events that you organize; if other people are on one, it asks whether to tell them. When you add guests to an event you create, Google emails them an invitation only if you choose Send. Guest suggestions come from the people in your own mail. When you put an event on your other calendars too, GoHelm adds a copy of it to each through that account, without emailing anyone, and keeps it in step when you change the event in GoHelm. It never changes events other people organize, beyond your own answer, and never has access to your calendar settings or sharing.
• Your Google account's address and ID, to tell mailboxes apart, and whether it is a Google Workspace account (its domain), because only those can use Google Chat.

Google Chat is a further, optional step, offered only for Google Workspace accounts. If you turn it on for an account, GoHelm also asks for:

• Your spaces, group chats and direct messages (chat.spaces.readonly) and who is in them (chat.memberships.readonly), to list and name them.
• Their messages (chat.messages.readonly), to show a conversation when you open it.
• Sending messages (chat.messages.create): only text you write in GoHelm and press Send on, after a few seconds in which you can undo it. GoHelm cannot edit or delete Chat messages, and never sends one on its own.
• When you last read each conversation (chat.users.readstate), to show which have unread messages, and to mark a conversation read when you open it in GoHelm, following your "opening marks read" choice in Settings. It moves only your own read marker; no message is changed.
• Names from your organization's directory (directory.readonly), because Google gives GoHelm only an ID for each person in a chat, and to suggest people as you type when you start a chat. Suggestions are not stored.
• Starting a direct message, group chat or space (chat.spaces.create), only when you press New chat or New space. GoHelm cannot rename or delete spaces.
• Adding and removing people in spaces you manage (chat.memberships), only when you do it in GoHelm, with a confirmation before anyone is removed.

What GoHelm stores

To keep the inbox fast, GoHelm keeps a cache of message details:

• Sender and recipient names and addresses, subject, date, Gmail labels, and whether a message is read.
• The short preview snippet Gmail itself provides for each message (a line or two of text).
• Attachment file names, types and sizes, never their contents.
• Classifications GoHelm works out from message headers, such as “newsletter” or “possible impersonation”.
• For support tickets' notification emails, what GoHelm works out from their sender, subject and preview: the ticket's number, title, status, type, who asked and who has it, and its link. Never the email's text.
• The addresses you have sent mail to, used only to mark senders you already correspond with as “Recognized”.
• Tasks you create: what you write (title, notes, dates, and who a task is waiting on), and, for a task made from an email, a link to that thread with its subject and sender.
• Notes you write on a conversation: the words, and which conversation they are on. They are yours alone, kept in GoHelm only (never written into Gmail), never sent to AI, and never recorded in the activity log.
• Rules you save: the sender, domain or group address a rule is for, and the label, actions and exception you chose. A rule changes your mail only when you apply it, or after you turn it on for new mail.
• Online meetings you save: a name, the meeting's standing link, and any meeting ID, passcode and dial-in you enter. They go into the events you create with it, so everyone invited sees them. GoHelm never asks for a Zoom, GoTo or other account's password.
• Your company's meeting rooms, so GoHelm can offer them: each room's name, Google's resource address for it, building, floor, capacity and features, and how often it is booked, found on events organized in your Workspace domain or added by you. They are shared with the other GoHelm users in your domain. A room's bookings are read live from its calendar to say when it is free, and never stored. To book another company's room with your account there, GoHelm puts a matching event on that calendar with the meeting's title and time, and the room, and nothing else.
• Favorite places you save, such as Home or a cabin: a name, an address (which may be your home's) and any notes, and roughly where it is so place suggestions can start near it. They are yours alone, never shared with other GoHelm users, and used only to fill in an event's location. The activity log notes that one was added, changed or removed, never which place. Settings › Plan's “Suggest places near” is kept the same way.
• For Google Chat: each conversation's type, name, when it was last active and last read, and the IDs of a few of its members, plus the names of people seen in your chats. Never the messages themselves.
• Your browser's time zone, and when you were last at work in GoHelm. GoHelm uses them only to sync your mail in the background: every minute or so while you work, every 5 minutes from 7 am to 7 pm your time while GoHelm is closed, and hourly overnight. Background sync stores the same message details listed here, nothing more.
• Google's access tokens for each connected account, encrypted with AES-256-GCM. They are never shown to you, logged, or sent to your browser.
• An activity log of consequential actions, such as connecting, syncing or disconnecting a mailbox, and every change GoHelm makes to your mail, recorded as the Gmail message and label identifiers involved so it can be undone. It can include a mailbox address, but never message content or tokens.

What GoHelm does not store

• Message bodies. When you open a message, GoHelm fetches it from Gmail, shows it to you, and discards it. The text of your mail is not kept in our database.
• Chat messages. They are fetched from Google each time you open a conversation, and refreshed every few seconds while it is open, then discarded.
• Attachment contents and calendar event details. They are read from Google when shown and not kept. The places your events were held, which Location suggests, stay in GoHelm's server memory for ten minutes at most.

Pictures that are part of a message are shown from the message itself. Images a message links to on the web are fetched by GoHelm's server on your behalf when they are shown, so the sender's server sees GoHelm, never your IP address or cookies, and they are passed to you without being stored. A sender can still tell that a message was opened when its images load, as with Gmail. In Settings you choose whether they load always (the default), only from people you know, or only when you ask. By default GoHelm also removes tracking images (the hidden pictures that tell a sender you opened a message) before showing a message, so those senders are not told; Settings can turn this off.

When a message shares a Google Drive file, GoHelm shows a link to it and, when you press Play or Preview, Google Drive's own player. That player comes from Google directly to your browser, and Google decides whether you may see the file from the Google account you are signed in to there. GoHelm has no access to your Drive and never fetches or stores the file.

Desktop notifications, if you turn them on, are shown by your own browser and operating system. GoHelm sends them nothing beyond what the notification says, and by default that is who a message is from, not what it says; message text and subjects appear only if you choose. Your notification settings stay in your browser.

Task reminders, if you turn them on for a device, travel by web push: GoHelm keeps the address your browser's push service gives that device (Google's for Chrome, Apple's for Safari, Mozilla's for Firefox), with the keys to encrypt what is sent, and a label such as “Chrome on Windows”. A reminder carries the task's title (unless you turn titles off) and a line such as “Due tomorrow”, encrypted so the push service cannot read it; it is never stored by GoHelm beyond the task itself. Turning reminders off on a device, or removing it, deletes its address.

How we use Google user data

GoHelm uses data from Google only to provide GoHelm's features to you: displaying, organizing, drafting and sending your mail, and your calendar. We do not sell it, do not use it for advertising, do not use it to train AI or machine-learning models, and do not share it with anyone except the service providers listed below, which run parts of GoHelm on our behalf.

No person at Collabetive Services, LLC reads your mail or calendar data unless you ask us to (for example, to help with a problem), it is necessary for security, or the law requires it.

GoHelm's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Mail you write. When you reply or compose in GoHelm, your text stays in your own browser until you press Send, and for the few seconds you have to undo it. It then goes to Gmail, which sends it from your mailbox, with any files you attached, your Gmail signature for that address (read from Gmail when you write), and, when forwarding, the original's attachments you chose. GoHelm does not keep the text or the files: it records only that a message was sent, when, from which mailbox, to how many people and with how many attachments, and adds its recipients to the people you write to.

AI features (OpenAI)

GoHelm uses OpenAI for these things, and sends it only what each needs:

• Draft with AI, when you press it: the text of the thread you have open (each message's sender, recipients, date and words) and anything you type into its box. For a new message, only your note, the subject and the recipients. The draft appears in your composer for you to read and change; nothing is sent until you press Send.
• Ask AI, when you ask a question about a conversation you have open: the text of that conversation (each message's sender, date and words, without the earlier messages a reply quotes), the names and types of its attachments but never their contents, and your question. The answer appears beside the conversation and is not kept once you close it; nothing is sent or changed because of it unless you choose to.
• Triage, for new unread mail GoHelm's own rules could not sort: the sender, recipients, subject and Gmail's short preview snippet, to suggest whether it is high priority or needs a reply. Never the full text of a message.
• Reading interests, only if you turn it on in Settings › Reading: when you click a link in a newsletter, GoHelm records the link and reads that public web page once, sending its text (or, if it cannot be read, the link's own words and the sentence around it) to learn the topics you like; the page's text is not kept. When you open a newsletter, the words of its links and the sentence around each go, with your topics, to mark the links that match. Never the rest of your email. GoHelm keeps the links you clicked, the topics learned and the marks, all of which you can see and erase on the Reading interests page.

Google Chat messages are never sent to OpenAI. Attachments are never sent to OpenAI. OpenAI does not use data sent through its API to train its models, and keeps it for up to 30 days to monitor for abuse, after which it is deleted. GoHelm records that it asked, which model and how much was sent, never what. AI suggestions and drafts can be wrong; nothing is sent or changed in your mail because of them without you choosing it.

Service providers

• Vercel hosts the GoHelm application.
• Neon hosts GoHelm's database, in the United States.
• Google provides sign-in, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Chat.
• komoot (Photon, over OpenStreetMap data) suggests addresses as you type an event's location or a favorite place. GoHelm's server asks on your behalf and sends only what you typed, and the area you chose to search near, never your IP address, your account or anything else about you.
• OpenAI writes AI drafts and triage suggestions, as described above.

All traffic to GoHelm and between these services is encrypted in transit.

Cookies

GoHelm uses a sign-in session cookie and one preference cookie that remembers the width of the sidebar. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, and no third-party trackers.

Keeping and deleting your data

• Disconnecting a mailbox (on the Accounts page) revokes GoHelm's access at Google and deletes everything cached from that mailbox, its Google Chat details included. Turning Chat off for a mailbox deletes those details too. Your mail in Gmail is untouched. Tasks you made from its mail are yours and are kept, with the subject and sender they were created from, until you delete them.
• Removing a mailbox does all of that and also forgets it here: its name and colour, its scheduled messages (their drafts stay in Gmail), and the support-ticket details learned from its mail. Tasks made from it are kept.
• You can also revoke access at any time from your Google Account permissions. GoHelm will then stop syncing that mailbox.
• To delete your GoHelm account and all data we hold about you, email todd@thecollabetive.com. We will do so within 30 days and confirm when it is done.
• The activity log is kept for security and accountability. It is deleted with your account.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the data we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it, by emailing todd@thecollabetive.com. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights under local law, and we will honor them.

Children

GoHelm is not intended for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly serve them.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update the effective date above. If a change affects how your Google data is used, we will tell you in GoHelm before it takes effect.

Contact

Collabetive Services, LLC · todd@thecollabetive.com