Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Escape Hatch is operated by Colila Media (“we,” “us,” or “our”). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your personal information when you use our website at escapehatch.to and our services.

2. Information We Collect

We collect the following categories of information:

Account information: Your name and email address when you create an account, or information provided by Google if you sign in with Google OAuth.

Genealogical data: Names, birth dates, birth places, death dates, and family relationships you provide during the intake process. For Pro users, this also includes uploaded vital record documents.

Payment information:Payment details are collected and processed entirely by Stripe. We store only a transaction reference ID and payment timestamp — we never see or store your credit card number.

Usage data: We collect basic usage information such as when you log in, which pages you visit within the app, and email delivery status (whether emails we send are delivered and opened). We do not use third-party analytics or tracking tools.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information for the following purposes:

To provide our service: Your genealogical data is used to perform ancestry research and generate your research report.

To communicate with you: We send transactional emails (payment confirmations, research results), onboarding emails when you first sign up, and occasional re-engagement emails if you have not completed a step in the process. You can opt out of non-essential emails at any time from your Settings page or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email.

We do not sell your data. We do not share your personal information with third parties for marketing purposes. We do not use your genealogical data for any purpose other than providing your assessment.

4. Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored on Supabase, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure in the United States. We enforce row-level security policies in the database, meaning only your authenticated account can access your case data. All data is transmitted over TLS-encrypted connections. Uploaded documents are stored in a private, access-controlled storage bucket. While no system is perfectly secure, we take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information.

5. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate Escape Hatch. Each processes data according to its own privacy policy:

Supabase— Database, authentication, and file storage.

Stripe— Payment processing. Stripe receives your payment details directly; we do not handle or store card information.

Anthropic— Ancestry research. Portions of your genealogical data (names, dates, places) are sent to Anthropic’s Claude API to perform ancestry research. Anthropic does not use API inputs for model training.

Resend— Email delivery. Your email address is shared with Resend to send transactional and service-related emails.

Google— OAuth authentication (if you choose to sign in with Google).

Vercel— Website hosting and deployment.

6. Data Retention and Deletion

You retain access to your assessment and research results for as long as your account exists. You may delete your account and all associated data at any time from the Settings page. Upon deletion, all case data, research results, uploaded documents, and email logs are permanently removed from our systems. We may retain anonymized, aggregated data that cannot be used to identify you.

7. Cookies

We use essential cookies for authentication and session management only. We do not use third-party tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or analytics cookies.

8. Your Rights

You have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information at any time. You can update your profile from the Settings page, download your research report from the Dashboard, or delete your entire account. If you have questions about your data or wish to exercise any privacy rights, contact us at the address below.

9. Scanner and Lead Capture Data

When you use our free citizenship scanner, we collect your answers to scanner questions, your email address (if provided), and derived results such as pathway scores. This data is used to provide your scanner results and, if you opt in, to send follow-up information about our services.

We use Beehiiv for email delivery and marketing automation. Your email address and relevant tags are shared with Beehiiv to manage email sequences. You can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email.

We use PostHog and Google Analytics (GA4) for product analytics to understand how users interact with our website and improve our service. These tools collect anonymized usage data such as page views, button clicks, and feature usage.

We do not sell your data to third parties. Your personal information is used solely to provide and improve our services as described in this policy.

You can request deletion of all your data at any time by contacting us at hello@escapehatch.to or by deleting your account from the Settings page.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by posting a notice on our website. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact

For privacy-related questions or requests, contact us at hello@escapehatch.to.