Privacy Policy
This Policy explains how Causal-D (operated by Eutheni) collects, uses, and protects your personal information when you use Causal-D. It should be read together with our POPIA Notice.
1. Information we collect
- Account information — name, email, institution, programme, and cohort year you provide at registration.
- Content — research projects, documents, references, notes, and other material you create or upload.
- Usage and technical data — log data, device/browser information, and IP address, used to operate and secure the Service.
- Optional contact details — e.g. a phone number for WhatsApp/email notifications, if you enable them.
2. How we use it
We process your information to provide and maintain the Service, personalise your experience, send notifications you have enabled, secure the platform, and comply with legal obligations.
3. AI processing and your data
We never use your data to train AI models. Your writing, documents, and research are yours — they are not used to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI model, by us or by our AI providers.
Causal-D uses large language models to power its assistant features (summaries, feedback, and research support). How this works with your data:
- No training, ever. Content you submit is sent to our AI provider (Google's Gemini API, under a paid commercial agreement) only to answer your specific request. Under that agreement, Google does not use these prompts or outputs to train its models. Causal-D itself trains no models and performs no fine-tuning on user content.
- Grounded in your own material. Assistant answers are generated using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG): the AI is given relevant passages from the documents and writing you have added, and is constrained to work from them, rather than drawing on unknown external data.
- Transient processing. Your content is passed to the AI model only for the duration of processing your request. It does not become part of the model.
- Data residency. Your stored data lives in the AWS Africa (Cape Town) region. Content is transmitted to the AI provider only when needed to process a request you make.
4. Sharing
We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with service providers that help us run the platform (for example, hosting and AI processing providers, as described in section 3) under appropriate safeguards, with your institution where you use an institutional account, or where required by law.
5. Storage and security
Your data is stored on managed cloud infrastructure with access controls, encryption in transit, and other safeguards. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your information.
6. Retention
We keep your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service and meet legal requirements. You may request deletion as described below.
7. Your rights
Subject to applicable law, you may access, correct, or request deletion of your personal information, and object to certain processing. See the POPIA Notice for how to exercise these rights and who to contact.
8. Contact
For any privacy question, contact our Information Officer, Giovann Adonis, at privacy@causal-d.co.za.