Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

The controller of your personal data is Ferrarix di Patrizia Rossi, a sole proprietorship (ditta individuale) registered in Italy, Via della Stazione 13, 04015 Priverno (LT), Italy, VAT (P.IVA) IT03365170590. Citeon is our product; our team works from The Hague, the Netherlands. For anything about your data, email hello@citeon.ai. We have not appointed a data protection officer, because the law does not require one for our kind of processing.

2. What we process, why, and on what basis

Free audit

Data: the website and work email you enter, the country your request comes from (from our hosting provider, not your full location) and the website you came from, if any. Your IP address is used briefly to stop abuse and is not stored. Why: to run the audit, send you the report link and reply about it. Basis: steps you asked for before a possible contract (art. 6(1)(b) GDPR), and our legitimate interest in following up on your report and preventing abuse (art. 6(1)(f)). The website and email are needed to deliver the report; without them we cannot run it.

Tips and product news, only if you tick the box

The free audit form has an optional box to receive Citeon tips and product news. It is never ticked for you and the report does not depend on it. If you tick it, we record when you did and the exact wording you agreed to. Basis: your consent (art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). Every email has an unsubscribe link, and you can also withdraw by emailing us.

Contact and demo requests

Data: your name, email, website and message. Why: to answer you. We receive these by email and do not store them in our database. Basis: your request (art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in answering business enquiries (art. 6(1)(f)).

Your account

Data: your email, password (stored only in hashed form by our login provider), business name and website, your role, and the emails of team members you invite. If you sign in with Google, we receive the email address of your Google account. Why: to give you access, verify your email and run the workspace. Basis: our contract with you (art. 6(1)(b)).

Billing

Data: your name, email and subscription details. Card details go straight to Stripe and never reach us. Why: to charge the subscription and keep accounts. Basis: our contract (art. 6(1)(b)) and our legal duty to keep accounting records (art. 6(1)(c)).

Using Citeon for your business

Data: what we need to measure and improve your AI visibility: pages of your public website, the questions we track, the answers AI assistants give, your competitors, and, if you connect them, access to tools such as WordPress, Shopify, Google Analytics, Search Console, Microsoft Clarity or Bing. Access keys you give us are stored encrypted. Public pages and AI answers can occasionally contain names of people; we use them only to deliver the service to you. Basis: our contract (art. 6(1)(b)). Where we process personal data on your behalf, we act as your processor and sign a data processing agreement on request.

Orione, the assistant in your dashboard

Data: the questions you ask Orione, its answers, which of your workspace’s Citeon data it read to answer, the time, and, if you give it, your feedback on an answer (helpful or not, a reason you pick and an optional note). Why: to answer your questions about your workspace, keep your conversations so you can return to them, and check answers people mark as not helpful. Your question, up to three earlier questions and answers of the same conversation, your workspace’s name and plan, the dashboard page you asked from, and the workspace data needed to answer are sent to Anthropic, which provides the AI model. Basis: our contract (art. 6(1)(b)); for feedback, our legitimate interest in improving the answers (art. 6(1)(f)).

API keys and the Citeon MCP

Data: for each key: its name, its first characters, who created it, when it was created, last used and when it expires. We store a one way hash of the key, never the key itself. For each call made with a key: the tool, whether it succeeded and counted, how long it took, the key, the time and, for a failed call, the error message; never what was asked or returned. Why: to let only your keys in, count calls against your plan, show you the request log and investigate problems. Basis: our contract (art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure (art. 6(1)(f)). When you connect an AI assistant with a key, the data it reads is sent to that assistant’s provider, which you choose and which processes it under its own terms.

Connected apps (sign in instead of a key)

Data: when you connect an assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT by signing in to Citeon and choosing Allow: the app’s name and the web address it identifies itself with, the address it returns to, the workspace you chose, who allowed it, and when. The app receives tokens that read only that workspace through the MCP; we store one way hashes of them, never the tokens themselves. The connection appears in Developers like a key, with the same request log. Why: to let only the app you allowed in, for the workspace you chose, and to let you see and revoke it. Basis: our contract (art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure (art. 6(1)(f)). As with a key, the data the app reads is sent to that app’s provider under its own terms.

Service emails

We send emails you need: email verification, password reset, team invitations and report notices. We only send tips and product news to people who ticked the box for it (see above). Basis: our contract (art. 6(1)(b)).

Website analytics, only with your consent

If you choose Accept, or switch services on under Customise, we use Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity (which records how pages are used), PostHog (which features are used, with no recordings and no page text), our own Citeon Pulse and Google Ads conversion measurement (whether a visit from our ads started a free trial, no retargeting), as described in the Cookie Policy. When you are signed in, PostHog links your visits to your account’s random ID, never your email. Basis: your consent (art. 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw at any time under Cookie settings.

Without your consent, Google Analytics and Google Ads still receive cookieless signals through Google’s consent mode: that a page was viewed or a free trial started, with the page address and basic browser details, without cookies and without an ID that recognises you. Google uses them to estimate totals, and we use those totals to see which pages and ads bring sign ups. Basis: our legitimate interest in measuring our own marketing (art. 6(1)(f)). Ad personalisation is always off.

Support chat, when you open it

Our chat runs on Crisp and loads only when you open it and choose Start chat, or have allowed it under Customise. Crisp then keeps your messages, any name or email you give in the chat, and your IP address with the conversation. Basis: your consent for the chat cookies (art. 6(1)(a)), and answering your request (art. 6(1)(b)).

Improving Citeon

What we want to achieve: find and fix errors, see which features are used and which are not, make scans more accurate and reliable, and build benchmarks that show a business how it compares with others in its field.

Data we use: error and performance reports; how scans, audits and fixes performed (for example which sources AI assistants cited and what changed after a fix); feedback you send us; and, only if you consented, the website analytics described above.

How we protect it: wherever we can, we work with aggregated data that no longer identifies a person or a business. We only show or publish figures that combine at least five businesses, never the data of one business, and never raw AI answers. Data that is truly anonymous is no longer personal data. Basis: our legitimate interest in maintaining and improving Citeon (art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object at any time (see section 6).

No AI training on your content. Citeon does not use your content to train AI models. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity state in their API terms that they do not train their models on data sent through their APIs.

Security and errors

We use error monitoring (Sentry, EU region), set up not to send names or email addresses, and bot protection on our forms. Basis: our legitimate interest in keeping Citeon safe and working (art. 6(1)(f)).

No automated decisions about you

Citeon scores how AI assistants treat businesses. We make no decisions about you as a person by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects.

3. Who helps us

We do not sell personal data. These providers process it for us, under contracts that bind them to our instructions:

• Vercel (hosting and bot protection), Vercel Inc., United States.
• Supabase (database, login and files, data stored in Frankfurt), Supabase Pte. Ltd., Singapore.
• Stripe (payments), Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd., Ireland.
• Resend (sending emails), Plus Five Five, Inc., United States.
• Sentry (error monitoring, EU region), Functional Software, Inc., United States.
• GitHub (runs our analysis jobs), GitHub, Inc., United States.
• AI providers that answer and analyse the questions we track, and Anthropic for Orione: OpenAI Ireland Ltd, Anthropic Ireland, Limited, Google, and Perplexity AI, Inc. (United States). They receive the questions and the business context needed to answer them.
• DataForSEO (search and AI answer data), DataForSEO OÜ, Estonia.
• Google Maps Platform (business ratings and review counts on the Reputation page), Google. It receives the names of the businesses looked up with your city and country, and the Google listing IDs; ratings are read when the page opens and not kept by Citeon.
• Google Analytics (cookies only with consent; cookieless signals otherwise), Google.
• Google Ads (conversion measurement only; cookies only with consent, cookieless signals otherwise), Google.
• PostHog (product analytics, only with consent, EU cloud), PostHog, Inc., United States.
• Crisp (support chat, only when you open it, hosted in the EU), Crisp IM SAS, France.

Microsoft Clarity, used only with your consent, is run by Microsoft as a separate controller under its own terms and privacy statement. Company logos in reports come from Brandfetch or Google’s favicon service, which your browser contacts directly.

4. Data outside the EU

Some providers above are based in, or use services in, countries outside the European Economic Area, mainly the United States. We only use them with a legal safeguard in place: the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses of 4 June 2021, which the processors above that are outside the EEA, or pass data outside it, include in their data processing terms, and for Vercel, Stripe, Sentry, GitHub, Google, Perplexity, Resend and PostHog also their certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards at hello@citeon.ai.

5. How long we keep it

• Account data: while your account exists. When you ask us to close it, we delete it, except what the law requires us to keep.
• Billing records and invoices: ten years, as Italian law requires (article 2220 of the Italian Civil Code).
• Free audit requests (website, email, country, referring site, report): 24 months from the request, then deleted or anonymised. You can ask us to delete yours sooner.
• Consent to tips and product news: until you unsubscribe, and at most 24 months after your last interaction with our emails.
• Contact emails and support chats: as long as the conversation is relevant. You can ask us to delete a chat at any time.
• Raw AI answers collected for a customer: 120 days, then deleted automatically.
• Orione conversations: until you delete them. Deleting a conversation removes its questions, answers, notes, which data was read and the page it was asked on; a record of the cost (date, model, usage, cost, status and any helpful or not helpful vote with its reason) is kept without them.
• API keys: while your workspace exists, including revoked keys, so the request log and usage stay explainable. The key itself is never stored.
• API and MCP request log: 30 days, then deleted automatically. Monthly call counts are kept with your account.
• API keys and connected apps: while the workspace exists, so the request log can name them, including revoked and expired ones. A connected app’s access stops when you revoke it, or 30 days after it last renewed its access.
• Backups: daily, kept for 7 days.
• Cookie choices: kept as proof of your consent; they hold a random ID, your choices and the time, no IP address, name or email.
• Citeon Pulse visit records: 24 months, then only aggregated counts remain.
• Other analytics: for the periods set out in the Cookie Policy and by each provider.
• Aggregated and anonymised data that no longer identifies a person or a business: kept, as it is no longer personal data.

6. Your rights

You have the right to:

• access your personal data and get a copy;
• have it corrected or deleted;
• restrict how we use it;
• receive it in a machine-readable format and move it to another service;
• withdraw consent at any time, without affecting what happened before.

Right to object. Where we rely on our legitimate interests, you can object at any time for reasons related to your situation, and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds that override yours.

To use any of these rights, email hello@citeon.ai. We answer within one month. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Italian data protection authority, the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, or to the authority in the EU country where you live or work.

7. Security

Data travels encrypted, access keys you connect are encrypted in our database, access is limited to people who need it, and backups are made daily. No system is perfectly secure, and we review our measures regularly.

8. For businesses, not children

Citeon is a tool for businesses and is not meant for anyone under 16.

9. Changes

When we change how we handle personal data, we update this page and the date at the top. For important changes we also tell account owners by email.