Privacy, honestly

How Loop Labs handles your information when you read Lab Notes, contact Rich, or take part in mentoring and Software Makers.

The short version

Lab Notes uses your email to send the newsletter you requested. Mentoring and community participation need more information, such as your name, agreed plan, and session contributions. We use that information to deliver the service, not to sell a profile of you.

Who runs this

Richard Steinmetz operates Loop Labs and Software Makers. Email rich@looplabs.cc for support or privacy requests.

The Software Makers privacy notice covers app accounts, Projects, attendance, private cohort records, recording, transcription, AI-assisted notes and analysis, providers, retention, and deletion. Read it before registering or sharing work in a group. Public profiles and marketing subscriptions are optional.

What we actually collect

• Your email, if you subscribe. Plus which page you typed it on, so we know which post earned the signup. Newsletter consent is separate from creating a Software Makers account or receiving essential mentoring messages.
• Your correspondence and mentoring arrangements, if you contact Rich or book mentoring: your name, contact details, messages, and the plan and scheduling information needed to respond and provide the service.
• That you visited — page, referrer, UTM tags if you arrived with them, and a first-party cookie so two visits from you don't read as two people.
• Aggregate traffic stats — how many people landed, from where, on what kind of device. Google Analytics does this and sets its own cookies to do it. It tells us which posts are worth writing more of; it doesn't tell us who you are.
• Purchase records, if you buy something: the payment platform handles your full card details; we may receive the billing and payment-status records needed to administer your purchase.

What we don't do

• Sell or rent your data. To anyone. Ever. It's an email list, not an asset class.
• Run advertising trackers or third-party ad pixels.
• Treat a mentoring purchase or app account as newsletter consent. Lab Notes is a weeklyish email you choose to receive, with an unsubscribe link in each issue.

Why we use it and how long we keep it

We use your newsletter subscription consent to send Lab Notes. You can withdraw it using an unsubscribe link. Account and mentoring messages needed to deliver a service you requested are separate from marketing consent. We use the information needed to arrange and provide that service under Article 6(1)(b) GDPR, and necessary correspondence and security records under our legitimate interests in responding to requests and operating the business under Article 6(1)(f).

Newsletter contact records remain while you subscribe; we may retain the minimum information needed to honour an unsubscribe. Mentoring correspondence and purchase records remain for as long as needed to provide the agreed service and meet applicable accounting, legal, or dispute-handling obligations. The Software Makers notice gives the app's more specific retention and deletion rules, including what remains in historical session records after an account is deleted.

Who else touches it

These providers support the Loop Labs website, newsletter, correspondence, and payments. Software Makers' additional providers and the information they receive are described in its privacy notice.

• ClickFunnels — stores the contact record, runs the page SDK that counts visits, and sends the emails. US-based.
• Netlify — serves these pages and keeps standard server logs, including your IP address, for a short window.
• Google Analytics — the aggregate traffic stats above. Sets its own cookies and receives your IP, which Google truncates.
• Google Fonts — the typefaces. Yes, this means Google sees a font request, and your IP with it.
• Google Workspace — our email. Write to us and the thread lives in Gmail.
• X (Twitter) — embedded posts inside articles load from X, so X sees that request. We don't control that; it's the price of quoting someone properly.
• Cloudflare — runs the DNS for this domain via Porkbun, so it resolves the lookup that gets you here.
• Porkbun — the registrar. Holds the domain, not your data.
• Stripe and the platform where you purchase handle checkout and payment information. We may receive billing and payment-status records needed to administer your purchase; full card numbers are handled by the payment provider.

An optional mentoring experiment may use MentorCruise. We use only the name, email, agreed plan, and included-access information needed to arrange any agreed group participation. MentorCruise handles its own platform and billing data under its privacy policy.

We do not sell your information or supply a marketing list to other businesses. Purchase platforms and embedded-content providers also process information under their own privacy policies when you use their services.

Each of them runs on infrastructure of their own and uses their own subprocessors — a cloud host under one, a mail relay under another. We don't reprint those lists here, because every company above publishes its own and keeps it current, which is worth more to you than a stale copy of ours. Most of them are US companies, so your data does cross the Atlantic to reach them.

Security and access

These pages and payment checkout use HTTPS. Payment providers handle full card details. Software Makers restricts private records by account and cohort roles and encrypts stored session transcripts, notes, and analysis. Its privacy notice describes those controls and who can access each kind of record. No website or service can guarantee absolute security; contact Rich if you suspect a problem involving your information.

Your move

You can ask to access, correct, delete, restrict, or receive a portable copy of your personal information, object to processing based on legitimate interests, or withdraw consent. Email rich@looplabs.cc. We may ask for enough information to verify that a request concerns your own records. Some purchase or dispute records may need to remain to meet legal obligations. You can also complain to the data protection authority responsible for you.