Privacy & retention

Gather uses Google sign-in to create your account and sign you in. Connecting Gmail or Outlook is optional, and mailbox access is read-only. We never send, modify, delete, or unsubscribe from your email.

What is stored

Your Google identity, email address, connected Gmail and Outlook addresses, encrypted refresh tokens, sender preferences, feed settings (timezone, digest day and hour, sender-only mode, focus instructions, maximum words per idea), and the subject, sender, received date, mailbox message identifiers and content of messages identified as newsletters. Ordinary message bodies are processed in server memory and not retained. Raw MIME and attachments are not stored; small inline raster images may be retained as part of newsletter content.

In the reader you can add tags to newsletters and highlight or annotate passages, and in the news feed you can highlight or annotate passages of its posts. Gather stores your tags, and for each highlight or note the quoted text, a few surrounding characters to find it again, its position (for news feed highlights and notes, the post and paragraph) and your note text. On the paid plan, Gather also stores each daily audio roundup: its title, script, source newsletter identifiers and the generated MP3 audio.

To avoid processing the same email twice, Gather keeps a list of processed message identifiers with their outcome (for example newsletter, not a newsletter, or sender not included) for 30 days. It contains no subjects, senders or content. Generated feed entries store the extracted ideas and the identifiers of their source newsletters.

If you subscribe, payment is handled by Stripe. Card details are entered on Stripe and never reach Gather. We store only your Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, the subscription status and the end of the current billing period.

Access and use

Only your authenticated account can access your saved newsletters and news feed. With your separate, explicit opt-in, Gather checks your mailbox automatically: once a week on the free plan, at the day and hour you choose, and every hour on the paid plan. Each check sends Google's Gemini API the subject and cleaned body of new candidate emails to recognize newsletters, including emails that may then be rejected. Emails already processed are never sent again. Recognition does not use sender identity, mailing-list headers or mailbox categories; manual sender preferences are explicit overrides. Long messages use a bounded beginning/end excerpt for recognition. Each plan has a limit on emails checked by AI (150 a week on the free plan, 4,000 a month on the paid plan); emails from senders you include or exclude do not count, and emails beyond the limit are skipped without being sent.

On the free plan, emails needing recognition are submitted to Gemini's batch service about six hours before your weekly digest. Google holds that request until Gather deletes it once results are ready, at the latest at your digest time; if deletion fails, Google expires the job after 48 hours. Gather keeps only the job identifier and, for each message identifier, a content hash until the digest runs. Turning AI off, enabling sender-only mode, disconnecting a mailbox or deleting your account withdraws a pending job.

If you choose to process only senders you include, Gather searches your mailboxes only for those senders, and email from anyone else is neither sent to Gemini nor stored, apart from its message identifier in the processed list. If you have not included any sender, nothing is processed.

After each check, the text of newly saved newsletters is split into numbered sentences and sent to Gemini, together with your focus instructions if you set any. Gemini picks the sentences that carry the most substantive ideas and writes only the entry title and headings; the feed shows the picked sentences exactly as written in the newsletters. Promotional, vague and housekeeping content is left out, so some newsletters may not appear in the feed. Extracts can still lose context or be poorly chosen; verify their linked newsletter sources. No mailbox content is sent to advertising or analytics.

On the paid plan, once a day after 6:00 in your timezone, the subject and text of newsletters saved in the previous 24 hours (in sender-only mode, only from senders you include) are sent to Gemini, together with your focus instructions, to pick the day's key stories as verbatim sentences. Gather then sends the resulting script (the selected sentences, the story headings, the newsletter names and the date; Gather adds nothing that identifies you) to Gemini's text-to-speech service to produce the audio.

The reader shows images from saved newsletters by fetching them through Gather's server, so senders do not receive your IP address; images that look like tracking pixels are dropped. The sender can still see a request from Gather's server for its image, which may reveal that the newsletter was opened. To show a recognizable thumbnail, Gather also fetches the sender domain's published brand logo or website icon.

AI processing requires an operator-configured paid Gemini project. Google states paid-service content is not used to improve its products, subject to its applicable terms; this is not a zero-retention guarantee. Operators must verify billing, applicable data-processing/retention terms, required disclosures and Google API Limited Use compliance before enabling real mailbox processing. Turning AI off in Settings stops automatic checks and further transfers, and removes your cached classifications, your news feed, your audio roundups and the processed-email list.

Retention and deletion

Saved newsletters, tags, highlights, notes, preferences, settings, consent records and feed entries remain until account deletion; feed entries are also removed when AI is turned off, together with the highlights made in them. Removing a tag, highlight or note deletes it immediately. Audio roundups are deleted after one year, or earlier when AI is turned off. Recognition decisions contain input hashes and predefined outcomes, not rejected bodies. They are reusable for 30 days, pruned on each check, and capped at 1,000 per account after pruning; inactive expired entries remain until cleanup or deletion. The processed-email list is pruned after 30 days. Disconnecting a mailbox removes its credentials and stops automatic checks of it but retains saved content. For Gmail, Gather also attempts Google token revocation. Microsoft offers apps no way to revoke their own access, so remove Gather from account.live.com/consent/Manage (personal account) or myapps.microsoft.com (work or school account). Account deletion deletes your Stripe customer, which cancels any subscription, then immediately removes all application records from the active database. Stripe keeps its own payment records as required by law and its terms. Emails in your mailboxes are never deleted. Provider-side retention is governed separately by Google's, Microsoft's and Stripe's terms.

Deployment operators must encrypt storage and backups, restrict database access, publish their contact information and specify backup expiry before public launch. Deleted data must not be reintroduced when restoring backups. This development application does not configure a backup service.

Google API data

Gather's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. There is no sale of mailbox data and no human access except as permitted by that policy.

Microsoft Graph data

Outlook access uses Microsoft Graph with the delegated Mail.Read, User.Read and offline_access permissions. Gather reads messages from every mail folder except Junk Email, Deleted Items, Drafts, Outbox and Sent Items, only to find, save and display your newsletters, under the same storage, AI processing and retention rules described above. There is no sale of mailbox data and no human access to it.