Privacy policy

Effective 21 September 2026

Draft for review. This was written against what the software actually does, which is the hard part, but it has not been reviewed by a lawyer. Have counsel read it before you rely on it — particularly the liability, indemnity and governing-law terms, and anything touching state regulatory obligations.

Muriel is a drinking-water compliance assistant. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what you can make us do about it. It describes the product as built, not as a category.

1. What we collect

What	Why	Kept for
Email address	It identifies your account and is where receipts and service notices go.	While the account exists
Password hash	To sign you in. We store a scrypt hash, never the password.	While the account exists
Phone number, if you verify one	To confirm a real person is signing up, which is what keeps the free tier from being farmed.	While the account exists; verification codes for 10 minutes
Google account id and profile, if you sign in with Google	To sign you in without a password. We receive your Google id, email, name and avatar.	While the account exists
Your questions and the answers	To produce the answer, and to show you your own conversation history.	Until you delete the conversation
Usage and credits	Tokens, cost and a credit ledger, so billing is something you can audit rather than trust.	7 years (financial records)
Page views	To know how many people use the product.	400 days
Newsletter choice, only if you opt in	To send the Muriel newsletter, about once a month. We record when you said yes, from where, and the wording you agreed to; a yes sent with an emailed link counts only once that link is clicked. Every issue has a one-click unsubscribe link, and your account page has a switch.	Until you unsubscribe; the record of your yes and your no is kept as proof of consent

What we deliberately do not collect

Your IP address is never stored. It is used to route the request and is not written to any table.
Full referrer URLs are never stored. We keep the host that sent you (google.com) and discard the rest, because a search URL contains the search.
No third-party analytics or advertising trackers. There is no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no advertising network, and nothing on the site that reports to anyone but us.
We do not sell or share personal information for money or for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are used in the CCPA. We never have.

2. Cookies

Cookie	Purpose	Consent	Life
`wqa_session`	Keeps you signed in. The site cannot work without it.	Strictly necessary — no consent required	30 days
`wqa_consent`	Remembers your answer to the cookie banner, so we stop asking.	Strictly necessary — it records your choice	180 days
`wqa_vid`	A random id that lets us count unique visitors rather than raw hits.	Only set if you accept	180 days

Decline and the product works identically. Your visit is still counted, as an anonymous increment with no identifier attached. You can change your answer at any time from your account page, and withdrawing deletes the cookie.

3. Sending your questions to a model

Answers are generated by Anthropic's Claude models. The text of your question, the relevant water-quality data and the conversation so far are sent to Anthropic's API to produce the answer. Do not paste anything into Muriel that you would not send to a third-party processor — and there is rarely a reason to: the data the agent reasons over is public state monitoring data it already holds.

We use the API under terms that do not permit your inputs to be used to train models.

4. Who else sees your data

Anthropic — question text and context, to generate answers.
Stripe — if you subscribe. Stripe handles the card directly; we never see or store card numbers, only a customer id and the last four digits Stripe reports.
Twilio — your phone number, only if you verify one. We use it to send a single one-time verification code when you ask for one. We do not send marketing texts, and we do not sell, rent or share phone numbers with anyone for their own marketing. Reply STOP to any message to opt out, or HELP for help. Message and data rates may apply; frequency is one message per request. We keep a record of when you agreed to receive these texts, which the mobile carriers require us to be able to produce.
Google — only if you choose to sign in with Google.
Cloudflare — every request to this site passes through Cloudflare, which serves it and holds the certificate. If you use the free trial without an account, Cloudflare's Turnstile also runs a check that you are a person rather than a script; it sees your IP address and browser characteristics for that purpose. We use it to stop automated abuse of a service that costs us money per question, and we receive only a pass or fail — never the signals behind it. Also: Resend, which delivers our email.
Our hosting provider, which stores the database.

Beyond that: nobody. We disclose personal information otherwise only where the law requires it, and if we are ever compelled to, we will tell you unless we are forbidden to.

5. The water-quality data itself

Sample results, violations and system records come from state and federal public sources. They concern public water systems, not individuals, and are public records in their own right. They are not about you and this policy does not restrict them.

6. Your rights

Whatever jurisdiction you are in, you may ask us to show you what we hold, correct it, delete it, or send you a copy in a portable format. Email info@murielai.io and we will respond within 30 days.

If you are in the EEA or UK, our lawful bases are: contract for your account, your questions and billing; consent for the analytics cookie and for SMS; and legitimate interests for security, fraud prevention and keeping the service working. You may withdraw consent at any time and may complain to your supervisory authority.

If you are in California, you have the rights to know, delete, correct and opt out. We do not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of, and we will not discriminate against you for asking.

Deleting your account removes your email, password hash, phone number, Google link and conversations. Billing records are kept as long as the law requires us to keep them.

7. Security

Passwords are hashed with scrypt. Session tokens are stored as hashes, so a copy of our database does not hand anyone a live session. Traffic is encrypted in transit. No system is perfectly secure; if we suffer a breach affecting your personal data we will notify you and the relevant regulator as required.

8. Children

Muriel is a professional tool and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16.

9. Changes

If we change this materially we will update the effective date and ask for your cookie choice again, because consent given against an earlier version is not consent to this one.