Privacy policy
Effective Oct 14, 2026
What CageCard collects, why, where it's kept and for how long, and what you can ask us to do with it. In short: we keep what's needed to run your colony records, we don't sell or advertise with it, and you can get it back or have it deleted.
Who we are
CageCard is run by Collin McMahon, doing business as CageCard, in Massachusetts, USA ("we", "us"). For anything about your data, email privacy@cagecard.app.
Your lab's colony records belong to the lab. When a lab or institution uses CageCard, it decides what goes in and who can see it, and we process those records on its behalf. Institutions that need a data processing agreement can ask for one at the address above.
What we collect
Your account
- Your name, email address and password (stored only as a one-way hash).
- If you sign in with Google or Microsoft: your name and email address from that account.
- Your workspaces and your role in each (owner, manager, worker or viewer).
- Which version of these terms you accepted, and when.
Your colony records
- What you and your lab enter: cages, mice, lines and genotypes, breeding, litters, weights and health observations, tasks, notes, and files you import.
- A history of every change (who made it, when, and on which device, such as "Chrome on Mac"). Labs rely on it to see what happened to an animal, and it's kept for as long as the workspace exists.
Technical information
- For each signed-in session: the IP address and browser it came from, to keep accounts secure (spotting sign-ins that aren't yours).
- Counts of recent sign-in attempts per email address and IP address, to stop password guessing. They're deleted when the limit window ends, within an hour.
- If you turn on push notifications: the address your browser gives us to deliver them, and its name.
- Which reminders and digests we've sent you, so you don't get the same one twice (kept 180 days), and your notification settings.
- Daily totals per workspace (active people, changes, mice and cages) to understand how CageCard is used.
- Error reports when something breaks: what failed and where in the code. They don't include your name, email, IP address, cookies or what you entered.
Payments
Subscriptions are handled by Stripe. We see the plan, its status and the billing email, but never your card number.
What we don't do
- We don't sell your data or share it with advertisers.
- There are no advertising or analytics trackers on CageCard, and no tracking cookies.
- We don't use your colony records to train AI models.
Why we use it
- To run CageCard for you: keep your records, sync them between your devices, and let your lab work together.
- To send what you asked for: sign-in links, password resets, invitations, reminders and digests.
- To keep it secure and working: preventing abuse, investigating problems, backups.
- To bill subscriptions.
- To improve CageCard, from usage totals and the feedback you send us.
For people in the EU and UK, the legal bases are: performing our contract with you or your lab, our legitimate interest in a secure, working service, and complying with the law (for example, keeping billing records).
Cookies and storage on your device
CageCard only uses what it needs to work, so there's no cookie banner:
- A sign-in cookie, shared with our sync server (sync-us.cagecard.app).
- A cookie remembering which help tips you've dismissed.
- Browser storage for working offline: a copy of your workspace's records, edits not yet synced, a random id for this device and its name, and your theme choice. Signing out deletes the records and edits from the device.
Where it's stored
Your data is stored in the United States: the database and sync server run on servers we rent from Hetzner, and the app runs on Cloudflare's network. Backups are encrypted before they leave the server, with a key only we hold, and kept in Cloudflare R2. The companies that process data for us are listed on the subprocessors page.
If you're outside the US, your data is transferred to the US. Where the law requires it, we rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. A European data region is planned.
How long we keep it
- Account and workspace data: for as long as the account or workspace exists.
- After you ask us to delete an account or workspace: deleted from the live database within 30 days, and from backups as they expire, within a further 35 days.
- Sign-in sessions: until you sign out or they expire.
- Reminder and digest history: 180 days. Records of edits made offline: 30 days.
- Billing records: as long as tax law requires (Stripe keeps these too).
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- give you a copy of your data, including your lab's records as a spreadsheet (if you own the workspace);
- correct anything that's wrong (you can edit most of it yourself);
- delete your account, or a workspace you own;
- stop or limit some uses, or object to them.
Email privacy@cagecard.app from your account's address and we'll reply within 30 days. You can also do the first and third yourself: in Settings, a workspace's owner can download all its data or delete the workspace, and anyone can delete their account. A lab's records belong to its workspace: if you leave a lab, the changes you made stay in its history, since the lab needs them. In the EU and UK you can also complain to your data protection authority.
Security
Connections are encrypted (HTTPS). The database isn't reachable from the internet; the app reaches it through an encrypted tunnel. Backups are encrypted, sign-in attempts are rate-limited, and access to your lab's records is checked on our server for every request. No system is perfectly secure: if a breach affects your data, we'll tell you without undue delay.
Children
CageCard is for research staff and isn't meant for anyone under 16.
Changes
When this policy changes, we'll update it here with a new effective date. If the change matters (a new use of your data, say), we'll email account holders before it takes effect.