Privacy Policy

The short version

We do not ask who you are and we do not keep what you write. There is no account, so there is nothing to attach your text to. The detail below explains exactly what happens to a document when you press Check.

What happens to your text

When you press Check or Rewrite, your text is sent to our server, which:

• runs a set of local rules over it to catch mechanical errors;
• forwards it to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, which returns a corrected version;
• compares the two to work out where the errors are, and sends that list back to you.

The full text of your document is not written to any database and is discarded once the response is sent.

Caching

To keep the service fast and affordable, the list of corrections produced for a piece of text may be cached for up to seven days. The cache is keyed by a one-way hash of your text, which cannot be reversed to recover the original.

A cached record contains the individual words and punctuation marks that were corrected, not the surrounding document. It is not linked to you, your IP address or any identifier, and it is deleted automatically when it expires.

History stored in your browser

The editor keeps your last few checks, and whatever you were in the middle of writing, in your own browser using local storage. This is what lets the History button work and what restores your text when you come back.

This data never leaves your device and is never sent to us. It is not readable by other websites. If you are on a shared or public computer, use Clear all history in the History panel when you are finished, which removes both the saved checks and the restored draft.

Third-party processing

Text is processed by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. Under Microsoft's terms for that service, prompts and outputs are not used to train or improve any model, and are not shared with other customers or with OpenAI.

Because processing happens on Microsoft infrastructure, your text leaves our servers when it is checked. If you are handling material under a confidentiality agreement, an embargo, or institutional rules on third-party tools, check those rules before pasting anything in.

Rate limiting

To prevent abuse, we count how many checks come from an IP address within a rolling window. We store a counter against a key derived from the IP address, and it expires automatically. We do not use it to build a profile of you or to track you across the site.

Cookies and analytics

The site sets no advertising cookies and no cross-site tracking cookies. If analytics are in use, they are limited to aggregate page-level counts with no personal identifiers.

Children

The service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Your rights

Because we hold no account data and nothing that identifies you, there is generally nothing for us to retrieve, correct or delete on request. If you believe we hold something relating to you, write to us and we will look into it.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects how your text is handled, we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy can go to support@punctuationcheck.com.