Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Meriana ("Meriana," "we," "us," or "our") operates the website located at meriana.app and provides an AI-powered intelligence briefing service (the "Service"). This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, disclose, retain, and protect information about you when you use our Service, visit our website, or otherwise interact with us.

By accessing or using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with its terms, please discontinue use of the Service. This Policy applies to all users of the Service, including visitors to our website, registered users, and paying subscribers.

2. Information We Collect

(a) Information You Provide Directly

When you create an account, subscribe to a plan, or otherwise interact with the Service, we collect:

• Name and email address
• Account credentials (passwords are stored in hashed, non-recoverable form)
• Topics, companies, and themes you configure for monitoring, including their scheduling and delivery preferences
• Domain block lists, keyword filters, and other personalisation settings
• Billing information (collected and processed by our third-party payment processor; we do not store full payment card numbers)
• Communications you send us, including support requests and feedback

(b) Information Collected Automatically

When you access or use the Service, we automatically collect:

• Device and browser information (browser type, operating system, screen resolution, device identifiers)
• Log data (IP address, access timestamps, pages and features viewed, referring URLs, error logs)
• Usage data (topics tracked, briefings generated and opened, links clicked within briefings, feature interactions, session duration)
• Cookie and tracking technology data (see Section 7)

(c) Information from Third Parties

We may receive information about you from:

• Third-party login providers if you use social or single sign-on authentication
• Analytics and advertising platforms in aggregated or pseudonymised form
• Business partners and co-marketing arrangements, where you have consented to such sharing

3. How We Use Your Information

(a) Service Delivery

• Creating and maintaining your account
• Generating, personalising, and delivering your intelligence briefings
• Processing payments, managing subscriptions, and issuing billing receipts
• Providing customer support and responding to your inquiries
• Maintaining and archiving your briefing history

(b) Service Improvement and Analytics

• Analysing usage patterns to improve the features, reliability, and performance of the Service
• Developing and testing new features and products
• Training and improving the AI models and summarisation logic that power the Service
• Monitoring and ensuring the security and integrity of the Service

(c) Marketing and Promotional Communications

We may use your name, email address, usage behaviour, topic preferences, briefing engagement data, and other information we hold about you to conduct marketing activities, including:

• Direct marketing email: Sending you promotional emails about Meriana's features, products, service enhancements, limited-time offers, and subscription upgrade opportunities, personalised based on how you use the Service and the topics you track.
• Behavioural personalisation: Using information about which topics you monitor, which briefings you open, and how you engage with our content to tailor marketing messages to your specific professional interests and use case.
• Retargeting and interest-based advertising: Sharing hashed email addresses, cookie identifiers, and device signals with third-party advertising platforms (including Google LLC and Meta Platforms, Inc.) to serve you relevant advertisements for Meriana's Service on those platforms. We may also use data about your use of the Service to build lookalike audiences on such platforms.
• In-app third-party advertising: Displaying advertisements, sponsored placements, and promotional content from third-party advertisers and partner companies within the Service. To select, deliver, and measure these advertisements, we may use and share information such as your topic preferences, briefing engagement, cookie and device identifiers, and other usage data with advertisers, advertising networks, and measurement providers, so that the advertising shown to you within the Service is more relevant to your interests. These third parties may use the information we share to market their own products and services to you.
• Partner co-marketing: With your consent where required, sharing your contact information with carefully selected partners whose products or services we believe are relevant to your professional needs, so that those partners may contact you directly.
• Educational and engagement content: Sending you newsletters, tips, case studies, benchmark reports, and other content designed to help you get more value from the Service.
• Aggregate and de-identified marketing research: Using aggregated, anonymised data about our user base — including topic categories, industry segments, and engagement patterns — in external marketing materials, investor presentations, and industry reports. Such data cannot reasonably be used to identify any individual user.

We rely on our legitimate business interest in promoting our products and services to existing customers as the legal basis for direct marketing where permitted by applicable law, and on your consent where consent is required. You may opt out of marketing communications at any time — see Section 6.

(d) Legal Compliance and Safety

• Detecting and preventing fraud, abuse, and security incidents
• Enforcing our Terms of Service and other agreements
• Complying with applicable laws and regulations
• Responding to lawful requests from law enforcement or government authorities

4. Legal Bases for Processing (EEA and UK Users)

If you are located in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we process your personal data under the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract: Processing necessary to provide the Service under the agreement formed when you create an account or subscribe.
• Legitimate interests: Analytics, security, fraud prevention, product improvement, and direct marketing to existing customers (in each case, where our interests are not overridden by your fundamental rights).
• Consent: Certain cookies, retargeting, third-party in-app advertising and related advertiser disclosures, partner co-marketing, and marketing to individuals who are not existing customers. You may withdraw consent at any time without affecting prior lawful processing.
• Legal obligation: Processing required to comply with applicable law.

5. How We Share Your Information

We share your personal information in the circumstances described below. Some of our advertising-related disclosures — including those that support the third-party advertising shown within the Service — may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information under California and certain other state privacy laws. You can exercise your right to opt out of such sale or sharing as described in Sections 6 and 7.

(a) Service Providers

We share information with vendors and service providers who process it on our behalf, under written agreements that restrict their use to the purposes we specify. These include:

• Google LLC — our AI infrastructure is built on Google's Gemini API and uses Google's live web search services. Your topics and associated briefing parameters are processed through Google's systems in accordance with Google's data processing terms. For more information, see Google's Privacy Policy.
• Email service provider — for delivering briefings and transactional and marketing emails.
• Payment processor — your billing information is handled by a PCI DSS-compliant payment processor. We receive only a tokenised reference and summary billing data; we do not store raw card numbers.
• Analytics providers — for aggregate and pseudonymised usage analytics.
• Cloud hosting and infrastructure providers — for data storage, compute, and delivery infrastructure.

(b) Advertising and Marketing Partners

Unlike the service providers described above, the following partners may use the information we share with them for their own purposes, including marketing their own products and services to you:

• Advertising platforms, networks, and advertisers — we share information such as hashed email addresses, cookie and device identifiers, and topic and engagement data with advertising platforms, networks, and individual advertisers to deliver and measure retargeting, interest-based advertising, and the third-party advertisements and sponsored content shown within the Service, as described in Section 3(c). These partners may use that information to market their own products and services to you and to measure the performance of their advertising. Some of these disclosures may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information under applicable law; see Sections 6 and 7 for your opt-out rights.

(c) Business Transfers

If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing due diligence, reorganisation, bankruptcy, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change via email or prominent notice on our website, and any acquirer will be required to honour this Privacy Policy or provide you with advance notice of any material changes.

(d) Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if we have a good-faith belief that disclosure is required by applicable law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request; to protect the rights, property, or safety of Meriana, our users, or others; or to detect, prevent, or address fraud or security incidents.

(e) With Your Consent

We may share your information for other purposes with your explicit consent, including partner co-marketing arrangements where you have opted in.

6. Your Marketing Choices

Opting out of marketing emails

Every marketing email we send includes a clearly marked unsubscribe link. You may also submit an opt-out request by emailing us at hello@meriana.app. We will process your request within ten (10) business days. Opting out of marketing emails does not affect your receipt of transactional communications (such as account confirmations, billing receipts, briefing deliveries, and service notices), which are necessary to operate your account and cannot be disabled while your account is active.

Opting out of retargeting

You may limit interest-based advertising by adjusting your advertising preferences directly on each platform (for example, through Google Ad Settings or Meta Ad Preferences). You may also use opt-out tools provided by the Digital Advertising Alliance (optout.aboutads.info) or the Network Advertising Initiative (optout.networkadvertising.org).

Opting out of in-app advertising

We show advertisements and sponsored content from third-party advertisers within the Service. To opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information for this in-app and cross-context behavioural advertising, you may adjust the cookie and advertising controls described in Section 7, send a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal from your browser where supported, or contact us at hello@meriana.app. We will honour verified opt-out requests as required by applicable law.

Opting out of partner co-marketing

Where we share your information with partners for co-marketing, we will obtain your explicit consent before doing so, and you may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us at hello@meriana.app.

7. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies, web beacons, pixels, and similar tracking technologies to operate and improve the Service and to support our marketing activities. The following table describes the categories of cookies we use:

You may manage cookies through your browser settings. Please note that disabling certain cookies may affect the functionality of the Service. We honour Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals where required by applicable law.

8. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period thereafter to allow you to reactivate your account, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

Briefing archives are retained in accordance with the limits of your subscription tier. Upon account deletion, we will delete or anonymise your personal information within ninety (90) days, except where we are required to retain it by law (for example, for tax and accounting purposes) or where retention is necessary for legitimate business purposes such as fraud prevention.

Marketing interaction data (email engagement, advertising click data) is retained for up to thirty-six (36) months from the date of the interaction or the date of your last engagement with us, whichever is later.

9. International Data Transfers

Meriana is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction.

For transfers of personal data from the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we rely on appropriate transfer mechanisms including the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission, supplementary technical and organisational measures, and adequacy decisions where applicable. Our service providers, including Google LLC, are required to maintain equivalent transfer safeguards.

10. Your Privacy Rights

(a) All Users

Regardless of your location, you have the right to:

• Access and receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete information
• Request deletion of your personal information, subject to our legal and contractual obligations
• Opt out of marketing communications (see Section 6)

(b) EEA and UK Residents (GDPR / UK GDPR)

In addition to the rights above, you have the right to:

• Restriction of processing: Request that we restrict how we process your data in certain circumstances
• Data portability: Receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format
• Objection: Object to processing based on legitimate interests, including for direct marketing purposes (in which case we will cease such processing immediately)
• Withdrawal of consent: Withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent, without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing
• Complaint: Lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority (in the EU, your national data protection authority; in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office)

(c) California Residents (CCPA / CPRA)

California residents have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act and the California Privacy Rights Act:

• Right to know: The categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the categories of sources, our business purposes, and the categories of third parties with whom we share it
• Right to delete: Deletion of personal information we have collected, subject to certain exceptions
• Right to correct: Correction of inaccurate personal information
• Right to opt out of sale or sharing: We share — and, depending on how it is configured, may "sell" as broadly defined under California law — certain information (such as hashed email addresses, cookie and device identifiers, and topic and engagement data) with advertising partners and advertisers for cross-context behavioural advertising and for the third-party advertising shown within the Service. You have the right to opt out of this sale or sharing; you may do so as described in Sections 6 and 7, by sending a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal where supported, or by contacting us at hello@meriana.app
• Right to limit use of sensitive personal information: To the extent we process sensitive personal information, you may request that we limit its use to purposes permitted by law
• Right to non-discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights under California law

To submit a request, contact us at hello@meriana.app. We will verify your identity before processing the request and will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law (generally 45 days, with one possible extension of an additional 45 days where reasonably necessary).

11. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from, individuals under the age of 16. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 16, we will take reasonable steps to delete that information promptly. If you believe we may have collected information from a child, please contact us at hello@meriana.app.

12. Security

We implement reasonable and appropriate technical and organisational security measures designed to protect your personal information against unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, loss, or destruction. These measures include encryption of data in transit and at rest, access controls, and regular security reviews. However, no method of internet transmission or electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by applicable law.

13. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technologies, legal requirements, or for other operational reasons. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email to the address associated with your account, or by posting a prominent notice on our website, prior to the effective date of the change. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of the updated Policy constitutes your acceptance of the revised terms. We encourage you to review this Policy periodically.

14. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our personal data practices, please contact us at:

For GDPR-related inquiries, our designated data protection contact can be reached at hello@meriana.app. We will respond to all requests within the timeframes required by applicable law.