Privacy Notice
SameGROUND Author, by Sameground Limited. Version 1.7, November 2026.
1. Who we are
Sameground Limited is the data controller for the personal data described in this notice. We are a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17302709, with our registered office at 1 Cricklade Court, Old Town, Swindon SN1 3EY.
We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC241542.
You can contact us about anything in this notice at support@sameground.com.
Data Protection Officer. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer. We are not a public authority; our core activities do not involve large scale monitoring of people's behaviour; and we do not process special category data or criminal offence data on a large scale. On that basis the statutory duty to appoint one does not apply to us. Data protection matters are handled by the company's directors at the address above.
2. What this notice covers
SameGROUND Author is a writing tool. You give it your writing, and it reads that writing against a profile of your voice. This notice explains what happens to your work and to the information about you that we hold.
SameGROUND Author is for adults. Our terms require you to be 18 or over.
3. What we collect
Information you give us
- Account information: your name and email address.
- Payment information: handled by Stripe and its checkout service Link, which sells SameGROUND Author to you as our reseller. Link uses your name, email address, billing address and card details to take the payment, work out and pay sales tax, and support your purchase, under its own privacy notice. We never see or store your card details: Link holds them. We keep your plan, whether your subscription is active, and the dates it renews or ends.
- Your writing: manuscripts, drafts, samples and anything else you type or upload into the product.
- Writing by someone else, if you submit it: for example, a text you give the forensic examiner to review. You must have the right to submit it. We use it only to give you the reading, and we do not store it.
- Anything you send us by email, including complaints and support requests.
Information the product creates about your writing
This is the part most people do not expect, so we set it out plainly.
- A voice profile, built from the samples you supply when you set up a voice. Where you supply samples, we keep the original text of those samples.
- With a voice built from samples, a short record of your writing habits, read from those samples: the patterns your writing shows, and the ones it never does. The product uses it only when it writes in that voice. It describes your writing in general terms and does not quote it.
- Notes on a passage: what a reading of your text noticed, and where in the text it noticed it.
- Notes from reviews of your writing (we call them craft seeds). When the product reviews and revises your text, it keeps a short note of what the review found and what the change did, never the passages themselves. Before a note is kept, any quotation, any name or figure, and any run of three or more words from your text is taken out of it. A note may still say what a passage is about (a scene of grief, say), but it keeps none of your passages, quotations, names or figures.
It also keeps:
- Your first drafts. When the product writes a piece for you, it may write a first draft and check it before you see the finished piece. We keep that first draft, which you never see, until you cancel.
- Story notes: the characters, places and threads the product notes in your manuscript, and what it infers about them, which you can correct.
- A book record, if you ask for your whole book to be read: what happens in each chapter, the characters, places, threads and timeline, kept with the project.
- A record of each piece the product writes for you: the finished draft, what its check found, and what you decided to do with it.
- Your run history: each reading or draft you asked for, when, and how many words it used.
- Authenticity readings, if you ask for one: the reading is shown to you at the time and is not stored. We record only that a reading ran, and how many words it used.
- A fingerprint of your email address, kept even after your account is deleted: a scrambled code from which your address cannot be read back. The free trial is once per email address, and this is how we check that an address has had it. While your account exists it is linked to your account by a second scrambled code; when your account's data is erased, that link is removed and nothing then ties the fingerprint to you.
Information collected automatically
- Technical data needed to run and secure the service: IP address, browser type, request logs. Our application's service logs on Google Cloud can also hold short extracts of your writing, a few words at a time, where we need them to find faults and check that the product works as it should. In rare cases, when our database refuses a change, its log at Supabase can hold the whole record being saved, including your writing.
- Usage data: word counts consumed, runs performed, subscription activity.
4. What we do with your writing, and what we do not
We learn from the reviews of your writing. What we learn stays yours.
Your craft seeds are used only when the product reads, reviews or revises your writing. Your "Yes, this run helped" and "No, not for me" answers decide which of them it relies on. They are used for your account and no other. They are never added to anything shared, and they are never shown or applied to another customer. That restriction is built into the product, not just stated here.
SameGROUND Author also uses a set of general writing checks that are the same for everyone, for mechanical matters such as turning verbs into nouns, the passive voice and filler words. We write those checks ourselves. They are not derived from any customer's writing.
Your work is not used to train an artificial intelligence model, ours or anyone else's. We do not train models on customer content. Where we send a passage to Anthropic, the provider of the model that reads it, it is processed to return a result to you; Anthropic's commercial terms do not allow it to train its models on what we send. Our error-reporting service is set not to record the text of your writing. Our application's service logs on Google Cloud can hold short extracts of it, and are kept for thirty days (section 7). Rarely, our database's log at Supabase can hold a whole record, your writing included, for no longer than that.
5. Why we are allowed to do this
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Provide the product, hold your account, process your writing so the product can read it | Performance of a contract with you |
| Take payment and prevent payment fraud | Performance of a contract, and legal obligation |
| Keep the service secure, diagnose faults, prevent abuse (including checking that a free trial is taken once) | Our legitimate interests in running a secure and working service |
| Keep records of complaints and data protection requests | Legal obligation |
| Send you service messages about your account | Performance of a contract |
| Send you marketing email, if you have asked for it | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
6. Who else handles your data
We use the following providers. Each one is bound by a written agreement that limits them to acting on our instructions.
| Provider | What it does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database and sign-in. Your account, writing, voice profile and craft seeds are stored here. Its database log can, rarely, hold your writing (section 3). | Our database is in London, United Kingdom. Supabase uses its own suppliers, some of them in the United States. |
| Google Cloud | Runs the application, and keeps its service logs, which can hold short extracts of your writing. | London, United Kingdom |
| Cloudflare | Runs the service that connects our web address to our servers, and the check at sign-up that tells people from automated programs, which reads your IP address and browser signals for that purpose. | Global network |
| Anthropic | The model that reads your writing and returns a result. | United States |
| Stripe (including Link) | Sells SameGROUND Author to you as our reseller, takes payment and pays sales tax. Receives your name, email, billing address and card details, not your writing. | United States |
| Resend | Sends service email such as verification and receipts. Receives your email address, not your writing. | Sends from the European Union. Resend uses its own suppliers, some of them in the United States. |
| Sentry | Records technical errors so we can fix faults. It is set not to record the text of your writing. | European Union |
We do not sell your personal data and we do not share it for advertising.
Sending data outside the UK. Anthropic and Stripe are in the United States, Cloudflare operates a global network, and Supabase and Resend use suppliers of their own, some of them in the United States. Where personal data leaves the UK, the transfer is made under the safeguards each provider publishes and that UK data protection law permits: the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it, or another safeguard the law allows.
Your writing reaches Anthropic, because that is how the product reads it. Your writing does not reach Stripe, Cloudflare or Resend.
7. How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Account details | While your account is open. If you ask us to delete your account, it closes at once and everything is erased 30 days later, unless you sign in before then to cancel the request. |
| The fingerprint of your email address (the free trial) | Kept after your account is deleted, for as long as we offer a free trial, so that the same address cannot take a second one. It cannot be turned back into your email address. |
| Your manuscripts, drafts and book records (including how each book is divided into parts) | While you subscribe. If your subscription ends, we keep them for six months from the end of your last paid period and email you before that date; if you come back within the six months, nothing is lost. If you have never subscribed, or your trial has ended without a plan, we keep them for six months after you last use SameGROUND Author, and email you before that date. If you ask us to delete your account, they are erased 30 days later. |
| Your voice profiles, their original samples and habits records | As for your manuscripts: kept for six months after your subscription ends, and erased 30 days after you ask us to delete your account. |
| Craft seeds, notes from reviews of your writing (never your text) | Deleted when you cancel; and erased with everything else if you ask us to delete your account. |
| Your first drafts: the unchecked draft behind a finished piece, which you never see | Deleted when you cancel your subscription. |
| Your story notes, the record of each piece written for you, and your run history | As for your manuscripts: kept for six months after your subscription ends, and erased 30 days after you ask us to delete your account. When you cancel, the first draft inside each record is removed. |
| Records of how many words you used, and when (they contain none of your writing) | If your account is erased, kept with your identity removed, so our cost records still add up. |
| Payment and transaction records | Six years, because tax law requires it |
| Complaint records | Three years from the date the complaint is closed |
| Technical error records, and service logs, including our database's log (which can hold extracts of your writing) | Thirty days |
8. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- ask us to correct data that is wrong or incomplete
- ask us to delete your data. You can do this yourself from your account page: we ask you to confirm on screen, your account closes at once, and your data is erased 30 days later. Signing in before then cancels the request.
- ask us to restrict how we use it
- receive your data in a portable format, or ask us to send it to someone else. You can also download any book you have written in SameGROUND Author yourself, at any time.
- object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests
- withdraw consent, where we relied on consent
Automated decisions. SameGROUND Author's readings and drafts are produced automatically, but they are about your writing, for you to weigh. We make no decision about you that has a legal or similarly significant effect by automated means alone.
To exercise any of these, email support@sameground.com. We will respond within one month. If your request is complex we may extend that by up to two further months, and we will tell you if we do. There is no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
9. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first, at support@sameground.com. We have a written complaints procedure, published alongside this notice, and a legal duty to handle your complaint. We will acknowledge it within 30 days and respond without undue delay.
If you remain dissatisfied, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, by telephone on 0303 123 1113, or by post to Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. The Commissioner will normally expect you to have raised the matter with us first.
10. Cookies and storage in your browser
We use cookies that are strictly necessary to sign you in and keep the service secure, and no others: no advertising or tracking cookies. Our cookies page lists them. The workspace also keeps a copy of the text you are working on in your browser, tied to your account and removed when you sign out, so that nothing is lost if a page is closed.
11. Changes to this notice
If we change this notice we will update the date below and, where the change is significant, tell you by email.
Version 1.7, November 2026.