Privacy policy

This page explains what personal data Machinegeist processes, why, and what you can ask of us. It covers two things: this website, and the way we reach out to potential clients ourselves. On the website: no cookies, no tracking scripts, visitor statistics without personal profiles, and what you type into a form is used to answer you. If you received an email, a message or a phone call from us without contacting us first, read "When we approach you for business" and "Your right to object".

Who is responsible

Machinegeist BV · BE 1042.323.495

Registered office: Lindestuk 15, 9032 Ghent, Belgium. For any question about privacy, or a request about your data, write to privacy@machinegeist.ai.

No cookies, no tracking scripts

This website sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser’s local storage. It loads no tracking or advertising scripts, which is why there is no cookie banner. Our fonts are hosted on our own site, so opening a page sends no request to a font service.

How we measure traffic

We want to know which channels bring visitors to the site, without following anyone around. Our measurement is first-party, uses no cookies and runs on our server.

When you open a page, our server works out which channel brought you, for example a campaign link, an ad, another website or a direct visit. It then adds a short signed visit code to the links on the page, which you can see as the v parameter in the URL. The code holds only where your visit came from (traffic source, campaign, landing page and time) and random visit numbers. It holds no personal data and is not stored in your browser. A new one is issued after 24 hours.

For each page view, our server sends data about the visit to a web statistics service, hosted in the EU, which processes it on our behalf: the page and the referring page, your browser, operating system and type of device, your language, your IP address and the origin from the visit code. That service uses the IP address only to count a visitor once per day, with a hash that changes every day and cannot be reversed, and to look up the country. The service does not store the IP address. We only see aggregated statistics.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in understanding which channels bring visitors, without using cookies.

We share no data with advertising platforms, and we sell no data.

When you fill in a form

This covers the contact form, the guide request forms (the AI notetakers guide and the local AI guide) and the forms on the domains we send email from. When you submit one, we receive:

• your email address, and your phone number and message if you give them
• which form you used
• the visit attribution described above: traffic source, campaign, landing page and time of your first visit
• the country our hosting provider derives from your request

We store this in our database, hosted in the EU, and the founders are notified in a private group on a messaging service. For the forms on machinegeist.ai, the submission is also reported to the web statistics service, with the name of the form, the traffic source and the campaign, but without your email address or anything you typed.

The contact form and the forms on the domains we send email from also check that a person is writing to us: before one can be sent, a bot-protection service in the EU gives your browser a small puzzle, which your browser solves itself. For that, the service receives your IP address and browser details; it sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser.

The guide forms only accept work email addresses. When you request a guide, we email you the PDF through an email service outside the European Economic Area (EEA). That transfer relies on an adequacy decision of the European Commission and on standard contractual clauses.

You can also use the form on a domain we send email from to ask us to stop writing to you. See “Your right to object” below.

Legal basis: steps taken at your request before a possible contract, and our legitimate interest in answering you and in keeping automated abuse out of our forms.

AI Maturity Scan and booking a meeting

The AI Maturity Scan (/scan) is a form from a form service in the EU, embedded in our page. What you enter there is processed under that service’s terms, and your answers reach us so a founder can review your readout.

When you book a meeting, you do so on an appointment page of a calendar service outside the EEA.

Hosting

The website and our server run on the network of a hosting and network provider outside the EEA. It processes IP addresses to deliver the site and to protect it against abuse.

When we approach you for business

Machinegeist reaches out to decision makers at mid-sized companies in Belgium and the Netherlands to offer our own services. To do so, we process professional data about you that we did not receive from you. This part applies to you if you received a first email, a first LinkedIn message or a phone call from us, and also if you are in our database of potential clients and we have not contacted you yet.

What data

• your name, and the address and number of your LinkedIn profile
• your professional data as it appears on your profile: your role, your employer, your career, your location and what you write about yourself
• your public activity on LinkedIn, such as your posts, your comments and following our company page, and how you are connected to a founder
• your work email address and whether it can receive mail, and, if we want to call you, your mobile number, with the date and the outcome of the lookup
• the language model’s assessment described below, with its explanation
• preparatory notes: what is publicly known about you and your company, and, if we want to call you, a short call note for the caller
• our contact moments: our messages and calls, your replies, the outcome of a call, the dates and our notes

We use data about your employer, such as sector and size, to decide whether the company fits what we offer.

Where the data comes from

• professional networks such as LinkedIn: your profile and your activity there
• search engines and public websites, including about your company
• providers of business contact data: your work email address and, if we want to call you, your mobile number

Search engines and public websites are public sources. From LinkedIn we use what you make visible there yourself.

Why, and on what legal basis

We use this data to approach you as a potential client, by email, on LinkedIn or by phone, with a proposal that concerns your own role, and to keep track of when we were in touch with you.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR) in offering our services to the companies and people for whom they are relevant. We weighed that interest against yours. We only approach people in their professional role, about an area they are responsible for, and we use data about your work, and your mobile number to call you. A person approves every message, and one reply is enough to stop receiving them. You can ask us for that assessment at privacy@machinegeist.ai.

Assessment by a language model

Before a person sees your data, we have a language model assess whether your role and your company match the people our services are meant for. This is profiling within the meaning of Article 4(4) GDPR. Only a founder can add you as a contact. The assessment has no legal effect on you and does not affect you in a similarly significant way; there is no automated decision within the meaning of Article 22 GDPR.

We also use a language model to assess what public posts are about, and to prepare the call note.

You can always object to this assessment. How is under “Your right to object” below.

A person approves every message

A founder decides whether to add you as a contact, and then approves every message. The founder approves the follow-up messages of a sequence before the sequence starts. We write to you in a founder’s name, and a founder makes every phone call in person.

Who receives the data

These kinds of service providers receive data from us:

• services that collect and complete data: retrieving profiles and activity from professional networks, looking up business contact data and searching the web (in the EU and outside the EEA)
• providers of language models, for the assessment, the call note and the AI tool the founders work with (in the EU and outside the EEA)
• services for sending email, and the mailboxes we write to you from and in which your replies arrive (outside the EEA)
• database hosting (the data is in the EU; the provider is outside the EEA)
• services for storing files and configuration and for work planning (including outside the EEA)
• a messaging service for notifications to the founders (storage in the EU)

Some of these providers process data outside the European Economic Area. For those transfers there is an adequacy decision of the European Commission, or the providers refer in their terms to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. You can ask for a copy of those safeguards at privacy@machinegeist.ai.

We sell no data, and we do not pass it on to other companies for their own purposes.

Your right to object

You can object at any time, free of charge and without giving a reason, to the use of your data for prospecting, and to the assessment by the language model that goes with it. There are four ways:

• reply STOP to an email from us (any other reply asking us to stop counts too)
• write to privacy@machinegeist.ai
• use the form on the page of the domain we wrote to you from
• tell us during a phone call

We confirm your objection by email, and within 48 hours we stop approaching you, by email, on LinkedIn and by phone (the legal deadline is one month). After that we keep your email address and the address of your LinkedIn profile only to check that we do not approach you again.

If you say during a call that we may no longer call you, we no longer call you. If your profile later comes in again through one of our sources, the language model may still assess it, but that does not lead to new contact.

How long we keep data

• Form submissions: as long as we need them to follow up with you, and no longer than 24 months after our last contact.
• Visitor statistics: kept as aggregated, pseudonymous data for as long as our account with the web statistics service exists.
• Prospecting, if we never contacted you: 12 months after collection. After that we delete your data, or we assess again whether you still fit what we offer.
• Prospecting, if we contacted you and you did not reply: 2 years after our last attempt. After that we delete your data, or move it to an archive we no longer use actively.
• After an objection or unsubscribe: out of all active use within 48 hours, and at the latest within one month. Your email address and the address of your LinkedIn profile are kept with no end date, only so that we never approach you again. We no longer use the rest of your data; it stays under the periods above unless you ask for erasure.
• Backups of our database are kept for 12 weeks. A deletion therefore reaches the backups after 12 weeks at the latest.
• After an erasure request, we delete the data in our database that is only about you. In our log of contact moments we remove your name and the link to you, and for a phone call also the number called and the notes; the date, the channel and the company stay. We keep an irreversible fingerprint (a hash) of your email address and of the address of your LinkedIn profile, only to refuse you when one of our sources brings you in again.

Your rights

You have the right to access your personal data, including its source, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable format. To exercise any of these rights, write to privacy@machinegeist.ai and we will answer within one month. What erasure involves is described above under “How long we keep data”.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority, Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels, www.dataprotectionauthority.be. If you live or work in the Netherlands, you can also turn to the Dutch Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, www.autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl.

Changes to this policy

When the way Machinegeist handles personal data changes, we update this page and the date at the top.