Privacy & Data Use Policy

ExSient (“ExSient”, “we”, “us”) is a customer-experience consultancy operated by Jesseh Alexander, serving clients in India, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere. This policy covers personal data processed through exsient.com, our AI assistant Exie, our self-serve research product afterwords, and our consulting engagements.

We have written it with two laws in front of us: India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) and the UAE’s Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data (PDPL). Where the two differ, we apply the stronger protection to everyone rather than maintaining two standards.

Browsing the site. Aggregate, privacy-preserving analytics (page views, country-level region, device class) via Vercel Analytics. No advertising cookies, no cross-site tracking, no profiles built on you.

Talking to Exie. The text of your conversation, and any details you volunteer in it (for example your name, company, or a request for a call). If you use the microphone, speech is converted to text on your device; only the text reaches us. Exie remembers past conversations on your device only after you expressly consent, and the footer’s “Forget me” control erases that memory.

Requesting a Snapshot, report, or booking. The contact details you provide (name, email or phone, company) and the brief you describe, used to deliver what you asked for and follow up on it.

Creating an afterwords study. Your email address (to send your study links), the study name, and the questions you want explored.

Answering an afterwords interview. The words of your answers and, only if you choose to leave them, your name, email, phone, and a one-tap feeling rating. Every one of those fields is optional; skipping them never blocks the interview. The public demo at /research/demo stores nothing at all.

Technical necessities. Short-lived IP-based counters used solely to prevent abuse (for example, limiting how many studies one address can create per day).

No camera access. No facial analysis. No voice-print, tone, or emotion analysis from audio — our emotion analytics are derived from the words people write or say and the ratings they choose to give, never from biometric signals. No audio recordings exist at any point: speech-to-text runs inside your browser and only text leaves your device. We do not collect government identifiers, financial account data, health data, or precise location, and we ask you not to send them to us.

We process personal data only for the purposes you would expect, each resting on a recognised ground under the DPDP Act and PDPL:

To provide what you asked for — answering questions, running interviews, generating dashboards, sending study links, scheduling calls (performance of contract / consent).

To follow up with people who contacted us — responding to leads who left contact details with us for that purpose (consent; legitimate use under the DPDP Act).

To keep the service safe — rate-limiting and abuse prevention (legitimate interest / legal obligation).

To improve our services — using aggregate, non-identifying usage patterns; never by selling or renting personal data, and never for third-party advertising.

Where processing rests on consent, you may withdraw it at any time with effect for the future (Section 10).

Exie’s conversations, afterwords interviews, dictation cleanup, and study analyses are processed through Anthropic’s Claude API. Under Anthropic’s commercial API terms, data submitted through the API is not used to train Anthropic’s models. AI outputs (themes, scores, summaries, draft emails) are analytical aids generated from your inputs; they are reviewed and acted on by ExSient, not by any third party.

When a business (the “study owner”) runs an afterwords study, the owner decides whom to invite and why — the owner is the data fiduciary / controller of respondent data, and must have a lawful basis to contact its respondents. ExSient operates the platform as processor: we store transcripts, run the analysis the owner requests, and show results only to whoever holds the study’s private dashboard link.

If you were interviewed and want your answers corrected or deleted, you may contact the business that invited you, or write to us at hello@exsient.com and we will act on the record directly.

We share personal data only with the service providers that make the product run, each bound by their own data-protection commitments:

Vercel (website hosting and aggregate analytics) · Anthropic (AI processing, no model training) · Upstash (encrypted database storage) · Resend (transactional email from hello@exsient.com) · Google Calendar (only when you book a session) · WhatsApp (only when you choose to message us there).

We do not sell or rent personal data. We do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We disclose data beyond the list above only if a law or competent authority validly requires it, and then only the minimum required.

Our infrastructure providers store data on cloud regions that may be outside India or the UAE (including the United States and the European Union). Transfers rest on our processors’ contractual safeguards and recognised transfer mechanisms, consistent with the DPDP Act’s transfer provisions and Articles 22–23 of the UAE PDPL. Wherever the server sits, this policy follows your data.

Exie conversations — on your device, under your control; our server-side lead records persist only if you asked us to follow up.

Leads and enquiries — kept while the conversation is live and for a reasonable period after, then deleted on request or when no longer needed.

afterwords studies — kept while the study owner uses the dashboard; deleted on the owner’s request.

Anti-abuse counters — expire automatically within days.

Wherever you are, you can ask us to:

access the personal data we hold about you · correct it · delete it · withdraw consent for the future · object to or restrict particular processing · receive a copy in a usable format. Under the DPDP Act you may also nominate a person to exercise these rights for you.

Write to hello@exsient.com. We acknowledge promptly and resolve within 30 days. If you remain unsatisfied, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India (for India) or the UAE Data Office (for the UAE).

All traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS). Study dashboards are gated by unguessable private links; admin surfaces are key-protected; stored data sits with providers offering encryption at rest. We collect little by design — the safest data is the data never gathered. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach ever materially affects you, we will inform you and the relevant authority as the DPDP Act and PDPL require.

We use no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Your browser’s local storage holds small preferences (for example, your Exie memory choice, a study dashboard token you created, reading history used to personalise suggestions on your device). Clearing your browser storage removes them; the “Forget me” control in the footer erases Exie’s memory.

Our services are for businesses and working professionals and are not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly process children’s data; if you believe we hold any, tell us and we will delete it.

When we change this policy materially, we will update the date above and, where the change affects how existing data is used, take fresh consent where the law requires it. The current version always lives at exsient.com/privacy.

Grievance Officer (DPDP Act) and privacy contact: Jesseh Alexander, ExSient — hello@exsient.com. We respond within 30 days.