Privacy
What Elk collects, and why.
This covers elk.work and the Elk apps and services. Inside Elk, the Your data page shows the same for your own workspace, read live.
On elk.work
elk.work records how the site is used, so we can tell which pages help a product leader decide to talk to us. It records:
- Each page you open: its address and title, the site that sent you (its address only, never the full link), and any campaign tags in the link you followed (the
utm_tags). - Your browser’s language, and whether you are on a phone or a computer and which operating system it runs.
- Pilot Requested, when you send the Talk to us form: that it was sent, and from which page. Not what you typed.
- Experiment Viewed, when we are testing two versions of a page: which version you saw.
- A random identifier your browser keeps in its local storage, so a second visit counts as the same visitor. It is not a cookie and it is not linked to your name, email or company. It is replaced after 13 months, and clearing this site’s data in your browser removes it.
None of this names you. The site sends no name, email address, company, form text or IP address to its analytics, and it uses no advertising or third-party analytics tools. The events go to Trail, Elk’s own analytics receiver, which removes personal details from event data before storing it.
If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, the site records none of it.
Two companies see your visit the way any website’s providers do. Netlify hosts elk.work and receives your IP address and browser details to serve each page. The pages load their fonts from Google Fonts, which receives the same.
When you talk to us
The Talk to us form sends your name, work email, company, role and anything you write to a spreadsheet in Elk’s Google Workspace. Elk’s founders read it to reply and to set up a pilot. It is not added to a mailing list or shared outside Elk, and it is never joined to the site’s analytics. Ask us to delete it and we will.
When you use Elk
Your account
Your name and email address, and if you sign in with Apple or Google, the account identifier they give Elk. Elk uses your email address for invitations, sign-in codes and the notifications you turn on.
What your team puts in
Captures, messages, tasks, decisions, meeting transcripts and recordings, images, and your conversations with Ask Elk.
The sources you connect
When your workspace connects a source (Elk calls it a Tap), Elk reads what that source makes available to the credential you give it, and keeps those records so it can answer questions about your work and your product. Your workspace chooses which sources to connect. Credentials are stored encrypted. Each tool’s own terms still apply.
Elk’s agents, and yours
Elk’s agents read your workspace to do the work you and your team hand them. Agents you connect yourself, such as Claude Code or Codex, reach Elk with the access you give them.
How the apps are doing
The Elk apps report which screens and features are used, tied to your account, to Trail, and send crash and error reports to Catch, Elk’s own error receiver. That is how we find what to fix and what to build next.
Your data, inside Elk
The Your data tab on the Signals page shows your own workspace’s version of this page: what Elk keeps, how much, for how long, where it is stored, and who else handles it. It is read live from Elk’s servers and marks every protection as in place, being built or planned.
How Elk uses it
- To run Elk for your workspace: answer questions, write Tracks and notes, propose work, and run the agents you ask for.
- To keep Elk working and secure, and to decide what to fix and build from how the apps are used.
- To write to you about your account and, if you asked, about a pilot.
Elk does not sell personal information or use it for advertising.
Elk does not train models on your workspace’s content unless an admin of your workspace turns that on. It stays off unless they do.
Elk’s AI providers, listed below, receive what a question or a piece of agent work needs, when it runs.
Who else handles it
These companies process data for Elk. The list follows the Your data page in the app.
| Company | What it does for Elk | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Neon | Stores the records Elk collects from your connected sources. | Every record from your connected sources. |
| Google Cloud | Runs Elk’s data services and some AI models (Gemini, on Vertex AI), and stores encrypted credentials. | Records passing through those services, your encrypted credentials, and what a Gemini job is given. |
| Supabase | Elk’s application database and file storage. | Accounts, conversations, tasks, captures, images and recordings. |
| Anthropic | The AI model behind Ask Elk and Elk’s agents. | Questions, the records that answer them, and the conversation around them. |
| OpenRouter | Carries some requests to the same AI model. | The same, for those requests. Every request asks for zero data retention and no data collection. |
| Fireworks | Runs a second AI model beside the first on some routine agent work, for comparison. | The prompts of that work. |
| ElevenLabs | Transcribes audio. | Audio from meetings and voice captures. |
| GitHub | Runs some of Elk’s scheduled jobs. | The data those jobs read and write, while they run. |
| Netlify | Hosts elk.work. | Your IP address and browser details when you visit. |
| Google Workspace | Holds Talk to us requests. | What you send in the form. |
| Apple, Google | Sign-in, when you choose it. | That you are signing in to Elk. |
No business associate agreement is in place with these companies yet, so Elk is not yet set up to hold health information. Until it is, do not connect a source that carries it.
How long Elk keeps it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Text of AI model calls | 30 days. Their times, costs and outcomes are kept. |
| Text of agent steps | 180 days. Their times, costs and outcomes are kept. |
| Records Ask Elk read to answer a question | Removed from the conversation after 30 days. The question and the answer stay. |
| Images in captures and messages | Your workspace’s setting: one year unless an admin changes it. |
| Records from a connected source | While the source is connected, unless a shorter window is set. Your data shows the window for each source. |
| Credentials for your sources | Destroyed when you disconnect the source. |
| Everything else your team puts in | Until the workspace is closed. |
| elk.work analytics | Kept for now. A 90-day limit on raw events is being built. |
| Talk to us requests | Until you ask us to delete them. |
Two kinds of deletion are not complete yet, and we would rather say so. Disconnecting a source deletes its tables and its credential, but copies in a few shared tables stay until that work lands. Closing a workspace deletes its content from Elk’s application database; removing its source records and files is being built.
How it is protected
- Encrypted in transit, and encrypted at rest by each provider.
- Credentials for your sources sealed with AES-256-GCM and bound to your workspace.
- Each workspace’s data kept apart by access rules scoped to that workspace. A database of your own, one for logs and events and one for everything else, is planned.
Elk is preparing for independent SOC 2 and HIPAA assessment. Until those are done, Elk claims neither.
Your choices
Write to privacy@elk.work to see, correct, export or delete what Elk holds about you. We answer within 30 days.
A workspace’s admins decide which sources it connects and can disconnect any of them. If your company runs your workspace, it decides what happens to the workspace’s data, and we will pass your request to it.
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you can also object to or restrict how we use your data, and complain to your data protection authority. Elk relies on providing the service you or your company asked for, and for the site’s analytics, on its interest in knowing which pages work.
If you are in California, you can ask what Elk holds about you and have it deleted. Elk does not sell or share personal information.
Elk is for work, and not meant for anyone under 16.
When this page changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes, and people with an Elk account hear about it before the change applies.
Contact
privacy@elk.work. The terms that go with this page are at elk.work/terms.