What leaves your PC, and why.

Genie9 Ltd (“Genie9”, “we”), 20-22 Wenlock Road, London, N1 7GU, United Kingdom, company number 07787114, makes Genie Backup Manager AI (“GBM AI”, “the app”) and runs genie9.com. For the personal data described here, Genie9 is the controller.

This notice covers the app and the parts of genie9.com that serve it: the download, the store, your account page, Ask Genie, support and the e-mails we send. The Genie9 privacy policy and cookie policy cover the rest of the website. Where they differ for GBM AI, this notice applies; their parts about cloud backup, files kept in our data centres and face data do not apply to GBM AI.

Your backups never reach Genie9. The app writes them only to the destinations you choose: a disk, a USB drive, a network share or your own S3 bucket, and a second copy only where you choose. Your jobs, settings, the Find index, the run history and the logs stay on your PC unless you send them to us yourself (section 6).

Passwords, share credentials, S3 keys and mail-server secrets are sealed on your PC with Windows data protection, and your sign-in token is kept in Windows Credential Manager. None of them is sent to Genie9.

No usage tracking. The app does not report how you use it: no usage statistics, crash reports or analytics are sent by themselves. Genie’s suggestions on Home are worked out on your PC. What the app does send is listed in section 3, and support details leave your PC only when you press Send.

The app talks to Genie9 only for the features below. Backing up, restoring, second copies and Find never do.

“This PC’s id” is a fingerprint the app derives from the PC, so a licence seat and a trial can be tied to one machine. “This PC’s name” is its Windows computer name.

From the update check we keep one record for each PC: its id, the app version it runs and the one it started with, its edition and whether it is on a trial or a paid licence, its platform and channel, and when we first and last heard from it. It tells us how many PCs run which version, so we can plan updates and support.

Ask Genie turns a sentence into a backup job and answers questions about your backups. When you ask, the app sends the following to Genie9’s server, which passes it to OpenAI, the provider of the language model, to write the answer, and returns the answer to the app:

• your prompt, and the conversation so far;
• your edition and trial state, the Windows version and architecture, and the app’s language;
• each drive’s letter, label, kind (internal, USB, network or cloud), role, size and free space;
• the names of the top-level folders on internal drives, each with an item count, a date and a content hint (such as photos, code or documents). Nothing below the top level, and nothing from USB, network or cloud drives. This is on by default; turn it off under Settings ▸ General ▸ Ask Genie;
• your existing jobs: each one’s name, what it backs up (its folders, or files you ticked one by one), destination, type, schedule, whether it is encrypted, retention, health, sets and size, its second copy (where it goes and whether it is up to date), and its last runs as counts, error codes and skip reasons, without file names; from app 10.5.2, also each job’s own settings (its exclusion and inclusion rules, presets, compression, verification, folder layout and run conditions), so a change Genie drafts keeps them;
• from app 10.5.2, the time on your PC with its time zone;
• if you use “Ask Genie why” on a skipped file in a run report, that one file’s path.

Never sent: your Windows user name, your PC’s name, a list of the files in your folders, the contents of any file, passwords or keys.

What Genie9 keeps. Each conversation: your prompts, what the app sent with them (the list above), Genie’s answer and any job it drafted, with your account e-mail, the PC’s id, the app version, language and edition, the model used and the tokens it took. We use them to answer you, to look into a problem you tell us about, to check and improve Ask Genie’s answers and our products, and to prevent abuse; Genie9 staff may read them for those reasons. Conversations are deleted after 90 days. A record that you asked (your account e-mail, the PC, the month, the tokens used and the length of your prompt) is kept while your account exists, to count your monthly allowance and our costs.

What OpenAI does with it. OpenAI processes the request for Genie9 under its API terms. Data sent through its API is not used to train its models, and OpenAI may keep it for up to 30 days to monitor for abuse, then deletes it.

Ask Genie needs a free Genie9 account (just your e-mail address) and an internet connection. Backing up and restoring never need a sign-in.

The app can e-mail you after a run. With “Genie9 sends it” (a purchased licence, signed in), the app sends the message to Genie9’s server, and we deliver it to your sign-in address only, through our e-mail provider. It holds this PC’s name, the job and its result, when it ran, the destination and the set, the file and verification counts, and the paths of the first 50 skipped files with their reasons. The run log is attached only if “Attach the run log” is on; from version 10.0.56 it starts off.

Genie9 keeps a line for each alert, to apply the sending limits: your e-mail, the PC’s id, the subject, the size, whether a log was attached, and whether it was delivered. We do not keep the message itself.

With “My own mail server”, the same e-mail goes through the SMTP server you set up, and never touches Genie9.

Send to support sends Genie9 the details we need to help you, in one click, and gives you a reference (such as GBM-7K3Q9P) to quote. It works on every edition, signed in or not, and only when you press Send. The window lists what will be sent first, and See the files first saves them on your PC so you can read them; Save to a file instead sends nothing.

What is sent:

• the app’s logs (the last three days only, if they would come to more than 25 MB);
• the run you were looking at, if any, and the last ten runs, with their logs;
• your jobs and the app’s settings, with every password and key taken out;
• a summary of the PC: the Windows version, the drives with their size and free space, this PC’s name and id, and the app’s version, edition and language;
• the message you typed and the e-mail address to answer, and your account if you are signed in.

File and folder names appear in the logs and run reports. The contents of your files never do, and neither do passwords or keys.

The app uploads the details to Genie9’s storage, and we e-mail our support team the reference and your message, with your address to reply to. Genie9 staff, and people who provide support for us under contract, use them to answer you, to find and fix the problem, and to improve GBM AI. We delete the uploaded details and the ticket 90 days after you send them. Our e-mails with you about it are kept with our support records.

Signing in, in the app or on your account page, needs only your e-mail address. Signing in for the first time creates your free Genie9 account. We send a code, and when you use it we record a session with your e-mail, the IP address and the app or browser it came from; it lasts up to 90 days. We refuse disposable and some alias addresses to stop abuse of the trial and of Ask Genie.

A licence record holds the key, the edition, the e-mail it is registered to, the name given at purchase, when its updates window ends, and the PCs it is active on (each PC’s id, name, Windows and its architecture, app version, and when it was last seen). The first time you use Ask Genie on a trial, we record the date against your account, so a trial’s allowance cannot be claimed twice.

Payments are handled by Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe, never to Genie9. Stripe gives us what we need to issue the licence, the invoice and any refund: your name, e-mail address, billing address (country and, where tax needs it, postcode) and the payment’s status, amount and tax. If you bought from the app, the store link also carries a short id of that PC, so the licence can switch on there by itself.

Service e-mails are about your account, a licence or trial you hold, or something you asked for. We send them to the address you signed in or bought with, and they do not depend on whether you take our news:

• sign-in codes;
• your licence key after a purchase, receipts, and a confirmation when you renew;
• if a licence you bought has not been switched on yet, reminders to activate it;
• renewal reminders, to the licence’s registered e-mail, before its updates window ends and on the day it ends;
• trial reminders, to the signed-in account of a PC on a trial, before the trial ends and on the day it ends. A PC that never signs in gets none;
• answers to a support request, and the alert e-mails you chose (“Genie9 sends it”);
• notices we need to give you: security issues, required updates, and changes to the licence agreement or this notice.

News and offers. As a GBM AI customer or user, you may also get e-mails about new versions and features, tips, and offers on GBM AI and other Genie9 products and services. We send them on our legitimate interest in keeping our customers and users informed, and every one has an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing stops news and offers, not service e-mails.

To stop trial or renewal reminders, tell us.

We share personal data only with providers that process it for us, under contract and on our instructions:

• OpenAI, in the United States — answers Ask Genie requests (section 4);
• Stripe, in the United States and Ireland — takes payments and refunds, and works out tax (section 8);
• our hosting and storage providers, such as Amazon Web Services in the United States, which run genie9.com, its database and its files, support details included;
• our e-mail delivery provider, which delivers the e-mails in section 9 and our support e-mails;
• people and companies that help us provide support, under contract and confidentiality.

Some of them process data in the United States or in other countries outside the UK and the European Economic Area. When data goes there, we rely on a safeguard the law recognises, such as an adequacy decision (including the UK–US data bridge and the EU–US Data Privacy Framework), standard contractual clauses, or the UK international data transfer agreement or addendum.

We may also disclose personal data when the law requires it, to establish or defend legal claims, or to a company that takes over all or part of our business, which would then be bound by this notice. We do not sell personal data, or share it for others’ advertising.

• To provide what you asked for (a contract with you): sign-in and your account, licences, updates, Ask Genie, alert e-mails and support.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the services secure and working, preventing fraud and abuse, one trial per PC, sending limits and allowances, knowing how many PCs run which version and edition, reviewing Ask Genie conversations and support details to improve our answers and products, reminders about a licence or trial you hold, telling our customers and users about our products (you can unsubscribe at any time), and establishing or defending legal claims.
• Legal obligations: keeping purchase and tax records, and working out tax on a purchase.

We may turn what we hold into statistics that identify no one, such as how many PCs run each version or which questions Ask Genie is asked most, and use them for any purpose.

• Sign-in codes expire after 30 minutes; a sign-in session after at most 90 days.
• Licence and purchase records: while the licence exists, and then as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Ask Genie conversations: 90 days. The record of each use, and alert records: while your account exists, to count allowances, limits and costs.
• Support details you send, and their ticket: 90 days. Our e-mails with you: with our support records.
• The record of each PC from the update check: while we provide GBM AI. Its day-by-day history: two years.
• OpenAI: up to 30 days, as section 4 says.

You can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and for it to be corrected, deleted or restricted; you can object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and ask for your data in a portable form. Contact us or write to info@genie9.com. Deleting your account does not touch the app on your PC or your backups.

You can also complain to a data protection authority: in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk); in the European Union, the authority of the country you live in.

We may change this notice. The version on this page, with its date, is the one that applies. When the app starts to send something new, we publish it here first.