Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated September 9, 2026

sieve is operated by Koi Platforms Inc. (“Koi”, “we”, “us”). This policy explains what we collect when you use sieve, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to the sieve website and everything reachable from it; our Terms of Service cover the rest of the relationship.

Questions, requests, or concerns: gavin.lifrieri@usekoi.com.

What sieve does

sieve asks you a short series of questions about what you're into, builds an interest profile from your answers, and recommends places on the internet that match it: newsletters, YouTube channels, podcasts, X accounts, blogs. If you sign in, you can save those sources to a library and read what they publish from inside sieve. Everything in this policy follows from those two moves.

Information we collect

Things you tell us. Your answers in the interests interview: the free-text conversation that produces your interest profile, and any follow-up edits to it. You can take the interview without an account. An anonymous interview isn't linked to a person unless you later sign in from its results page, at which point it becomes part of your account.

Your Google account, if you sign in. sieve uses Google Sign-In only; there are no passwords of our own. When you sign in, Google sends us your Google account ID, email address, whether that email is verified, your name, and the URL of your profile photo. We request only the basic openid, email and profile scopes. We never see your Google password and have no access to your Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Contacts, or anything else in your Google account.

Your mobile number, if you give it to us. Signed-in users can optionally add a mobile number to receive their stories by text. We store the number, whether it has been verified, and when the verification code was sent. Adding a number is never required; you can decline the prompt, and change or remove the number at any time from Settings.

What you do in sieve. The recommendations we generate for you and the ones you recycle; the sources you save to your library; which items you open or skip in Read and the reading-time budget you picked; and, if you use the collage tool, the interests you asked it to illustrate. The collage tool and the AI text detector work without an account, and the detector doesn't store the text you paste after scoring it.

Technical data. A session cookie that keeps you signed in; a short-lived signed cookie that protects the Google sign-in round trip; your light/dark theme choice, stored in your browser's local storage; and the standard server logs our hosting providers keep (IP address, browser type, pages requested, timestamps). We don't run advertising trackers or third-party analytics scripts on sieve.

How we use it

  • To run the interview and generate recommendations for you.
  • To keep you signed in, show your library, and build your Read feed by fetching new items from the sources you saved.
  • If you add a mobile number: to verify it's yours with a one-time code, and to text you your stories (one message a day). Reply STOP to any message to stop, HELP for help, or remove the number in Settings. The full program terms are in section 4 of our Terms of Service.
  • To keep sieve working and make it better: debugging, security, and understanding which recommendations people keep versus recycle.
  • To respond when you contact us.

We don't sell your information, we don't show ads, and we don't use anything you tell us to build advertising profiles.

Google user data

The information we receive from your Google account is used only to create and identify your sieve account and to show you who's signed in. We don't share it with anyone other than the service providers in section 5, we don't use it for advertising, and no person at Koi reads it except to resolve a security or abuse issue, to support you at your request, or when the law requires it.

sieve's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Who we share it with

Service providers that process data on our behalf and only on our instructions:

  • Google handles sign-in.
  • OpenAI runs the interview and the search that finds your sources. Your interview text and interest profile are sent to OpenAI's API for that purpose, subject to OpenAI's API terms; your Google account details are not.
  • Twilio verifies mobile numbers and delivers text messages, if you add a number. Your number is sent to Twilio for that purpose only, subject to Twilio's privacy policy.
  • Vercel hosts the website.
  • Railway hosts our servers, our database, and the AI text detector.

Mobile numbers, specifically. Your mobile number and your consent to receive texts are used only to send you the messages described above. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes, and we never sell it. Text-messaging opt-in data and consent are not shared with anyone except the providers that deliver the messages on our behalf.

Public platforms. To build Read, our servers fetch the public feeds of the sources you saved: Substack and other RSS feeds, YouTube, Spotify, and X. Those requests come from our servers, not your browser, and carry nothing that identifies you. When you click through to a source you're on their site, under their policies.

Share links. If you share your results, anyone with the link can view your interest profile and recommendations, read-only. Keep the link to yourself if you'd rather keep them private.

Legal and corporate. We may disclose information when the law requires it or to protect the rights, safety, or security of sieve and its users. If Koi is part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may transfer as part of that transaction, under this policy.

Cookies and local storage

  • sieve_session keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. It's HTTP-only, so scripts can't read it, and we store only a hash of it on our side.
  • A short-lived signed cookie carries the security state of the Google sign-in redirect and is discarded when it completes.
  • Your theme preference lives in your browser's local storage and never leaves it.

No third-party or advertising cookies are set by sieve.

How long we keep it

  • Sign-in sessions expire after 30 days, or immediately when you sign out.
  • Account data (your profile, mobile number, interviews, library, and reading activity) is kept while your account exists.
  • Anonymous interviews and their recommendations are kept so the results and any share link keep working.
  • Hosting-provider logs are kept according to the provider's own retention schedule.

You can delete your account yourself from Settings; your account, saved sources, reading activity, and mobile number are removed immediately (interviews you shared stay up, no longer linked to you). You can also email us and we'll do it within 30 days, except where we need to keep a record to meet a legal obligation.

Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live (for example the EU, the UK, or California) you may have additional rights over your personal data, including the right to object to certain processing or to complain to a supervisory authority. Contact us and we'll honor them.

Security

sieve is served over HTTPS, session tokens are stored only as hashes, and access to production data is limited to the people who need it to run the service. No system is perfectly secure, so we can't guarantee that; if we learn of a breach affecting your data we'll tell you.

Children

sieve isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we'll delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we'll update the date at the top. If a change is material we'll say so on the site before it takes effect.

Contact

Koi Platforms Inc.
gavin.lifrieri@usekoi.com