Penguin Parade

Privacy Policy

Last updated

Penguin Parade is run by Webmatter Solutions LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("we", "us" or "our"). This policy explains what information we collect when you use Penguin Parade, including its teams, check-ins, goals and emails and the tools companies connect to it; why we collect it; who sees it; and the choices you have. Your use of Penguin Parade is also covered by our Terms of Service.

You sign in to Penguin Parade with a Penguin HQ account. Your account and your companies are Penguin HQ's: your name, email address, password, two-step verification, sign-in sessions, companies, their members and invitations, and company plans and billing. They're covered by Penguin HQ's Privacy Policy. Penguin Parade reads them from Penguin HQ to work, and this policy covers what Penguin Parade itself collects.

The short version

  • We collect what it takes to run check-ins for your team: what you write in check-ins and goals, your teams, and the like. Your account itself is Penguin HQ's.
  • Your check-ins can be seen by your company's owners and admins, and by whoever can see your teams: the whole company for an open team, and only its members for a private one.
  • If your company connects Slack, your check-ins can be posted there too. Where a company has team highlights, Anthropic's AI model reads each team's check-ins to sum up its day.
  • We don't sell your information, show ads, or track you across other websites. Our analytics count visits without cookies.
  • Email cameron@webmatter.io for a copy of your information, or to have it deleted.

The rest of this policy has the details.

What we collect

When you're signed in

  • Penguin Parade reads your name, email address, penguin, color theme and time zone from your Penguin HQ account, whether you've verified your address, and the companies you're in.
  • The penguin, color theme and time zone you set here are saved to your Penguin HQ account, so they follow you into every Penguin app. Finishing getting started sets your time zone from your browser, so your day and your emails follow your clock. Until you pick a penguin, we show one worked out from your account, without saving it.
  • Your job title, if you add one, the times for your check-in reminder and daily digest, and which emails you get (reminders, the digest and blocker alerts).

When you're part of a company

The company itself, its members and their roles are Penguin HQ's. In Penguin Parade, we keep:

  • The company's teams: each one's name, description, check-in days, members and leads, whether it's private, and who follows it.
  • The company's holidays, when nobody's asked to check in, and how it asks for check-ins: the wording of its questions, and whether to ask about mood and last time's plans.

When you check in

You can check in once a day at each company you're in, for the day where you are. A check-in holds:

  • what you got done;
  • what's next, with each line kept as a plan, so your next check-in can ask which got done;
  • which of last time's plans got done;
  • whether you're blocked, and what's in your way;
  • your mood, from 1 to 5;
  • or instead, that you're out today, with a note if you add one.

Your company decides whether to ask about mood and last time's plans. We also keep the reactions and comments people leave on check-ins. Where a company has team highlights, we keep the few lines an AI model writes about each team's day too (see Who sees your information).

When you work on goals or take time off

  • Goals: each one's title, description, owner, contributors and teams, its start and due dates, how often it should be updated, and its updates, each with a headline, a write-up, a confidence level and progress. We also keep the reactions and comments on updates.
  • Time off: the dates, and a note if you add one. Time off you add covers every company you're in. A company's owners and admins can also add time off for you, which covers just that company. Either way, it stops your reminders and keeps you from being counted as missing.

When we email you

We keep a record of which scheduled emails we've sent you, like reminders and digests, so none goes out twice.

When your company connects Slack

On paid plans, a company's owners and admins can connect Slack. When they do, we keep who connected it, the token for Penguin Parade's Slack bot, which we encrypt, the workspace's name and web address, and the channels check-ins post to. For each check-in we post, we keep which channel it went to and which message it is, so changing or taking back the check-in can edit or delete the post.

When you visit the site

  • Your browser sends your IP address and details like its type and version with every request, as it does to any website. Our hosting provider uses them to deliver the site and protect it from attacks. Our own logs record what was requested, whether it worked, how long it took, and which account made the request, along with details of any errors, such as an email address we couldn't deliver to. They don't record IP addresses, apart from attempts to sign in to our staff tools, which we log to stop break-ins.
  • We count visits with Plausible Analytics. It sees the address of the page you visit, without any query string, the site that sent you, your browser, operating system and device type, and your country, region and city, worked out from your IP address. It doesn't store your IP address or set cookies, and can't tell who you are.
  • The site's fonts come from Google Fonts, so your browser fetches them from Google, which receives your IP address and browser details. The emails we send use the same fonts.

When you contact us

If you email us, we keep your message and our reply.

How we use it

We use your information to:

  • run Penguin Parade: collect and show check-ins, keep track of plans, goals and time off, work out insights, and remember your penguin and settings;
  • email you check-in reminders on your teams' check-in days, at your reminder time, if you haven't checked in yet; the daily digest of the day's check-ins from the teams you're on or follow, at your digest time; blocker alerts, if you lead a team; and a reminder when an update is due on a goal you own. These go only to verified addresses, and you can turn reminders, the digest and blocker alerts off in your profile;
  • know who you are when you're signed in, from your Penguin HQ account;
  • run companies' teams, holidays and check-in questions;
  • give each company what its plan includes in Penguin Parade;
  • post check-ins to Slack for the companies that connect it, and write team highlights for the companies that have them;
  • understand how Penguin Parade is used, in aggregate, so we can improve it;
  • answer you when you write to us, and tell you about changes to these policies;
  • prevent abuse, and meet legal obligations.

We don't sell your information, rent it out, or use it for ads.

Who sees your information

Your company

Members of a company see one another's names, email addresses, job titles, penguins and roles. Everyone in a company can see its open teams and who's on them, and can follow them. A private team, and who's on it, can be seen only by its members and the company's owners and admins. Everyone in a company can see its goals, with their updates, reactions and comments.

Your check-ins

Your check-ins can be seen by you, your company's owners and admins, and anyone who can see one of your teams: everyone in the company for an open team, and only its members for a private one. So if you're on an open team, the whole company can see your check-ins, even if you're on a private team too. Reactions and comments on a check-in can be seen by the same people. A comment can be deleted by whoever wrote it, or by the company's owners and admins.

Check-ins also go out by email, in the daily digest of the people on your teams and the people following them. When you say you're blocked, your teams' leads get an email with what's in your way, unless they've turned blocker alerts off. Insights, like participation and mood over time, are worked out from check-ins, and count only the people whose check-ins the viewer can see.

Team highlights

When a company's plan includes team highlights and they're switched on, we send each team's check-ins for the day, with the team's name and people's names, to Anthropic's API, so its AI model, Claude, can write a few lines summing up the team's day. The lines appear with the team's check-ins, for the people who can see the team. Because they're written by AI, they can be wrong. We keep them until they're rewritten because the team's check-ins changed, or the team is deleted.

Service providers

These companies help us run Penguin Parade, and handle your information to provide their services to us:

  • Render hosts the app and its cache, and Penguin HQ's database, which keeps Penguin Parade's information too, in the United States (Oregon).
  • Cloudflare sits in front of the site, delivering it and protecting it from attacks.
  • Mailgun sends our emails.
  • Plausible Analytics counts visits, in the European Union, without cookies.
  • Anthropic provides the AI model that writes team highlights, as described above.

Slack, if your company connects it

When your company connects Slack, check-ins from people on teams with a Slack channel are posted there as they come in: to a team's own channel, or, for an open team without one, to the company's. A private team's check-ins only go to its own channel. Each post shows the author's name and their check-in, mood included. Posts are edited when a check-in changes, and deleted when it's taken back. Anyone who can read a channel in Slack can see what's posted there, and Slack handles what it receives under its own terms and privacy policy.

For legal reasons, and if Penguin Parade changes hands

We may disclose information when the law requires it, or when we believe in good faith that it's needed to protect the rights, property or safety of our users, the public or us. If Penguin Parade is sold or merged, or its assets are transferred, your information may be transferred with it, and this policy will continue to apply to it.

Cookies and browser storage

We use only the cookies Penguin Parade needs to work. There are no advertising or tracking cookies, and our analytics don't use cookies at all.

  • __Secure-penguin_session keeps you signed in. It's Penguin HQ's, set for all of penguinhq.dev so every Penguin app knows it's you, and lasts 30 days. Signing out here deletes it, which signs you out of every Penguin app in this browser. Penguin HQ's policy has the details.
  • ps_company remembers which of your companies you're working in. It lasts a year.
  • __Host-ps_admin is only for the site's administrator. It lasts 12 hours.

We don't keep anything in your browser's local storage.

How long we keep it

  • Your account, sessions and companies: Penguin HQ's, kept as its policy says.
  • Your job title and email settings: as long as your account lasts.
  • Check-ins, reactions, comments, goals and time off: as long as the company exists, unless they're deleted sooner, for example when you take back a check-in or delete a comment.
  • Team highlights: until they're rewritten because the team's check-ins changed, or the team is deleted.
  • Connected tools: until the company disconnects them, which deletes their tokens. Check-ins already posted to Slack stay there; taking one back while Slack is connected deletes its post.
  • A company's teams, holidays and check-in settings: until its owners ask us to delete the company.
  • Logs: our hosting provider keeps them for a limited time.

When you delete your Penguin HQ account, which you ask for by email, it goes from every Penguin app. In Penguin Parade, we delete your settings, your place on teams, and your check-ins, reactions, comments and time off. Goal updates you've posted stay with their goals, without your name. Posts already in Slack, and team highlights, stay as described above. Deleted information can remain in backups for a limited time.

Your choices and rights

  • Change your job title, penguin, time zone, reminder and digest times, which emails you get, and color theme from your profile here. Your name, email address, password, two-step verification and where you're signed in are in your Penguin HQ account.
  • Email cameron@webmatter.io to get a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it, account and all. We'll answer within 30 days, and may ask you to confirm who you are first, for example by writing from your account's email address.
  • Your company's owners and admins manage its membership in Penguin HQ, and can tell you more about how your company uses Penguin Parade.

Depending on where you live, including the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and US states such as California, the law may give you the right to access, correct, delete or get a copy of your information; to object to or restrict how we use it; and to withdraw consent you've given. We won't treat you differently for using these rights. If you're in the EEA or the UK, you can also complain to your local data protection authority.

We don't sell or share personal information as California law defines those terms. And because we don't track you across other websites, there's nothing for Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signals to turn off.

Security

We protect your information with HTTPS and by encrypting Slack's token. Penguin Parade reaches its database only through Penguin HQ's private data service, and access to the systems that run it is limited. Penguin HQ's policy covers how it protects your account. No system is perfectly secure, so we can't promise your information will never be exposed, but if a breach affects it, we'll tell you as the law requires. You can help by using a password you don't use anywhere else for your Penguin HQ account, and turning on two-step verification there.

International transfers

We're based in the United States, and Penguin Parade runs there. If you use it from somewhere else, your information is transferred to the United States and stored and processed there, where data protection law may differ from yours. Cloudflare, which every request passes through, handles requests in data centers around the world, and Plausible processes its analytics in the European Union. Where the law requires safeguards for these transfers, we rely on those our providers offer, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Children

Penguin Parade isn't meant for children under 13, or under the minimum age where they live, and we don't knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us information, email cameron@webmatter.io and we'll delete it.

Changes to this policy

We'll post any changes to this policy here, with a new date at the top. If a change significantly affects how we handle your information, we'll tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.

Contact us

Questions, requests or complaints about privacy: email cameron@webmatter.io. Penguin Parade is run by Webmatter Solutions LLC, in Texas, United States.