Privacy, in plain words.

Who we are

Growth Dept is the trading name of Holden Growth, LLC (“Growth Dept”, “we”, “us”). This policy covers Growth Dept Helpdesk: the website and application at cs.growthdept.ai and its API. Questions, and requests to see or delete data, go to support@growthdept.ai.

Two kinds of people

People who use the helpdesk: a brand’s support staff and Growth Dept staff who sign in. We hold their accounts and decide how that data is used.

A brand’s customers: the people who email the brand’s support address. The brand decides which mailboxes to connect and what to do with the conversations. We process that data for the brand, under our agreement with it, and only to run its helpdesk.

What we hold about people who use the helpdesk

• Your email address and name, your role in each organization and helpdesk, and when you last signed in.
• If you sign in with Google: the name, email address and Google account id that Google shares with your permission (the openid, email and profile scopes).
• If you use a password: a scrypt hash of it, never the password itself.
• If you ask to reset your password: a hash of the emailed link’s token, and when the link was made, used or replaced. Requests are counted per email address under a hash of the address, to limit them.
• For each session: a hash of the session token, when it started and expires, how you signed in, and your browser’s user-agent string.
• An audit log of changes to accounts, helpdesks, access and API keys. It records ids and settings, not message text.

What a helpdesk holds about a brand’s customers

• The emails they send to a connected support mailbox and the replies the brand sends them, with attachments.
• Their name and email address as they appear on those emails, and anything the brand’s agents or systems add: notes, tags, ticket and customer fields, satisfaction scores and comments, and data the brand attaches through the API.

This data lives only in that helpdesk’s own tables, separated from every other helpdesk by Postgres row-level security. Logs, background jobs, events and the audit log carry ids, never message text, names or addresses.

Why we use it

• Account data: to sign you in, show you the helpdesks you have access to, keep the service secure and answer support requests.
• Helpdesk data: to show a brand its tickets, send the replies its agents write, run its rules and surveys, and produce its reports. Nothing else.

We do not sell personal data, use it for advertising, or share one brand’s data with another.

Gmail and other Google user data

Growth Dept Helpdesk’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

• When a brand connects a support mailbox, the helpdesk asks Google for one permission, gmail.modify, which lets it read that mailbox’s mail, label it and send mail from it. It uses that access only to bring the mailbox’s mail into the brand’s helpdesk as tickets and to send the replies the brand’s agents and rules write.
• We do not use Gmail data for advertising, sell it, or use it to develop, improve or train generalized AI or machine learning models.
• Gmail data is read by the brand’s own agents in its helpdesk. Growth Dept staff open it only when the brand asks for help with its helpdesk, to investigate security or abuse, or when the law requires it.
• The mailbox’s refresh token is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it is stored. Disconnect the mailbox in the helpdesk, or remove the helpdesk’s access in your Google account settings, and it stops reading the mailbox.

Cookies on cs.growthdept.ai

• cs_session: keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days.
• cs_google_flow: holds a Google sign-in in progress, for ten minutes.
• cs_signin_pending: holds a sign-in waiting for a second factor, for ten minutes.

This site sets no analytics or advertising cookies.

Who else handles it

• Vercel hosts the application, and Neon hosts the database, both in the United States (US East).
• Google, for sign-in with Google and for the Gmail and Google Workspace mailboxes a brand connects.
• Resend, which sends account email, such as password reset links, from Growth Dept’s address.

How long we keep it

• Helpdesk data: for as long as the brand keeps its helpdesk. An owner can download an export from Organization settings until the helpdesk is deleted, and export files are kept for seven days. Deleted helpdesks cannot be exported, and their data is deleted 30 days after the deletion.
• When a helpdesk is deleted, nobody can open it any more, its API keys stop working, mail sync and sending stop, every integration is switched off, the mailbox and store credentials we held for it are deleted, and we ask Google to revoke its Gmail access (unless another helpdesk still uses the same mailbox). Thirty days after the deletion we permanently delete everything the helpdesk holds: tickets, messages, attachments, customers, agents, settings, integrations, store connection records, background jobs and its access log. We keep the audit log’s entries about the helpdesk, which hold ids and settings but no customer data, and a record of the deletion with the number of rows removed from each table.
• A brand can delete a customer through the API, which removes that customer’s messages and files.
• Your account: until you or your organization ask us to delete it.

How it is protected

Each helpdesk’s rows are separated by Postgres row-level security. Mailbox tokens are encrypted with AES-256-GCM. Passwords, session tokens and API keys are stored only as hashes. The security page has the details.

Your choices

Email support@growthdept.ai to see, correct or delete your account data. A brand’s customers who want their data removed should ask the brand they wrote to; we act on the brand’s instruction.

Changes

We may update this policy. The current version is always at cs.growthdept.ai/privacy with its effective date.