The Herald website collects the information you choose to send through forms, such as your email address, contact details, feedback, and beta update requests. We use that information to respond to you, improve Herald, and send product updates when you ask for them.
The website may rely on service providers for hosting, form delivery, spam prevention, analytics, and email updates. Those providers process information only as needed to operate the site and related services.
The site is served via Cloudflare, which processes visitor IP
addresses, request headers, and necessary cookies such as
__cf_bm and cf_clearance for security, bot
mitigation, and content delivery. Cloudflare's data processing is
described in Cloudflare's
Privacy Policy.
Website Analytics
Herald also uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, a cookie-less analytics service that aggregates page views and performance metrics without tracking identifiers across sites or sessions.
Herald uses Google Tag Manager to load Google Analytics only after you accept analytics cookies. If you decline, the analytics tag should not load for your browser unless you later clear or change your saved choice and accept analytics.
When Google Analytics is enabled, it may collect pages viewed, links or events used on the site, referral source, approximate location, device, browser, operating system, screen details, and cookie or similar identifiers used to understand repeat visits. Herald uses this information in aggregate to understand traffic and improve the public beta website.
Google Signals is enabled for Herald analytics. When available from signed-in Google users who have allowed ads personalization, Google may provide aggregated reporting about demographics, interests, and cross-device activity. Herald does not receive your Google account identity from these reports.
Herald's GA4 event data retention period is configured for 14 months. Google may also process analytics data under its own terms and privacy controls. You can use the analytics banner to decline analytics cookies on this site.
Mailbox Access
The Herald beta connects to mail providers from your local machine using IMAP for reading and SMTP for sending. You configure the account, provider, host, port, username, and credential details. Demo mode uses synthetic messages and does not connect to a real mailbox.
Local Cache
Herald caches message metadata, selected body text, classifications, embeddings, and related state in a local SQLite database. The cache is used for timeline views, cleanup, search, semantic search, contacts, and MCP read tools.
Credentials
Herald stores credentials locally in its configuration path unless a configured system keychain path is available in the product. Config files may contain app passwords, OAuth tokens, provider settings, and AI provider keys. Keep those files private and follow Herald's file permission warnings.
Logs
Herald writes application logs to local files rather than the terminal. Logs are intended for debugging provider setup, sync, and UI behavior. Herald should not log passwords, app passwords, OAuth tokens, or email bodies; avoid sharing logs publicly without reviewing them first.
AI Providers
AI features are optional. Ollama is the default local AI path when AI is enabled. If you configure a cloud AI provider, prompts and relevant email context for the feature you invoke may be sent to that provider. Semantic embeddings are stored in the local SQLite cache.
MCP Behavior
Herald's MCP server can expose cached mailbox data to MCP clients that you configure. Those clients may include returned mailbox data in their own model requests. Configure only clients you trust, and treat write, send, delete, and bulk-action tools as beta capabilities that should be explicitly enabled.
Deletion And Uninstall
Delete and archive actions change your configured mailbox and update the local cache. To remove Herald data from your machine, delete the Herald binary, local configuration, cache database, and local log files. Revoke provider app passwords or OAuth tokens in the provider's account settings when you no longer want Herald to access an account.
To ask about privacy or request changes to information you have sent through the website, use the contact page.