Privacy Policy

Hue (doing business as Hue Studios; "we," "our," or "us") operates Earnest, a business management platform that helps agencies, firms, practices, shops and other small businesses run their operations in one place — including customer relationships (CRM), projects and tasks, invoicing and payments, proposals and contracts, marketing, and an AI assistant ("Earnest") that reads across your workspace to draft and automate work. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard information when you use Earnest.

By accessing or using Earnest, you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with its terms, please do not use the platform.

1. Your Data and Your Customers' Data

Earnest is a workspace where you manage your own business, which often includes information about your clients, contacts, and team. For the information about your account, we act as the data controller. For the business and client data you add to your workspace, we act as a service provider (processor) that handles that data on your behalf and under your instructions. You are responsible for having an appropriate basis to collect and store information about the people you add to Earnest.

2. Email Lists and Newsletters

This section is for anyone who receives marketing email sent through Earnest, such as a newsletter or a campaign, whether or not you have an Earnest account.

Who is sending

• A business that uses Earnest. Its email comes from that business (or from one of its clients, when it runs that client's email). The sender decides who is on its lists and is responsible for having your permission to email you. Earnest sends the email and keeps the list on the sender's behalf, as described in Section 1.
• Hue. Email from us about Earnest or Hue Studios is our own, and we are responsible for it.

What is kept about you

• Your email address, and your name if you gave it.
• Which of the sender's lists you are on, when you joined and when you left, and how you joined (a sign-up form, added by the sender, or a list moved from another email service, with the sender's note on where you signed up).
• Which emails were sent to you.
• What happened to each email, as reported by our email provider, SendGrid: delivered, delayed, bounced, not sent, opened, clicked, or reported as spam. Open and click reports include the time, the link that was clicked, and the IP address and browser or mail app that SendGrid saw.

Opens and clicks

Marketing email sent through Earnest records when it is opened and which links are clicked, so the sender can see what was read. Opens are counted with a small image in the email, and links pass through SendGrid on the way to their destination. Open counts are approximate: if your mail app blocks images, an open is not recorded, and some mail apps load images on their own, which can record an open you never made.

Unsubscribing

• Every marketing email has an Unsubscribe link at the bottom. One click takes you off that sender's lists. You do not need to sign in or confirm anything. If the email was sent for one of a business's clients, you leave that client's lists only. The unsubscribe button that Gmail, Yahoo and Apple Mail show does the same.
• For a business's own email, the page you land on also offers to stop all email sent through that business, including the email it sends for its clients.
• Reporting an email as spam takes you off that sender's lists too. If an email bounces because your address no longer exists, that sender's email to it stops.
• We keep a record that you left, so that the sender cannot add you back, by hand or by importing a list. Only you can rejoin, by signing up again and confirming from the email that follows.

Questions and requests about a list

For a copy of what a business holds about you, a correction, or deletion, please contact the business that sent the email first: it decides what happens to its list. If you write to us at hello@earnest.guru about a list that belongs to one of our customers, we will pass your request to that customer (see Section 10). For email from Hue itself, write to us directly.

3. Information We Collect

3.1 Information You Provide

• Account & Organization Information: Your name, email address, password (stored only as a secure hash), role, and workspace/organization details when you create or join an account.
• Business & Client Data: The records you create in Earnest — contacts, clients, leads, organizations, projects, tasks, notes, proposals, contracts, and related documents — which may include personal information about third parties you do business with.
• Financial Data: Invoices, expenses, payments, and billing records you manage in Earnest, and, if you enable bank sync, transaction data retrieved through our payment processor (Stripe).
• Content & Communications: Messages, meeting notes, files, marketing content, and anything you upload or create, plus information you provide when you contact us for support.
• Voice, Calls & Meetings: What you say to Earnest by voice, once your browser has turned it into text; meeting recordings and transcripts; and, if you use Earnest's phone lines, call records, texts, voicemail and call recordings. Section 18 explains each one.

3.2 Information From Integrations

When you connect a third-party account (for example, a calendar, bank, payment, or social media service):

• Profile & Account Identifiers: Usernames, display names, profile pictures, and account IDs from the connected service.
• Authentication Tokens: OAuth access and refresh tokens that let Earnest act on your behalf. These tokens are encrypted using AES-256-GCM before storage. We never receive or store your passwords for connected services.
• Service Data: Data returned by the connected service that is needed to power the feature you enabled, and nothing beyond it — for example, calendar events and availability from Google or Outlook, and payment and payout records from Stripe.
• Social media metrics: Earnest is built to read follower, reach, impression and engagement figures for social accounts you connect, but that collection is currently switched off and no such figures are being gathered. If we turn it on, it will apply only to accounts you have connected yourself, and only for as long as they stay connected.

3.3 Automatically Collected Information

• Log Data: IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URLs, pages viewed, and access times.
• Device Information: Device type, unique device identifiers, and network information.
• Cookies: We use essential cookies for authentication and session management. We do not use advertising cookies.

4. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Earnest platform and its features
• Power AI features that read your workspace to draft, suggest, and (with your approval) automate work
• Process invoices, payments, and other transactions you initiate
• Sync with services you connect and act on your behalf where you authorize it
• Send you service-related notifications and respond to support requests
• Detect, prevent, and address fraud, abuse, security, and technical issues
• Comply with legal obligations

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

5. AI Features and How Your Data Is Processed

Earnest uses artificial intelligence to read across your workspace and draft suggestions, decisions, and content for you. Here is how that works and what it means for your data:

• Grounding: To generate relevant output, Earnest processes the data in your workspace — such as contacts, projects, financial records, messages, and content you have added — and, when you ask Earnest during a video meeting or it writes a meeting recap, that meeting's transcript.
• Isolation between customers: Your workspace data is logically separated by organization. We do not use one customer's data to generate results for, or expose it to, another customer.
• Third-party AI provider: To produce AI output, we send the relevant context to our third-party large language model provider (Anthropic). We use Anthropic under business terms that prohibit it from using your data to train its models, and under which your data is retained only transiently to process each request.
• No model training on your data: We do not use your business or client data to train our own AI models.
• You stay in control: AI-generated actions that reach a client or move money are drafted for your review and require your approval before they take effect.

6. Data Storage and Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your data:

• Encryption: OAuth tokens and sensitive credentials are encrypted using AES-256-GCM at rest; all data is transmitted over HTTPS/TLS.
• Access Controls: Access to production data is restricted to authorized personnel who need it to operate and support the service.
• Tenant Separation: Each organization's workspace is access-controlled so that only members you invite can see your data.
• Regular Review: We review our security practices and update them as needed.

While we strive to protect your information, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Third-Party Services and Sub-processors

We rely on trusted third parties to operate Earnest. They process data only as needed to provide their service to us and are bound by confidentiality and data-protection obligations. These include categories such as:

• Cloud hosting and infrastructure (Vercel and DigitalOcean) — to run the platform and store your data (United States).
• AI / large language model provider (Anthropic) — to generate AI output, under no-training business terms.
• Payment processing and bank sync (Stripe) — to process subscription and other payments and, if you enable it, retrieve bank transaction data. We do not store full card numbers.
• Email delivery (SendGrid) — to send transactional, notification and marketing emails, including marketing email our customers send to their own lists, and to report delivery, opens and clicks.
• Video meetings (Daily) — to run Earnest's video meetings and phone dial-in to them, to store meeting recordings when recording is on, and to transcribe meetings when transcription is on, which Daily does through its speech-to-text provider (Deepgram).
• Phone and text messaging (Twilio) — for organizations that add Earnest's phone lines: to carry calls and texts, record voicemail and, where switched on, calls, and to transcribe voicemail. Spoken phone menus use Twilio's built-in voices, which Twilio produces with Amazon Polly.
• Synthetic voices (ElevenLabs) — to read Earnest's replies aloud in a custom voice, for organizations that add Custom Voice, and to record the greetings and menu prompts of phone lines set to an Earnest voice. ElevenLabs receives the text to be spoken, never your voice.
• Social and calendar integrations you choose to connect (such as Instagram/Meta, TikTok, Google) — to power those specific features.

Talking to Earnest uses your web browser's own speech recognition, which is provided by your browser's maker rather than by us; see Section 18.

We only request the minimum access necessary to provide a feature, and you can disconnect an integration at any time. See our Data Deletion Instructions for how to disconnect accounts and delete data.

8. How We Share Your Information

We do not sell your personal information. We may share information only in these circumstances:

• Within Your Workspace: With other members of your organization and with people you explicitly share items with (such as clients you send a proposal, invoice, or portal access to).
• With Your Consent: When you authorize us to share information with a third party.
• Service Providers: With the sub-processors described above, subject to confidentiality obligations.
• Legal Requirements: When required by law, legal process, or a valid government request.
• Protection of Rights: To protect the rights, property, or safety of Earnest, our users, or others.
• Business Transfers: In connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, with notice to affected users.

9. Data Retention

We retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the service. Specifically:

• Workspace & Account Data: Retained until you delete the item, or until the organization is archived and its 90 days have passed (see below).
• Integration Tokens: Retained until you disconnect the integration or the tokens expire or are revoked.
• Financial Records: May be retained as needed to meet tax, accounting, and legal obligations.
• Activity & Security Logs: Retained for a limited period for security and audit purposes.
• Recordings & Transcripts: Meeting and voicemail transcripts are workspace data. Call, voicemail and meeting recordings are held by Twilio or Daily; see Section 18.

Closing an organization

An organization's owner closes it by archiving it in Earnest (Organization → Settings → Archive organization). The subscription ends with the current billing period and the workspace becomes read-only. We keep it for 90 days so it can be restored, then permanently delete its workspace data. A few records are not deleted with it: your personal account, uploaded files and call, meeting and activity logs (which are detached from the organization), and the billing records our payment processor keeps. We delete those on request. Our Data Deletion page has the details.

Deleting your personal account

Earnest does not yet have a button to delete your personal account. Email hello@earnest.guru and we will delete or anonymize your personal information within 30 days of your request, except where retention is required by law. The same applies to anything left after an organization is closed.

10. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on your location, you may have the right to:

• Access a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate personal information
• Delete your personal information
• Export your data in a portable format
• Withdraw consent or disconnect integrations at any time
• Opt out of non-essential communications

To exercise these rights, contact us at hello@earnest.guru . If your request concerns data we process on behalf of one of our customers, we will direct the request to that customer.

11. California Privacy Rights (CCPA)

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):

• The right to know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose
• The right to request deletion of your personal information
• The right to opt out of the sale of personal information (we do not sell personal information)
• The right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights

To make a request, contact us at hello@earnest.guru . We will verify your identity before processing your request.

12. International Data Transfers

Our servers are located in the United States. If you access Earnest from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. By using Earnest, you consent to this transfer.

13. Children's Privacy

Earnest is a business tool intended for use by individuals aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 18, we will delete it promptly.

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated policy on this page and revise the "Last updated" date. For material changes, we will provide additional notice, such as an email notification. Your continued use of Earnest after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

15. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us:

16. Social Media Integration Disclosures

Earnest's Marketing features let you connect social media accounts to schedule and publish content and view analytics. When you connect these accounts, your use is also subject to the connected platform's own terms and privacy policy.

Instagram / Meta

We use the Instagram Graph API to publish content and retrieve analytics. Your use of Instagram through Earnest is also subject to Meta's Privacy Policy and Meta Platform Terms . We access only the data necessary to provide these features and do not store your Instagram password.

TikTok

We use the TikTok Content Posting API to publish content and view basic analytics. Your use of TikTok through Earnest is also subject to TikTok's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service . We access only the data necessary to provide these features.

You can revoke a connected account's access at any time from within Earnest or directly through the platform. See our Data Deletion Instructions for step-by-step guidance.

17. Google User Data

When you connect a Google account to Earnest's Scheduler, Earnest asks Google for permission to use your Google Calendar. This section explains exactly what we access and what we do with it.

What we access

• Your Google account email address, to label the connection so you can tell several connected accounts apart.
• Your calendars and their events and free/busy times, to work out when you are free so people can only book open times, and to show your Google events alongside your Earnest schedule.
• Notices that a calendar changed. Google tells Earnest when something changes on a calendar you connected, so a new event blocks its time within a minute instead of waiting for the next check.
• Events Earnest creates, to add each booking to the calendar you choose and to update or remove it when the booking is rescheduled or cancelled. If you move or delete one of these events in Google Calendar, Earnest notices and asks you whether to move or cancel the booking too. It never changes a booking on its own.

What we store, and for how long

• Access tokens, encrypted, for as long as the account stays connected.
• Your calendar list (each calendar's name and color, and your settings for it), so you can choose which calendars block your availability and which one receives bookings.
• Busy times: the start and end of the busy events on the calendars you chose, with the event's identifier — never its title, description, location or guests. We keep these so booking pages load without asking Google each time. Past busy times are removed within a few days after the event ends.
• Identifiers of the events Earnest created, and the times Earnest wrote, so it can update or remove them later and tell your own changes apart from its own.

How we use and protect it

• We use Google user data only to provide the scheduling features you turned on.
• We do not sell Google user data and do not use it for advertising, including personalized or retargeted advertising.
• We do not share Google user data with third parties, except as needed to run the feature (our hosting and database providers, listed in Section 7), to comply with law, or as part of a merger or acquisition with notice to you.
• When you ask Earnest's assistant to find a time, it sees the open times on your booking calendar, which already account for your Google busy times. It never sees your Google events, their titles or their details. We do not use Google user data to develop, improve, or train generalized artificial intelligence or machine learning models, ours or anyone else's, and our AI provider does not train on it (see Section 5).
• Our staff do not read your Google user data unless you ask us to for support, it is needed for security purposes such as investigating abuse, or the law requires it.

Earnest'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.

Disconnecting and deletion

You can disconnect Google at any time in Earnest under Scheduler → Settings → Connected calendars, or from your Google Account at myaccount.google.com/permissions. When you disconnect, we stop Google's change notices, delete the stored tokens, your calendar list and the busy times we kept, and stop reading your calendar. Events Earnest already added to your calendar stay there unless you delete them. To have all of your data deleted, follow our Data Deletion Instructions or email hello@earnest.guru.

18. Voice, Phone Calls and Video Meetings

Several parts of Earnest involve speech: talking to Earnest, hearing it reply, video meetings, and business phone lines. This section explains who hears what.

Talking to Earnest

• When you use the microphone in Earnest, your web browser turns your speech into text. Earnest's servers never receive the audio, only the text, and only once it is sent to Earnest.
• Your browser's maker provides that speech recognition, under its own privacy policy. In Google Chrome the audio is processed on Google's servers. In Safari, including on iPhone and iPad, Apple's dictation handles it, on your device or on Apple's servers depending on your device and settings. Firefox does not offer speech recognition, so the microphone does not appear there.
• Hands-free keeps the microphone open in that browser tab until you turn it off, leave the page or reload. Only what begins with "Earnest" is sent to Earnest; everything else is discarded. Your browser's speech service still hears all of it while Hands-free is on.
• You can approve some of Earnest's suggestions by saying yes. Email, invoices and meetings can never be approved by voice: they always wait for your tap.

Hearing Earnest reply

• Replies are read aloud by a voice on your device. Some browsers also offer online voices, which Earnest labels "(online)"; with those, the text is sent to your browser's maker to be spoken.
• With Custom Voice, the text of each reply to be read aloud is sent to ElevenLabs, which returns the audio. Replies can include names and figures from your workspace. Your own voice is never sent to ElevenLabs.

Video meetings

• Earnest's video meetings run on Daily. The audio and video of a meeting pass through Daily to reach the other people in it.
• Recording and transcription start when the host joins, if they are on for that meeting. Whether they are on by default depends on your plan, and the host can change it. Recordings are stored by Daily, and Earnest keeps a link to them. Transcription is done by Daily through Deepgram, and the transcript is saved in your workspace.
• When the meeting ends, the transcript is sent to Anthropic to write a recap. If you ask Earnest a question during the meeting, the transcript so far is sent with your question. Earnest does not speak or listen in the meeting itself.
• If you record or transcribe a meeting, you are responsible for telling the people in it and for having any consent the law requires where you and they are.

Phone lines

For organizations that add Earnest's phone lines (the Communications add-on):

• Calls and texts are carried by Twilio, including calls made from the browser. Earnest keeps a record of each call and text, including the caller's number and, when known, their name.
• Voicemail is recorded by Twilio, for up to two minutes, and transcribed by Twilio. The transcript is saved in your workspace, added to the caller's contact record, and quoted (the first 280 characters) in the notifications Earnest sends about it, including email and push notifications.
• Call recording. A line set to record every call tells both sides "This call may be recorded." The Record button during a call does not announce itself: if you use it, you are responsible for any notice and consent the law requires.
• No AI listens to or answers phone calls. Phone menus are press-a-number, and their greetings are spoken by Twilio's built-in voices or by an Earnest voice recorded from the greeting's text by ElevenLabs.
• To register your business for texting, the business details you enter are sent to Twilio and, through it, to the mobile carriers.

Keeping and deleting recordings

Transcripts and voicemail text are part of your workspace and are kept and deleted like the rest of it (Section 9). Call, voicemail and meeting recordings, and the transcripts Twilio and Daily keep with them, are held by Twilio and Daily and played back through Earnest.

• When you close your account, its recordings are deleted from Twilio and Daily within 30 days. They cannot be brought back if you reopen the account after that.
• At any other time, email hello@earnest.guru and we will delete your organization's recordings from Twilio and Daily within 30 days.