Privacy Policy

This Policy covers the public website at totemlayer.com and the hosted Totem service, including accounts, organization workspaces, APIs, and service communications. It does not cover an independently operated Totem deployment or a third-party site linked from the service; those operators provide their own notices.

Totem generally controls information needed to operate the public site, create and secure accounts, deliver requested communications, and protect the service. For organization data entered and directed by a customer, Totem may process that information for the organization. Organization administrators also control member access and many records in their workspace.

A deployment identified as a sandbox accepts reserved .example names and simulates domain verification. Do not submit real credentials, confidential requests, regulated information, or production data to a sandbox. Production DNS verification checks control of the specified TXT record at verification time; it does not establish legal identity, safety, reliability, or continuing control.

Depending on how you use Totem, we may collect:

• Account and membership data: name, work email, password hash, email-verification status, account timestamps, organization memberships, roles, and accepted legal-policy version and time.
• Organization and domain data: organization name, domain, DNS TXT challenge and result metadata, verification method and status, and changes that affect trusted relationships.
• Agent and authorization data: agent names, descriptions, endpoints, public keys, status, credential scopes and limits, recipient bindings, revocation state, and API-key prefixes or hashes. Secret values may be encrypted or hashed where the product is designed to do so.
• Connection and workflow data: contact invitations, business contact details, organization relationships, company requests and responses, challenges, presentations, verification outcomes, automation status, and audit-event metadata.
• Communications: email-delivery events, support messages, feedback, demo-scheduling information you choose to send through a third party, and encrypted legacy launch-update records retained to honor prior suppression choices.
• Device, log, and security data: IP addresses, IP-derived abuse-control values, request timing, browser and device details, page or API activity, error and delivery logs, authentication events, and other telemetry needed to operate and protect the service.

Totem does not ask for Social Security numbers, government identification, consumer financial-account credentials, health information, precise geolocation, biometric identifiers, or payment-card details. Payment-card details are entered on Stripe-hosted pages and are not stored by Totem. Do not place sensitive or unrelated personal information in free-text fields.

We receive information:

• directly from you when you register, configure, communicate, or use the service;
• from organization owners, administrators, coworkers, and connected organizations that invite you or create records involving your business contact information;
• from systems that call Totem’s APIs or present credentials on behalf of an organization; and
• automatically from browsers, servers, DNS lookups, security controls, and service providers.

We use information to:

• create, authenticate, and secure accounts and organization workspaces;
• verify domain control, register agents, issue and validate credentials, evaluate exact action authority, and produce security evidence;
• deliver invitations, company requests, notifications, and other requested communications;
• operate, maintain, debug, measure, support, and improve the service and its user experience;
• detect fraud, replay, abuse, security incidents, policy violations, and service failures; and
• comply with law, enforce agreements, and protect users, Totem, and others.

Totem does not use customer prompts, credentials, company requests, or verification records to train a general-purpose AI model for Totem’s own purposes. Optional assistant or planning features may send a limited prompt and relevant workspace context to a configured model provider. If our own training practice ever changes, we will provide a clear notice and seek any permission required before using existing data for a materially different purpose.

We design forms and APIs to collect only fields needed for account security, organization and agent verification, requested communications, billing, and audit integrity. Optional fields are identified as optional and have bounded lengths. We do not collect data merely because it may be useful later, and we periodically review whether retained categories still serve a legitimate operational, security, contractual, or legal purpose.

We may disclose information:

• Within your organization: to members and administrators according to their role and the workspace’s access controls.
• At your direction: to an invited contact, connected organization, credential recipient, or other party you select through a workflow.
• To service providers: infrastructure, database, email, security, analytics, scheduling, and support providers that process information to deliver their services to us. Depending on deployment configuration, these may include Cloudflare or another host, a managed PostgreSQL provider, Resend or Google for email, OpenAI when an optional assistant or planner is configured, Google Analytics after consent, and Google Calendar when you choose to open the demo-booking flow.
• For legal and safety reasons: when reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect rights and safety, investigate abuse, or respond to a valid legal request.
• In a business transaction: to parties evaluating or completing a financing, merger, acquisition, reorganization, or asset transfer, subject to appropriate confidentiality and continued privacy protections.

Totem does not sell personal information for money and does not use personal information to serve targeted ads. If applicable law treats an enabled analytics configuration as a sale or sharing activity, we will provide the required notice and choice before enabling that use. We will update this Policy before adopting a materially different practice.

When you invite or accept a company connection, the selected counterparty may receive the relevant user name, work email, organization identity, invitation message, request, response, and lifecycle information. Notes labeled as private to the sender are not included in the recipient view.

Totem uses essential cookies for signed-in sessions, security, and selected organization context. The browser may also store limited state needed to resume an invitation or onboarding flow, remember an analytics choice, or avoid repeating a completed demo step. Blocking essential storage may prevent the service from working.

Google Analytics is inactive unless a deployment configures a measurement ID. Even when configured, the public site asks for a choice and does not load Google’s script or send an analytics event before acceptance. If accepted, Google may receive browser, device, page-view, and approximate-location information under the deployment’s configuration and Google’s terms. Totem remembers the choice in a first-party cookie for up to one year. You can change it at any time through “Manage cookie choices” in the site footer. The separate Cookie Policy lists the cookies, browser storage, purposes, and durations currently used.

When no Totem choice has already been saved, a supported Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal selects essential-only storage. Totem does not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and it does not currently use targeted-advertising or session-replay trackers. If those practices change, Totem must first update this notice and provide any legally required opt-out.

Where a law requires a legal basis, Totem processes information as needed to provide the service and perform an agreement, for legitimate interests such as securing and improving a business service, to comply with legal obligations, and with consent for optional analytics or marketing where consent is the appropriate basis. You may withdraw consent for future optional processing, but withdrawal does not affect prior lawful processing.

We retain information for as long as reasonably needed to provide and secure the service, maintain the integrity of authorization and audit records, honor choices, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, and comply with legal obligations. The period depends on the record’s purpose, sensitivity, relationship to an active account, and applicable contractual or legal requirements.

For records collected through the retired early-access form, Totem retains the encrypted email, consent history, suppression status, token metadata, and delivery metadata so prior communication choices remain enforceable. There is not currently a promised automatic deletion date for those records. Expired tokens, security events, and verification evidence may also be retained to prevent replay, investigate an incident, or preserve an audit trail. Provider backups may persist after live records change or are deleted.

Totem includes technical safeguards such as organization-scoped authorization, server-side permission checks, transport encryption, hashed or encrypted secrets where designed, revocation controls, and security logging. These controls reduce risk but do not make the service completely secure, and Totem cannot guarantee that loss, misuse, or unauthorized access will never occur.

You are responsible for protecting your mailbox, account, devices, sessions, API keys, and workload credentials and for promptly revoking or reporting suspected exposure.

Totem and its service providers may process information in the United States and other countries where they operate. Those countries may have different data-protection laws. Totem has not represented that every deployment is configured for every jurisdiction. A launch directed at a jurisdiction with additional transfer, notice, contract, or local-representation requirements must complete those steps before the service is offered there.

Depending on your location and relationship with Totem, you may be able to request access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, or an objection to certain processing. You may also withdraw optional consent and appeal a denied request where applicable. We may need to verify your identity and authority before acting, and some records may be retained where required for security, contracts, legal obligations, or the rights of others.

These rights can include California rights to know the categories and specific pieces of information collected, correct inaccurate information, delete information subject to exceptions, receive information about disclosures, opt out of a sale or sharing, limit certain uses of sensitive personal information, and receive equal service after exercising a right. Totem does not sell personal information, does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and does not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics. Where EEA or UK law applies, rights may also include lodging a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority.

You can correct many organization and agent details through the service, revoke keys and permissions, disconnect relationships, use an existing private preference link to suppress legacy launch updates, and change analytics consent through browser storage controls.

If Totem processes information for an organization that provided your account, contact that organization first. It controls many workspace records and can confirm which deployment-specific rules apply. For the hosted Totem service, send privacy requests to the address below. Do not include passwords, API keys, verification tokens, or other secrets.

A request should identify the account or organization involved and the right you want to exercise. We will acknowledge and respond within the period required by applicable law. Authorized agents must provide proof of authority, and Totem may ask the account holder to verify the request directly. If a request is denied, the response will explain the reason and any available appeal process.

Totem is a business service for adults and is not directed to children under 13. You must be at least 18 to create an account and must not submit children’s personal information. If we learn that information was collected from a child in violation of this Policy, we will take reasonable steps to delete it unless retention is legally required.

We may update this Policy as the service and its providers change. The version and effective date will appear above. The service will request a new affirmative acceptance if applicable law or the nature of a change requires it. Changes do not authorize a use of personal information that applicable law prohibits.

The Terms of Service govern use of the hosted service. Privacy questions and suspected vulnerabilities should be sent only through a private channel.