Security
Your inbox, kept safe.
The short version:
- Marc can only read your Gmail and Calendar. Google's permission doesn't let it send, delete or change anything.
- Marc never sees your password, and full emails are never stored.
- The keys to your accounts are encrypted separately, and your data is held encrypted in Mumbai.
- Text delete my data on WhatsApp and it's gone, with Google access revoked.
1. What Marc can do in your accounts
You sign in on Google's own screen, so your password never reaches us. Marc then asks Google for two read-only permissions:
- gmail.readonly, to read your mail.
- calendar.events.readonly, to read your calendar.
These limits are enforced by Google, not by a promise from us. Marc holds no permission to send an email, delete one or change an event, so nothing that happens at Marc's end could make it do so.
Other apps, such as Notion or Todoist, ask your permission on their own sign-in screen. Marc asks for read-only access where the app offers it, and only runs the actions an app marks as read-only.
If you ask for a file from one of your emails, it can only go to your own WhatsApp. There's no way to give Marc another recipient, so nothing written in an email can route a file somewhere else.
2. How your mail is handled
| When | What Marc reads | What's kept |
|---|---|---|
| Your brief and alerts | Sender, recipients, subject, date, labels and a preview of up to 300 characters, including mail you sent in the last 21 days, to spot who hasn't replied. | What your brief shows you, and a view of your day that's refreshed through the day. |
| You ask about one email | Its full text and attached PDFs, once, to answer you. | Not the email. Only Marc's reply in your chat, which may quote what you asked about. |
| An email carries a calendar invite | The email is opened to find its calendar file, so a meeting that hasn't reached your calendar isn't missed. Only the invite is used. | The meeting's title, time, people and up to 300 characters of its description, where it's shown to you. |
| A notetaker emails a recap of your call | That email, once, to list who promised what. | Not the email. The commitments, and Marc's message about them. |
| You're about to meet someone | Your latest email thread with them, once, boiled down to three lines. Never health, family, religion or politics. | Not the thread. Only the prep message Marc sends you. |
| You've turned on Burn Sentry with burn on | Emails that look like bills, receipts or invoices, once each. | Not the email. The vendor, amount, billing cycle and dates, until you text burn off. |
| A commitment appears in a preview | The same previews as your brief. | A short note: who, what and when. It's removed once kept, or some time after it lapses. |
| You ask for an attached file | The file, to pass to WhatsApp for delivery to you. | Only the file's name. |
3. What we store, and where
Your data lives in a Postgres database run by Supabase, in India (AWS Mumbai). It holds your account details, your profile and setup transcript, the people who matter to you, your WhatsApp conversation with Marc including voice note transcripts, your briefs, promises and reminders, and a numeric index of your messages that lets Marc recall past conversations.
We never keep voice recordings, images or files you send.
- At rest: Supabase encrypts the database with AES-256.
- In transit: everything moves over HTTPS/TLS.
- The keys to your accounts: your Google and app tokens get a second layer. We encrypt them ourselves with a key kept away from the database, so a leaked copy of the database wouldn't open your mail.
- Everything else: your briefs and messages are protected by the database's encryption and access controls. They aren't individually encrypted with a key of your own, and we think you should know that.
- Backups: encrypted with AES-256 before they're stored, in a private repository, and deleted after 30 days.
4. How the system is protected
- The database is closed to Supabase's public APIs. Only Marc's servers and its backup job connect to it.
- Every message from WhatsApp must carry Meta's signature. Anything forged is refused.
- Your number is linked by a one-time code that you send from that phone, so nobody can attach their number to your account.
- Sign-in sessions are HTTPS-only and expire after 14 days. Web pages and AI use are rate limited.
- Passwords and keys are kept out of our code, and our code is in a private repository.
- Error reports say where something broke. Message content, request bodies, email addresses and phone numbers are stripped before a report leaves Marc.
The standards behind all of this:
| Area | Standard |
|---|---|
| Data in transit | TLS 1.3 (AES-256-GCM), with Strict Transport Security (HSTS) so browsers never fall back to plain HTTP. |
| Data at rest | AES-256 database encryption, in AWS Mumbai. |
| Keys to your accounts | A second layer of authenticated encryption (Fernet: AES with HMAC-SHA256), under a key stored apart from the database. |
| Backups | OpenPGP AES-256 encryption before storage, with a test restore every night. |
| Sign-in | OAuth 2.0 with Google, and OAuth 2.1 with PKCE (S256) for other apps. No passwords, ever. |
| WhatsApp messages | Every incoming message is checked against Meta's HMAC-SHA256 signature, in constant time. |
| Data isolation | Postgres row-level security on every table. |
| Web sessions | Signed, HTTPS-only cookies with SameSite protection, expiring after 14 days. |
| Browser protections | Pages can't be framed by other sites (clickjacking protection), and browsers are told not to guess file types. |
| AI providers | Paid API plans only, under which your data isn't used to train models. |
5. AI and your data
To decide what matters, Marc sends the relevant parts of your data, such as email previews and calendar events, to an AI provider, currently Google Gemini. During voice calls, your speech goes to Sarvam AI and Marc's replies are spoken by Cartesia. For founders' data we use paid API plans under which these providers do not use it to train their models. We don't use it to train general AI models either.
Emails are written by other people, and some try to give an AI instructions. Marc is told to treat everything in your mail as information, never as orders, and since it can't send anything, a malicious email has little to work with. AI can still make mistakes, so treat what Marc says as a prompt for your judgement.
6. WhatsApp
Marc talks to you through Meta's WhatsApp Cloud API. Messages are encrypted on the way, but a chat with a business isn't end-to-end encrypted the way a chat with a friend is: Meta's service decrypts messages so they can reach Marc. Meta says it encrypts them at rest and keeps them for up to 30 days.
If people can see your phone, text discreet on to keep names off your lock screen.
7. Who can see your data
Nobody at Ask Marcos reads your mail, calendar or messages, unless you ask us to (for example, to fix a problem with your brief), it's needed for a security or abuse investigation, or the law requires it. Our usage reports show who is active and when, never what anyone wrote.
We never sell your data or show you ads. The companies that help run Marc are listed in section 6 of our Privacy Policy. Some of them process data outside India.
8. You stay in control
| Text Marc, or go to | What happens |
|---|---|
| delete my data | Your account, profile, briefs, messages and transcripts are deleted, Google access is revoked and every app is disconnected. Copies in encrypted backups are deleted within 30 days. |
| log out | Every connection is revoked and Marc stops. Your history stays for when you return. |
| what do you know about me | See what Marc has learned about you, and strike out anything wrong. |
| apps | Add or remove Google accounts and connect other apps. |
| Your Google Account | Remove Marc's access yourself at any time. Marc stops reading right away. |
9. Where we are today
Marc is in a small early-access pilot, run by a small team. We haven't yet completed an independent security audit, a certification such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or Google's app verification, so Google may show a warning on its sign-in screen. We'd rather tell you that here than have you find out later.
10. Found a problem?
If you think you've found a security issue, email aaravjhawar578@gmail.com and we'll look at it right away. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.