Privacy Policy
Last updated: 2 June 2026
This policy explains what personal data StackSift collects, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the rights you have under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It is written to satisfy the information requirements of GDPR Article 13.
1. Who we are
StackSift is an AI-powered log-analysis and SRE platform. For questions about this policy or to exercise any of your rights, contact us at dardan.ternava@gjirafa.com.
2. Controller vs. processor
For your account data (your email, name, billing details, and audit trail), StackSift is the controller and decides why and how it is processed.
For the log data you send us — the contents of your log entries and any context fed into an AI analysis — StackSift is a processor acting on your instructions under GDPR Article 28. You are the controller of any personal data your logs may contain about your own end-users. We do not redact log content server-side by default; controlling what your applications log is your responsibility. We provide guidance and a sample redaction enricher to help.
3. Account data we collect
The following data is collected when you create an account, join a team, or subscribe to a paid plan.
- Purpose
- Identity, sign-in, billing receipts, service notifications
- Legal basis
- Contract
- Retention
- Until account deletion
- Purpose
- Personalising the in-app UI
- Legal basis
- Contract
- Retention
- Until account deletion
- Purpose
- Authenticating you to the platform
- Legal basis
- Contract
- Retention
- Until account deletion (stored Argon2-hashed in Keycloak)
- Purpose
- Abuse and fraud detection
- Legal basis
- Legitimate interests
- Retention
- 90 days (rolling)
- Purpose
- Delivering a pending team invitation
- Legal basis
- Legitimate interests
- Retention
- Until accepted, or 30 days
- Purpose
- Security audit trail and forensics
- Legal basis
- Legal obligation / legitimate interests
- Retention
- 365 days, then actor identifiers are anonymised
- Purpose
- Subscription billing and reconciliation
- Legal basis
- Contract / legal obligation
- Retention
- 7 years (statutory accounting requirement)
- Purpose
- Authenticating log ingestion
- Legal basis
- Contract
- Retention
- Until the log source is deleted (HMAC-SHA256, never stored in clear)
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email address | Identity, sign-in, billing receipts, service notifications | Contract | Until account deletion |
| Display name | Personalising the in-app UI | Contract | Until account deletion |
| Authentication credentials (password) | Authenticating you to the platform | Contract | Until account deletion (stored Argon2-hashed in Keycloak) |
| Last login IP address | Abuse and fraud detection | Legitimate interests | 90 days (rolling) |
| Invitation email address | Delivering a pending team invitation | Legitimate interests | Until accepted, or 30 days |
| Audit log (actor email + IP) | Security audit trail and forensics | Legal obligation / legitimate interests | 365 days, then actor identifiers are anonymised |
| Billing identifiers (Stripe customer + subscription) | Subscription billing and reconciliation | Contract / legal obligation | 7 years (statutory accounting requirement) |
| Log-source API key (hashed) | Authenticating log ingestion | Contract | Until the log source is deleted (HMAC-SHA256, never stored in clear) |
4. Log data processed on your behalf
Log entries are indexed in Elasticsearch hosted on Hetzner (EU, Germany), isolated per organisation. AI analyses send a relevant slice of your log context to OpenAI for embedding and completion (see international transfers below).
- Purpose
- Core product function — search, alerting, incident analysis
- Legal basis
- Processed on your behalf (Art. 28 processor)
- Retention
- Per plan tier — 3 days (Free), 30 days (Indie), 90 days (Team)
- Purpose
- Generating root-cause analyses (RAG embeddings + completion)
- Legal basis
- Processed on your behalf (Art. 28 processor)
- Retention
- Retained while your organisation is active
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Log entry content (message + metadata) | Core product function — search, alerting, incident analysis | Processed on your behalf (Art. 28 processor) | Per plan tier — 3 days (Free), 30 days (Indie), 90 days (Team) |
| AI-analysis input context | Generating root-cause analyses (RAG embeddings + completion) | Processed on your behalf (Art. 28 processor) | Retained while your organisation is active |
5. Subprocessors
We rely on the following third-party processors to operate the service. This list is kept consistent with our subprocessors page.
- Purpose
- Marketing site hosting (stacksift.io)
- Region
- Global edge
- Purpose
- Application + database + log indexing
- Region
- EU (Falkenstein, Germany)
- Purpose
- Embeddings (text-embedding-3-small) and chat completion (gpt-4o-mini) for AI root-cause analyses
- Region
- US
- Purpose
- Subscription billing, payment processing, hosted customer portal. Card data never reaches StackSift servers.
- Region
- US (with EU data-residency option)
- Purpose
- Privacy-friendly site analytics (self-hosted at plausible.stacksift.io)
- Region
- EU
| Service | Purpose | Region |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Marketing site hosting (stacksift.io) | Global edge |
| Hetzner Cloud | Application + database + log indexing | EU (Falkenstein, Germany) |
| OpenAI | Embeddings (text-embedding-3-small) and chat completion (gpt-4o-mini) for AI root-cause analyses | US |
| Stripe | Subscription billing, payment processing, hosted customer portal. Card data never reaches StackSift servers. | US (with EU data-residency option) |
| Plausible | Privacy-friendly site analytics (self-hosted at plausible.stacksift.io) | EU |
6. International data transfers
Your account data and log indices are stored in the EU (Hetzner, Germany). AI root-cause analysis sends log context to OpenAI in the United States. That transfer is governed by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs). Stripe processes billing data in the US with an EU data-residency option. We use no other transfer outside the EEA.
7. How long we keep data
Retention periods are listed in the tables above. Log retention follows your plan tier (3 / 30 / 90 days). Two categories are subject to a regulatory floor that overrides account deletion: audit events are kept for 365 days and Stripe billing records for 7 years. When you delete your account, those rows are retained for the floor period but the actor identifiers are anonymised.
8. Security
All data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. Passwords are stored Argon2-hashed by Keycloak; log-source API keys are stored as HMAC-SHA256 hashes with a server-side pepper and are never logged. Access is gated behind authenticated, per-organisation API calls.
9. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the following rights:
- Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification — correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
- Erasure — delete your account and associated data (subject to the legal retention floors below).
- Portability — export your data in a machine-readable format.
- Restriction — ask us to limit how we process your data.
- Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent — where processing relies on consent, withdraw it at any time.
- Complaint — lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.
You can exercise access, portability, and erasure directly from your account settings: request a data export, or delete your account. Account deletion starts a 30-day grace period (during which you can restore the account with a one-time token); after the grace period your organisation data is permanently removed, except the regulatory-floor records described in section 7.
10. Cookies and analytics
The marketing site uses no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, so no consent banner is required. When site analytics are enabled we use Plausible, a privacy-friendly, cookieless analytics tool that collects only aggregate, non-identifying metrics and sets no cookies. The application itself uses a single strictly-necessary, HTTP-only session cookie to keep you signed in.
11. Changes
We will update this policy as the service evolves and revise the “last updated” date above. Material changes will be communicated in-app or by email.