Backstory privacy notice

Who this notice is for

Backstory is a research service run by Auto Units. Backstory researches founders and operators that investors and backers are considering. This notice is for two groups of people: our customers, who ask us to research someone, and the people our reports are about.

Signing in uses your shared Auto Units account, which has its own privacy policy at accounts.auto-units.com/privacy.

If you are a customer

Your account: the email address or phone number you sign in with. Sign-in codes are sent by Resend (email) and Twilio (text message).

What you give us about the person you want researched: their name, a short context such as a company or profile link, your questions and follow-up questions, and any documents you upload (PDF or image). We also keep a record of each question asked about a person, as part of the case.

Payments: Stripe takes payment on its own page and receives your email address. We never see your card number.

If you review yourself: the statement that the review is of you, and any feedback you give on a finding. People on our team who review research quality can see that feedback; only anonymous counts of feedback categories are used to improve the research, and your details are never copied into anyone else's report.

If a report is about you

We look only at public professional information: roles, organizations, employment dates, credentials and published work. We never look for criminal, financial, medical, relationship, political, sexual, home-address or private-contact information, and we never contact you.

A report compares what a customer told us with public sources and lists the sources it read. It is not a consumer report and must not be used to decide on your employment, housing, credit or insurance.

How research works

We send the case (the name, context, questions and uploaded documents) to OpenAI, whose models search the public web and write the report. We ask OpenAI not to keep what we send; OpenAI may keep requests for a limited time to detect abuse, under its API policies.

Who sees information

The customer who started a case sees it, and anyone they send a share link to. We do not sell or rent anyone's information, or use it for advertising.

People on our team see a case only when needed to support a customer, fix a problem, review research quality or answer a request. Our automated business tools see only totals, such as how many reports were completed, never names or report contents.

Providers that process information for us, all in the United States: Vercel hosts the site; Neon stores cases, reports and accounts; Amazon Web Services stores uploaded documents, encrypted; OpenAI runs the research; Stripe takes payments; Resend and Twilio send messages; Sentry receives error reports (the page, the browser and the error, never your details or what you typed).

An analytics provider (PostHog), to understand how the site is used: pages visited, clicks, and how the site performs. It never receives your payment details, what you type, or your address. You can turn it off with "Do not track me" at the bottom of any page.

How long we keep it

We delete a case 12 months after its last activity (when it was created, last researched or last asked a follow-up question), and a case that was never researched 30 days after it was created. Each case in your account shows the date it will be deleted.

A share link opens once, within seven days. Once it has been opened, has expired or is revoked, we delete the copy of the report it held. Someone you shared a report with may keep their own copy.

You can delete a case at any time from its page or from My account. Deleting your Auto Units account deletes every case you started with AI PI, Backstory and Plus One. Records of payments and orders stay, as the law and our accounts require, with no report content in them.

Your choices

As a customer, you can see, correct or delete what we hold about you by deleting a case yourself or by writing to backstory@auto-units.com from the address you sign in with.

If you think a report is about you, write to backstory@auto-units.com. You can ask whether we hold a report about you, and ask us to show, correct or delete it. We confirm the request comes from the person a report is about before acting on it, answer within 30 days (45 for California residents), and never tell anyone else whether a report about someone exists.

Age

You must be 18 or older to buy a report. We never knowingly research anyone under 18, and we delete a case about a minor as soon as we learn of it.

Legal status of a report

A report is not a consumer report under the US Fair Credit Reporting Act, and we are not a consumer reporting agency.

Changes and contact

We update this notice when the service changes; the date at the top is the latest revision. Questions go to backstory@auto-units.com.