Privacy Policy
This policy says what we collect, why, who else sees it, and how long we keep it. It is short because we collect little: this is a subscription tool for technicians, not an advertising business.
Who is responsible
Southeast Military Equipment LLC is the controller of the personal data described here. Write to support@southeastmilitaryequipment.com, or to the address at the foot of this page.
What we collect
Because you have an account
- Your email address — it identifies the account.
- Your name and phone number. These are required, because they are the only way we can reach you about a payment or an access problem — there is no password-reset email on this site, so an account you cannot get into has no other route back to us. If you register through Google or Microsoft we take the name they give us rather than asking you to type it again.
- Anything else you enter on the sign-up form: your organisation, the type of organisation you selected, the equipment you operate, and how you heard about us. All of these are optional — the account works without them. We use them to understand who our customers are and what equipment to carry.
- The account tier you chose — hobbyist, shop or rebuilder. Also required, wherever manuals are sold, because it sets the rate you are charged. It affects the price and nothing else: it is never used to decide what you may read. You cannot change it yourself once the account exists; write to us and we will.
- When you accepted these policies, recorded as a timestamp at sign-up. An account an administrator created carries no such timestamp, because nobody accepted anything.
- A hash of your password (Argon2), if you use one. We never store the password itself and cannot recover it. If you sign in with Google or Microsoft instead, we store the provider's name and its opaque subject identifier for you, and no password at all.
- When the account was created, and when it last signed in.
- Your interface preferences — such as the vehicle variant you last selected.
Because you use the service
- An access log. For each significant action: the time, the account, what kind of action it was, which manual, maintenance level and work package it concerned, your IP address, and a hash of your browser's user-agent string — not the string itself. This is how we make bulk extraction visible and leaks attributable, and it is the control the whole subscription model rests on.
- Bookmarks and notes you create, with the text you type into them.
- Problem reports you file, including what you wrote and the page you filed it from.
Because you use the Diagnostic Assistant
- Your questions and the answers, kept as a transcript so you can return to a conversation.
- Anything you upload to it — photographs, intake forms, and the equipment profile you fill in for your vehicle.
This is stored per account, in a directory named by a hash of your email address, and is not visible to other customers.
Because you pay us
- A Stripe customer identifier, your subscription's status and its current period end.
- We do not receive, process or store your card details. Those go directly to Stripe.
Why we may use it
- To let you sign in and to show you what you are entitled to — this is how we perform our contract with you.
- To take payment and manage your subscription — likewise.
- To protect the content: detecting shared credentials, bulk extraction and abuse, and identifying the source of a leak. This is our legitimate interest, and the licensors' — without it the material could not be offered at all.
- To answer your support requests and act on problem reports you file.
- To understand who our customers are and what equipment they run, so we know which manuals to carry. This is our legitimate interest, it uses only what you volunteered on the sign-up form, and the account works whether or not you fill any of it in.
- To meet legal, tax and accounting obligations.
We do not sell your data, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not profile you. There is no advertising or analytics tracker on this site.
Who else sees it
Only these, and only for what is listed:
- Stripe — payment processing and subscription management. Stripe receives your email address and payment details; we receive back an identifier and a subscription status.
- Anthropic — the Diagnostic Assistant sends your questions, and the manual passages retrieved to answer them, to Anthropic's Claude API. If you do not want your questions leaving our servers, do not use the assistant; nothing else in the product sends anything there.
- Our hosting provider — the servers this runs on. They hold the data at rest; they do not use it.
- Google or Microsoft, only if you choose to sign in with them, and only to the extent of that sign-in.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim. We will tell you if that happens unless we are prohibited from doing so.
Where it is held
The service is hosted in the United States, and our processors above may process data there and elsewhere. If you are in the UK or EEA, that means your data is transferred outside it; those transfers rely on the processors' standard contractual clauses.
How long we keep it
- Account details — while the account exists, and for up to 12 months after it is closed, in case it is reopened.
- The access log — 24 months. It is the record we would need to investigate a leak, which is rarely discovered quickly.
- Bookmarks, notes and problem reports — until you delete them, or the account is closed.
- Assistant transcripts and uploads — until you delete them, or the account is closed.
- Payment and invoice records — as long as tax and accounting law requires, typically seven years. Held by Stripe as well as by us.
Your rights
You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, or restrict or object to how we use it. You can also ask us to send it to someone else in a portable form. Write to support@southeastmilitaryequipment.com and we will respond within 30 days.
Two honest limits. We may keep the access log for its full retention period even if you ask for deletion, because it is the record that protects the licensors' content and we have a legitimate interest in keeping it; and we must keep payment records for as long as tax law says. Everything else we will delete on request.
If you think we have handled your data badly, please tell us first — but you have the right to complain to your data protection authority regardless.
Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as Argon2 hashes. Content assets are served through short-lived links tied to your account, and administrative functions are separated from ordinary accounts. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim this one is; if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.
Cookies
One cookie, emsweb_session, which keeps you signed in. It is
strictly necessary for the service to work, so there is no consent banner to
click. We set no analytics, advertising or third-party tracking
cookies. Signing out clears it.
Children
This is a professional tool sold to businesses. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
Changes
If we change this policy materially we will email account holders before it takes effect. The "last updated" date above always reflects the current version.