Privacy Policy

1. Personal information we collect

To provide our services, we may collect the following personal information.

• Name
• Email address
• Name and address of the user's office
• Phone number
• Payment information (credit card information is managed by our payment processor, Stripe; we do not hold it)
• Service usage history and log information
• User IDs, display names, and message contents received through external platforms such as LINE
• Contents of inquiries

2. Purposes of use

We use the personal information we collect for the following purposes.

• Providing and operating our services
• Billing and payment processing
• Responding to inquiries from users
• Improving our services and developing new features
• Sending important notices about maintenance, outages, and the like
• Responding to violations of our Terms of Service

3. Provision to third parties

We do not provide personal information to third parties without the user's consent, except in the following cases.

• When required by law
• When necessary to protect a person's life, body, or property
• When necessary to improve public health or promote the healthy development of children
• When necessary to cooperate with a national or local government body, or a party entrusted by one, in carrying out duties prescribed by law

We provide Stripe, Inc. with the information necessary for payment processing. See the Stripe Privacy Policy.

To provide our services through external platforms such as LINE, we send and receive information with the operators of those platforms to the extent necessary to provide and operate the services.

4. Security measures

We take appropriate security measures to prevent leakage, loss, or damage of personal information, and we supervise employees who handle personal information as necessary and appropriate.

5. Disclosure, correction, and deletion

When a user asks us to disclose, correct, add to, delete, or stop using their personal information, we will respond within a reasonable period after verifying their identity.

Contact: contact@astarworks.com

6. Cookies and analytics

Our services may use cookies to improve convenience and the services themselves. Users can refuse cookies in their browser settings, though some features may then be unavailable.

7. Handling of Google user data

Our service "Astar" accesses Google user data through Google APIs only when the user signs in with a Google account or connects a Google account in Settings. All other features of the service can be used without connecting.

Astar's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

(1) Scopes we request and how we use the data

The service requests only the following eight permissions (scopes), and obtains and uses only the data listed for each.

• openid / userinfo.email / userinfo.profile

  Data: the Google account's name, profile picture, and email address

  Purpose: signing in with a Google account, displaying the user in the service, and showing the user which Google account is connected to prevent connecting the wrong account or connecting twice

• calendar.events

  Data: events on calendars the user chooses (title, description, location, start and end time, attendees, organizer, attachment information, meeting URL, reminders, visibility)

  Purpose: viewing and syncing events in the service, and creating, updating, or deleting events by the user's own action or by an AI feature acting on the user's request

• calendar.calendarlist.readonly

  Data: the list of the user's calendars (name, access role)

  Purpose: letting the user choose which calendars to sync

• forms.body.readonly

  Data: the title and question definitions of a Google Form the user connects by pasting its edit URL. We do not fetch the user's list of forms.

  Purpose: letting the user map each question's answers to a column of a table in the service

• forms.responses.readonly

  Data: responses to the connected form (answers to each question, the respondent's email address if the form collects it, the response time, and file IDs for file-upload questions). We do not download the uploaded files themselves, and we never write to the form.

  Purpose: importing responses as rows of a table in the service so that no one has to copy them by hand. While connected, new responses are imported about every 15 minutes and when the user requests it.

• drive.file

  Data: only the files and folders the service creates in Google Drive, and spreadsheets the user selects in Google's file picker (Google Picker). We do not access any other files.

  Purpose: saving and retrieving documents when the office chooses Google Drive as its shared file storage, and importing a spreadsheet the user selects as a table in the service

(2) Storage and retention

• The name, profile picture, and email address obtained at sign-in are stored as the user's account information for as long as the account exists.
• Synced events are stored in our database for display and search in the service, for as long as the connection is active.
• Form responses and imported spreadsheet contents are stored in our database as data of a table in the user's office, and can be viewed and searched by users in the office who have permission to view that table. They are kept until a user deletes the table or the rows.
• Access tokens and refresh tokens issued by Google are stored encrypted and are used for no purpose other than those described in this section.

(3) AI features

Only when a user uses an AI feature of the service and carrying out that request requires events, form responses, or imported spreadsheet contents, we send the necessary portion of that content to the AI model provider. We do not use Google user data to develop, train, or improve generalized AI or machine-learning models, and we do not permit AI model providers to use it for training.

(4) Third parties and advertising

We do not use or provide Google user data for advertising, and we do not sell it to third parties. We do not provide it to anyone other than the AI model providers described above and the infrastructure providers needed to operate the service. Our employees view Google user data only with the user's explicit consent, when necessary for security purposes, to comply with applicable law, or when the data is anonymized and aggregated.

(5) Disconnecting and deletion

Users can disconnect their Google account at any time from "Settings → Integrations" in the service. When they do, we ask Google to revoke the token, and delete the synced events, the connection information, and the tokens from our database. Form responses are no longer imported after disconnecting.

Form responses and spreadsheet contents already imported into a table remain as data of the office's table. Users can delete the table or rows in the service, or request deletion at the contact in Section 5.

When an office disconnects Google Drive as its file storage, we delete its tokens from our database.

Users can also revoke the service's access on Google's side from the "Third-party apps & services" page of their Google Account.

(6) Data protection

We have the following security procedures in place to protect the confidentiality of Google user data.

• Encryption in transit: traffic between the user's device and the service is encrypted with TLS (version 1.2 or later), and HTTP connections are redirected to HTTPS. Traffic between the service and Google APIs, and between the service and its database, is also encrypted.
• Encryption at rest: the database that stores Google user data runs on Google Cloud SQL (Tokyo region), and the data stored in it is encrypted.
• Token encryption: access tokens and refresh tokens issued by Google are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they are stored. The encryption key is managed separately from the database, and each ciphertext is bound to the user (for Google Drive storage, the office) it was issued for, so it cannot be decrypted on behalf of another user or office.
• Isolation between offices: PostgreSQL row-level security (RLS) prevents each office's data from being read or written by any other office. Google account connection information and tokens can be read only when processing for the user who connected them.
• Restricted internal access: when our staff connect to the production database, they use short-lived credentials of a dedicated service account limited to the minimum necessary permissions; no long-lived keys are issued. Connections for investigation are read-only by default. The cases in which employees may view Google user data are limited as described in (4).

8. Data handled by the browser extension "Astar 作業観測" (Work Observation)

The Chrome extension "Astar 作業観測" (the "Extension") works together with the Astar desktop app and is used only to create the user's own work records (daily reports).

(1) Data collected

Only after the user grants permission in its popup, the Extension collects the following data about the tab in the foreground. Sites excluded in the Astar desktop app's settings are not recorded.

• The page's URL and title, and the time and duration it was shown
• The text shown on the page
• The names of buttons and links the user clicked

The Extension does not collect values typed into input fields, passwords, elements not shown on screen, or the contents of other tabs not in the foreground. It does not operate pages.

(2) Where data is sent

The Extension passes the data it collects only to the Astar desktop app running on the same computer, and does not send it to any other external server. The Astar desktop app stores the data it receives in the service as the user's own work records.

(3) Purpose of use

The data is used only to create the user's own work records and daily reports, and to search and view them in the service. When an AI feature is used to create a daily report, the data is sent to the AI model provider to the extent needed for that processing, but we do not permit its use for training AI models.

(4) Third parties and advertising

We do not sell data collected by the Extension, and do not use or provide it for advertising. Except as set out in Section 3, we do not provide it to anyone other than the AI model providers described above and the infrastructure providers needed to operate the service.

(5) Stopping and deletion

Users can stop collection at any time by withdrawing permission in the Extension's popup or by removing the Extension. Requests to disclose or delete stored data are accepted at the contact in Section 5.

9. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this Policy as necessary. The revised Privacy Policy takes effect when it is posted on our website.

10. Contact

For inquiries about the handling of personal information, please contact: