How we look after your data

Where it lives

Grades.com runs on Google Cloud in the United States (us-east4, Virginia). The database is reachable only on a private network address, and every connection to it is encrypted with TLS. Application secrets are kept in a managed secret store, not in code.

Encryption and credentials

• TLS on every page, API call and database connection; data at rest is encrypted by our cloud provider's storage.
• Passwords and API keys are stored only as hashes. A key is shown once.
• Signed-in sessions of connected review-site accounts are encrypted again with keys in a managed key service and are never handed back to anyone, you included. We never store those accounts' passwords.

Access and roles

• Every request is checked against your membership of the business. Keys and AI clients reach only the locations you belong to; anything else answers "not found".
• Four roles per location: owners run everything, admins run their locations, approvers only approve or reject the agent's drafts, and viewers read without changing anything.
• AI clients sign in with OAuth: access tokens last one hour, refresh tokens rotate, and changing your password ends every sign-in.
• Approvals, replies, key changes and setting changes are recorded with who made them. Staff access is limited to what the work needs.

Data residency

Your account, reviews, contacts and uploads are stored in the United States (Google Cloud, us-east4). The AI and data providers we use process what they receive in their own data centers; requests to Google's Gemini text models go to Google Cloud's global endpoint, which does not fix a region. The subprocessors page names each provider and where it works.

Where a transfer from the EEA, the United Kingdom or Switzerland needs a transfer mechanism, section 12 of our DPA incorporates the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, with the UK Addendum and the Swiss references.

Retention and history

Scores, rankings, AI answers, competitor snapshots and earlier versions of business facts are kept as dated history instead of being overwritten, because people check a past grade later. After an account closes, its data is deleted or anonymized within 90 days. Service logs are kept for about 30 days. Automated database backups are kept for 14 days, and a one-off backup taken before a larger change is deleted after 30 days. Details: Privacy Policy, section 10.

Availability

Uptime checks run every 5 minutes on the dashboard, the API, the directory, the MCP server and this website, and alert the team when one fails.