Security & Data Handling

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Plain-language summary: Your bill is transmitted over an encrypted connection, read by Anthropic's Claude API to extract the structured data, and never resold or used to train anything beyond what a bill-reading tool needs. Passwords are never stored in plain text. The admin panel that lets our team see saved reports is behind its own separate password and refuses to load anything at all if that password isn't set correctly. Certo is a small, early product — this page tells you exactly what we do and don't have in place yet, rather than implying protections we haven't built.

1. How your bill is transmitted and read

When you upload a bill, it's sent from your browser to our server over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection, then forwarded to Anthropic's Claude API to extract the structured data (utility, supplier, usage, rates, charges). We don't retain the original file after that extraction — only the structured data it produced. See Anthropic's own privacy policy at anthropic.com/legal/privacy for how they handle data sent to their API.

2. How your password is stored

If you save a report, the password you set is never stored as plain text. It's run through a salted, one-way hashing function (Node's built-in scrypt) before it's stored — the actual password isn't recoverable from what's in our database, by us or anyone else with access to it.

3. Where your data lives

Saved reports, account records, and bill history are stored in our hosting provider's database (Vercel, backed by Upstash Redis). We don't run our own servers or datacenters — we rely on those providers' infrastructure and security practices for the systems underneath ours.

4. Who inside Certo can see your data

An internal admin view lets our team see saved reports, rate requests, and account activity for support and operational purposes. That view is gated behind a separate admin password (distinct from any customer's own password) and is built to fail closed — if that password isn't configured correctly on our end, the admin view refuses to load any data at all rather than showing an empty screen that could be mistaken for "nothing to see."

5. What we don't do

We don't sell your personal information or bill data. We don't share your contact information or bill data with an energy broker, supplier, or any other third party unless you take a clear action requesting that connection (for example, requesting rate offers). We don't use your data to train our own AI models.

6. What we haven't built yet

We're an early product and want to be upfront about current limits rather than implying more than is true: we do not yet hold a formal third-party security certification (like SOC 2), we do not yet offer two-factor authentication on customer accounts, and billing/payment for paid plans is not yet connected to any payment processor, so no payment card data is collected or stored anywhere in the app today.

7. Deleting your data

If you'd like your saved reports and account deleted, email us at [contact email] and we'll remove them.

8. Questions

For anything not covered here, reach us at [contact email]. See also our Privacy Policy and Terms.