Privacy policy

Updated November 11, 2026

This notice describes the hosted AskLit service operated by the Legal Innovation & Technology Lab at Suffolk University Law School. AskLit lets people create, manage, publish, and use AI assistants. Other websites and independently hosted copies may have different policies.

Information we receive

When you sign in with Google, we receive your account identifier, name, email address, verification status, and, when supplied, Google Workspace domain. We use this information to sign you in and apply organization access rules. AskLit requests only basic identity scopes (openid, email, and profile); it does not request access to your Gmail, Drive files, or contacts. Microsoft sign-in, when configured, similarly uses identity and tenant information.

For local accounts, we store your name, email used as a username, organization membership, and a salted password hash. We also store AskLit configurations, knowledge-base files and extracted text, published revisions, evaluation inputs and results, and administrative activity records.

During a conversation, we process and store messages, responses, and extracted text from attachments. Service providers also process connection information such as IP addresses. AskLit uses security and usage counters to limit abuse and costs.

How information is used and shared

We use information to operate accounts, enforce access controls, retrieve relevant knowledge-base content, generate answers, evaluate assistants, and maintain the service. AI requests send conversation content, relevant knowledge-base excerpts, instructions, and attachment text to the configured model provider. This deployment currently uses OpenAI. Do not submit information you are not authorized to share with the service and its providers.

Fly.io hosts the application. Supabase provides database and private file storage. Cloudflare provides the domain's DNS. Google processes Google sign-in. These providers process information needed to supply their services under their own terms and privacy policies.

Organization administrators can manage their organization's AskLits and memberships. Published assistants may disclose information drawn from their knowledge bases in answers. Public listings and public assistant links are accessible to anyone; an unlisted link is not an access restriction. Password and organization restrictions limit access but do not make an AI conversation a confidential legal consultation. Service operators can access stored information as needed for operation, support, and security.

Voice

Browser speech features may send audio or text to your browser or operating-system provider; processing is not necessarily confined to your device. If an organization enables paid speech, recordings are sent to the configured transcription provider and reply text to the speech provider (currently OpenAI). AskLit does not persist these audio recordings as account files. Transcribed text becomes part of the conversation when sent.

Cookies and browser storage

AskLit uses cookies for sign-in sessions and OAuth security, and browser storage for conversation access and interface preferences. These are used to operate the service. The Studio does not include advertising or analytics trackers. An embedding website may use its own cookies and analytics.

Retention and deletion

Hosted conversations expire 7 days after creation and are removed by background housekeeping. Clearing a conversation through the chat controls deletes its stored conversation record and related messages and attachments. Account information, assistant configurations, knowledge-base documents, revisions, evaluations, and administrative records do not all share that automatic expiration. Archiving an assistant is not the same as deleting its stored data.

Contact litlab@suffolk.edu to request access, correction, or deletion of your information. We may need to verify your identity and coordinate with your organization. Backup copies and provider records may persist under their separate retention processes; information may also need to be retained for security or legal reasons. Removing AskLit's access in your Google account prevents future Google authorization but does not delete existing AskLit records.

Contact and changes

Questions about this notice can be sent to litlab@suffolk.edu. Changes will be posted here with an updated date. See also the Suffolk LIT Lab website policy.