Privacy Policy

Citation[Z] (“we”, “us”), operated by Indigitual, LLC, operates citationz.com. This policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have. The short version: we collect the minimum needed to run the product, and we don't sell your personal data.

What we collect

Without an account: you can use the citation generator, converter, and bibliography builder without giving us any personal information. Bibliographies built anonymously are stored in your own browser (localStorage), not on our servers. Standard web logs (IP address, browser type, pages visited) are processed for security and analytics.

With an account: your name, email address, and a securely hashed password (we never store the password itself), plus the citations, projects, tags, and notes you choose to save.

With a Premium subscription: payments are processed by Stripe. We store your subscription status and a Stripe customer reference — your full card number never touches our servers. Text you submit to Premium research features (topics, claims, paragraphs) is processed to generate results and is not used to train AI models.

Browser extension

Our browser extension collects data only while you use it, and sends it only to citationz.com:

The page you cite:when you open the extension popup, it reads the active tab's URL and title (and any DOI published in the page's metadata) and sends them to our citation service to build the citation.

Cite all open tabs: if you choose this action, the extension reads the URL of every open http(s) tab in that window and sends each one to the same service. This runs only when you click it — never in the background.

Your sign-in:to recognise your account, the extension reads the citationz.com session cookie and sends it to us with requests so we can identify you. It reads no other site's cookies, and the extension does not track your browsing.

Retention and improving our citation engine: we keep a log of the URLs, DOIs, and ISBNs submitted for citation — from the extension and from the website — along with the citation data returned, and we use it to measure and improve the accuracy of our citation engine, including training our own citation models. These records are stored without your account ID or IP address, so they are not linked to you. To request removal of a submitted URL, email support@citationz.com.

How we use it

To provide the service, maintain your saved library, process subscriptions, respond to support requests, prevent abuse, and understand aggregate usage so we can improve the product. We measure usage with analytics and show advertising to non-premium users (see below).

Advertising and analytics

Free tiers are supported by Google AdSense, which may use cookies to show relevant ads; you can control ad personalization in your Google settings. We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used. Premium subscribers are not shown ads.

Third parties we rely on

Vercel (hosting), Neon (database), Stripe (payments), Google (advertising and analytics), Anthropic (AI processing for Premium research features), and scholarly metadata services (CrossRef, OpenAlex, OpenLibrary, Google Books) that receive only the identifiers you look up (a URL, DOI, or ISBN). Each processes data under its own privacy terms. We never sell your personal information to anyone.

Data retention and deletion

Your saved data is kept while your account exists. You can delete your account at any time from your Account page, which permanently removes your citations, projects, and notes and cancels any active subscription. You can also email support@citationz.com and we'll process it promptly.

Security

All traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Access to your saved data is scoped to your account. No system is perfectly secure, but we follow current best practices and keep our attack surface small.

Children

Citation[Z] is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Changes

If we make material changes to this policy, we'll update the effective date above and note the change on this page.

Contact

Questions about privacy: support@citationz.com.