Privacy Policy

Effective 12 October 2026

Contents

1. Who we are
2. What this policy covers
3. Data the app accesses
4. Google user data
5. How the data is used
6. Where the data is stored
7. When data leaves your Mac
8. AI agents
9. No AI training
10. Security
11. Retention and deletion
12. This website and support email
13. Your rights
14. Children
15. Changes to this policy
16. Contact

1. Who we are

ClerkMail is developed and published by Venelin Kochev, an independent developer based in Bulgaria ("we", "us"). You can reach us at support@clerkmail.app.

2. What this policy covers

This policy covers the ClerkMail application for macOS (the "app") and this website, clerkmail.app. It explains what data the app accesses, how it uses, stores and shares that data, and the choices you have.

The app is software that you install and run yourself. It is not an online service: there is no ClerkMail account to create, and the processing described below happens on your Mac, under your control.

3. Data the app accesses

To work as an email client, the app accesses the following, only for the accounts and features you set up:

Data	What it includes	Why
Email account details	Your email address, display name, server settings, and either a password or a sign-in token from your provider	To connect to your mailbox and send mail as you
Email messages	Headers (sender, recipients, subject, date), message text, attachments, folders, Gmail labels, and status such as read, flagged and replied	To show, search, organise, reply to and send your mail
Addresses you correspond with	Names and addresses from messages you send and receive	To suggest recipients as you type
macOS Contacts (optional, with your permission)	Email addresses and photos of your contacts	To show a person's photo next to their mail
Mailbox files you import (optional)	Messages in files you choose, such as Thunderbird local folders or .mbox exports	To make them searchable alongside your other mail
App settings	Workspaces, rules, signatures, notification and agent permissions	To remember how you set the app up

The app does not collect analytics, usage statistics, crash reports, device identifiers or location, and it contains no advertising or tracking code.

4. Google user data

When you add a Gmail or Google Workspace account, the app uses Google Sign-In and asks for these permissions:

• https://mail.google.com/: read, compose, send and permanently delete email in Gmail. A complete email client needs this permission: the app syncs your mailbox over IMAP and sends mail over SMTP, and Google allows both only with this scope. It is also what lets the app move, label and delete messages when you ask it to.
• openid and email: your Google account's email address, to label the account in the app and to address the mail server correctly.

How we use Google user data. The app uses Google user data only to provide and improve the user-facing email features of ClerkMail that you use: downloading and displaying your messages, keeping them in sync, searching them, sending the messages you write, and carrying out actions you take or set up (such as moving, labelling, marking or deleting messages, including through rules and AI agents you have authorised as described in section 8).

How it is stored. Google user data is stored only on your Mac: messages in the app's local database, and your Google sign-in token in the macOS Keychain. It is transmitted only between your Mac and Google's servers, over encrypted connections. It is never transmitted to, or stored on, any server operated by us.

How it is shared. We do not sell, rent, transfer or disclose Google user data to anyone. We do not use it for advertising, including personalised, retargeted or interest-based advertising, and we do not use it to determine credit-worthiness or for lending purposes. No person working on ClerkMail can read your Google user data, because it never reaches us. The only transfers that can happen are ones you start yourself in the app, described in sections 7 and 8.

ClerkMail'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.

You can revoke ClerkMail's access to your Google account at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions, and remove the account from the app to delete its data from your Mac (section 11).

5. How the data is used

All data the app accesses is used only to provide the features you see in the app, on your Mac:

• showing your mail, grouped into the accounts and workspaces you create;
• searching your mail, on your Mac and, when you ask, on your mail server;
• composing, sending, scheduling and saving drafts of your messages;
• organising mail through the actions you take and the rules you create;
• notifying you about new mail, as you configure;
• showing sender photos and logos, as described in section 7;
• answering requests from AI agents you connect, within the permissions you set (section 8).

The data is not used for any other purpose.

6. Where the data is stored

• On your Mac only. Messages, attachments you open, contacts used for suggestions, imported mailbox copies, cached sender pictures and settings are stored in the app's folder on your Mac (~/Library/Application Support/ClerkMail).
• In the macOS Keychain. Passwords and sign-in tokens are stored in the Keychain, which macOS encrypts and protects.
• A local diagnostic log. The app keeps a log of its sync activity (such as folder names, message counts and connection errors) on your Mac to help diagnose problems. It is never sent anywhere automatically; you may choose to share it with us when asking for help.

Because everything stays on your Mac, it is also covered by your Mac's own protections, such as your login password and FileVault disk encryption if you use it.

7. When data leaves your Mac

Data leaves your Mac only in these cases, each of which serves something you asked the app to do:

• Your email providers. The app exchanges mail with the providers whose accounts you add (for example Google, iCloud or your own host) to sync your mailbox and send your messages. Their own privacy policies apply to the data they hold.
• Messages you send. Mail you send goes to its recipients through your provider.
• Sender logos. To show a company's logo next to its mail, the app looks up public records for the sender's domain (for example example.com) through your Mac's DNS settings and may download the logo the domain publishes. Only the domain name is used, never the message, your address or any other content. Results are kept on your Mac so each domain is looked up at most about once a month. You can turn this off in Settings.
• Website icons (off unless you turn them on). If enabled, the app downloads the icon of a sender's website, which shares only the domain name with that website.
• Remote images and links. Images that load from the internet are blocked until you choose to load them, for a message or a sender. Links open in your browser only when you click them.
• AI agents you connect. See section 8.
• Update checks. The app may contact clerkmail.app to check whether a newer version is available. This shares your IP address and the app version with our hosting provider, and nothing from your mail.

None of these transfers is made to us, and we do not receive copies of your data.

8. AI agents

ClerkMail lets AI agents that support the Model Context Protocol, such as Claude Desktop or Claude Code, work with your mail. This feature is off until you turn it on:

• No agent can connect until you create one in the app's Agents screen. Each agent gets its own access token, which you can revoke at any time.
• Agents connect to the app locally on your Mac, never through us.
• For each agent and workspace, you choose whether it may read, search, mark, draft, send, archive, move or delete mail, and whether to allow, deny or be asked each time. Requests set to ask are shown to you with their details and do nothing until you approve.
• The app records every request an agent makes in a log you can review on your Mac.

When an agent you have connected reads mail you allowed it to read, that content is passed to the agent. The agent may in turn send it to its own provider (for example, Anthropic for Claude) to produce a response. That processing is governed by the agent provider's terms and privacy policy, not by us. Please choose agents and permissions you are comfortable with. This transfer happens only at your direction, to provide a feature you set up and use.

9. No AI training

We do not use your data, including any Google user data, to develop, improve or train artificial intelligence or machine learning models. ClerkMail does not contain any AI model of its own, and we never receive your data, so we have none to train on.

10. Security

• Connections to mail servers use TLS encryption. Connections to Proton Mail Bridge stay on your Mac.
• Passwords and sign-in tokens are kept in the macOS Keychain. Google sign-in uses OAuth with PKCE, so ClerkMail never sees your Google password.
• The connection agents use is available only on your Mac: a local socket in your user folder, and an optional local address that accepts connections from this Mac only, with an agent's token required on every request. Tokens are stored only as secure hashes.
• The app is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS can verify it has not been tampered with.

No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, but because your data never leaves your control for our systems, it is not exposed to breaches of any ClerkMail server.

11. Retention and deletion

Data stays on your Mac for as long as the account is in the app. You are in control of it:

• Remove an account in the app to delete its messages, settings and stored sign-in from your Mac.
• Remove imported mailboxes with "Remove Local Folders" in the sidebar. The original files you imported are not touched.
• Delete everything by quitting the app and deleting the folder ~/Library/Application Support/ClerkMail and the app's items in Keychain Access.
• Revoke Google access at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Revoking stops the app from accessing your Gmail, and you can then delete the local data as above.

Deleting mail on your email provider is done through the provider. We hold no copy of your data, so there is nothing for us to delete. If you have questions, write to us and we will help.

12. This website and support email

This website has no cookies, analytics, advertising or trackers. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes technical data such as IP addresses to deliver and protect the site, as described in Cloudflare's privacy policy.

If you email us, we use your address and message only to reply and to help you, and we keep the correspondence only as long as needed for that, after which it is deleted. We do not add you to mailing lists without your consent.

13. Your rights

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have rights under data protection law, including to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, and to data portability. For data in the app, you exercise these directly, because the data is on your Mac and in your control. For the limited personal data we do handle (support emails), contact us at support@clerkmail.app; we will respond within one month. Our legal basis for handling support emails is our legitimate interest in answering you, or the steps you ask us to take.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, such as the Bulgarian Commission for Personal Data Protection (cpdp.bg) or the authority where you live.

Residents of other places, including California, have similar rights. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by California law.

14. Children

ClerkMail is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.

15. Changes to this policy

If we change how the app handles data, we will update this policy, change the effective date above and, for significant changes, announce them on this site or in the app before they take effect. We will never begin using Google user data in a new way without first asking for your consent where Google's policies or the law require it.

16. Contact

Venelin Kochev, developer of ClerkMail
Email: support@clerkmail.app
Website: clerkmail.app