Privacy Policy

The controller for the processing described here is:

Use this address for any privacy question and to exercise your rights. We have not appointed a data protection officer; we are not required to.

Letter Manager lets you organise your mail, have letters analysed by an AI, draft replies and send them by post. This policy applies to the websites letter-manager.com and briefdiener.de and to your use of the application once signed in.

We only describe processing that actually happens. Where that sounds uncomfortable, we left it in anyway.

The application, the database and the file storage run on servers in Germany:

Your content is held in a PostgreSQL database. Uploaded documents, sent letter PDFs and signature images are held in a private object store (MinIO) and are only served through signed links with a limited lifetime. Visiting the site also produces server log data (including IP address, timestamp, the address requested and the browser identifier).

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of the contract) and Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in secure, stable operation). Hetzner acts as our processor under Art. 28 GDPR.

Third country: No. The servers your data is stored on are located in Germany. Delivery of the website, however, runs via Cloudflare — see the next subsection.

Delivery of the website (Cloudflare CDN and DNS)

Name resolution (DNS) for briefdiener.de and letter-manager.com runs through Cloudflare, and the website is delivered over Cloudflare’s network. Every request to our pages therefore passes through a Cloudflare location, which is also where the encrypted connection (TLS) terminates. This processes your IP address, the address requested, the browser identifier and the timestamp. Which location that is depends on where you access the site from and may be outside Germany.

Your content — documents, letters, signature images and database records — is unaffected by this and remains exclusively with Hetzner in Germany. Cloudflare does not store it. Cloudflare does not set any cookies on our pages.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in a secure, fast website and in defending against attacks). Cloudflare acts as our processor under Art. 28 GDPR.

Third country: United States, based on the Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, under which Cloudflare, Inc. is certified.

User accounts (Firebase Authentication)

You cannot use the service without an account. Accounts themselves — registration, sign-in, passwords and session tokens — are handled for us by:

This involves your email address, your password or your Google account identity, a user identifier, sign-in times and, with every request, your IP address and browser identifier. If you sign in with Google, we also receive your name and profile picture.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. Storing session tokens on your device is strictly necessary for the service you requested (Section 25(2)(2) TDDDG).

Third country: United States. Firebase Authentication runs on Google LLC infrastructure, based on the Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

reCAPTCHA (Firebase App Check)

To keep bots away from our sign-in systems we use Google reCAPTCHA v3. Your IP address, device and browser information, interaction signals such as mouse and scroll movement and the address you requested are sent from your browser directly to Google. At present this happens on every page of our site, not just the sign-in pages.

Recipient: Google Ireland Limited, Dublin, Ireland (infrastructure: Google LLC, United States).

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in security and abuse prevention).

Cloudflare Turnstile

On the registration and sign-in pages we additionally use Cloudflare Turnstile. This processes your IP address, device and browser data and interaction signals, from which Turnstile infers whether the request comes from a human. Turnstile stores information in your browser for this purpose. The check runs without image puzzles; according to Cloudflare the data is not used for advertising or profiling.

We additionally confirm the result of the check with Cloudflare on our server before accepting a sign-in or registration. This transmits the verification token and your IP address to Cloudflare.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (protection against automated sign-ups). Storing the verification data on your device is strictly necessary for the sign-in you requested (Section 25(2)(2) TDDDG).

Third country: United States, based on the Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, under which Cloudflare, Inc. is certified.

We use Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-8TM42GC1EH) to understand how our pages are used. This sends your IP address (truncated), a cookie-based identifier, device and browser data, the address requested, the page title and the referring page to Google. Personalised advertising and advertising signals are switched off.

Google Analytics is loaded only after you have explicitly agreed in the cookie banner. Without your consent, no script is loaded from Google, no analytics cookie is set and no page view is transmitted.

Legal basis: Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, Section 25(1) TDDDG). Google Analytics must not be loaded without consent.

Third country: United States. Google LLC is also a recipient, based on the Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Withdrawal: You may withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future: Change cookie settings — switch “Analytics” off there, or choose “Only necessary”. Google Analytics is then shut down immediately and the analytics cookies already set are deleted. You can also reach us at [email protected]. This does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

When you use the service, we store in particular:

• Cases: title, description, category, reference numbers, opposing party, deadlines and appointments and — where you enter them — the name, address, phone number, email address, date of birth, tax identification number and health insurance number of the person concerned.
• Documents: the uploaded original file plus the extracted full text, summaries, detected senders, recipients, amounts and deadlines.
• Letters: subject, the full letter text, sender and recipient details, dispatch status and tracking data.
• Signatures: the image of the signature you drew or uploaded. We store only the image, not writing dynamics such as pressure or speed; no biometric analysis for the purpose of unique identification takes place.
• Settings, appointments, credit balance and billing records as well as promotional codes and their redemption.

By its nature this content may contain special categories of personal data under Art. 9 GDPR — for example health data from a letter written by your health insurer, or social security data from a benefits decision — as well as information about legal disputes.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR for providing the service. Where special categories are involved we rely on your explicit consent under Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR, given when you upload the document in question, and where applicable on Art. 9(2)(f) GDPR where the data serves the establishment or defence of legal claims.

This is the section to read before you upload anything.

We use Google's Gemini API to analyse your mail and draft replies. What we transmit is not an extract but:

• the complete uploaded file — the entire scan or photo of your letter,
• the extracted full text together with every detail recognised in it, such as names, addresses, reference numbers, amounts and deadlines of both sender and recipient,
• when a reply is drafted, additionally the entire history of the case: the summaries of every document in the case, the full content of every previous letter, and your own free-text instruction,
• after dispatch, also the finished letter PDF including the letter content and the recipient's address.

If your mail contains health or social security data, that data is transmitted to Google. If you do not want this, please do not upload the document. Using the service without this transmission is currently not possible.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, because the analysis is the main service you ordered. Where special categories under Art. 9 GDPR are involved, additionally your explicit consent under Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR.

Third country: Requests go through the general Gemini API endpoint. Processing exclusively within the EU is therefore not guaranteed, and processing by Google LLC in the United States does take place, based on the Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

No automated decision: The AI produces summaries and suggested text. It does not make any decision about you, and nothing is sent without your action. There is no automated decision-making within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR.

When you send a letter by post, we hand the complete letter PDF — the letter content, your sender address and the recipient address — to the service provider that prints, encloses and posts it:

We also transmit the dispatch options you selected, such as registered mail or advice of delivery, together with a transaction reference. In return we receive the delivery status.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of the contract).

Third country: No. The provider is based in Germany.

Every letter you send carries a QR code with a random reference in the bottom right corner. When that code is scanned, we record the reference, the associated letter identifier, the time of the scan and a flag indicating whether the request was automated (link preview, crawler). If the reference belongs to no letter, nothing is stored.

We record no IP address — not even a hashed one — and no user agent, set no cookie, store no referring page and take no device fingerprint. The data is not shared with third parties.

Scanning the code opens a plain status page (briefdiener.de/r/status) that explains exactly this — no offer, no advertising.

The person affected here is usually the recipient of the letter, who has not consented to this. The purpose is to establish whether and when a letter arrived and was read.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (the sender's legitimate interest in tracking their own mail).

Retention: 90 days from the scan. After that the record is deleted automatically and for good; a daily job removes all older logs.

Right to object: If you are the recipient of such a letter, you may object to this processing at any time under Art. 21 GDPR — an informal email to [email protected] is enough. You can also simply not scan the code; without a scan, no data is created.

You buy credits through a payment provider. You enter your payment details — card number, PayPal identity and the like — directly with that provider. This data never reaches our servers.

Paddle (default)

Paddle acts as the seller (merchant of record) and invoices the order including VAT. Paddle is therefore not a processor but a controller in its own right for the payment. We transmit your user identifier, the package chosen, the number of credits and the amount; Paddle returns the transaction reference and the payment status.

Third country: United Kingdom, covered by the European Commission's adequacy decision. Paddle also uses sub-processors in the United States.

Stripe (alternative)

If the service is switched to Stripe, you are redirected to a checkout page operated by Stripe. We transmit your user identifier, the package and the amount.

Third country: Transfer to Stripe, Inc. in the United States, based on the Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of the contract).

We send you email in three situations:

• Deadline reminders for appointments in your cases. These emails contain the title, type and description of the appointment — and therefore possibly the subject matter of your case, for example „appeal deadline, health insurer“.
• a welcome email with a voucher code after you register,
• technical alerts to ourselves when a service fails.

For delivery we use:

Delivery is configured to Mailgun's EU region, where message content is processed. A transfer of account data to the US parent company cannot be excluded; it is based on the Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR for deadline reminders, as they form part of the service; Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR for the welcome email.

Turning it off: You can disable deadline reminders at any time in Settings under „Notifications“. With the switch off, we send no further reminders.

You can subscribe to your deadlines and appointments in an external calendar application. The feed is served from a secret address containing an access token.

Treat that address like a password. Anyone who knows it can read the titles and descriptions of all your deadlines and appointments in plain text, without signing in. If you subscribe to the feed in a calendar service such as Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, that provider will fetch the address regularly from its own servers and store the appointment content there. We have no control over that processing.

The token cannot currently be revoked individually. If you believe the address has fallen into the wrong hands, please contact us.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR — you actively request the feed.

While your account exists

We store your content for as long as your account exists. Individual cases, letters, documents or signatures are not deleted automatically after any period. You can delete them yourself in the application at any time.

When you delete your account

Account deletion happens in two stages:

• Immediately: your access is blocked and all active sessions are terminated. You can no longer sign in or reach your data. The data itself remains stored unchanged during this period.
• After 30 days: your data is deleted permanently — cases, letters, documents, settings, signatures, addresses, appointments, credit balance and billing records, the associated files in the object store, and your user account itself.

Those 30 days are a safety margin against accidental or unauthorised deletion. You cannot restore the account yourself during that time; if you want it back, write to [email protected] within the period.

Records of scanned QR codes (see section 9) are deleted 90 days after the scan regardless. Payment records that we must retain for commercial and tax law reasons may be kept beyond that point. Server log data is overwritten after a short time.

You have the following rights against us:

• Access (Art. 15 GDPR) — what data we process about you.
• Rectification (Art. 16 GDPR) — correction of inaccurate data.
• Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR) — deletion of your data, unless we are required to retain it.
• Restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR).
• Data portability (Art. 20 GDPR) — your data in a common, machine-readable format. We compile this for you by email on request.
• Objection (Art. 21 GDPR) — against processing we base on a legitimate interest. This concerns in particular the QR-code tracking and abuse prevention.
• Withdrawal of consent (Art. 7(3) GDPR) — at any time with effect for the future. This does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out beforehand.

An informal email to [email protected] is enough for all of these.

Complaint to a supervisory authority

Regardless of the above, you may lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority under Art. 77 GDPR — in particular in the Member State of your habitual residence, your place of work, or the place of the alleged infringement.

There is no automated decision-making, including profiling, within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR. Our AI analyses your documents and suggests text. It makes no decision with legal effect, and no letter is sent without your approval. What you send in the end is entirely your decision.

The service is not a substitute for legal advice. Check every AI-generated text before you send it.

The connection to our servers is encrypted with TLS throughout. The file storage is not public; documents are served only through signed links with a limited lifetime. Access to your data is tied to your account.

We update this policy when we change the service or when the law requires it. The version published here is the one that applies. The date at the top tells you how current it is.