Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Footnote does with personal information. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

The short version

• You do not need an account, an app, or to give us anything to read a Footnote exhibit. Scan the code and it opens.
• We never sell personal information. Exhibit pages carry no advertising or tracking cookies at all. This marketing website does — see below.
• Survey answers are anonymous. We do not record who gave them.
• If you donate, your card details go straight to Stripe. We never see or store them.
• For the institution's content and its visitors, we act on that institution's instructions.

Who this covers

Footnote is operated by MUSE INNOVATION LAB LLC (“Footnote”, “we”, “us”). Three kinds of people appear in this policy:

• Institutions — museums, historic sites, zoos, gardens, hospitals, campuses, chambers of commerce and similar organizations that subscribe to Footnote, and the staff who use the dashboard.
• Visitors — members of the public who open an exhibit, usually by scanning a code beside an object.
• App users — Visitors who choose to install the free Footnote app and create an account in it.

Our role: when we decide, and when we don't

For Institution accounts, our own website, and our marketing, we decide how information is used. In data-protection language we are the controller, and this policy governs.

For everything that happens inside an Institution's exhibits — what its Visitors open, what they answer in its surveys — we act on that Institution's instructions. We are the processor and the Institution is the controller. Their privacy policy governs what they do with that information; this policy governs how we handle it for them.

Information about Institutions and their staff

When you open an account with us we collect:

• Your name and email address, and the organization you belong to.
• Your role and permissions within your organization's account.
• Billing details. Card numbers go directly to Stripe, our payment processor; we hold only what Stripe returns to us, such as the card brand, the last four digits, and whether a payment succeeded.
• Records of your correspondence with us.
• Ordinary technical information when you use the dashboard — IP address, browser and device type — used to keep the account secure and to diagnose faults.

We use this to provide the service, take payment, support you, keep the service secure, meet our legal obligations, and — where you have not opted out — to tell you about Footnote.

Information about Visitors

Opening an exhibit does not require an account and does not ask you for anything about yourself.

We do measure how exhibits are used, so the institution can see which objects held attention. That measurement records the exhibit opened, the time spent, whether audio or video was played, and general device and language information. It is keyed to a random identifier stored in your own browser, not to you. That identifier is not derived from anything about you, is not shared with the institution as an identifier, and is cleared if you clear your browser storage.

We do not use tracking cookies on exhibit pages. Analytics there is provided by Mixpanel; error reporting by Sentry. The marketing website is different — see “Advertising on this website”.

Survey answers

An institution can ask you questions through an exhibit. Answering is voluntary.

Answers are stored anonymously. Footnote records the answer text, which survey it belongs to, whether it came from the web or the app, and the time. We do not store your name, your email address, or your IP address with a response, and there is no identifier that lets an institution work out which visitor gave which answer.

Institutions are contractually required not to ask questions that invite you to identify yourself. If you are ever shown a Footnote survey that asks for your name, email, health information or similar, please tell us at hello@tryfootnote.com.

Donations

If you donate to an institution through Footnote, you are paying that institution, not us. The payment is processed by Stripe on the institution's own Stripe account.

Your card details are entered on Stripe's own payment page and go directly to Stripe. Footnote never receives or stores your card number. Stripe handles your payment information under its own privacy policy. The institution receives the donation and whatever details Stripe passes to it, such as your name, email address and the amount, so that it can thank you and issue a receipt.

We receive the fact that a donation occurred and its amount, so that we can account for our platform fee.

The Footnote app

The app is optional; everything on an institution's labels works without it. If you create an app account we collect your name and email address, and we store the things the account exists to remember — the exhibits you saved, the places you follow, and your preferences.

The app uses your camera to scan codes. Images from the camera are processed on your device to read the code and are not uploaded to us. The app does not track your location in the background.

You can delete your app account and the data held with it at any time at tryfootnote.com/account-deletion, or from within the app.

Translation

Content an institution publishes can be translated automatically. Text sent for translation is processed by DeepL, our translation provider. Survey answers are not sent for translation.

Who else sees information, and why

We do not sell personal information. We use a small number of service providers, each handling only what its job requires:

• Vercel — hosting for the website, the dashboard and exhibit pages, and storage for uploaded media.
• Stripe — subscription payments and visitor donations.
• DeepL — machine translation of published content.
• Mixpanel — anonymous usage measurement.
• Sentry — error and crash reporting.
• Resend — transactional email, such as account and confirmation messages.
• Google and Meta — advertising measurement on the marketing website only.

We also share information where we must: to comply with the law or valid legal process, to enforce our terms, to protect the rights or safety of people or property, and — if Footnote is ever sold or merged — with the acquiring organization, in which case we will tell you.

Advertising on this website

This marketing website — tryfootnote.com — carries Google Tag Manager and a Meta (Facebook) advertising pixel, so that we can tell which advertising brings institutions to us. These set cookies and share information about your visit with Google and Meta, which under California law counts as “sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising.”

This applies to the marketing website only. The exhibit pages your visitors see when they scan a code carry no advertising tags, no pixels, and no tracking cookies — nothing about a museum visitor is shared with an advertising network.

To opt out, turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser — several browsers and extensions offer it, and some have it on by default. We check for that signal and load no advertising tags when we see it. You can also write to hello@tryfootnote.com with “Do Not Share” in the subject line.

Children

Museums, zoos and historic sites are visited by children, often with a school. We have designed the visitor experience so that using it does not require a child to give up anything about themselves: no account, no sign-in, no personal details, and anonymous surveys.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Institutions are contractually prohibited from using Footnote surveys to collect personal information from anyone, which includes children. The Footnote app is intended for people aged 13 and over.

If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to hello@tryfootnote.com and we will delete it.

How long we keep things

• Institution account and billing records: for as long as the account is open, and afterwards for as long as we need them for tax, accounting and legal purposes.
• Published content: while the subscription is active, and for 30 days after it ends so that it can be exported, after which it is deleted.
• Survey answers: held for the institution until it deletes them, or until its account closes.
• Anonymous usage measurement: retained in aggregate; it does not identify anyone.
• App accounts: until you delete the account, at which point the account and the data held with it are deleted.
• Support correspondence: kept while it is useful for supporting you, then deleted.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal information, to correct it, to delete it, to limit or object to how we use it, to receive it in a portable form, and to opt out of marketing. You will not be treated differently for exercising any of these rights.

To make a request, email hello@tryfootnote.com with “Privacy” in the subject line. We may need to verify who you are before we act, and we will respond within the time the applicable law allows.

If your request concerns something an institution published or collected through its exhibits, we will pass it to that institution, since they decide what happens to it.

US state privacy rights

Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and other states with comprehensive privacy laws have the rights described above, including the right to know what is collected, to have it deleted or corrected, and to opt out of sale or targeted advertising.

We do not sell personal information. We do share it for cross-context behavioral advertising on this marketing website, through the tags described above — see that section for how to opt out. We honor the Global Privacy Control signal. Californians may also designate an authorized agent to make a request on their behalf, and may appeal a decision by replying to it.

Security

We take reasonable measures to protect personal information, including encryption in transit, access controls that keep each institution's data separate from every other institution's, and keeping payment card handling entirely with Stripe so that we never hold it. No service can promise perfect security, and we do not.

Where information is held

Footnote is operated from the United States, and information is stored and processed there. If you use Footnote from outside the United States, you are sending information to a country whose data-protection laws may differ from your own.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it last changed, and we will give notice of material changes by email or in the dashboard.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about how your information is handled: hello@tryfootnote.com, with “Privacy” in the subject line. Postal correspondence should be addressed to MUSE INNOVATION LAB LLC.