Privacy Policy

Numista.AI ("we", "our", or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, store, and share information when you use our mobile/web application ("Service") and the Numista.AI Desktop Agent ("Desktop Agent"), which is the software downloaded to connect a physical microscope to the Service.

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1. Information We Collect and Access

We limit our data collection to only what is strictly necessary to run the Service, identify your numismatic specimens, and facilitate your estate planning preferences.

A. Information Collected via the Desktop Agent (Microscope Connector)

The Desktop Agent is a local utility that runs on your personal computer to interface with your USB microscope or webcam. It collects and accesses:

• Account Association (Email Address): The Desktop Agent requires your Numista.AI account email address. This is entered during the initial setup wizard or sent via the local pairing protocol when you link the agent to the web interface. It is used solely to route scanner commands and associate captured images with your account.
• Device Alias (Optional): You may optionally provide a friendly name for your computer (e.g., "Main PC" or "Coin Room Desktop"). This is stored locally and used in your user dashboard to identify which hardware agent is sending scans.
• Local Video Stream & Viewfinder: The Desktop Agent accesses your connected USB microscope or camera to calculate image sharpness and display a centering viewfinder. This live video feed is processed entirely locally on your machine. We do not stream or record your live camera feed to our servers.
• Captured Coin Images: When the Desktop Agent detects that a coin is stable and in focus, it captures high-resolution static snapshots (Obverse and Reverse). These images are saved temporarily in a local directory before being uploaded to your private folder on Google Cloud Storage.
• Operational Logs: The agent writes status and diagnostic logs locally to your system configuration folder. These logs remain on your local computer and are not transmitted to us unless you manually provide them to support for troubleshooting.

B. Information Collected via the Web/Mobile Application

• Basic Profile Information: When you register, we utilize Firebase Authentication and security protocols to securely manage your account via your email address, an optional user-defined name or alias, a password or 6-digit security PIN, and encrypted third-party authentication tokens (such as Google Sign-In).
• Numismatic Collection Data: We store the coin collection data you input, including year, denomination, mint mark, variety, purchase cost, storage location, grades, custom notes, and image URLs. This data is securely saved in Google Cloud Firestore. Optional Reference Library Contribution: If you voluntarily opt-in via our in-app photo consent settings, high-quality images of your specimens may be anonymized and contributed to our public global reference library to help improve the coin identification catalog for the collector community; this feature is strictly optional and off by default.
• AI Analysis Results: We retain the metadata generated by our AI models (such as estimated grade, series, and attributes) to show you details about your collection.

C. Personal Data Collected via the Estate Planning Feature (Zero-Knowledge Architecture)

To maximize privacy, our Estate Planning feature operates under a Zero-Knowledge design regarding your sensitive legal and contact information:

• Persistent Anonymous Data: We store only your state/legal jurisdiction (to apply state-specific rules like tax cliffs or limits), your marital status, and anonymous beneficiary aliases (e.g., "Primary Heir" or "Daughter") that you use to allocate your collection.
• In-Memory Processing for PDF Generation: Sensitive personal details (such as the estate owner's legal name, executor contact details, attorney contact info, and the mapping of aliases to real names) are processed entirely in-memory on our secure servers during the PDF report generation request. These details are printed on the generated PDF report itself but are never stored in our cloud databases.
• Generated PDF Storage: The compiled PDF report is uploaded and stored securely as a private document in Google Cloud Storage with restricted access.
• Collection Distribution Preferences: Your instructions for collection liquidation (e.g., consign all items, maximize financial value, or keep in the family) and your preferred professional auction houses/consignors (e.g., Heritage Auctions, GreatCollections, or Stack's Bowers).

2. How the Desktop Agent Operates (Local Loopback Connectivity)

To communicate with the web browser application (running on https://numista.ai) without transmitting your private, live camera feed over the public internet, the Desktop Agent establishes a lightweight local loopback server on localhost:5000.

• Local HTTPS / TLS Security: This connection is secured using local SSL/TLS certificates, ensuring all local transit between your web browser and the Desktop Agent is encrypted to prevent local sniffing or interception.
• Local Isolation: This connection operates strictly within your local machine's loopback interface. No external internet traffic can access this port, preventing external entities from intercepting local hardware data.
• CORS Safeguards: The local server enforces strict Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) rules that restrict connection requests to official Numista.AI web domains and local developer addresses, ignoring any incoming requests from unauthorized third-party sites.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to operate, maintain, and improve our services, specifically:

• Collection Syncing: To upload microscope captures and automatically log coin records to your personal "My Collection" database.
• AI Numismatic Identification: To send captured coin images to our secure AI processing pipeline (using Google Cloud's Gemini enterprise platform) to identify the coin's type, year, mint mark, and die varieties.
• Third-Party Database Enrichment: To query numismatic databases (such as PCGS) using identified attributes to retrieve structural values, melt estimates, and historical data.
• Estate Planning PDF Generation: To process your estate profile, collection inventory, and beneficiary allocations to compile legal estate reports and tangible personal property memoranda.
• Direct Sharing Facilitation: To generate local email layout templates and clipboard text packages allowing you to quickly share your downloaded inventory directly with your legal counsel via your own email client.
• Service Diagnostics: To troubleshoot hardware connection issues, optimize camera autofocus/manual-focus calculations, and improve the accuracy of our visual classification models.

4. Sharing Your Information

We do not sell, rent, trade, or share your personal data with third-party advertisers or marketers. We only share information with trusted third-party service providers who help us operate our platform:

• Cloud Infrastructure Providers: Your account details, coin collection, and estate profiles are stored securely on Google Firebase (Google Cloud Firestore and Google Cloud Storage).
• Global Reference Library Index: If you explicitly opt-in to contribute images, your anonymized coin photos (stripped of all user identifiers, costs, and personal notes) are hosted in our public reference library bucket on Google Cloud Storage to populate the canonical catalog for all users.
• AI and Numismatic Enrichment Partners: Scanned images are transmitted securely to Google Cloud's Gemini enterprise platform (via the Google Gen AI SDK) for image classification, structural analysis, and variety detection. Because we utilize Google Cloud's enterprise infrastructure, your uploaded images and metadata are strictly protected under enterprise data governance policies and are never used by Google to train public machine learning models. Coin metadata is sent to PCGS APIs to retrieve coin records. These partners do not use your data for any purposes outside of performing these services for Numista.AI.
• Affiliate Integration Partners: When viewing or interacting with your collection wishlist, the Service integrates with the eBay Partner Network (EPN) to surface live product availability cards. Interacting with these features utilizes standard affiliate tracking identifiers to manage campaign routing, strictly isolated from your personal estate data.
• Legal Compliance: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, protect our rights, or prevent fraud.

5. Data Security

We implement standard administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to secure your personal information:

• All communications between the Desktop Agent, the web application, and our cloud databases are encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS/HTTPS).
• Database isolation is enforced at the database level: Firestore security rules prevent any user from reading, writing, or accessing coin records, estate profiles, or image URLs belonging to another user.
• Volatile PDF Rendering: Estate reports are rendered via temporary server infrastructure, ensuring that high-value inventory results combined with real personal identities never exist on static disk storage.

6. Your Choices and Data Control

You maintain full control over the data you provide to Numista.AI:

• Deleting Coins: You can delete individual coin records and their associated microscope images from your collection at any time via the web app.
• Editing or Deleting Estate Profiles: You can edit, update, or completely delete your estate profile and anonymous beneficiary lists at any time in the Estate Planning dashboard.
• Deleting Your Account: You can permanently delete your Numista.AI account and erase your entire database record (including your estate profile and anonymous generation metadata) from Firebase by contacting support or using the delete feature in the web application settings.
• Local Agent Data Deletion: You can delete the Desktop Agent's local files at any time by uninstalling the software and deleting the configuration directory located in your AppData directory.