Last updated December 28, 2025
This Privacy Notice for Otto Science Institute ("Otto," "we," "us," or "our"), describes how and why we might access, collect, store, use, and/or share ("process") your personal information when you use our services ("Services"), including when you:
Questions or concerns? Reading this Privacy Notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. We are responsible for making decisions about how your personal information is processed. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services. If you still have any questions or concerns, please contact us at privacy@ottosr.com.
When you visit, use, or navigate our Services, we may process personal information depending on how you interact with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use.
Some of the information may be considered "special" or "sensitive" in certain jurisdictions, for example your racial or ethnic origins, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs. We do not process sensitive personal information.
We do not collect any information from third parties.
We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent. We process your information only when we have a valid legal reason to do so.
We may share information in specific situations and with specific third parties.
We have adequate organizational and technical processes and procedures in place to protect your personal information. However, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information.
Depending on where you are located geographically, the applicable privacy law may mean you have certain rights regarding your personal information.
The easiest way to exercise your rights is by submitting a data subject access request, or by contacting us. We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you register on the Services, express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and Services, when you participate in activities on the Services, or otherwise when you contact us.
Personal Information Provided by You. The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. The personal information we collect may include:
Sensitive Information. We do not process sensitive information.
Payment Data. We may collect data necessary to process your payment if you choose to make purchases, such as your payment instrument number, and the security code associated with your payment instrument. All payment data is handled and stored by Stripe. You may find their privacy notice link(s) here: stripe.com/privacy.
Social Media Login Data. We may provide you with the option to register with us using your existing social media account details, like your Facebook, X, or other social media account. If you choose to register in this way, we will collect certain profile information about you from the social media provider, as described in the section called "HOW DO WE HANDLE YOUR SOCIAL LOGINS?" below.
All personal information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information.
We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate the Services. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, location, information about how and when you use our Services, and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Services, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.
Like many businesses, we also collect information through cookies and similar technologies. You can find out more about this in our Cookie Notice: Cookie Notice.
The information we collect includes:
Our use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our Services, including:
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on in order to process your personal information. As such, we may rely on the following legal bases:
We may process your information if you have given us specific permission (i.e., express consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose, or in situations where your permission can be inferred (i.e., implied consent). You can withdraw your consent at any time.
In some exceptional cases, we may be legally permitted under applicable law to process your information without your consent, including:
We may disclose de-identified information for approved research or statistics projects, subject to ethics oversight and confidentiality commitments.
As part of our Services, we offer products, features, or tools powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, or similar technologies (collectively, "AI Products"). These tools are designed to enhance your experience and provide you with innovative solutions. The terms in this Privacy Notice govern your use of the AI Products within our Services.
We provide the AI Products through third-party service providers ("AI Service Providers"), including Anthropic, Google Cloud AI, OpenAI and xAI. As outlined in this Privacy Notice, your input, output, and personal information will be shared with and processed by these AI Service Providers to enable your use of our AI Products for purposes outlined in "WHAT LEGAL BASES DO WE RELY ON TO PROCESS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?"
You must not use the AI Products in any way that violates the terms or policies of any AI Service Provider.
Our AI Products are designed for the following functions:
All personal information processed using our AI Products is handled in line with our Privacy Notice and our agreement with third parties. This ensures high security and safeguards your personal information throughout the process, giving you peace of mind about your data's safety.
We may use de-identified User Inputs and Service Data to operate, secure, and improve our Services, including to evaluate and tune model performance and to develop new features. We do not use Licensed Content, such as paywalled or copyrighted scientific articles you upload, for model training or to build datasets for redistribution or repurposing.
Where we use third-party AI service providers to process your inputs and outputs, we configure and contract with those providers to apply zero-data-retention and no-training settings. Providers must not use Ottocustomer data to train their foundation models. You can learn more about each provider's data handling practices at: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Vertex AI.
You have choices regarding how we use your information.
Training opt-out. You may disable our use of your data for model training and product improvement at any time in your account settings (when available) or by emailing privacy@ottosr.com. We will honor opt-outs prospectively.
Interaction history controls. You may turn off interaction history logging or set an auto-deletion period for your interaction history. You may delete project-level interaction history at any time.
Deletion. You may request deletion of your account-level history and personal information at any time. We will act on your request promptly, subject to legal obligations that may require us to retain certain information for a limited period.
Our servers are located in the United States. Regardless of your location, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored by, and processed by us in our facilities and in the facilities of the third parties with whom we may share your personal information (see "WHEN AND WITH WHOM DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?" above), including facilities in the United States, and other countries.
If you are a resident in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom (UK), or Switzerland, then these countries may not necessarily have data protection laws or other similar laws as comprehensive as those in your country. However, we will take all necessary measures to protect your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Notice and applicable law.
We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us keeping your personal information for longer than the period of time in which users have an account with us.
When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.
We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information.
Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Services is at your own risk. You should only access the Services within a secure environment.
We do not knowingly collect, solicit data from, or market to children under 18 years of age or the equivalent age as specified by law in your jurisdiction, nor do we knowingly sell such personal information. By using the Services, you represent that you are at least 18 or the equivalent age as specified by law in your jurisdiction or that you are the parent or guardian of such a minor and consent to such minor dependent's use of the Services.
If we learn that personal information from users less than 18 years of age or the equivalent age as specified by law in your jurisdiction has been collected, we will deactivate the account and take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records. If you become aware of any data we may have collected from children under age 18 or the equivalent age as specified by law in your jurisdiction, please contact us at paul@ottosr.com.
In some regions (like the EEA, UK, Switzerland, and Canada), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right:
If a decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects is made solely by automated means, we will inform you, explain the main factors, and offer a simple way to request human review.
You can make such a request by contacting us using the contact details provided in the section "HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?" below. We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided in the section "HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?" below.
However, please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal nor, when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
If you would at any time like to review or change the information in your account or terminate your account, you can contact us using the contact information provided. Upon your request to terminate your account, we will deactivate or delete your account and information from our active databases. However, we may retain some information in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our legal terms and/or comply with applicable legal requirements.
Most Web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove cookies and to reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our Services. For further information, please see our Cookie Notice.
If you have questions or comments about your privacy rights, you may email us at privacy@ottosr.com.
Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage, no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online.
If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this Privacy Notice.
California law requires us to let you know how we respond to web browser DNT signals. Because there currently is not an industry or legal standard for recognizing or honoring DNT signals, we do not respond to them at this time.
The table below shows the categories of personal information we have collected in the past twelve (12) months:
We will use and retain the collected personal information as needed to provide the Services or for as long as the user has an account with us.
You have rights under certain US state data protection laws. However, these rights are not absolute, and in certain cases, we may decline your request as permitted by law. These rights include:
To exercise these rights, you can contact us by submitting a data subject access request, by emailing us at privacy@ottosr.com, or by referring to the contact details at the bottom of this document.
Upon receiving your request, we will need to verify your identity to determine you are the same person about whom we have the information in our system. We will only use personal information provided in your request to verify your identity or authority to make the request.
Under certain US state data protection laws, if we decline to take action regarding your request, you may appeal our decision by emailing us at privacy@ottosr.com. We will inform you in writing of any action taken or not taken in response to the appeal, including a written explanation of the reasons for the decisions. If your appeal is denied, you may submit a complaint to your state attorney general.
California Civil Code Section 1798.83, also known as the "Shine The Light" law, permits our users who are California residents to request and obtain from us, once a year and free of charge, information about categories of personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes and the names and addresses of all third parties with which we shared personal information in the immediately preceding calendar year. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please submit your request in writing to us using the contact details provided in the section "HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?"
We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated "Revised" date at the top of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this Privacy Notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.
If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO) by email at paul@ottosr.com, by phone at (548) 390-5350, or contact us by post at:
Data Protection Officer
1111B S Governors Ave, Dover, DE 19904, USA
STE 29360
Dover, DE 19904
United States
Phone: (548) 390-5350
Email: paul@ottosr.com
Based on the applicable laws of your country or state of residence in the US, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, details about how we have processed it, correct inaccuracies, or delete your personal information. You may also have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal information. These rights may be limited in some circumstances by applicable law.
To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, please fill out and submit a data subject access request.