Privacy and what you should know

What we keep and why, and what this project is.

Your data

This site keeps your e-mail address, your name and what you gave us at sign-up only so that you can access your account. Accounts cannot exist without it. Beyond that the site collects no data from you: no ads, no trackers, and I never sell or hand your data to anyone. We have no room for it anyway: storage devices are ultra expensive.

What is kept?

• Account: username, e-mail address, your name if you gave it, a salted hash of your password (never the password itself), your tier and, if you created one, an API key.
• If you signed up with Google or GitHub: only the verified e-mail address and name the provider shares. The provider never gives us your password.
• Guests: a daily-rotating hash derived from the IP address to count the daily quota; the IP address itself is not stored. Text you translate is not saved and tasks are deleted within one hour.
• Members: your translation history, tasks, glossary and translation memory are visible only to you (or to the members of an organization you joined). Because space is limited, history and finished tasks are deleted automatically after 30 days for free members and 365 days for Supporters and Academics; you can delete them yourself at any time.
• Cookies: only a session cookie (tv). Your theme and language choice stay in your browser. No analytics or advertising cookies.

Where is the server?

The whole system and the server are located in the Republic of Türkiye. Traffic passes through Cloudflare for speed and security; verification e-mails go out through an e-mail provider; if you sign in with Google or GitHub that provider knows you signed in. The Tilvar language model runs on this very server, and your text is not sent to third-party translation services. When translating websites, pages are fetched through the Tor network only. While “search the web” is on in the chat (you can turn it off), the short search query the assistant derives from your message is sent to DuckDuckGo through the Tor network; the pages it finds are read directly from our server, so those sites see our server’s address in their logs. Your message itself, your name and your account are not sent to them, but because the query is derived from your message, avoid typing private details into the chat. If you paste a link, that address is read. Images you upload are analysed only on this server, in memory; they are not saved, and metadata such as location (EXIF) is removed before the model sees them.

The browser extension

The Tilvar browser extension sends the text you ask it to translate or answer (selected text, the visible text of a page you want translated), images and your chat messages only to the server tilvar.athena.org.tr, and nowhere else. It contains no ads or analytics, does not read your browsing history and sends nothing unless you use it. Your API key, chat history and settings are stored only in your browser; the key goes to the server as a header with each request. On the server, whole-page translations made through the extension, chat messages and images are not stored; single-text translations are written to your translation history under the same rules as other translations. When web search is on in the chat, the rules described above apply.

This is not a service, it is a hobby

This system is not an offered service or business; it is a hobby project. I develop this AI, the Tilvar language model, as a hobby and keep developing it continuously. There are no guarantees and there can be outages. We sell no subscriptions of any kind: everything is completely free.

My resources are limited

My network connection is a simple optical fibre limited to 1 gigabit. By day the server’s power comes directly from the flexible solar panels on my balcony. At night it comes from the grid: dreadful mains electricity from an old, inefficient, coal-burning, polluting power plant. So please run heavy or unnecessary jobs during the day to reduce carbon emissions. Usage limits keep resources fair for everyone; but when the server is not under load, your limit grows automatically in your favour.

Becoming a Supporter

Anyone who supports the project through Coffee becomes a Supporter. The Supporter status gives priority and unlimited access. Under the laws of the Republic of Türkiye, income received through Coffee is taxed automatically in the Social Content Creator tax class; the tax is deducted before I receive the payment. For this reason Coffee contributions cannot be refunded. When a contribution arrives, Coffee sends me the amount, the number of coffees, the supporter's e-mail address and the message; I use them only to credit the contribution to the right account and keep them with the payment record until your account is deleted.

If you would like to gift hardware

If you like one of my projects and would like to send, say, an RTX 6000 so that I can train better language models and offer more varied, nicer tools to everyone: that is not possible because of Türkiye’s customs policies (I cannot afford the huge taxes and a customs broker). Instead you can buy the device you would like to gift from an online marketplace in Türkiye. Get in touch with me about it; I have plenty of time, so I will probably reply within the day.

Academics

If you are an academic or a master’s / doctoral student and want unlimited access, send me an e-mail from your university address: your account gets the Academic status and unlimited access. Please state in your papers that you used my AI model.

Contact, suggestions, bug reports

For any suggestion, bug, problem or vulnerability report, write an e-mail that describes the issue directly: [email protected]. If you are an ultra-rich company and want to hire me: you meet my terms, I will not meet yours. So please keep the AI-written job spam out of my inbox; all my resources are limited!

Deleting your data

You can delete your account from the account page at any time. The account is removed immediately; your data in the tools is purged within about 20 minutes.