This policy describes how Observable, Inc. (“we,” “us,” or “Company”) collects, aggregates, stores, protects, and uses the data and information (including non-public personal information, or “NPI”) provided by users through our website, observablehq.com (the “Site”), and through other channels such as email, phone, or in offline communications. This Site is operated by the Company and has been created to provide information about our company, products, and services (together, the “Services”). This policy applies to the Site, the Services, our mobile, tablet, and other smart device applications, and application program interfaces (collectively, "Application"). The Site, Application, and Services together are hereinafter collectively referred to as the “Site.”
We take your privacy and the security of your information seriously.
This policy explains:
What information we collect
How we manage the information we collect
This policy is incorporated into and a material term of your registration and/or use of Company’s products and services, including our website, observablehq.com. By using the Site, you consent to the practices set forth in this Privacy Policy.
Effective: July 10, 2025
We collect your information only with your consent in accordance with our Terms of Service. We only collect personal information that is necessary to fulfill the purpose of your interaction with us. We don’t sell your personal information to third parties, and we only use it as this Policy describes.
For any questions about this Policy, please contact support@observablehq.com.
For definitions of terms, please see our Terms of Service.
We may collect browsing information from all visitors to the Website and users of our Service, including, without limitation, potentially personally-identifying information such as the visitor’s browser type, language preference, referring site, the date and time of each visitor request, and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
If you log in to Observable, we may require additional information: a valid email address, name, avatar image, biographical paragraph, and an account name from a supported identity provider.
If you sign up for a Team Account, we may require additional information: a valid business name, a business URL, a designated User to act as an owner of the team, and valid payment information.
If you configure your notebook to run on a Schedule, we temporarily store logs generated by the notebook, including things you have explicitly chosen to log as well as errors that may arise unexpectedly.
“User Personal Information” is any information about one of our users which could, alone or together with other information, personally identify him or her. Information such as a user name, an email address, a real name, and a photograph are examples of “User Personal Information.”
User Personal Information does not include aggregated, non-personally identifying information. We may use aggregated, non-personally identifying information for any lawful purpose, including, but not limited to, operating, improving, marketing, and optimizing our website and service.
Our system is designed to avoid collecting sensitive personal information, such as social security numbers, genetic data, health information, or religious information.
Our system is designed to avoid collecting User Personal Information that is stored in your notebooks or any other free-form content inputs, including information shared with integrated third-party solutions. Information in your notebooks belongs to you, and you are responsible for it, as well as for making sure that your content complies with our Terms of Service.
If your notebook is public, anyone (including Observable employees) may view its contents. If you have included private or sensitive information in your public notebook, such as email addresses, that information may be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. In addition, while we do not generally search for content in your private notebooks, we may scan our servers for certain tokens or security signatures, or for known active malware.
We do share User Personal Information with your permission, so we can perform services you have requested or communicate on your behalf. For example, if you suggest a notebook to another Observable User, we will send them an email including your name and Observable login, and a link to your suggested notebook. If you join a Team Account, the other members of the team will be able to view and edit any team notebooks you create. We will respect your choices.
We do not share, sell, rent, or trade User Personal Information with third parties for their commercial purposes.
We do not host advertising on Observable. We may occasionally embed content from third party sites, such as YouTube, and that content may include ads. Any advertisements on individual Observable notebooks are not sponsored by, or tracked by, Observable.
Other than as described in this Privacy Policy, we do not disclose User Personal Information outside Observable, except in the situations listed in this section, when compelled to by law, and/or as technically required by your use of Observable’s Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) features and/or product suite.
Artificial Intelligence. Some element of Observable 's AI functionality is powered by Claude, an AI product offered by Anthropic, Inc. and headquartered at 548 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94104. When you use and/or opt-in to using Observable AI functionality, you recognize that some or all of the data related to your usage or query will be shared with Claude, and, by extension, Anthropic. If you have any questions surrounding your use of Observable AI functionality, including its privacy implications, please contact support@observablehq.com. Please refer to Section 7, below, with more information on how we manage your data.
We do share certain aggregated and anonymized information with others about how our users interact with Observable. For example, we may compile statistics on the usage of open source libraries across Observable. However, we do not sell this information to advertisers or marketers.
We may share User Personal Information with your permission, so we can perform services you have requested.
We may share User Personal Information with a limited number of third-party vendors who process it on our behalf to provide or improve our service, and who have agreed to privacy restrictions similar those in our Terms of Service. Our vendors may perform services such as payment processing, marketing communications (subject to the right to opt-out), sending email on our behalf, customer relationship management, content delivery networking, error log analysis, data center hosting and other similar services.
We may share User Personal Information if we are involved in a financing, merger, sale, or acquisition.
Much of Observable is public-facing. If your content is public-facing, third parties may access and use it in compliance with our Terms of Service. We do not sell that content; it is yours. However, we do allow third parties, such as internet archives, to compile public-facing Observable information.
Your Personal Information, associated with your content, may be gathered by third parties in these compilations of Observable data. If you do not want your Personal Information to appear in third parties’ compilations of Observable data, please do not make your Personal Information publicly available.
Observable uses cookies (and similar technologies, such as HTML5 localStorage) to keep you logged in, remember your preferences, and provide information for future development of Observable. The cookies Observable sets are essential for the operation of the website or are used for performance or functionality. By using the Website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your computer or device. If you disable your browser or device’s ability to accept cookies, you will not be able to log in or use the Service.
Certain pages on our site may set other third party cookies. For example, we may embed content, such as videos, from another site that sets a cookie. Or another user’s notebook may embed a third party video. While we try to minimize these third party cookies, we can’t always control what cookies this third party content sets.
We use a number of third party analytics and service providers to help us evaluate our users’ use of Observable, compile statistical reports on activity, and improve our content and website performance. In addition, we use our own internal analytics software to provide features and improve our service and performance.
We do not permit third parties other than our analytics and service providers to track our users’ activity over time on Observable. We do not track your online browsing activity on other online services.
User-Generated Content is stored in our internal databases hosted in the United States by third-party providers administered by Observable. Sensitive Data (Secrets, Database Credentials, API Keys, and OAuth Tokens) are encrypted in our internal database. Observable does not store User-Generated Content on removable media devices. We retain monthly backups of our production database at our hosting provider.
Use of Observable’s AI functionality and AI features requires sharing data related to or arising from that use with Anthropic, Inc., as discussed in Section 3, above. Users can opt-out of such data sharing by opting out of using Observable AI.
It is Observable's policy to respect the principle of least privilege when designing access controls and administrative tools. We have provisioning and de-provisioning controls over administrative accounts with the ability to access User-Generated Content.
We have the right (though not the obligation) to remove any User-Generated Content when it violates any Observable terms (see Section D.2 of our Terms of Service)
Upon deletion of a User or Team Account, we will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements, but otherwise, we will delete your full profile, the Content of your private notebooks, your Secrets, and any other private information stored on Observable within a reasonable period of receiving the deletion request or termination (though some information may remain in encrypted backups). This information cannot be recovered once your account is deleted. However, we will not delete Content that you have contributed to other Users’ notebooks or that other Users have forked from your notebooks. This is described in Section K.2 of our Terms of Service.
Our employees are required to train on our company policies, which include:
Work Computer Policy: to properly secure employee endpoints
Secure Software Development Process: which describes how we design, build and deploy our software with security taken into consideration at every level
Security Incident Management Process: describing the steps and procedures that should be taken if an incident were to occur
Observable integrates with third-party services to offer features such as AI. When using these services, Observable will provide the user with clear options about what information it will send to the third party for processing. This may include notebook content as well as database schemas. Data sent to these third parties will be collected and stored in accordance with the third-party's retention policy.