Privacy statement

The rule

No outbound connection happens unless your internet mode allows it and the specific operation is permitted. Every network call in the product passes through a single gate that checks your setting first. During ordinary use that gate is never reached, and the product makes no external connections at all.

Internet modes

• Offline Only: nothing connects, ever. An update check you approved is still refused.
• Ask Before Connecting, the default: the product explains why it wants to connect, asks, and connects for that one operation.
• Internet Enabled: permits the categories you have switched on. The model on the stick still writes every answer.

What is never sent

When you use live internet search, only the search query needed to perform that search is sent to The Stick AI’s search service and its commercial search provider. Your documents, memory, My Knowledge and conversation history are not sent. A follow-up question is turned into a standalone search phrase on the stick, from your own words, before it goes. The results are handed to the model on the stick, which writes the answer. You see the exact query before approving it.

When you use live location features such as weather, place lookup or routing, only the location information needed to perform the request is sent to The Stick AI’s location service and, where required, the relevant data provider (for weather, MET Norway receives the place’s coordinates). Place names are resolved on the stick itself from a built-in list. Your documents, Memory, My Knowledge and conversation history are not sent. A default location you set in Settings stays on the drive.

Our hosting infrastructure necessarily receives normal connection information such as an IP address when live internet search or a live location feature is used. We use this information transiently to operate and protect the search and location services, including applying fair-use limits. We do not use it to build a profile of you, associate it with your documents, memory or conversations, or maintain a personal search history. Search queries are not logged; the service keeps only aggregate counts (how many searches, how many were limited) to run it.

Live internet search is included with The Stick AI for normal personal use. Fair-use limits apply per internet connection, so more than one Stick on the same connection shares one allowance; contact us if you regularly use several at one location. See the terms and fair use.

Your name and location, if you enter them, shape the assistant’s instructions on the stick. They never leave the drive.

The same holds for everything added since: scans and photos of documents are read by the text recognition built into Windows, on the PC, and no page is uploaded; spreadsheet totals and comparisons are calculated on the PC; dictation and reading aloud use the PC’s own speech engines; and a Create Image description goes to the picture engine on the drive as a process argument, is never written to a log, and the picture is saved on the drive.

Updates and knowledge packs

Checking for updates fetches a signed list of versions. Installing fetches the files that list names and the stick lacks. Each request carries a fixed program name and nothing else: no identifier, no query string, no cookie. The installed version is compared on the stick and never transmitted.

Nothing installs until its size, its hash and the list’s signature all verify against the key on the stick. Your folders (conversations, memory, documents, notes, output and assistants) are blocked as update targets; a package that touches them is refused whole. Every replaced file is backed up first.

World Knowledge packs are built from Wikidata (CC0) on our release machine, never by the stick.

What stays on the host PC

The product tries to leave the PC as it found it, and it is honest about the limits of that.

• The runtime unpacks about 150 MB of support files into the user profile. They are removed on exit when the default “remove temporary files” setting is on.
• A voice recording exists in the temporary folder only while it is being transcribed, then is deleted.
• Windows keeps its own traces of any program run from a removable drive (prefetch, recent items, event logs). Those are Windows’ records, not ours to remove.
• Your browser caches the page and any images you paste into a chat, as it does for any site. The page sets no storage of its own.
• Create Image starts the picture engine once per picture and it exits when the picture is done; it is never left running. The result of the one-time speed test is stored on the drive, not on the PC.

Verified, not assumed

On the shipping build, in Offline Only mode, a live-style question and an approved update check produced no connection from any of the product’s processes. Every process the product starts belongs to it and ends with it, so nothing keeps running after the window closes or the stick is pulled.

The drive itself

The stick is not encrypted. Anyone holding it can read what is on it. Keep it with you, and do not store passwords or other secrets on it.

This website

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics. If you use the “tell me when it ships” form, we keep your email address, the time, and the country the request came from in our own database, and send you one confirmation email. We use the address for that single purpose, never share it, and delete it if you reply asking us to. If you buy, Stripe handles the payment under its own privacy terms; we never see your card. We receive your name, email, phone and shipping address, keep them in our own database to fulfil and support the order, and share the address only with the carrier that delivers it.

Questions: support@thestick.online.