Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective date: September 18, 2026 (v1.1)
Last updated: September 18, 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how DocuShield Inc. ("DocuShield," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, stores and shares personal data when you use our website at docushield.live and the DocuShield electronic trade document platform (the "Service"). It is written for the people whose data we handle: the staff of our business customers, and the individuals named on the trade documents those customers issue.
This policy is a notice, not a contract. Our Terms of Service govern your organization's use of the Service. Where we act as a processor for a customer, that customer's own privacy notice also applies to you.
1. Who we are and what we do
DocuShield is a business-to-business platform. Our customers are freight forwarders, NVOCCs and other trading organizations. Customers use the Service to issue electronic trade documents as cryptographically signed, tamper-evident records, and, for three document types (electronic bill of lading, bill of exchange, promissory note), to bind the document to a title record on a public blockchain.
We do not offer the Service to consumers.
2. Our role: controller or processor
We handle two kinds of personal data, and our role is different for each.
Data about our users. For account, sign-in, invitation, event-history, security and billing data, DocuShield decides why and how the data is processed. We are the controller.
Data inside documents. Trade documents often contain personal data about people who are not our users: a named shipper, consignee, notify party or contact. Our customer decides what goes into a document and why. For that data DocuShield acts as a processor on the customer's instructions, and the customer is the controller. If you are named on a document and want to exercise your rights, the customer that issued the document is usually the right first contact; we will help route your request.
This characterization is our working position for the pilot. We may update it if counsel or a supervisory authority requires a different framing.
3. What we collect
| Category | Examples | Who it is about |
|---|---|---|
| Account and contact data | Work email address; name and job title where provided; organization name | Our users |
| Organization identifiers | Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) or EORI number, if provided. We check these against the public registry to confirm the entity exists. That check does not confirm that you control the entity | Our customers |
| Wallet address | A public blockchain wallet address generated for each user through Magic when they first sign in | Our users |
| Invitation records | Email addresses submitted for invitation, and their approval or waitlist status. No account is created for an unapproved address | Invited people |
| Document data | The contents of documents a customer issues, including names, addresses and contact details of parties to a shipment | People named on documents |
| Document event history | An append-only record of who issued, transferred, endorsed, surrendered or verified a document, and when | Our users |
| Security data | Session tokens (stored hashed) and API keys (stored hashed, never in plain text) | Our users |
| Usage and technical data | Pages visited, features used, IP address, browser and device information, and application and error logs, which may contain email addresses or other personal data that appears in a request | Our users and, incidentally, people named in requests |
| Billing data | Billing contact and Stripe customer identifiers, only if a paid plan is enabled. Not collected during the free pilot. We never store full card numbers | Customer billing staff |
| Communications | Emails and messages you send us | Anyone who contacts us |
| Website analytics | Pages viewed on docushield.live, the referring site, and browser, device type and country. No cookies are set and IP addresses are not stored | Visitors to our website |
We do not seek to collect sensitive (special-category) personal data. If a customer puts such data into a document, that is the customer's decision and we process it only as a processor.
4. How we use personal data and on what basis
Where US state privacy laws apply, we process personal data for the business purposes described below. Where the UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies to a particular person or processing, we rely on the bases in the table.
| Purpose | Basis (where UK/EU GDPR applies) |
|---|---|
| Provide the Service: issue, verify, transfer, endorse and surrender documents | Performance of our contract with the customer |
| Authenticate users and secure the Service | Contract; our legitimate interest in security |
| Manage invitations and the invite-only allowlist | Legitimate interest; contract |
| Keep the append-only event history that makes documents tamper-evident | Legitimate interest; legal obligation where record-keeping rules apply |
| Send transactional email (invitations, document notifications, security alerts) | Contract; legitimate interest |
| Operate, monitor, debug and improve the Service | Legitimate interest |
| Billing, if a paid plan is enabled | Contract |
| Comply with law, respond to lawful requests, and establish or defend legal claims | Legal obligation; legitimate interest |
| Screen the parties named in documents, and transfer recipients, against published sanctions lists | Legal obligation where sanctions law applies; legitimate interest in preventing unlawful use of the Service |
| Measure how our website is used | Legitimate interest |
We do not use personal data to train machine-learning models. We do not sell, rent or trade personal data. We do not send marketing email without your opt-in, and you can withdraw that opt-in at any time.
5. The blockchain: what is public and what cannot be deleted
Please read this section. It describes something that is different from most software services.
Which ledger. Transferable records are bound to a public blockchain designated by DocuShield. The identity of that network, its chain identifier, and the addresses of the DocuShield registry contracts are published at docushield.live/technical (and in the System Rulebook when published).
What goes on-chain. For a transferable record we write to the public ledger: a title token; a cryptographic hash of the signed document; and the public wallet addresses of the parties who hold or are entitled to the record, together with the history of transfers between them. The document's contents (names, cargo, addresses) are not written to the chain. They are stored in our systems.
Wallet addresses are personal data. A wallet address is a pseudonym. On its own it does not identify you, but combined with other information it can. Because wallet addresses are published on a public ledger, anyone can see which addresses held a record and when.
Nothing on-chain can be deleted. On-chain data is permanent by design. DocuShield cannot edit or remove it, and neither can anyone else. If you exercise a right to erasure, we will erase what is in our own systems, and we will disconnect your account from the wallet address in our records, but the on-chain token, hash and address history will remain.
Signed documents are also permanent by design. A document issued through the Service is a signed, tamper-evident record. Changing or removing personal data inside it would break its signature and its value as evidence. Where erasure is requested for data inside an issued document, we will work with the customer that issued it, but we may need to retain the signed record for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.
Verification is read-only. Anyone can check on our verification page whether a document is authentic and unaltered. Verification reveals the document's contents only to someone who already has the document. It does not transfer or affect control of any record.
6. Who we share personal data with
We share personal data with service providers that process it on our behalf, with our customers (for data they control), and where the law requires. We do not permit any service provider to use personal data for its own purposes. We have data processing agreements in place with several of them and are completing agreements with the rest.
| Provider | What it does | Data it may see |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase (hosted on AWS, us-west-2, Oregon, USA) | Database and file storage | Most categories above |
| Magic (magic.link) | Email one-time-passcode sign-in and wallet key management | Work email; wallet address |
| Resend | Transactional email | Email addresses; message content |
| Stripe | Payments, only if a paid plan is enabled | Billing data |
| Hostinger (VPS, Boston, USA) | Application hosting | Technical and usage data; application logs; website analytics records |
| Anthropic (Claude API) | AI-assisted form filling: reads a document a user uploads and suggests values for the form | The contents of the uploaded document, which may include names, addresses and contact details of parties to a shipment |
| Microsoft 365 | Business email | Emails sent to us, and their contents |
| Ankr (blockchain access provider) | Connects your browser to the designated blockchain when you use the Service | Your IP address; your wallet address |
| Uptime monitoring service | Checks that the Service is reachable and responding | Availability data only; it does not receive personal data |
We may add error or performance monitoring tools as the Service grows. If we do, they will process technical data and any personal data contained in an error report, under a data processing agreement, and we will update this table.
We may also disclose personal data to comply with a legal obligation, a court order or a lawful request from a public authority, to protect the rights, property or safety of DocuShield, our customers or others, or in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, in which case this policy will continue to apply to the transferred data.
The current list of providers, with where each processes data, is published at docushield.live/sub-processors, and we update it before adding a new one.
The designated public blockchain is not our service provider. It is a public network operated by independent participants. Data written to it is governed by that network's own rules, not by our agreements with providers.
7. Where data is stored and international transfers
Our application servers are hosted by Hostinger in Boston, USA, and our database and file storage are hosted by Supabase on AWS in Oregon, USA. Our other providers may process data in the United States and in other countries where they operate.
If you are in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area or another jurisdiction that restricts international transfers, your personal data may be transferred to the United States. Where UK GDPR or EU GDPR requires a transfer mechanism, we will use an appropriate safeguard (for example the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or a provider's Data Privacy Framework certification where available). Details for a specific transfer are available on request at info@docushield.live.
Data on the public blockchain is replicated on nodes worldwide and cannot be localized to any single country.
8. How long we keep data
We keep personal data for as long as needed for the purposes above, and afterward as required by law or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims. In outline:
- Account and contact data: for the life of the account, then a limited period after closure.
- Document data and event history: for the life of the customer relationship and the retention period that applies to trade and commercial records, because these are the customer's business records and may be needed as evidence.
- Invitation records for unapproved addresses: until the address is approved or the invitation expires.
- Logs and technical data: a short rolling period.
- Website analytics records: 90 days, then deleted automatically.
- Billing records: as required by tax and accounting law.
Our full retention schedule is available on request. Nothing in this section applies to data on the public blockchain, which cannot be deleted (Section 5).
9. Your rights
Depending on where you are, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you and receive a copy.
- Correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Erase your data, subject to the blockchain and signed-document limits in Section 5 and to legal retention.
- Restrict or object to certain processing, including any processing based on legitimate interests.
- Receive your data in a portable format.
- Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
- Not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that has legal or similarly significant effects. One automated check applies: when a document is issued or transferred, the named parties or the recipient are compared with published sanctions lists, and a match can stop the issuance or transfer. You can ask for a person to review any such result by emailing info@docushield.live.
- Complain to a data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office; in the EEA it is the authority in your country.
To exercise a right, email info@docushield.live. We may ask you to verify your identity. We aim to respond within one month, and within 45 days for requests under US state privacy laws, and we will tell you if we need longer.
If your data is inside a document that a customer issued, we will route your request to that customer and assist them as their processor.
California residents: we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in the CCPA/CPRA, and we do not use it for cross-context behavioral advertising. You have the rights to know, delete, correct and not be discriminated against for exercising them.
10. Cookies and local storage
We use one strictly necessary cookie, set when you sign in to the Service, and browser storage to make the Service work. The sign-in cookie expires after 7 days or when you log out. Our website sets no cookies.
We do not use analytics, advertising or cross-site tracking cookies on the website or the Service. We measure how our website is used with analytics software that we run on our own server. It sets no cookies and does not store IP addresses (see Sections 3 and 8). If we introduce analytics cookies later, we will ask for your consent through a banner where the law requires it, and you can decline.
Our sign-in provider (Magic) and, if enabled, our payment provider (Stripe) may set their own cookies under their own policies.
11. Security
We protect personal data with measures that include: encryption in transit (TLS); encryption at rest provided by our database provider; row-level security on the database, configured deny-by-default; session tokens and API keys stored only as hashes; append-only event history; and access to production systems limited to authorized staff.
No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a personal data breach that is likely to affect you, we will notify you and, where required, the relevant authority, in line with applicable law.
12. Children
The Service is for business use. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.
13. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. For material changes we will notify users by email or through the Service before they take effect. The effective date at the top shows when the current version began to apply.
14. Contact
Privacy questions, rights requests and complaints: info@docushield.live
DocuShield Inc., New York, NY, USA
We have not appointed a data protection officer or a UK or EU representative. We will review this as the Service grows and update this section if that changes.