Privacy Statement

Version 1 — 22 May 2026

Who we are

Rerum is a research tool for exploring Catholic social teaching through AI-assisted search and answer generation. The data controller is Paul Twomey (paul.twomey@argopacific.com).

Rerum is hosted on the Railway platform, with servers located in California, United States (US West region).

What we collect and why

Guest users (no account)

If you use Rerum without creating an account, we collect nothing that identifies you personally. Your questions are sent to our servers to retrieve answers from Church documents and are not stored after your session ends. We do not log guest queries, link them to an IP address, or associate them with any persistent identity.

Registered users

When you create an account, we collect:

Email address — used to authenticate you and to send account-related messages (email verification, password reset). We do not use your email for marketing.
Display name — shown within the interface; you choose what to enter.
Hashed password — if you sign in with email and password. We store a one-way hash; we cannot recover your password.
Preferred language — used to prioritise sources in your chosen language.
Conversation history — your questions and Rerum's answers, stored so you can return to previous sessions.

We do not collect payment information, location data, or device identifiers.

How we use your data

To answer your questions by searching our document corpus and generating responses.
To let you return to previous conversations.
To maintain your account preferences (language, display name).
To send transactional emails you explicitly requested (verification links, password resets).
To study how Rerum is used, in aggregate, so we can improve it. This analysis uses conversation data stored in our own systems; we do not send it to third-party analytics services.

We do not sell your data. We do not share it with third parties except as described below.

Sharing and disclosure

We share data only in the following circumstances:

With your explicit consent — for example, if a future feature allows you to share a conversation with another user or make it publicly accessible. Any such sharing will be opt-in and explicitly confirmed by you, and you will be able to revoke it.
Service providers — we use Railway to host our infrastructure. Railway processes data on our behalf under its own privacy and security commitments.
Legal obligation — if required by law or a valid legal process.

Your rights

Delete your account — you can delete your account at any time from the account settings. This permanently removes your email address, display name, and all stored conversations.
Data portability — you may request a copy of the data we hold about you by emailing paul.twomey@argopacific.com.
Correction — if any stored information is inaccurate, contact us and we will correct it.

Cookies and storage

Rerum uses browser session storage to track the number of questions a guest has asked in the current tab session. This data is not sent to our servers and disappears when the tab is closed.

We use standard authentication cookies to keep registered users signed in. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking cookies.

Data retention

Guest sessions: no data is retained after the session ends.
Registered users: your data is retained until you delete your account.
Deleted accounts: account data is removed promptly. Anonymised aggregate statistics (e.g. total query counts) may be retained for internal analysis.

Changes to this statement

When we make material changes to this privacy statement, we will update the version date at the top of this page. Continued use of Rerum after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated statement.

Contact

For any privacy-related questions or requests, contact: paul.twomey@argopacific.com