Privacy
Last updated 3 November 2026
- We only see emails you choose to forward to us.
- We read each one once to write your report, then delete it.
- We keep a small record of each check, with no words from the email, and delete that after 90 days.
- We reply only to the address that forwarded the email, and never write to anyone named inside it.
- We don’t sell anything about you or share anything for advertising.
- This website sets no cookies, has no analytics, and loads nothing from anyone else.
What happens when you forward an email
- Cloudflare receives it for us at check@headcheck.email and checks that your address is on our list. If it isn’t, the email is turned away there and never reaches our server.
- Our server holds it in a queue, normally for a few seconds. Before any report goes out, we check that the forward really came from your address, so nobody can get a report sent to someone else.
- Our software pulls out the facts a careful person would check: who really sent it, whether the sender’s identity checks passed, where its links go, and what it asks you to do. It never opens attachments and never visits links.
- TypeSafe’s AI answers our questions about it. We send it a trimmed summary: who the email says it’s from, the subject, the first part of its text, the names of any attachments and the facts about its links. It answers questions like “does this ask you to sign in?” Our own code turns the answers into the report.
- We email the report back to the address that forwarded it, and only that address.
- The email and your address are wiped from the queue as soon as the job finishes, whatever happened. The database overwrites the space they took up.
What we keep
For each email we check, for 90 days:
- a fingerprint of the email (a one-way code that can tell us we’ve seen it before, but can’t be turned back into it);
- a fingerprint of your address, made with a secret key so a list of addresses can’t be matched against it;
- the domain you forwarded from, such as gmail.com or yourcompany.com;
- our reading (which of the five answers, and how likely each was), which version of our checks gave it, your plan, whether the email came as an attachment or inline, how long it took, and when.
Nothing from inside the email: no subject, no text, no names, no addresses and nothing from attachments.
We also keep:
- Who can use HeadCheck: each member’s address as a fingerprint only, or a whole company domain, with its plan and settings, for as long as they’re a member.
- Addresses we must never write to again (because mail to them bounced, or someone marked our reply as spam): a fingerprint, one word for why, and when.
- “Did this help?” answers: the answer, the reading it was about, and when. Not who answered, and never linked to the record above.
Google’s scam-site check
This is an optional add-on. When it’s on for your plan, each web address in the email is looked up in Google’s list of known scam sites before we read it. Google receives those web addresses and nothing else from the email. We keep Google’s answer against a fingerprint of the link, not the link itself, for at most an hour for a link Google doesn’t list, or until the time Google gives for one it does. On the record of each check we also keep how many links were looked up and how many Google lists.
Who helps us run HeadCheck
We use a few companies to carry mail and run our server. Each gets only what its job needs.
| Who | What they do | What they get |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Receives forwarded mail; hosts this website | The forwarded email as it passes through, and the usual web traffic details for this site |
| TypeSafe | The AI that answers our questions | The trimmed summary described above |
| Amazon Web Services | Sends reports; runs our server from late 2026 | Each report on its way to you, and the server’s files |
| Postmark | Sends reports until our move to Amazon finishes | Each report on its way to you |
| DigitalOcean | Runs our server until our move to Amazon finishes | The server’s files |
| The scam-site check, only when it’s on | The web addresses in the email |
The companies that carry mail keep their own records of the messages they deliver, as every mail service does, under their own privacy policies. When buying opens, payments will be handled by a payment company that holds your card details. We will never see them, and we’ll name that company here first.
This website
It sets no cookies, runs no analytics or tracking, and loads no fonts, scripts or images from other sites. Cloudflare, which hosts it, sees the normal details any web host sees, such as your IP address, to deliver the pages.
Your choices
- Stop replies to your address: write to us and we’ll add it to the list we never write to.
- See or delete what we hold: because we keep your address only as a fingerprint, we can’t look you up by name. Write to us from the address you forwarded from, and we’ll tell you what’s tied to it and delete it if you ask.
Changes and questions
If this changes, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. Questions are welcome at hello@headcheck.email.