Security

Caute’s servers read what you save, because finding it for you means reading it: extracting text, transcribing recordings, indexing meaning. So Caute is not end-to-end encrypted, and we don’t say it is. This page says what protects your library instead.

Your data

• Encrypted at rest, a key per space. Every stored file is encrypted with its own key, which is wrapped by a key for its space, which is wrapped by a key for its workspace held in AWS’s key management service. The database is encrypted on disk.
• Separated by the database itself. Each request runs with the permissions of whoever made it, and the database refuses to return rows from spaces they can’t read, even if our code forgot to ask. Search filters by the spaces you can read inside the query, never afterwards.
• Private by default. Everything you save lands in your own private space. Nothing is shared until you move it to a shared space.
• No routine access. Nobody at Caute looks at your library in the ordinary course of running it. Access for an investigation you ask for, or one the law requires, is limited, approved and logged.
• Not used for training. What you save is never used to train AI models, ours or anyone’s.

Files from the outside world

• Every file and attachment is scanned for malware before anything opens it. An infected file is held, not opened.
• Documents, spreadsheets, recordings and other files are opened in sandboxes: separate processes and containers with strict limits on memory and time, and no way to reach the network.
• Saved web pages and emails are shown from a separate domain, cauteusercontent.com, which shares nothing with the app: no cookies, no sign-in, no access to your account.
• Email from senders you haven’t confirmed, or that fails the checks proving who sent it, is held for you to release, never processed automatically and never answered.

Signing in and connected apps

• No passwords: you sign in with a passkey or a link emailed to you, or a team on the Team plan signs its people in through its own Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra, on a domain it has proven.
• The session cookie is locked to app.getcaute.com and can’t be read by scripts.
• Apps and AI assistants connect through OAuth. You choose which spaces and actions each one gets, see what it has done, and can disconnect it at any time, with immediate effect.
• Everything returned to an AI assistant carries a label saying it is quoted data, not instructions, so a saved page can’t tell the assistant what to do.
• Reads and writes by apps, assistants and tokens are recorded, and you can see them in Settings.

What the product enforces

These rules are built into Caute and checked by automated tests on every change, so they hold for every account, app and assistant:

• Saving never waits on processing, never needs a title, tag or choice, and lands in a private space.
• What you saved is never rewritten. Text derived from it can be rebuilt, and reprocessing never touches what you wrote yourself.
• Deleting something deletes everything derived from it, and the stored file.
• Every table holding saved data is separated by workspace in the database itself; every search is filtered by what the caller can read inside the query; a link shows only when you can read both ends; and nothing reveals that something exists in a space you can’t read.
• A token or app can never do more than the person who connected it, reads only if it was given read access, and is checked again on every request. Disconnecting it takes effect at once.
• A team’s owners and admins see which apps and tokens read which of the team’s spaces each month, can block an app from all of the team’s spaces, and can require their company’s own sign-in.
• What an assistant wrote is always marked as written by it, and an assistant can change a note only if it was given that permission, after a copy of the note is kept.
• Suggestions from AI and apps, such as tags and properties, change nothing until a person confirms them.
• Spaces kept away from AI are never sent to a language model or read by any assistant. The one model that may read them is the one built into your own iPhone, which answers from what the phone holds and sends nothing anywhere.
• Every request Caute’s servers make to another site is signed so the site can tell who is asking, and Caute never pays to read a page.

Running it

• All connections use TLS.
• Error reports carry where in our code something broke, never what you saved.
• Database backups are kept for 10 days; what you delete is gone from them within 10 days.
• Caute runs in one region, in the United States.

What isn’t done yet

Caute hasn’t had an independent security audit or certification, such as SOC 2. We’ll say so here when it has. Teams that process personal data under data protection law can rely on our data processing addendum.

Reporting a problem

If you think you’ve found a security problem, write to security@axionarylabs.com. Please don’t access anyone else’s data or disrupt the service while testing, and give us a chance to fix it before telling others. We’ll reply and keep you informed.