This Privacy Policy explains how The Ag Digest (www.theagdigest.com) handles personal information: what we collect and why, who helps us process it, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have. It covers the website, accounts, paid plans, the newsletter, and the brief, demo and calculator request forms. We publish it under Article 30 of Korea's Personal Information Protection Act.
The Ag Digest is operated by SHMAPLEX (슈마플렉스), a sole proprietorship registered in the Republic of Korea: business registration number 208-06-17257; representative Robert Sawyer; address 2F, 428 Seolleung-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06192 (서울특별시 강남구 선릉로 428, 2층). In this policy, “we” and “us” mean SHMAPLEX, and “you” means anyone who uses the service.
At a glance
- We don't sell or rent your personal information.
- Reading the site needs no account. An account needs only an email address, or Google sign-in. A request form needs your name, email address and what you're asking for; everything else on it is optional.
- What you send in a brief, demo or calculator request, your newsletter subscription, and the fact that you created an account go to Runner, SHMAPLEX's own customer system, so we can follow up (section 2).
- Measurement tools wait for your permission: they set no cookies or identifiers until you allow them, and you can change your choice at any time under Cookie settings at the bottom of every page (section 8).
- You can access, correct or delete your data, and withdraw consent, at any time (section 9).
1. What we collect, why, and how long we keep it
We collect only what each activity needs. For each one below: what we collect, what we use it for, the legal basis, and how long we keep it. Where a law sets the period, we say so.
Reading the site
- What we collect: the page you request, the time, your browser and device type, and the country your connection comes from. Our own request logs record the page, the time, the country and whether the request came from a known automated crawler, not your network (IP) address, name or email address. Our host, Vercel, processes your network address to deliver pages and protect the service from attacks.
- Why: to deliver pages, keep the service secure and available, and measure performance.
- Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a secure, working website.
- How long: request logs are kept for about one day and then deleted automatically.
- Settings you choose, such as theme and feed layout, and the list of articles you've read are kept in your own browser. Measurement tools are covered in sections 2 and 8.
Accounts and sign-in
- What we collect: your email address and password or, if you sign in with Google, the name, email address and profile picture Google shares with us. Our sign-in provider, Supabase, handles your password; our application database never stores it. Supabase also records the network address and browser of each sign-in session to protect your account. We keep your preferred language, whether you want alert emails, your sign-in times and, if you turn it on, your two-step verification setup. A public profile is optional: a handle, display name, short bio and profile image.
- Why: to create and secure your account, sign you in, send account emails (such as confirmations and sign-in links) in your language, and show your profile next to your contributions.
- Legal basis: performance of our contract with you (the Terms of Service).
- How long: until you delete your account. We delete the account and the information linked to it within 10 days of confirming your request, except records a law requires us to keep (see Subscriptions and payments).
- When you create an account with an email address and password, we also create a customer record at Stripe with your email address and account ID, so a later upgrade takes one step. Accounts created with Google or a sign-in link get this record only when you start a checkout. In every case we tell Runner that the account exists (section 2).
Brief, demo and calculator requests
- Where: the brief request (/intelligence/brief), the demo request (/intelligence/demo), and the walkthrough request on the coffee landed-cost calculator, the brewer calculator and the spirits planner.
- Required: your name and email address, and your question (brief) or the Premium features you'd like to see (demo). A calculator request also sends a summary of the scenario on screen, with its quantity and total cost.
- Optional: organization, role, type of organization, phone number, the country you're based in, a country you'd like covered, the topics you want covered, plan interest and what you're deciding (demo), and three separate tick boxes: permission to call you, Ag Digest updates by email, and permission to contact you for product feedback.
- Sent automatically: the page you sent it from, the site language, and the anonymous visitor ID Runner's collector uses for your browser, if it has one. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we discard that ID before anything is stored or sent.
- Why: to answer your request or arrange the demo; to do what you ticked, and nothing you didn't (a phone number on its own is never treated as permission to call); and to manage and prioritise requests in Runner (section 2).
- Legal basis: steps you ask us to take before a possible contract (answering your request); your consent, for each tick box; and our legitimate interest in managing and prioritising requests.
- How long: our own copy is kept only until Runner confirms it has received the request; we then erase the contact details and keep only a delivery record (reference, status and times). If a request can't be delivered, its contact details are erased after 30 days. How long Runner keeps requests is set out in section 2.
- We tell Google Analytics that a request was sent, with the page, the language and fixed-choice answers such as whether you ticked the feedback box or a country you'd like covered. We never send it your name, email address, organization or anything you typed.
Subscriptions and payments
- What we collect: paid plans (Premium and Team) are billed by Stripe. You enter card details on Stripe's checkout page; we never receive or store your card number. We keep your email address, Stripe customer and subscription IDs, plan, subscription status and renewal date.
- Why: to take payment, provide your plan's features, and handle renewals, cancellations and billing questions.
- Legal basis: our contract with you, and legal obligations to keep tax and accounting records.
- How long: while you subscribe, and afterwards for the periods Korean law sets: five years for records of contracts, cancellations, payments and delivery of the service, and three years for records of complaints and disputes (Act on the Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce), and five years for tax records (Framework Act on National Taxes). These records are kept apart and used only for those purposes.
- If you start a checkout before signing in, a cookie that lasts 24 hours links the purchase to the account you then sign in with.
Newsletter
- What we collect: if you subscribe, your email address, the language you chose, when and how you subscribed, the version of the wording you agreed to, and when you confirmed through the link we email you. For each issue we record whether it was delivered, and any bounce or spam complaint our email provider, Amazon SES, reports.
- Why: to send the newsletter you asked for, prove that you asked for it, and stop emailing addresses that can't or don't want to receive it.
- Legal basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
- How long: until you unsubscribe, in one click from any issue or from your account preferences. After that we keep your address only as a record that you unsubscribed, so it is never emailed again, until you ask us to delete it.
Translated articles
- What we collect: when you read an article's full translation, which article it was and when, linked to your account.
- Why: to count the translated articles included in your plan each month (10 a month on a free account).
- Legal basis: our contract with you.
- How long: until you delete your account.
Workspace features
- What we collect: watchlists you create and the items and notes in them; alert rules, the alerts they trigger and whether each alert email was delivered; saved calculator scenarios and their inputs; teams you create or join, members' roles and who invited whom; and a record of each data export you request. Members of a team can see each other's email addresses.
- Why: to provide these features and send the alert emails you ask for.
- Legal basis: our contract with you.
- How long: until you delete the item, leave or delete the team, or delete your account. Triggered alerts stay with their rule until the rule is deleted, and a failed alert email is retried for up to three days.
Community contributions
- What we collect: translations and wiki edits you submit, with their edit summaries; reports you make about translations; and the articles you save, vote on or mark as interesting or needing context.
- Why: to publish community translations with credit, keep an edit history and moderate. Your handle or display name and profile image appear publicly next to your edits; who reported a translation is visible only to moderators.
- Legal basis: our contract with you.
- How long: published edits stay in each article's public edit history. When you delete your account, they are no longer credited to you, and your saves, votes and reports are deleted.
Support requests and corrections
- What we collect: the type of report, its title and description, your email address if you aren't signed in, and technical context: the page path (without query strings), browser language, platform, screen and window size, and app version.
- Why: to answer you and fix the problem. Each request is copied into a private issue tracker hosted by GitHub, without your contact email, and with email addresses and access tokens removed from the text.
- Legal basis: our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in fixing problems.
- How long: three years, the period Korean e-commerce law sets for records of consumer complaints. The copy in GitHub is deleted with the request.
Abuse prevention
- What we collect: the request forms, the newsletter sign-up and machine translation limit how many requests one network can send in a period. To do this we store a count under a one-way code made from your network (IP) address with a secret key that changes every day, so the code can't be turned back into the address or linked across days; IPv6 addresses are grouped by their /64 network. The forms also check signals that only automated tools produce, such as a hidden field and how quickly the form was filled in; those signals aren't stored.
- Why: to keep the forms and translation available, and to stop spam and abuse.
- Legal basis: our legitimate interest in security and preventing abuse.
- How long: each count is deleted automatically 24 hours after its period starts.
We don't ask for sensitive information (such as health, beliefs or political views) or for resident registration or other identification numbers. Please don't include them in free-text fields.
2. Runner, SHMAPLEX's customer system
Runner (app.runtheworld.ai) is SHMAPLEX's own customer and sales system, operated by SHMAPLEX, the same operator as The Ag Digest, and the system of record for requests made on The Ag Digest. It stores data in Seoul, South Korea. Runner keeps one customer record per person across SHMAPLEX's services, so if you also use another SHMAPLEX service, your records there and here are joined. Permission to send you marketing is kept separately for each service: permission you give The Ag Digest is never used to send you another service's marketing. Runner receives:
- From a brief, demo or calculator request: everything listed for those forms in section 1, including your tick-box choices, as a record of what you agreed to.
- When you create an account (by email, sign-in link or Google): your account ID, email address, whether the address is confirmed, your language and the time you signed up. This is sent from our server, so it doesn't depend on your cookie choices, and it doesn't imply any marketing permission.
- When you subscribe to or leave the newsletter: your email address, your language, where you signed up, and the wording and version of what you agreed to, as a record of your consent. Your network address is never sent.
- While you browse, once you allow measurement: Runner's collector, the same script that shows the consent notice, records page views under an anonymous visitor ID and a session ID. It doesn't follow browsers that send Global Privacy Control.
- When you're signed in, once you allow measurement: the site gives the collector your account ID, never your email address or name, so Runner can connect those anonymous visits to your account.
Runner uses this to keep one record per person across requests, sign-up, the newsletter and visits; to keep evidence of consent decisions; to estimate which organization a visit comes from; and to decide which requests to follow up first.
Runner doesn't add visitors to The Ag Digest to any identity record shared with the other businesses that use Runner, doesn't match them against one, and doesn't send their information to outside identification services. It estimates which organization a visit comes from only from information it holds itself.
Runner scores each request automatically to suggest which to follow up first. A person reviews every suggestion before anyone contacts you, and the score never affects your access to the service, its price or its terms, so it is not an automated decision under Article 37-2 of the Personal Information Protection Act. To ask how it applied to you, or to object, contact us (section 12).
Runner keeps your customer record, your requests, the records of your consent decisions and records of page visits until you ask us to delete them.
3. Legal bases
Depending on the activity (section 1), we rely on:
- Contract: to provide the account, plan and features you signed up for, and to take steps you ask for before signing up, such as answering a brief or demo request.
- Consent: for measurement tools, for the newsletter, and for each optional tick box on the request forms. You can withdraw consent at any time; this doesn't affect processing that has already taken place.
- Legitimate interests: to keep the service secure and working, prevent abuse, and manage and prioritise requests. You can object (section 9).
- Legal obligation: to keep transaction and tax records for as long as consumer protection and tax laws require.
4. How we destroy personal information
When a retention period ends or the purpose has been achieved, we destroy the information without delay, unless a law requires us to keep it. Information kept because a law requires it is stored separately and used only for that purpose. The privacy officer (section 12) approves each destruction and keeps a record of it.
- Electronic records are deleted in a way that can't be restored in the service. Our database provider's automatic backups are each replaced after seven days, and database exports made for maintenance are deleted within 30 days.
- Request-form contact details are erased from our database automatically as soon as Runner confirms delivery.
- We don't keep personal information on paper.
5. Provision to third parties
We don't sell or rent personal information. We provide it to third parties only with your consent or where the law requires it, for example a lawful request from an authority. Card details you enter at checkout go directly to Stripe, and if you choose Google sign-in, Google shares your profile with us under its own privacy policy; in both cases you give the information to that company directly.
Runner is operated by SHMAPLEX itself, the same operator as The Ag Digest, so sending information to Runner is part of our own processing, not a provision to a third party.
6. Service providers that process data for us
These companies process personal information on our behalf, for The Ag Digest and for Runner, only for the tasks listed. Each does so under its data processing terms, which bind it to protect the information and use it only on our instructions.
- Supabase, Inc.: account sign-in and database hosting, for The Ag Digest and Runner. Data is stored in Seoul, South Korea.
- Vercel Inc.: website hosting, server functions (run in Seoul) and page-speed measurement (Speed Insights), for The Ag Digest and Runner.
- Amazon Web Services, Inc. (Amazon SES): sending account emails, alert emails and the newsletter, from Seoul, South Korea.
- Stripe: payment processing and subscription billing.
- Google LLC: website measurement (Google Analytics 4), storage of profile images (Google Cloud Storage), and machine translation of article text (Google Cloud Translation, which receives article text only, not information about you).
- Anthropic PBC: machine translation of article text, which receives article text only, not information about you; and, if we answer your request through Runner, help sorting and drafting replies to your messages.
- Microsoft Corporation: session recordings and heatmaps (Microsoft Clarity), only after you allow measurement.
- GitHub, Inc.: tracking support requests in a private issue tracker, without contact email addresses.
7. Transfers outside Korea
Some providers process personal information outside Korea. It is sent over encrypted connections at the time you use the feature concerned. For each: the recipient and country, what is sent, why, and how long it's kept.
- Stripe (United States): email address, account ID, plan, and the payment details you enter at checkout; to process payments and billing; kept for as long as Stripe is required by law to keep payment records.
- Google LLC (United States): measurement data (pages viewed, device and browser, approximate location, cookie identifiers) and profile images you upload; to measure use of the site and host your profile image. Measurement data is kept for 14 months from your last visit; a profile image is kept until you replace or remove it, or delete your account. Our Google Analytics is linked to our Google Ads account only to measure our own advertising, with ads personalization turned off.
- Microsoft Corporation (United States): records of how pages are used (clicks, scrolling and page movement, with typed text masked), device and browser, after you allow measurement; to find where the site is confusing; recordings are kept for 30 days, except favourites and a random sample kept for up to nine months.
- GitHub, Inc. (United States): the title and description of support requests, with email addresses and access tokens removed, and technical context; to track fixes; deleted with the request (section 1).
- Vercel Inc. (United States; server functions run in Seoul, and pages are delivered through its worldwide network): the request data described in section 1; to host the site; request logs are kept for about one day.
- Supabase, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (United States) store and send the data from Seoul. Their staff may access it from outside Korea only to provide support or keep their services secure.
- Anthropic PBC (United States): the text of messages you exchange with us through Runner, and the request details they concern, when we use its AI model to help sort or draft a reply; kept by Anthropic for no longer than 30 days and not used to train its models.
- DiceBear (Florian Körner, Germany; delivered through Bunny CDN): if you haven't uploaded a profile image, your browser loads a generated default picture directly from DiceBear, which receives your network address and browser details, not your name or email address.
- A paused copy of our database, from before we moved it to Seoul on September 18, 2026, is held by Supabase in Mumbai, India. It is not in use and receives no new information.
Each recipient can be contacted through its privacy page: stripe.com/privacy, policies.google.com/privacy, privacy.microsoft.com, docs.github.com/site-policy/privacy-policies, vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy, supabase.com/privacy, aws.amazon.com/privacy, anthropic.com/legal/privacy and dicebear.com. For transfers from the EU/EEA or the UK, the providers' data processing terms include the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
You can refuse these transfers by not using the feature concerned: keep measurement off under Cookie settings, upload your own profile image or don't create a profile, or don't subscribe. Without payment processing we can't provide a paid plan.
8. Cookies and similar technologies
Cookies are small files a website stores in your browser. Some features use your browser's local storage in the same way. We use them as follows.
Always on
- Sign-in: Supabase session cookies (named sb-…-auth-token) keep you signed in. Accounts don't work without them.
- Checkout: agdigest_billing_claim (24 hours) links a checkout started before sign-in to your account.
- Preferences: agdigest_feed_view and agdigest_topics_panel (one year) remember your feed layout. Your theme, the articles you've read (the last 1,000 at most), your article view mode, your weather region and unsent wiki drafts are kept in your browser's local storage.
- Consent: Runner's notice stores your choice and whether you've seen the notice in local storage (shmaplex_consent_v1, shmaplex_tracking_consent, shmaplex_tracking_notice_seen and shmaplex_traffic_context), so you aren't asked again.
- Performance: Vercel Speed Insights measures how fast pages load, without cookies.
- An older device-based sign-in, now retired, used a device identifier (agdigest_did) that lasted until you closed the browser. It isn't set for new visitors.
Measurement, only with your permission
- On The Ag Digest, measurement cookies and identifiers are set only after you allow them, wherever you are.
- Google Analytics 4 loads on every page with all storage denied. Until you allow measurement it sends only cookieless signals, such as the page viewed, and sets no cookies. Once allowed, it sets its own cookies to count visits and returning visitors. We never send it your name, email address or anything you type.
- Microsoft Clarity loads only after you allow measurement. It records clicks, scrolling and page movement so we can see where pages confuse people, with text typed into form fields masked, and it stops when you withdraw.
- Runner's collector may keep an anonymous visitor ID (shmaplex_tracking_anonymous_id) and a session entry that expires after 30 minutes of inactivity (shmaplex_tracking_session) in your browser's local storage, only after you allow measurement, and never when your browser sends Global Privacy Control.
- We don't show advertising or use these tools for targeted advertising. Google signals is turned off in Google Analytics, and we don't use Clarity data for advertising.
How to refuse or change
- Use Cookie settings at the bottom of every page to change your choice at any time.
- Turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser: the collector then doesn't follow you, and the request forms drop the visitor link.
- Block or delete cookies in your browser's settings (for example, in Chrome: Settings > Privacy and security). Blocking sign-in cookies stops your account from working; blocking measurement doesn't affect the rest of the service.
9. Your rights and how to use them
You can, at any time:
- Access your personal information and get a copy. Account > Data & privacy downloads your account details, subscription status, linked legacy identities and support requests as a file. For anything else, such as your profile, watchlists, alerts, scenarios, team memberships, contributions, newsletter subscription and translated-article reads, ask us.
- Correct it. Most details can be changed in your account and profile; ask us for anything else.
- Delete it. Request account deletion from Account > Data & privacy, after cancelling any active subscription. We delete the account and the information linked to it within 10 days of confirming your request; some records are kept where the law requires (section 1).
- Ask us to stop or restrict processing, or object to processing based on legitimate interests, including prioritising your request (section 2).
- Withdraw consent. Change measurement under Cookie settings; leave the newsletter in one click from any issue or your account preferences; turn off alert emails in your profile or with the unsubscribe link in any alert email; and withdraw a request-form permission (calls, updates or feedback) by contacting us.
- Receive information you gave us in a machine-readable format, or have it sent to another company, where the law provides for this.
- Complain to a regulator (section 13).
Contact us at support@theagdigest.com, or send a privacy request from Account > Data & privacy. A legal representative or someone you authorize can also make a request, with proof of authority. We'll check that the request comes from you and respond within 10 days.
10. Children
The Ag Digest is a service for professionals and isn't directed at children. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 14, and if we learn we have, we delete it.
11. How we protect personal information
- Connections to the site, and between us and our providers, are encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS), and our database and its backups are encrypted at rest by our database provider.
- Passwords are handled by our sign-in provider and never stored in our application database, and you can turn on two-step verification.
- Staff tools are limited to people who have been granted a role, and database tables can't be reached directly from a browser.
- Our logs are designed not to record names, email addresses, network addresses or form contents; request-form submissions are logged by reference number only.
- Messages our server sends to Runner are signed, so they can't be forged or altered in transit.
12. Privacy officer and contact
- Privacy officer: Robert Sawyer, representative of SHMAPLEX.
- Contact for privacy questions, requests and complaints: support@theagdigest.com, or Account > Data & privacy.
- The privacy officer handles access, correction, deletion and other requests directly.
13. If you have a complaint
You can contact us first. You can also ask these Korean bodies for help or mediation:
- Personal Information Infringement Report Center (run by KISA): privacy.kisa.or.kr, phone 118
- Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee: www.kopico.go.kr, phone 1833-6972
- Supreme Prosecutors' Office: www.spo.go.kr, phone 1301
- Korean National Police Agency: ecrm.police.go.kr, phone 182
If you're in the EU/EEA or the UK, you can also complain to your local data protection authority.
14. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with its effective date at least seven days before it takes effect, and at least 30 days before for a change that significantly affects your rights, which we'll also email to account holders. Earlier versions are available on request from support@theagdigest.com.
15. Effective date
This policy takes effect on September 29, 2026.
