Privacy Policy

1. Overview of our service

Darkwater provides decision-support analytics — vessel and counterparty screening, ownership and behaviour signals, and dark-fleet alerting — to corporate and institutional customers. The platform is designed to inform human review; it does not make automated legal, credit, or compliance decisions on your behalf. In this context the individuals whose personal information we typically process are customer and prospect contacts, waitlist registrants, website visitors, and our own personnel and candidates.

2. Information we collect

We process the following categories of personal information:

• Contact & registration data — name, work email, company, role, and any message you send us when you join the waitlist, request access, or contact us.
• Account & usage data — for authorised platform users: login identifiers, searches and screenings run, saved entities, exports, and audit metadata used to secure and improve the service.
• Technical data — IP address, device and browser type, and similar information collected automatically when you use the site.
• Business-partner data — contact details of vendor and supplier representatives we work with.

The maritime, corporate-registry, sanctions and open-source datasets that power screening relate primarily to vessels, companies and other legal entities. Where such source data incidentally contains personal information (for example, a named director or beneficial owner), we process it to provide the risk-intelligence service.

3. How we collect it

We collect information directly from you (forms, email, account activity), automatically through cookies and similar technologies, and from third-party sources such as our infrastructure and analytics providers and the public and licensed data sources that feed the platform.

4. How we use it

• To operate, maintain, secure and improve the service and website.
• To manage the waitlist and provision access to the platform.
• To respond to enquiries and provide customer support.
• To send service and, where permitted, marketing communications.
• To detect, prevent and investigate fraud, abuse and security issues.
• To comply with legal, regulatory and contractual obligations.

We do not use your inputs or outputs to train third-party foundation models. See the Darkwater AI Guide for how AI features handle your data.

5. Cookies and similar technologies

We use strictly necessary cookies to run the site and a limited set of analytics cookies to understand usage and improve the product. You can control cookies through your browser settings; disabling some cookies may affect how the site works.

6. Sharing with third parties

We do not sell personal information. We share it only with service providers acting on our behalf under contract — for example cloud hosting, analytics, email delivery, and payment processing — and where required to comply with law, enforce our terms, or protect our rights, users, or the public. These providers may process data only as instructed by us.

7. International data transfers

We may process and store information in countries other than the one in which you are located, including in the EU and the United States. Where we transfer personal information across borders, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent mechanisms.

8. How we secure information

We apply appropriate technical and organisational measures — including access controls, encryption in transit, and audit logging — to protect personal information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Aggregated and anonymised data

We may create and use aggregated or de-identified data that no longer identifies you — for statistics, benchmarking, and improving the service — including sharing it with customers and partners for lawful business purposes.

10. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or port your personal information, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to withdraw consent. You can opt out of marketing emails at any time using the unsubscribe link or by contacting us. To exercise any right, email darkwaterlabs@proton.me. Our site does not respond to “Do Not Track” signals.

11. Data retention

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes described here, to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Retention periods vary by data type and context; when data is no longer needed we delete or anonymise it.

12. Children’s privacy

The service is intended for business use by professionals and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be posted here with a revised “last updated” date, and where required we will provide additional notice.

14. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your personal information? Contact us at darkwaterlabs@proton.me.