Privacy policy
This policy explains what personal data uMail collects, why we collect it, and what choices you have. We wrote it in plain words on purpose.
1. Who we are
uMail is a hosted business email service. It is run by uSolve, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (“uMail”, “we”, “us”). For the data described here, we are the data controller, which means we decide how and why it is used.
2. What data we store
Account information
Your name, your email address, your company name, your role in the company (owner, admin or member), your plan and a protected form of your password. We never store your password in readable form.
Your mail
The emails you send and receive, with their attachments, folders, stars and drafts. This is stored on servers we operate. Mail you send and receive also travels over the internet to and from other mail servers, as email always does. Some outgoing mail is delivered through Amazon Web Services (AWS), which may store and scan that mail for abuse and spam.
Domain information
The custom domains your company adds, and the result of our checks that each domain is set up for email.
Calendar, contacts and team work
Your calendar events, the contacts you save, your display settings, and for team addresses who an email is assigned to and whether it is done. If you subscribe to an outside calendar, we fetch it from the link you give us.
Connected apps
If you connect an AI tool or a calendar app, we store a protected form of the access key you create, what it may do, and when it was last used. You can remove a connected app at any time in Settings.
Payment records
Invoices, amounts, dates and transaction IDs. If you pay by telebirr, we receive the transaction ID and the payment status. If you pay by card, the card payment provider handles your card. We do not see or store your full card number.
Technical data
Basic logs such as the time of a request, your network address and errors. We use them to keep the service safe, to stop abuse and to fix problems. We use a session cookie to keep you signed in. We do not use advertising cookies.
Website statistics and product usage
On our public website (umail.et) we use Google Analytics to count visits and to see which pages help people. It runs only on the public pages, never inside your mail, the admin site or the staff site. We ask first: it sets cookies only if you press Accept. If you press Decline, Google receives only a count, with no cookie and nothing that identifies you. Google may handle this data in other countries. We do not use it for advertising.
Inside uMail we also keep our own count of what happens, such as when a company signs up, adds a domain, sends its first email or pays. We use it to find where people get stuck and to improve the service. It never holds the content, subject or recipients of any email. It stays on our servers. If our staff turn on the option, we also send these short events to Google Analytics in a scrambled form that has no names, email addresses or company names.
3. Why we use your data
- To provide your mailbox and the features you use, like sending, receiving, search and spam filtering.
- To run your company account, bill you and follow the law on records.
- To keep the service safe, and to find and stop spam, phishing and abuse.
- To contact you about your account, for example about billing or a service problem.
4. What we do not do
- We do not sell your data.
- We do not show ads.
- We do not use the content of your mail for advertising.
- We do not track you while you read: pictures in emails are hidden until you choose Show images, tracking pixels are always blocked, and scripts in email never run. When you show pictures, they load through uMail, so the sender does not see your address. If you choose Always show from this sender, we keep that sender's email address in a list so we can remember it. You can remove it in Settings.
Our systems scan mail automatically for spam and viruses. This is done by software to protect you. It is not used to profile you.
5. How long we keep data
- Mail stays until you or your company administrator delete it. Deleted mail goes to Trash first. Removing a user deletes their mailbox and mail.
- Account data stays while your company has an account.
- If a company account is closed, we delete its mail and account data within 30 days after the export window described in our Terms ends.
- Payment records stay for as long as the law requires us to keep accounting records.
- Technical logs are kept for a short time, normally no longer than 90 days.
6. Who helps us run uMail
We share data only with companies that help us run the service, and only the data they need.
- Ethio Telecom (telebirr), to process payments made with telebirr.
- Polar, to process card payments in US dollars.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS), which delivers some of our outgoing mail. AWS may store and scan that mail to detect abuse.
- Cloudflare, which runs a short check that a person (and not a robot) is signing up or booking a meeting.
- Google LLC (Google Analytics), to count visits to our public website and, if turned on, to receive short product events with scrambled ids.
- Our infrastructure and hosting providers, who run the servers where we operate the service.
We may also share data if the law requires it, for example because of a valid order from a court. We will tell the affected company first when the law allows it.
7. Security
- Connections to uMail are encrypted.
- Passwords are stored in a protected form.
- Access to systems is limited to people who need it to do their work.
- Attachments are always downloaded and never opened inside the page. Scripts in email never run.
- We back up data so that we can recover from failures.
No system is perfectly safe. If we learn of a breach that affects your data, we will tell you without unnecessary delay.
8. Your rights
You can ask us to:
- give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you (access),
- give you your mail in a common format so you can move it (export),
- correct data that is wrong,
- delete your data (deletion), and
- stop using your data for a reason you give us.
If your mailbox belongs to a company, your company administrator controls the account and can also manage your mailbox. For some requests we may ask your administrator to act, or we may ask you to prove who you are first. We answer within 30 days.
9. Children
uMail is for businesses and is not meant for children under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from them.
10. Changes to this policy
If we make an important change, we will tell company owners by email or in the product before it starts. The effective date at the top shows the latest version.
11. Contact
Questions or requests: privacy@umail.et. You can also write to uSolve, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.