Handbook Privacy

Last updated 28 October 2026.

Handbook is a reference and notebook for fitters and machinists, made by Deoxy Labs. This page covers what it sends, where it goes and what is kept. Handbook carries the full technical detail, and a transparency report, under Settings, Feedback.

On your devices

• Your tool library, gauges, balancing jobs, setup sheets, notes, calculations and Spectre chats are stored on your iPhone.
• With iCloud Sync on, which it is unless you turn it off, they also sync through your private iCloud. Deoxy Labs can't read them there. Apple holds the encryption keys too unless you've turned on Advanced Data Protection.
• Reference tables and calculators work on the iPhone without a connection.

Spectre

• Asking Spectre sends your message, the conversation so far, instructions written in the app (the date, your time zone, region and units, and what Spectre remembers about you) and results from Handbook's own tools to spectre.deoxylabs.com.
• Search sends what you type to Spectre when it reads like a question or matches nothing in Handbook.
• The server answers and keeps no conversations. Its logs record that a request happened, not what was asked.
• Until 28 October 2026 those logs also held shortened copies of questions and the addresses of pages Spectre read, and from June to September 2026 some questions the knowledge base couldn't answer were saved to find gaps in it. All of it was deleted on 28 October 2026, from backups as well.
• Kept: answers you report as wrong, with your correction, and, only if you switch it on, the tooling data and wear photos you share to help train Spectre. Questions and answers are never used to train a model.

Community

• Posting, commenting and reacting need an account, made with Sign in with Apple or an email and password. The server keeps your email or Apple ID, your username and any profile details you add.
• Posts are checked by a moderator before they appear. Comments appear straight away. Your profile is public once you fill it in.
• What you post is signed with a key kept in your iPhone's Keychain, so anyone can check a post hasn't been altered since. Since 28 October 2026 the key is sent only with requests that change something. Before that it went with every request, including reading while signed out.
• Signing in registers your iPhone's push token with your account so replies can reach you. Signing out removes it.
• The server's logs record the time, path and result of each request. From 12 May to 15 September 2026 they also recorded the account number behind each request, and those entries are still held. They have never held your IP address.
• Deleting a comment erases its text. Deleting your account removes it, with your posts, comments, reactions, profile, push tokens and signing-key record. A keyed one-way hash of your email and Apple ID is kept with the date, as the record that the account was deleted. It can't be turned back into either.

Others who handle it

• Cloudflare carries all traffic to both servers and decrypts it at its edge, as for any site behind Cloudflare. Cloudflare sees your IP address; Deoxy Labs' servers don't.
• Apple provides iCloud, notifications, Sign in with Apple and the App Store. Speech is recognised on your iPhone, and goes to Apple only on an iPhone that can't recognise your language offline.
• Collier & Miller's website supplies product photos for C&M stock.
• Spectre's web searches and the pages it reads are fetched by Deoxy Labs' server, so search engines and websites see the server, not you.

Not in Handbook

• No advertising, analytics, tracking or crash-reporting code.
• No device identifier or install ID. Earlier versions sent an install ID to the community server with every request.

Backups

Deoxy Labs' servers are backed up every night, and backups are kept for up to six months. Something deleted from a server is gone from its backups within six months.

Children

Handbook is a trade reference for working fitters and machinists. It isn't directed at children, and Deoxy Labs doesn't knowingly collect anything from them.

Contact

Questions about any of this: [email protected]