Mathematical infrastructure for complex systems · Institute for Decision Systems and Number Theory
Terms and privacy
Terms of service and privacy policy
Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems · New Jersey · Johannesburg · Last updated 23 September 2026.
Built by the ELARA·CORTEX Institute for Decision Systems and Number TheoryMeasured in public: drift proof · benchmarks · research · security
- Terms of service
- Acceptable use
- Privacy policy
- Cookies and storage
- Your data rights
- Sub-processors
- Data processing
- Refunds
- Service levels
- Safety notice
- Contact
1. Terms of service
These terms govern your use of Elara Chat, its collaboration rooms and the account that holds your work (the Service), provided by Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems, Inc., a Delaware C-Corporation (we, us), with an office in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States. Our South African trade is conducted by Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems (Pty) Ltd, Johannesburg, South Africa (CIPC Enterprise Number 2026/492586/07). For any legal notice, write to legal@elara-cortex.com. By using the Service you agree to these terms.
Responsible party under POPIA (South Africa): Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems (Pty) Ltd, Johannesburg. For GDPR (EU and UK) and CCPA (US) the data controller is the parent company, Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems, Inc., Jersey City, New Jersey. For a postal address or written legal notice, email legal@elara-cortex.com and we will provide the current postal details for service.
- Your account and keys
- You are responsible for keeping your password, your account and any API key you add to it secure, and for all activity under them. If you suspect unauthorised use, tell us at once. We will act on it.
- The Service
- We provide a chat with a reasoning engine, saved conversations, projects and memories, document and web research tools, collaboration rooms with voice and video, invitations to them, and call alerts. We work to keep the Service available and accurate, and it is provided as is to the extent permitted by law. We may change, suspend or improve features over time and will give reasonable notice of material changes that affect you.
- Fair use and limits
- Each plan has request-rate limits, storage limits and volume limits. We may rate-limit, suspend or revoke access that threatens the stability, security or lawful operation of the Service.
- Liability
- To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the fees you paid us for it in the three months before the claim. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law.
- Governing law
- These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, and the courts of South Africa have jurisdiction, without affecting any mandatory consumer rights in your own country.
2. Acceptable use
- Lawful use
- Do not use the Service unlawfully, or to harm, harass, defraud or infringe the rights of others.
- Integrity of the Service
- Do not attempt to break, overload, reverse-engineer or circumvent the Service, its security or its rate limits.
- Other people's rooms
- Do not use an invitation you were not given, and do not share a room's material outside the room without the consent of the people in it.
- Safety-critical use
- Do not use the Service where failure could lead to death, injury or serious harm (see the Safety notice).
3. Privacy policy
This policy explains what personal information we process and why. It is designed to meet the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA, South Africa), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, EU and UK) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA and CPRA). The responsible party under POPIA is Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems (Pty) Ltd, Johannesburg; for GDPR and CCPA the data controller is the parent company in Jersey City, New Jersey.
3.1 What we collect
| Category | What and why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Email address and a hashed password, to create your account and keep it yours. The password itself is never stored. | Contract |
| Billing and usage | Subscription references, payment status, token or image counts and allowance adjustments, to provide your plan and show what you have used. These records do not contain card numbers or the text of your prompts. | Contract / legal obligation |
| Conversations, projects, memories | What you write, attach and ask Elara to remember, to answer you and to keep your work under your account. Private to you; never used to train a model. | Contract |
| Rooms and invitations | Room membership, the names guests give, and the invitation you send by email, WhatsApp or link, so the right people are in the room. | Contract / consent |
| Voice and video | Media flows between participants for the duration of a call and is not recorded by us. Signalling needed to connect the call passes through our servers. | Consent |
| Call alerts | A push subscription for each device you turn alerts on for, so it can ring when somebody calls you. Remove a device from the alerts page at any time. | Consent |
| Server logs | The IP address, the user agent, the URL, the timestamp and the response status, for security and reliability. | Legitimate interest |
3.2 How long we keep it
We keep account data while your account is active. Your conversations, your projects and your memories stay until you delete them. There is no fixed limit. Server logs are kept for up to 12 months and then deleted or aggregated. You can ask us to delete your data sooner (see Your data rights), and your account page can export everything you have stored.
Deleting your account removes your chat data and scheduled work. Payment and usage records may be retained for accounting, disputes and legal obligations. A record of a trial already used prevents a new account from restarting the same trial. Contact privacy@elara-cortex.com about retained records.
3.3 Where it is processed
Data is processed in South Africa and by the sub-processors listed below, some of which operate outside your country. Where we transfer EU or UK personal data, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the Standard Contractual Clauses.
3.4 Use and access restrictions
We do not sell your personal information, run third-party advertising trackers or use your conversations to train AI models. We share your conversations only with the model and search providers needed to answer your request. Staff may read a conversation only for a safety or abuse matter, or when you ask support to review it.
4. Cookies and local storage
- Essential
- Your session, your theme, consent and the state the app needs to function. Always on; no consent needed.
- Call alerts
- A device you turn alerts on for keeps a push registration so it can ring. Off until you turn it on; remove it at any time.
- Advertising and tracking
- We use no advertising cookies or cross-site tracking.
5. Your data rights
Under POPIA, GDPR and CCPA you may access a copy of the personal information we hold about you; correct or delete it (the right to be forgotten); object to or withdraw consent for consent-based processing; port your data to another service; and rely on the fact that we never sell personal information (the CCPA Do Not Sell right).
To exercise any right, email privacy@elara-cortex.com. We respond within the time the law allows. You also have the right to complain to the South African Information Regulator or your local data-protection authority.
6. Sub-processors
These providers help deliver the Service. Each receives only the data needed for its task.
| Provider | Purpose |
|---|---|
| AI model providers | Generating answers from your messages and relevant attachment or project text. Contact privacy@elara-cortex.com for the providers used by your service. |
| Search providers | Web research: your search terms, so that sources can be found and shown to you. |
| Email delivery provider | Invitations, password recovery and account notices you ask for. |
| Browser push services | Delivering a call alert to a device you turned alerts on for. |
| Stripe | Payment processing for subscriptions. |
| Render | Hosting of the Service. |
7. Data processing (for business customers)
If you use the Service to process personal data of your own users, you are the controller and we are your processor. We process that data only on your instructions, keep it confidential, secure it appropriately, help you meet your own obligations, and delete or return it on request. A full Data Processing Addendum is available on request at legal@elara-cortex.com.
8. Refunds, cancellation and disputes
- 8.1 Cancelling a plan
- You can cancel a paid plan at any time from your account or by emailing hello@elara-cortex.com. Cancellation stops the next renewal; your plan stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not pro-rate or refund the unused part of a current paid period, except where clause 8.2 or the law requires it.
- 8.2 Free trial, and when we refund
- The free trial includes $1 USD of usage and up to five stored assets. Verify your email to use it. The trial ends 14 days after account creation, when its $1 usage allowance is exhausted or after 25,000 requests, whichever comes first. Usage is measured at the published rates. No card is required and the trial does not automatically become a paid subscription. A paid plan and monthly billing begin only when you complete Stripe checkout, including if you choose to subscribe before the trial ends. If the Service materially fails to perform as described and we cannot fix it within a reasonable time after you tell us, we refund the affected paid period, pro-rated to the days affected. If you are charged twice, or charged in error, we refund the difference in full. Your rights under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 always apply and are not limited by this policy.
- When a paid period is not refundable
- Because the engine is provisioned and consumed as you use it, once a paid subscription period has begun that started period is not refundable, except as set out above or where the law requires it. By starting the subscription you agree that performance begins immediately, so the seven-day cooling-off for electronic transactions does not apply to a service you have already begun to use (ECT Act, section 42(2)(a)). The free trial carries no charge, so there is nothing to refund.
- 8.3 How to ask for a refund
- Email hello@elara-cortex.com within 7 days of the charge, with your account email and the reason. We aim to reply within 2 business days and to settle valid refunds within 10 business days, back to your original payment method.
- 8.4 Disputes and chargebacks
- If you are unhappy, contact us first; most issues are resolved quickly. We keep a receipt and a log for every billed item and will share the relevant records with you. If a chargeback or payment dispute is raised with your bank or card provider before you have contacted us and given us a fair chance to resolve it, we may suspend the account while the dispute is open, and we reserve the right to contest the chargeback with our transaction and usage evidence. Where a dispute is upheld in your favour we refund promptly; where it is not, normal billing resumes. This clause does not limit your statutory rights in clause 8.2.
Subscriptions are purchased through Stripe checkout. Visit your account to manage your plan. These terms apply to the plans on the pricing page.
Service levels
Paid plans target 99.9% monthly availability for the Service, measured on successful responses to valid requests and excluding scheduled maintenance, notified in advance, and events outside our reasonable control. Where a paid month falls below this target, you may request a service credit against your next invoice. Specific availability targets, support response times and credit schedules for Enterprise plans are set out in your order or contract. Trial and free entitlements are provided without an availability commitment. Questions: legal@elara-cortex.com.
9. Safety notice
Elara is a reasoning and drafting aid. It is not a safety-critical system. Review its answers, keep your own judgement, and confirm decisions with the people responsible for them. Do not rely on the Service for autonomous, life-safety, medical or emergency decisions. The facts on the ground always take priority over any answer we give.
10. Contact
United States: Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems, Inc., a Delaware C-Corporation, Jersey City, New Jersey. South Africa: Elara-Cortex Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems (Pty) Ltd, Johannesburg, CIPC Enterprise Number 2026/492586/07.
General: hello@elara-cortex.com · Privacy: privacy@elara-cortex.com · Legal: legal@elara-cortex.com. For a postal address or written legal notice, email legal@elara-cortex.com and we will provide the current postal details for service.
As the responsible party under POPIA, our Information Officer can be reached at privacy@elara-cortex.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa): JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001 · enquiries@inforegulator.org.za · POPIA complaints: POPIAComplaints.IR@inforegulator.org.za · inforegulator.org.za.
We review and update these terms as the Service grows. Material changes are notified on this page with a new last-updated date. Return to chat · About Elara