Aria is built on three principles that are not up for negotiation: the data stays the customer's, the infrastructure sits in the EU, and conversations are not used to train other models. This page explains exactly what each one means in practice.
Where your data sits
Our entire production stack runs in the European Union, on Contabo servers hosted in Lauterbourg, France. Every business has its own isolated space, with its own separate database. The conversations and your customers' personal data, meaning what Aria receives and what she answers, are stored in the European Union.
One exception is telephony, and we say it explicitly because it is exactly the kind of detail a supplier would be tempted to hide. Transcribing what the person on the call says runs on our supplier's European access point. Voice synthesis, meaning Aria's actual voice, is processed by a supplier outside the EU, covered contractually by standard contractual clauses. Telephony is not switched on for a business unless it asks for it. Even without telephony, not everything stays inside the European Union: there are suppliers outside it that receive data anyway, for example the GitHub backup described below. We do not count them and we do not list them here, because a list kept in two places drifts apart: the supplier table in the DPA is the complete list and says, for each one, what it receives and where it is. The full backup, the one that does contain the conversations, stays inside the European Union.
The language model Aria uses is Mistral AI, a French company, with processing in the European Union. The full list of the suppliers we use is in the DPA and it is updated there whenever it changes.
We take daily backups, to two different places, and we say exactly what each one holds. The first goes to Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany, so it does not leave the European Union: it is encrypted before it leaves our server and it holds everything, including the conversations and your customers' personal data, because those are precisely what has to be recoverable if the main server disappears. The second sits in a private repository at GitHub, a provider in the United States, and holds only the configuration and the knowledge base of your business, never the conversations and never passwords or keys. The knowledge base can contain contact details written into it, for example phone numbers, so we do not promise you that this copy holds no personal data at all.
Encryption
We say exactly what is encrypted and what is not:
- In transit (between you, your customer, and Aria): TLS 1.3 is supported and preferred, TLS 1.2 is still accepted for older phones and browsers, and TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are refused. Certificates are issued by Let's Encrypt, with automatic rotation.
- At rest (on disk): the data is not encrypted at rest. We have no disk encryption and no key management system, so we do not sell you one. What protects your data on the server is different: every business runs in its own unprivileged container, with its own separate database file, not rows in a shared table; access to the server is by SSH key only, with passwords disabled and fail2ban active; every night we take a snapshot of every database, kept for 14 days, and an encrypted copy leaves the same night for a second provider in the European Union, its integrity verified at both ends; and every sign-in, failed attempt and password change goes into an access log. One thing is left on the list: encryption at rest. We do not have it yet and we do not sell it as if we did.
Your conversations do not train models
The conversations between Aria and your customers are never used to train our models, our suppliers' models, or any third party's. This principle is written explicitly into our Terms and into the DPA.
We use only aggregated and anonymised metadata (response time, escalation rate, distribution by language) to improve the product, never the actual content of the conversations.
Integrations with your systems
When Aria connects to your existing systems (the Previo hotel PMS, calendar, CRM), we use read-only permissions wherever possible. Where we read but do not write, the restriction is enforced in our own code, even if the key we get from the supplier would also allow writing.
How to ask for your data to be deleted
Under GDPR Art. 17, you have the right to ask for the deletion of any personal data processed by Aria. Send an email to hello@ariaknows.com and we answer within 5 working days at most, deleting the data within 30 days at most.
If you are a customer of a business that uses Aria, we recommend you contact us directly through that business, they are the data controller, we are only the data processor.
AI transparency
Aria identifies herself explicitly as an AI assistant at the start of a conversation with a customer who has not spoken to her before. She never claims to be human. At any time you can see in your panel exactly what she answered and when she handed the conversation to a colleague.
Organisational security
Access to production systems is named and need-based, at the lowest privilege that does the job. Every person signs in with their own account and two-factor authentication, never a shared one, and access to the servers themselves is by cryptographic key only, with passwords disabled. Every sign-in, every failed attempt and every password change is recorded with the user, the time and the IP address. The log is never auto-deleted and leaves the main server encrypted every night, and if you ever need it for an investigation that concerns you, we hand it over.
Isolation between customers is architectural rather than a promise about procedure: each business runs in its own unprivileged container with its own database file, so there is no shared table holding several customers data side by side. And rather than ask you to trust a certificate somebody else issued, on another system, we answer you directly: we show you where your data sits, we give you the full list of suppliers, we complete your compliance team’s questionnaire with answers you can verify, and we accept your security clauses in the contract. If your organisation requires an independent audit, we give your auditor everything they need.
Reporting incidents
If you find a security vulnerability, write to us at hello@ariaknows.com with the subject "Security". We answer within 48 hours at most. We do not have an official bug bounty programme yet, but we publicly acknowledge and thank anyone who reports a problem to us responsibly.
Questions?
Send us an email at hello@ariaknows.com. We answer security questions as a priority, usually the same day.