Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 25, 2026
Contents
This policy explains what MakoDeck collects when you use it, why, who helps us run it, how long we keep things, and what you can ask of us. MakoDeck hosts, presents and shares HTML slide decks, so most of what we hold is your account and your decks. It also covers the people who open a deck through a share link, and the AI apps you connect.
1. Who we are
MakoDeck is run by Reel48 Industries LLC, 5900 Balcones Dr. #23614, Austin, TX 78731-4257, United States. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean that operator.
For anything about your privacy, write to support@reel48.com.
2. What we collect and why
We collect what we need to run MakoDeck. You give us most of it; some is made as you use MakoDeck.
Your account
- Your name and email address, and whether the address is verified. We use them to create your account, sign you in and email you codes.
- A password, if you choose one. We keep only a one-way hash of it, never the password itself.
- Google or Microsoft, if you choose to sign in with them: their identifier for you, and the name and email address they give us. We don’t keep your profile picture or the sign-in tokens they issue to MakoDeck.
- A plan we’ve given you by hand, if we have: which plan, until when, and our own note on why.
If you buy Pro
Pro is paid through Stripe. You enter your card and billing details on Stripe’s own checkout page, never on MakoDeck, and you manage your subscription on Stripe’s billing page. To start a checkout we send Stripe your account’s id and email address. We keep only what Stripe tells us about your subscription: Stripe’s ids for you and for the subscription, its status, the dates of the period you’re billed for, and whether it’s set to end. We never see or keep your card details.
When you sign in
Each sign-in creates a session: a random token, when it ends, the IP address and browser details (the “user agent”) of your device, and the workspace you last used. We use the session to keep you signed in and to let you sign out everywhere; the IP address and browser details are kept with it as a security record. One-time email codes (to sign in, verify your address or reset your password) have six digits, last 10 minutes and allow three tries. We store them only as a hash.
Workspaces and invitations
We keep the names of the workspaces you create or join, who belongs to each one and in which role (owner, admin or member). When someone invites you, we keep the invited email address, the role, who invited you and when the invitation ends, which is 48 hours after it is sent. Everyone in a workspace can see its members’ names, email addresses and roles; its owners and admins also see its pending invitations. Anyone who holds an invitation link can see the workspace’s name, who invited you, the invited address and the role, until the invitation is used or ends. An organization’s owners and admins can upload a logo, which its members see and which is shown, with the organization’s name, to anyone who opens one of its share links.
Your decks and files
Everything you upload, and what we make from it so that it can be shown:
- the original file and its file name, the deck’s title, and the copies we make from it: the files a viewer loads, thumbnails and a PDF;
- each slide’s title and visible text, which we index so you can search your library, and each slide’s speaker notes, which we store as plain text and show only in the presenter window (notes are not indexed);
- software files you attach beside a deck, and any warnings we raise about a file;
- for a deck you import from a drive, which drive, that drive’s own id for the file, who imported it and when, and a fingerprint of the file as it was imported, so that you can check it for changes later. The file is downloaded in your browser, and we never keep a way into your drive;
- brand fonts that a workspace’s owners or admins upload, who uploaded each one and when, and a record of their confirmation that they have the right to use it: who, when and the exact words they agreed to.
We use these to store, render, show and search your decks for you and the people in your workspace. A deck may contain other people’s personal information; you are responsible for having the right to upload it (see the Terms).
AI apps and API tokens
You can let an AI app, such as Claude or ChatGPT, or a tool of your own, publish and read decks for you. Connecting an app happens on a MakoDeck page where you choose the workspace and approve it; an API token is one you create in Settings. For each, we keep which app or name it has, its workspace and permissions, when it was created, when it was last used and when it ends or was revoked. The token itself, and the codes and tokens a connected app uses, are kept only as one-way hashes.
An app or tool sends MakoDeck only what it asks MakoDeck to do: the deck files it publishes become your decks, like an upload, and a search is used to answer it and not stored. To make a retried request safe, we keep the answer to a publish or share request for up to 24 hours. We never receive or store your conversations with an AI app — only the requests it sends to MakoDeck. What the app itself keeps is covered by its own privacy policy.
If you tick Link totals when you connect an app or create a token (it is never on unless you do), it can also read the share links of the decks it reaches: each link’s label (your name for the recipient), status and end date, and its totals — how many times it was opened and by how many browsers, the seconds viewers spent on it, how often they used an interactive part, how many PDFs were downloaded, when it was last opened, and the three slides viewed longest. It never gets a link’s address, a list of views, who opened a link or what device they used.
Share links
When share links are available to your workspace, a deck’s editors can make a link for one person outside it, who can then view the deck without an account. For each link we keep the deck, who made it, the label they gave it (often the recipient’s name, which is never shown to the recipient), whether PDF download is allowed, when it ends and whether it was revoked.
If you open a share link, we don’t ask who you are, and we set no cookie. Once the deck has been on your screen for five seconds, we record that view: when it was opened and last seen, how long it was on screen in whole seconds, how long each slide was shown, the furthest slide reached, how many times an interactive part of a slide was used (never what was entered), whether you downloaded the PDF, whether the screen was phone-, tablet- or desktop-sized, and when you first used the page (a click, a key, a touch).
The first time you open a link, the page also makes a random code for that one link and keeps it in your browser, so that opening the link again in the same browser counts as the same viewer, and someone you forward the link to counts as a new one. We store only a one-way hash of the code, tied to the link: the code carries nothing about you, and it can’t connect your visits to different links. It stays in your browser until you clear this site’s data, and another browser or device gets a new one.
The person who sent the link can see these records, grouped by viewer, including views of an earlier copy of a deck that has since been replaced; to name that copy’s slides, we keep its slide titles from the first time it is viewed. An AI app or tool they allow to read “Link totals” sees only the link’s totals, the label they gave it and when it was last opened (above), never a list of views. They get an email the first time the link is opened, and at most once a day an email when a new viewer opens it. Each share page links to this policy. Your IP address is turned into a keyed hash, which we use to limit abuse and to keep one report per address; we don’t store the address itself for share links. In your browser tab, the page also keeps a note of the current view so that reloading continues it rather than counting a new one; it ends when you close the tab.
A share page shows the sender’s name and, for an organization, its name and logo. Its title is the deck’s title, and its preview image is the deck’s first slide, so an app that shows a preview of the link where it is posted, such as Messages, shows that title and that slide too, and the app’s maker may keep them. If the sender’s account is less than 14 days old and they don’t have a Pro plan, the page’s title is just “Shared deck”, and the tags that link previews read name neither the deck nor its slides. Some apps build a preview from the page itself instead, and those may still show the deck’s title or a slide.
Link domains
Where link domains are available to a workspace, its share links can be sent from an address the workspace owns, such as decks.yourcompany.com, instead of makodeck.page. For each one we keep the address, a random code that shows whoever set it up controls it, its state (waiting to be connected, connected, not working or removed), when it was last checked, who added it and when, and, once it is removed, when, by whom and why. Opening a link on a link domain is the same as opening it on makodeck.page or makodeck.com: the same records are kept, for the same reasons, and no cookie is set.
A workspace’s owners and admins set up its link domain in Settings (once their account is at least 14 days old): they enter the address and add one DNS record that we show. To connect it, MakoDeck looks up that address’s DNS records (and, when our hosting provider asks for one, a TXT record of the domain), adds the address to our hosting provider’s project, and checks that HTTPS works for it by opening a secure connection to our own server with that address as its name. We never request a page from the address itself. While a domain is connected we look it up again about once a day, and while a removed address’s record still points to us we keep it on our hosting so nobody else can use it.
Where link domains are part of the Pro plan, whether a workspace may have one depends on its owner’s plan. If the owner no longer has Pro, we record when we first noticed, with the link domain’s record; new links stop using the address at once, links already sent keep opening there for 30 days, and then we remove it. We clear that note if the owner has Pro again before then.
A link domain’s address becomes public. So that it opens over HTTPS, a certificate is issued for it, and certificates are recorded in public logs (“Certificate Transparency”), where anyone can see that the address exists. Use a subdomain you are happy to have listed there.
Reports
Anyone viewing a share link can report it. We keep the reason, what you write, your email address if you choose to give it so we can reply, and the keyed hash of your IP address. We use these to review the report and to act against abuse. The alert we send ourselves names the link and the reason, not what you wrote or your address. A reported link may be paused automatically until we’ve reviewed it; the person who made it is told that it is paused, and nothing about who reported it or why.
If we suspend someone’s sharing
When someone breaks our terms, we may suspend their sharing: the share links they made stop working, and they can’t make new ones or set up a link domain. With the suspension we keep their account’s identifier, our reason, and a one-way hash (SHA-256) of their email address written in a standard form — lowercase, without a “+” tag, and for Gmail without dots — so that another account using the same inbox can’t share in their place. We don’t store the address itself with it, and no one is shown the hash. It doesn’t stop anyone signing up.
How you found us
We count how many times our front page is loaded each day, as one number per day with nothing about the visitor. If you create an account from a link on that page or on a share page, we note which of the two it was, once, with your account.
Records we keep about activity
- An audit trail of who did what and when: signing up, verifying an email address, resetting a password, creating, joining or leaving a workspace, inviting someone, uploading, replacing, archiving, trashing, restoring or downloading a deck or a file, creating or revoking an API token or app connection, making, changing or revoking a share link, adding, connecting or removing a workspace’s link domain, and a share-link PDF download or report. Entries name the person by email address (a share-link recipient or reporter only by the keyed hash of their IP address) and can include a deck’s title, a file name or an invited address. The audit trail only grows: MakoDeck can add to it but can’t change or delete an entry.
- Usage counts for each workspace: how much it stores, how many bytes its decks have delivered (to members and, separately, through each share link) and how much rendering time they used. They are kept per workspace, deck and link, not per viewer.
- Abuse-prevention counters: how many sign-up, sign-in, code, invitation, upload, download, font, API, app-connection, share-link and link-domain requests came lately from an IP address (for share links, its keyed hash), an account or a token, and how many emails went to an address (which we store only as a hash), so that abuse can be slowed down.
Email we send you
MakoDeck sends only these emails, and no marketing or newsletters:
- one-time codes;
- workspace invitations, which name the person who invited you and the workspace;
- when someone tries to sign up with an address that already has an account, a note to that address saying so, with the ways to sign in;
- when a password or sign-in method that was set before an address was verified is removed (see “Security”), a note to that address saying so, with how to set a new password;
- a notice when an API token is created, or an AI app is connected, on your account;
- after you change or reset your password or sign out everywhere, if you have share links you haven’t revoked, a note saying the change doesn’t end them, with a link to the list of the links you’ve made;
- to the person who made a share link, a note the first time it is opened, and at most once a day a note when a new viewer opens it, naming the link’s label and the deck;
- to the person who made a share link, a note when it is paused while we review a report about it, naming the link’s label and the deck;
- to the person who made a share link, a reminder about 3 days before it expires, naming the link’s label, the deck and when it expires — once for each date it expires on;
- to a workspace’s owners and admins, when its link domain goes live, and when it needs attention: it stopped working, or it was connected to another workspace (which the email doesn’t name);
- where link domains are part of Pro, to a workspace’s owners: once when its owner no longer has Pro, saying when its link domain will stop, and once when it is removed.
MakoDeck never emails a share link’s recipient.
What we don’t collect
MakoDeck has no third-party analytics, advertising or tracking tools and loads no third-party scripts. The only records of who viewed what are the share-link views described above, which go to the link’s sender, and the daily count of front-page loads. We don’t ask for your age, phone number or payment details, and we send the contents of your decks to no one outside the providers listed below and the AI apps you connect yourself. If you buy Pro, you give your payment details to Stripe on its own page; we never see them.
3. Cookies
MakoDeck uses only the cookies it needs to keep you signed in. It has no analytics, advertising or preference cookies. The only other things it keeps in your browser are a share page’s, described under “Share links” above: a note of the current view, in that tab’s session storage, and a random code for each link you open, in local storage, so its sender can count viewers.
| Cookie | What it does | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|
makodeck.session_token | Keeps you signed in. Set when you sign in. | 7 days, renewed as you use MakoDeck. |
makodeck.sign_up_proof | Shows that this browser chose the password when you signed up, so verifying your email address keeps it. Set when you sign up, or try to sign in before verifying. | 20 minutes. |
makodeck.state | Protects signing in with Google or Microsoft (and connecting one to your account) against forgery. Set only while you do that. | 5 minutes, and removed when it finishes. |
All three are HttpOnly (scripts can’t read them), SameSite=Lax, and set for MakoDeck’s own address only. Over HTTPS their names begin with __Secure- (the sign-up cookie’s with __Host-) and they are sent only over HTTPS. Your decks are shown from a different website: it never receives these cookies and sets none of its own, and deck code runs in a sandbox that can’t read or set cookies. Share pages set no cookie, whether they open at makodeck.com, at makodeck.page or at a workspace’s own link domain; the last two never receive your login cookie.
4. Who handles your information
We use these providers to run MakoDeck. They handle the information described here.
| Provider | What it does for us | What it handles | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Hosts MakoDeck, runs its code and scheduled jobs, and answers every request. | Everything you send to MakoDeck, including your IP address and cookies. | Vercel’s iad1 region (Washington, D.C., United States) |
| Vercel Blob | Stores uploaded decks, the files made from them, PDFs and fonts, in private stores (software files in a second one). | Your files. | United States |
| Vercel Sandbox | Makes thumbnails and PDFs in an isolated machine created for each job, with no network access and no secrets, then deleted. | The deck or PDF being rendered, while it renders. | United States |
| Neon | Runs our Postgres database. | Your account, workspaces, deck records, slide text, speaker notes and the audit trail. | United States |
| Vercel (domains) | Only for a workspace that sets up a link domain: adds that address to our hosting project, and has a certificate issued for it (by Let’s Encrypt, through Vercel) so that it opens over HTTPS. | The link domain’s address. | Their own |
| Amazon SES | Sends our emails, through Amazon Web Services. | The recipient, subject and body of each email we send. | United States |
| Stripe | Only if you buy Pro: takes your payment on its own checkout page, keeps your card and billing details, and runs your subscription and its billing page. | Your account’s id and email address, the card and billing details you give it directly, and your subscription and payments. What Stripe keeps is covered by its own privacy policy. | Their own |
| AI apps you connect | Only if you connect one, such as Claude or ChatGPT, or use an API token with a tool. | What you ask the app to publish, and what it reads back through MakoDeck: your decks’ titles, status and source, and, only if you tick Link totals, your share links’ labels and totals. What the app keeps is covered by its own privacy policy. | Their own |
| Google and Microsoft | Only if you choose to sign in with them. | They tell us your name and email address. What they keep is covered by their own privacy policies. | Their own |
Our hosting provider keeps standard logs of the requests it serves. MakoDeck’s own logs record errors and identifiers, such as a deck’s id, not the contents of your decks.
5. Who can see your decks
- A deck belongs to one workspace. Only that workspace’s members can open it; its owner and the workspace’s admins and owners can change it. Everyone else is told it isn’t found. Your personal workspace has one member: you.
- Outside the workspace, a deck can be seen only through a share link one of its editors made for one person. Anyone holding that link can view the deck until the link ends or is revoked; revoking it stops it within about 30 seconds. A link opens at makodeck.page, MakoDeck’s own address for shared links, and at makodeck.com, and, if its workspace has set up a link domain, at that address too, where only that workspace’s links open. Someone who isn’t signed in and opens a makodeck.com link address is sent on to makodeck.page. A link that a connected AI app asks for stays inactive until a signed-in editor approves it in MakoDeck; only an API token that a workspace’s admin or owner has allowed to share can make an active link itself.
- Decks are shown from a separate website that never receives your login cookie. The links your browser uses to load a deck’s files are signed and expire: after 6 hours for a deck, 5 minutes for a PDF download and 60 seconds for a software file download.
- If you are removed from a workspace, a deck you already had open can keep loading for up to 6 hours, until its links expire.
- In an organization, members can see each other’s names, email addresses and roles, who uploaded a font and when, and who moved a deck to the trash. What you publish in an organization stays with its workspace, even if you leave.
6. How long we keep things
Some periods are fixed in MakoDeck’s software. The rest are set out here.
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Sessions | 7 days from when one was last renewed, or until you sign out or sign out everywhere (changing or resetting your password signs out your other sessions). Ended sessions are deleted within the hour. |
| Email codes | 10 minutes. They are deleted when used, or within the hour after they expire. |
| Abuse-prevention counters | About a day. |
| Decks, templates and replaced copies in the trash | You can restore them for 7 days. After that they are deleted for good, files first and then records, by an hourly clean-up that runs an hour or so later — except the slide titles of a replaced copy that was viewed through a share link, which are kept with that link’s records (below). A replaced copy of a deck goes to the trash on its own. |
| Share links and their view records | Until the deck is deleted for good, with the slide titles of each copy of it that was viewed through a link, kept even after a replaced copy is deleted so these records can still name its slides. Revoking or ending a link stops it working but keeps its records, so its sender can still see them. |
| Link domain records | Kept while the domain is set up, and after it is removed for as long as its DNS record still points to us. Removing it marks the record removed and stops the address serving at once; once the record has stopped pointing to us and we have released the address, the record is deleted 30 days later. The note of when its owner’s Pro plan ended is kept with it, and cleared if they have Pro again. |
| Reports about share links | For as long as we need them to deal with the report and as a record of how we handle abuse. If you gave your email address, you can ask us to delete it. |
| The hash of a suspended person’s email address | For as long as their sharing is suspended, even if the account is deleted. We erase it when we lift the suspension; the record that there was one, with our reason, is kept. |
| API tokens and app connections | A token or connection lasts until it ends (at most a year) or is revoked. Changing or resetting your password, or signing out everywhere, revokes them all. We keep the record of each as a security record; the short-lived codes and tokens a connected app uses are deleted a day after they expire. |
| Answers kept to make retries safe | 24 hours, or 2 minutes when the app sends no retry key. |
| Front-page counts and how you found us | The daily counts hold nothing about any visitor and are kept. The note of how you found us is kept with your account. |
| Unfinished uploads | Deleted by the hourly clean-up once the time allowed for the upload has passed. |
| Software files no deck uses any more | About a day after they stop being used. |
| Your account and what you published | Until you, or for an organization’s decks the organization, delete them. You can’t delete your account yourself yet. After you ask us to: within 30 days we delete your account, its sessions and sign-in methods, your API tokens and connections, and the decks, files and fonts in your personal workspace. Decks you published in an organization stay with that organization, whose owners and admins can delete them. Audit-trail entries that name you are kept, as below, and copies in our database provider’s backups expire on their own schedule. |
| A plan we’ve given you by hand | Until we remove it, even after the plan has ended. It goes with your account. |
| Your Pro subscription’s record | While your account exists, including after the subscription ends. It goes with your account. Stripe keeps its own records of your payments. |
| Sign-ups whose email address was never verified | until you, or the owner of that address, ask us to delete it. Until the address is verified the account can’t publish anything. |
| The audit trail and font-rights confirmations | for as long as we run MakoDeck: they are our record of security events, and of the rights confirmed for uploaded fonts. |
| Usage counts | for as long as we run MakoDeck. They count bytes and rendering per workspace and deck, not who viewed what. |
| Invitation records | An invitation ends after 48 hours. We keep its record: for as long as the organization exists. |
| Logs at our hosting provider | for the short time our hosting provider keeps them: at most 30 days. |
| Database backups | up to 30 days, in our database provider’s restore history. |
| Emails at our email provider | as long as our email provider keeps them under its own terms; we keep no copy of an email’s body ourselves. |
If you remove a workspace font, decks that were already published keep their own copy of it until they are replaced or deleted.
7. Security
What MakoDeck does to protect your information:
- Passwords are stored as one-way hashes. Sign-in codes are stored hashed, last 10 minutes and allow three tries.
- A password or sign-in method set before an email address was verified is kept only if the browser that verifies the address is the one that chose it; otherwise it is removed when the address is verified, other sessions are ended, and the address is told how to set a new password. So nobody can sign up with your address first and keep a way into your account.
- Traffic to MakoDeck uses HTTPS, and our connection to the database checks the server’s certificate.
- Your login cookie can’t be read by scripts and is never sent to the website that serves decks.
- Decks are treated as untrusted code. They run only in your browser, in a sandbox on a separate website, and on our side only in isolated machines with no network access and no secrets.
- Files are kept in private storage and reached only through signed links, after an access check.
- A workspace’s link domain shows only that workspace’s share links, reads no login cookie, and answers nothing else from MakoDeck: every other address on it is “not found”.
- API tokens and app connections are stored only as hashes, are limited to one workspace and the permissions you chose, and are all revoked when you change or reset your password or sign out everywhere. We email you whenever one is created.
- Sign-up, sign-in, codes, uploads, downloads, API requests, share links and email are rate-limited, and the application’s access to the database is limited so that it can’t change the audit trail.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects you, we will tell you as the law requires.
8. Your choices and rights
What you can do yourself
In Account settings you can change your name and password, connect or disconnect Google and Microsoft, and sign out of every device. You can move a deck to the trash and restore it for 7 days, remove a workspace font, and leave an organization. In Settings you can revoke any API token or app connection, and any share link you made, one at a time or all at once; a deck’s editors can revoke its share links.
If you opened a share link or sent a report
You don’t need an account to ask us about the records described under “Share links” and “Reports”. Write to the address below with the link you opened, and we will tell you what we hold and delete it on request.
What you can ask us
Write to support@reel48.com to ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, to correct it (you can’t change your email address in MakoDeck yet), to have it deleted — including closing your account, which you can’t do yourself yet — or to object to how it is used. We deal with these requests by hand and will answer within 30 days. Depending on where you live, you may have further legal rights over your personal information; write to the same address to use them.
9. International transfers
MakoDeck’s application runs in Vercel’s iad1 region (Washington, D.C., United States). Our other providers store and process information in the places listed under “Who handles your information”. If you use MakoDeck from elsewhere, your information is moved to those places. When it moves between countries, it is protected by the data protection terms our providers offer, which include the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses where they are needed.
10. Children
MakoDeck is not for children under 18, and you must be at least that old to have an account. We don’t ask your age, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone younger. If you think a child has given us personal information, write to support@reel48.com and we will delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
We may change this policy. We will post the updated policy here with its date. If a change matters to you, we will tell you by email or in MakoDeck before it applies.
12. Contact
Reel48 Industries LLC
5900 Balcones Dr. #23614, Austin, TX 78731-4257, United States
Privacy: support@reel48.com
Everything else: support@reel48.com