Privacy policy
Last updated 12 November 2026
Bear is an AI agent that does a company's office work, starting with its accounting, in the apps the company connects. This policy covers Bear's apps at app.bear.inc and agent.bear.inc, its API and MCP server, and the work its agent does. The website at bear.inc has its own notice, at bear.inc/privacy. It says what data Bear holds, why, who else handles it, and what you can ask of us.
Who we are
Bear is made by Bloom Systems Oy, business ID 3616618-4, Mikonkatu 2 D, 00100 Helsinki, Finland ("we"). Write to us about privacy at hello@bear.inc.
Who decides about your data
- Your company's data is your company's. What Bear reads in your apps, and the work it does there, is your company's business data. Your company decides how it's used. We process it for your company, on its instructions, as its processor, as our agreement with your company says.
- Accounting firms decide about their clients' data. If you're an accounting firm, we process your clients' data on your instructions. Where you act for a client, we're your subprocessor.
- We decide about account data. That's what we need to run Bear for the people who use it, such as your name, email address and phone number. For account data, we're the controller.
What Bear does
- It works in your apps. Bear reads the accounting system, banks, payment providers, mail and chats your company connects. It does the work a person at your accounting firm would do there.
- It keeps records as they arrived. Bear keeps what each app sent exactly as it came, with every earlier version. Each company's records are kept apart.
- It never shows a sign-in. The passwords and keys Bear signs in with are kept in Google Secret Manager and used only by Bear's own servers. They're never shown to anyone, and Bear's AI never sees them.
- It can't approve payments at your bank. That takes the account holder's own code. Where your accounting system pays approved bills by itself, approving a bill pays it.
- It follows your approval process. When your company approves invoices, bills or pay runs in Bear, Bear goes ahead only after the person your company named says yes. It keeps who said yes, where and when.
- It records what it does. Bear keeps a record of every read, change, message and step in its browser, with who asked, when and why.
- Its email says it's AI. When Bear's AI writes an email to someone outside your company, the email says an AI assistant wrote it.
What we collect
Account data
- Your name, email addresses, the phone numbers you confirm, your language and your photo, if you add one.
- How you sign in: your Google account ID if you use Google, your passkeys, and the codes we email you.
- Your sign-ins: when each started and ended, and your browser and device type.
- Your IP address, to limit how often anyone can try to sign in. These counts are kept for 2 days, then deleted the next time someone asks for a sign-in code by email.
- The companies you belong to, your role, who invited you, and the chat accounts you link to yourself.
- When you approve something: what you were shown, when you approved it, and the IP address and browser you approved from. We keep this as proof of your yes.
- The AI apps you connect to Bear, such as Claude or ChatGPT, and when you connected them.
Business data
Business data is what your company's apps hold and Bear reads: the books and vouchers, bills and invoices, bank and card transactions, payroll, documents and receipts, and the messages and files in the chats and mail Bear is in. It also includes what Bear makes of them: what it read in each file, its search index, its work and messages, and its record of what it did.
Business data can include personal data about your people, customers, suppliers and employees, such as their pay, bank accounts and personal identity numbers. Where payroll needs it, it can include sick leave or trade union fees.
Usage data
- Analytics. The app at app.bear.inc measures how it's used through PostHog, in the EU. It counts the pages you open and what you press, notes technical errors and how fast pages load, and can record a replay of your visit. The text on the page and what you type are masked. Bear passes this to PostHog without your IP address. If you work at an accounting firm, reports include your work email. Everyone else stays anonymous. Analytics keep nothing on your device, so each visit starts as a new one.
- Logs. Our servers log requests and errors to keep Bear working and safe. Logs are kept for 30 days.
Cookies and browser storage
__Host-bearkeeps you signed in, for 30 days after your last visit.__Host-bear-googlefinishes a sign-in with Google, for 10 minutes.- Your theme, the workspace you picked and your unsent drafts stay in your browser.
Analytics store nothing in your browser. Bear uses no advertising cookies.
Why we use it
- To provide Bear to you and your company, under our agreement (GDPR Article 6(1)(b)).
- To keep Bear safe and working, to prevent abuse, to fix faults and to keep proof of approvals. This is our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)).
- To meet the law where it requires us to keep or hand over data (Article 6(1)(c)).
- To see how Bear is used and make it better. This is our legitimate interest too (Article 6(1)(f)).
We don't sell data, use it for advertising or share it for marketing. Bear's AI does your company's work. It makes no decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
Google user data
Google shares data with Bear only after you approve on Google's own consent screen.
- Sign in with Google. Google gives Bear your email address and your Google account ID. Bear uses them only to sign you in.
- Gmail. When your company connects Gmail, Bear gets read-only access. It reads every message except spam, trash and drafts. An AI model reads each message, with its attachments, to judge whether it's your company's accounting evidence, such as a receipt or an invoice. Bear keeps only the messages it judges to be, each whole with its attachments, as your company's records. It keeps nothing of the rest. Bear never sends, changes or deletes your mail.
- How we use it. We use Google user data only to provide the features you turned on, to keep Bear secure and to meet the law.
- Who handles it. Google Cloud stores it. OpenAI reads each message to judge whether Bear should keep it. The messages Bear keeps are handled like your company's other records, by the providers listed under Who else handles data.
- Who reads it. People at your accounting firm can read the messages Bear keeps, as part of your company's records. Our staff read Google user data only if you allow it, if they need to look into a fault, security or abuse, or if the law requires it.
- Limited Use. Bear's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
- What we never do. We don't sell Google user data, use it for advertising, pass it to data brokers or information resellers, or use it to decide creditworthiness or for lending. We don't use or transfer data from Google Workspace APIs to develop, improve or train generalized AI or machine learning models.
- Stopping access. You can remove Bear's access at any time in your Google Account, at myaccount.google.com/connections. Bear then reads nothing more from Google. The messages Bear already kept stay with your company's records until your company asks us to delete them.
Bear in your apps
When your company connects an app, that app's own consent screen lists what Bear may read and do there. Bear uses only that, and only for your company.
| App | What Bear reads | What Bear does there |
|---|---|---|
| Your accounting system or ERP | The books, bills, invoices, payroll and documents | Books, matches and prepares work, as a person at your accounting firm would |
| Banks, cards and payment providers | Transactions, balances and statements | Nothing. Bear only reads |
| Slack | Messages and files in the channels Bear is added to, never direct messages, with their authors' names and email addresses | Sends messages and files, reacts, and edits or deletes its own messages |
| Messages in the chats with Bear's number that belong to your company | Sends messages and files, and reacts | |
| Email at bear.inc | Email sent to your company's address, with its attachments | Replies, sends email, and forwards documents to your accounting system |
| Gmail | Your mailbox, to find your company's accounting evidence | Nothing. Bear only reads |
- See what Bear did. In Bear, your company's admins see the work Bear finished, what waits for a yes and who approved what. Bear keeps its full record of each read and change too. Your accounting firm can show it to you, or you can ask us.
- See Bear in the app. Each app lists Bear among its connected apps, with what it may do. In Slack, look under Apps. In Google, open myaccount.google.com/connections.
- Remove Bear. Remove Bear in the app's own settings at any time. Bear then can't read or do anything there. To stop Bear in a chat, ask your accounting firm to disconnect it. What Bear already kept stays with your company's records until your company asks us to delete it.
Who else handles data
These providers process data for us, under data processing agreements. Our AI model providers, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, don't train their models on what Bear sends them.
| Provider | What it does for Bear | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud (Google Cloud EMEA Limited) | Runs Bear and stores everything it holds: its servers, database, files, sign-ins, backups and logs | Finland. Backups in the EU. Logs and the network edge in Google's global locations |
| Google Vertex AI, part of Google Cloud | Reads files, builds search, and runs Gemini models where your accounting firm picked them | EU |
| Google Workspace | Receives email sent to addresses at bear.inc and passes it to Resend | Global |
| Google Public DNS | Checks the signatures of email Bear receives. It sees senders' domain names | Global |
| Anthropic (Anthropic Ireland, Limited) | Runs Claude, which Bear's agent uses by default and which summarises Bear's work. Our engineers' assistant, also Claude, reads Bear's logs and records to find faults, and changes nothing | Stored in the US. Processed in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia |
| OpenAI (OpenAI Ireland Ltd.) | Sorts incoming messages, picks which mail and documents to keep, checks Bear's work, and runs GPT models where your accounting firm picked them. It keeps what it reads for up to 30 days to watch for abuse | Global |
| turbopuffer | Holds Bear's search index: the text of your company's records and files, and of Bear's work | Germany |
| Daytona | Runs the computer and browser Bear's agent works in | EU |
| Exa | Searches the web for Bear's agent. It sees search queries and web addresses, which may name your suppliers | US |
| Idura | Confirms who a person is with their Finnish bank ID or mobile certificate, where your accounting firm asks for it. It sees their name, birth date and personal identity code as they identify, and keeps none of it afterwards | EU |
| Braintrust | Checks the quality of Bear's work. It keeps a trace of each run for 30 days | EU |
| Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.) | Receives email sent to your company's address, and sends Bear's email, sign-in codes and invitations, through Amazon Web Services | US. Sending in Ireland |
| PostHog | Analytics for the app: masked usage and errors, and the work emails of people at accounting firms | EU |
| Cloudflare | Runs the DNS for bear.inc and accounting firms' email addresses. It sees domain names, never documents or messages | Global |
The apps your company connects, such as its accounting system, bank, Slack, Gmail or WhatsApp, aren't our subprocessors. They handle your data under your own terms with them. So do the AI apps you connect to Bear, such as Claude or ChatGPT, which read what you let them. WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, and WhatsApp handles them under its own terms with each user.
When Bear's agent looks something up on the web, the sites it visits see that visit, as they would a person's.
Before we add a provider, we update this list and tell our customers.
Where your data is
Bear runs in Google Cloud in Finland. Your company's database, files and sign-ins are stored there. Some of the providers above work outside the EU and EEA. For them we rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or on an adequacy decision such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How we keep it safe
- Every connection to Bear is encrypted, with TLS 1.2 or newer. Google Cloud encrypts everything it stores.
- Each company's data is kept apart. The database lets each request read only the company it's for.
- Sign-ins live in Google Secret Manager. Only Bear's servers use them.
- Bear's agent works in a computer and browser of its own for each run, apart from Bear's servers.
- Records and files can't be changed once they're written.
How long we keep it
- Business data stays as long as your company uses Bear. When your agreement with us ends, your company can take its data with it, and we then delete it. The law may require your company to keep its accounting records for years. In Finland, the books and financial statements are kept for 10 years and vouchers for 6 years.
- Account data stays while you use Bear. A sign-in ends 30 days after your last visit. Its record is kept for 90 days after that, then deleted the next time someone signs in. Sign-in codes are kept for 90 days after they expire, then deleted the next time someone asks for one.
- Proof of approvals stays with your company's records.
- Logs are kept for 30 days, and Braintrust's traces for 30 days.
- Backups. After we delete data, our database backups keep it for up to 14 more days, and deleted files are kept for 7 more days.
Deleting your data
- Your account data. Write to us at hello@bear.inc from the email address you use with Bear. We delete your account data, except what the law requires us to keep and the proof of approvals your company's records need.
- Your company's data. Your company decides. Its admin, or its accounting firm, can ask us to delete it. We give your company a chance to export it first.
We answer within a month.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask us to:
- give you a copy of your personal data;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- limit how we use it;
- send it to you, or to another service, in a form a computer can read;
- stop using it where we rely on our legitimate interest.
You can withdraw your consent at any time. That doesn't affect what we did before.
For business data, your company decides. Send your request to your company or its accounting firm. If you send it to us, we pass it on to them.
Write to us at hello@bear.inc. If you think we've handled your data wrongly, you can complain to the Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman at tietosuoja.fi.
Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we update this page and its date. Before a change that matters, such as a new provider, we tell our customers.