Legal · last updated 24 October 2026

Privacy

Cobb is a talent-search tool in private pilot. This page describes what we hold, who else touches it, and how to get it removed. It is written to be accurate rather than exhaustive — if something here does not match what the product does, tell us and we will fix one of the two.

Who this covers

Two different groups, with different rights, and it matters which one you are in. Users are people who sign in and run searches. Candidates are people who appear in results — you never signed up for Cobb, and you can still have your record deleted. Jump to If you appeared in a search.

What we collect from users

  • Account. The Google address you sign in with, which identifies your workspace. We receive your email address, name and profile picture from Google; we never receive your Google password. Your session is a signed, HttpOnly cookie that lasts up to a year; clearing cookies signs you out.
  • Asking for access.If you leave your email on the sign-in page, or sign in with a Google account that isn't on the invite list yet, we keep that address (and the name Google gives us) so we can reply to you. Nothing else is done with it; write to tony@trycobb.com to have it removed.
  • Your work in the product. Searches and filters, shortlists, projects, saved contacts, outreach sequences and templates, and the company URL and brief you give us so results can be tuned to your company.
  • Usage counts. Number of searches, sequences and revealed contacts, used to show you your own spend estimates. There are no third-party analytics or advertising trackers on this site or in the app.

Google account data

Connecting Gmail is optional and only needed if you want Cobb to send outreach from your own address. When you connect it:

  • We request exactly two scopes: gmail.send, which can send mail as you and nothing else, and openid email, to know which address is connected. Cobb cannot read, search, or delete your mail — the send-only scope does not permit it.
  • We store your email address and a refresh token, encrypted at rest, so sending keeps working between sessions. We store the messages you send through Cobb, because they are your sequence. If you invite a teammate to your workspace, the invitation email is also sent from your connected address.
  • Cobb's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements, which apply to gmail.send as a sensitive scope. Concretely: we use Google user data only to provide the outreach sending you can see in the product; we do not transfer or sell it, or use it for advertising; no human reads it except with your explicit permission, for security, or where the law requires it; and we do not use it to train generalized AI models.
  • Disconnect any time from the app, or revoke Cobb at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Revoking stops sending immediately; ask us and we will delete the stored token too.

Emails sent through Cobb

Cobb is a recruiter's own mailbox writing to one candidate about one role. It is not a bulk mailer, and these rules are enforced in the product, not just stated here:

  • A person presses Send. Every first email is drafted, shown to the user, and goes out only when they send it to that one recipient. Follow-ups are the ones the user scheduled when they sent the first email, and any reply cancels them.
  • Every email carries an opt-out.The last line of each message invites the recipient to reply "no", and each message carries a standard List-Unsubscribe header. A reply of no, not interested, unsubscribe or stop ends every sequence to that address and adds it to the workspace's do-not-contact list. Cobb refuses to send to a listed address again, whatever the user drafts. We keep that list for as long as the workspace exists, because honouring it requires remembering it.
  • Volume is capped. One connected mailbox sends at most 25 cold emails in any 24 hours, across every workspace the person works in. The cap is not configurable by the user.
  • Replies.When a candidate answers, the user's own Gmail filter forwards that one reply to Cobb so the sequence stops and the user sees it. Cobb never reads the user's inbox; it receives only what the filter forwards.

Candidate data, and where it comes from

To answer a search, Cobb retrieves professional profile records — name, headline, employer, role history, location, public profile URL, and public activity such as posts or repositories. These come from public professional sources, retrieved on our behalf by a data provider. When you reveal a contact, we ask email-lookup providers for a likely work address for that person.

We keep the records that land in a user's workspace so their shortlist still exists tomorrow. We do not build a general-purpose profile database to sell, and we do not sell candidate data to anyone.

If you appeared in a search: write to tony@trycobb.com with your name and profile URL. We will tell you what we hold, delete it on request, and keep it out of future results. You do not need an account, and there is no charge. Depending on where you live you may also have rights to access, correct, or object to this processing — the same address handles those.

Who else processes this data

  • Anthropic — your search text and candidate profile snippets are sent to Claude models to interpret the query, rank results, and draft outreach.
  • Bright Data, HarvestAPI and Coresignal — retrieve public professional profile records.
  • Prospeo and Hunter — look up work email addresses when you reveal a contact.
  • Google — sends the mail you send, if you connect Gmail.
  • Resend — receives the candidate replies your own Gmail filter forwards to Cobb, so a sequence can stop. It sees those forwarded messages and nothing else from your mailbox.
  • Netlify — hosting.
  • Neon — the database that stores workspace data and the profile records above.
  • Neon — a Postgres database holding the profile records Cobb retrieved and when, so a record is not bought twice.

Each receives only what it needs to do that job. We do not sell personal data or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

How long we keep it

Workspace data stays until you delete it or ask us to close the workspace, at which point we remove it within 30 days. Deletion requests from candidates are handled on receipt. Some records may persist briefly in backups or provider logs after deletion.

How we protect data

  • In transit. Every connection to Cobb, and every call Cobb makes to the providers above, is over HTTPS (TLS). There is no unencrypted path.
  • At rest.Workspace data lives in our hosting provider's storage and the database named above, both encrypted at rest by those providers. The Gmail refresh token — the most sensitive thing we hold — is additionally encrypted by Cobb with a key that is never stored beside the data, so the stored record is unusable on its own.
  • Access.Sign-in is Google sign-in against an invite list, with a signed, HttpOnly session cookie. Your workspace is readable by you and the teammates you invite, and by nobody else. When Cobb runs recruiting for a client, Cobb's operator holds a named seat in that workspace which the client can see under Organization and remove at any time. Secrets and provider keys live in the hosting environment, not in code, and are not shared with users.
  • Least data. Gmail access is send-only. Cobb never requests permission to read, search or modify your mail, and replies reach it only through the filter you create yourself.
  • Deletion. Disconnecting Gmail in the app deletes the stored token immediately; closing a workspace removes its data within 30 days; candidates can have their record removed on request as described above. Backups and provider logs may hold copies briefly afterwards.

Access is by Google sign-in against an invite list, plus a signed session cookie; data is stored with our database provider (Neon) and the Gmail refresh token is encrypted at rest. Cobb is an early product run by a small team — it has not been through a third-party security audit, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. Do not put data in Cobb that you could not tolerate being exposed.

Children

Cobb is a business tool and is not for anyone under 16.

Changes

If this page changes materially we will update the date above and, for anything that affects existing users, email you.

Contact

Privacy questions, access requests, deletions and everything else: tony@trycobb.com.