Privacy and security

Where your documents live

Your documents live on your computer, in your Documents folder, as ordinary files under Documents\CDIA\projects. CDIA works on copies it makes at import. Your originals are never moved, changed or deleted. Back up the Documents\CDIA folder like any other working files.

Uninstalling CDIA removes the program only. Your projects and settings are left in place.

What stays on your computer in every mode

• Importing and copying your documents.
• Extracting their text, page by page.
• Reading scanned pages with CDIA’s built-in text recognition. The OCR engine ships inside CDIA; nothing is sent anywhere to recognise text.
• Building the search index.
• Gathering the evidence for a question and showing you the Investigation Review.
• Opening a citation. This opens a file from your disk, with no network call.
• Exact listing of every place a phrase appears (the dedicated Evidence Listing search), which is deterministic: no AI decides which matching records are included.

What Private AI sends

Nothing. With Private AI, project material is processed on your machine using a local AI runtime. The only network use for Private AI is the one-time model download when you first set it up. CDIA’s periodic licence check still needs a connection (see below).

What Cloud AI sends

With Cloud AI, CDIA sends prepared material for the task at hand to your chosen provider, over your own key, while it prepares and reads material as well as when it writes the answer: the selected evidence extracts with document names and page numbers, recent questions and answers where relevant, and your question. Raw document files are never transmitted, and your complete project is never sent automatically. If you ask CDIA to analyse one particular document in depth, the text CDIA needs from that document may be sent for that task.

With Cloud AI selected, CDIA may send relevant prepared evidence to your provider while it prepares and reads material for your question, as well as when it writes the answer. The Investigation Review comes before the final answer is written: it shows the prepared evidence and lets you untick items so they are left out of that answer. Unticking cannot recall material the provider has already processed during preparation. If material must not leave your computer at all, use Private AI. Anything outside your source selection is not sent.

Your Cloud AI key

Your Cloud AI key is held in the Windows credential store, not in a settings file. CDIA Technologies never receives it. The key is a pay-as-you-go developer key that you create with the provider and can revoke with the provider at any time.

The licence check

CDIA validates your licence online at first launch and periodically afterwards. The check sends two things to CDIA’s licence service:

• your licence email address; and
• an anonymous machine identifier, used to prevent licence misuse.

No project material is ever sent. Not document names, not questions, not answers. The licence service returns your subscription status, which CDIA stores on your computer so that it can run for up to 30 days at a time without a connection.

No telemetry

The CDIA application does not send usage data, crash reports or analytics to CDIA Technologies. If you ask for support, Help > Support & Contact offers a Copy Diagnostics button that puts the version, build and AI status on your clipboard. You decide whether to paste it into an email. Anything you send us for support is handled under the Privacy Policy.

What CDIA Technologies does not do

• We do not upload your project documents.
• We do not store your project files.
• We do not analyse your documents on our servers.
• We do not use your documents to train AI models.
• We do not run an AI service of our own. Cloud AI is between you and the provider under your own key.
• We do not see your questions or answers.

Payments

Subscription payments are processed by Stripe. CDIA Technologies never receives or stores your card details. The free trial does not ask for a card at all.

The website

cdia.co.uk uses cookies and analytics tools only after you consent through the cookie banner, except for cookies strictly necessary for the site to work. See the Cookie Policy.

Your responsibilities

You decide whether it is appropriate to process a given matter with CDIA, and which AI mode to use for it. Where your professional, contractual or regulatory obligations mean material must not be transmitted to a third-party service, use Private AI. Confidentiality and data-protection obligations for the material you load remain yours.