Privacy Notice — Spot

Last updated: 2026-09-14

Spot is an internal recruiting tool operated by Serval for its own employees. It is not offered to the general public. This notice covers two groups of people: Serval employees who use Spot, and the people in their LinkedIn networks whose profiles Spot processes.

If you are a Serval employee using Spot

The Spot LinkedIn Scout extension runs while you are signed into LinkedIn in your browser and reads, via LinkedIn's web API using your own session:

• Your 1st-degree connections (name, headline, profile URL, photo).
• Public profile details (work history, education, summary) for connections Spot selects for evaluation. Only these mapped fields are stored from LinkedIn — not the raw LinkedIn API response.
• Your own LinkedIn mini-profile, to confirm which account is connected.

When you approve an outreach message in Spot, the extension sends that message as a LinkedIn message from your account. When a recruiting campaign you are the From of reaches a connection-request step, the extension sends that connection request (with the note you wrote, if any) from your account. It reads replies only in conversations that Spot's own messages opened: a conversation is identified by the handle LinkedIn returned when Spot sent the message, or — for a connection request you sent through Spot that was accepted — located by that one person and read only if it is a two-party thread you have written in. In such a conversation it reads, at most once a day, only messages from that person written after Spot's own message, and sends their text to Spot; earlier history, messages from anyone else and every other conversation in your inbox are never read, listed or searched. Locally it keeps only when each such conversation was last read, never the messages. The extension never collects or transmits your LinkedIn password, does not read other sites or browsing history, and does not run when you are logged out of LinkedIn. Locally (chrome.storage.local) it keeps your Spot connect key, a device identifier, sync status, request-pacing state and at most one pending page of connections awaiting delivery.

Spot also stores your Google account email and name for sign-in, your role, and activity records (syncs, recommendations you made, referrals you submitted, messages you sent).

When something needs you — a teammate asks you for an introduction, a reply lands on a campaign you sent — Spot notifies you by direct message in Serval's Slack workspace, or by email when your work email has no Slack account. These notifications carry names and the next step only (for example "Priya asked you to introduce Sofia Lindqvist for Software Engineer"), never a message's text or anyone's contact details. To address the Slack message, Spot looks up your Slack member id by your work email and stores it. Buttons on the message act in Spot as you; each press is verified as coming from Slack and recorded in the audit trail.

When you are the From of a recruiting campaign, Spot sends its email steps from your Google Workspace mailbox, as you, through a domain-wide delegation Serval's Workspace admin authorizes for two Gmail permissions (send mail, read mail) — or, where that delegation is not set up, through a Google account you connect yourself in Settings. For a connected personal account Spot stores your Google address and an encrypted refresh token; you can disconnect it from Settings at any time, which revokes the token at Google. Spot reads only the email threads it started: it polls those threads for replies and never lists, searches or opens anything else in your mailbox. Every message sent and every thread read is recorded in the audit trail with your address and the thread id — never the message text.

If you are in a Serval employee's LinkedIn network

Spot holds a record of you because you are a 1st-degree LinkedIn connection of a Serval employee who uses the extension. For each such person Spot may process:

• From LinkedIn, via the employee's session: name, headline, profile URL, photo, and — for profiles selected for evaluation — work history, education and summary.
• From a third-party data vendor (Coresignal): Spot sends your LinkedIn profile URL to Coresignal and keeps a reduced copy of the vendor's response, limited to your work history, education, skills, location, headline and summary, seniority and function labels, career-activity metrics (tenure, promotion and posting statistics, follower counts), and at most one professional email address the vendor has observed or inferred. Salary projections, URLs of other public profiles, name parts and every other field the vendor returns are discarded. The reduced copy is retained as a cache so the vendor is not queried again for the same person, and is re-fetched periodically to stay current.
• From Serval's applicant tracking system (Ashby): whether you already have a candidate record or an application with Serval, and its stage.
• Generated by Spot: an AI evaluation of your profile against Serval's open roles (a fit score and written notes), produced by a large language model (Anthropic Claude) from the data above. These are internal assessments, not decisions about you.
• From your email replies: if a Serval employee emails you through Spot and you reply, the text of your reply is stored on your record, with the quoted history and any attachments removed (attachments are never opened). Only threads Spot started are read.
• From your LinkedIn replies: if a Serval employee messages you on LinkedIn through Spot — or sends you a connection request through Spot and you accept it — and you reply in that conversation, the text of your reply is stored on your record. Only conversations Spot's own messages opened are read, only your messages in them, and only those written after Spot's message.

This processing exists solely so Serval employees can spot people in their own networks who may be a fit for Serval's open roles and decide whether to reach out or refer them. When an employee refers or recommends you, or a recruiter adds you to a role's pipeline, your name, LinkedIn URL and — if held at a verified tier — email are sent to Ashby, where a candidate record is kept under the source "Spot"; a referral or recommendation also opens an internal recruiting ticket in Serval's systems. Notes that Serval staff and employees write about you in Spot, and the facts of a recruiting campaign Spot runs for you — that it started, that you replied and how Spot read the reply, that it ended and why — are also sent to Ashby as notes on that record. The text of your replies is never sent to Ashby.

Where data goes

• Serval's Spot database (hosted on Neon, Postgres) and application servers (Vercel).
• Coresignal, to look up profiles by LinkedIn URL (the URL is the only data sent).
• Anthropic, to evaluate profiles against role descriptions (profile text is sent; Anthropic does not train on this data under Serval's commercial terms).
• Ashby (Serval's applicant tracking system), when an employee refers or recommends you or a recruiter adds you to a pipeline — your record, the notes staff and employees write about you, and the campaign facts above; and Serval's internal recruiting tools, when an employee refers or recommends you.
• Slack (Serval's workspace) and Resend (email), to notify Serval employees of a next step concerning you — your name and the role only, never your contact details or any message text.
• Google (Gmail API), to send recruiting email from a Serval employee's Workspace mailbox and to read replies on the threads Spot started — your email address and the message text travel to Google as part of ordinary email delivery.

Data is not sold, shared with any other third party, or used for advertising.

Retention

Profiles, vendor responses and AI evaluations are kept while Spot is in use and re-evaluated as Serval's roles change. Records are removed on request (below). Employee connect keys are stored as a one-way hash. An employee's Google refresh token is stored encrypted and kept until they disconnect the account.

Your choices

Deletion and access. To have your data removed, or to request a copy of what Spot holds about you, contact privacy@serval.com; we handle requests manually. Anyone — including people who are not Serval employees — can ask.

Employees. Uninstall the extension at any time to stop all access. Rotate or revoke your connect key from the Spot app. Questions: contact your Serval admin.