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Privacy

How I handle your information on DeskDude.

Last updated: 23 July 2026

Here's how I handle personal data on the public DeskDude site, in the free resources, in the contact flow, in the Ask Malte assistant, and when someone writes to me about a job. It doesn't cover Restaurant Training, which has its own product-specific legal pages and its own data flow.

Who's behind this

My name is Malte Steenberg and I run DeskDude as a sole proprietorship from Copenhagen, Denmark. I'm the data controller for the personal data this notice covers. If you have privacy questions, want to see what I hold about you, or want it deleted, write to hello@deskdude.dk.

DeskDude currently operates as a sole proprietorship without a registered Danish business registration number (CVR). If DeskDude ever takes on a formal company structure or a CVR number, this page will be updated with it.

What this notice covers

This notice applies to the pages on deskdude.dk that are about DeskDude Services: free ebooks, blog posts, projects, contact inquiries, the Ask Malte assistant, and conversations about future client work. Restaurant Training is its own product track with its own data flow and its own app at app.deskdude.dk. The product's own privacy page lives at /restaurant-training/en/privacy.

Information I may process

  • Contact details you send yourself by email, e.g. name, email address, company, role, and message.
  • Project context you choose to share, e.g. screenshots, links, documents, workflows, requirements, or technical problems.
  • What's needed to discuss or deliver a scoped job, e.g. meeting notes, decisions, tasks, deliverables, and support context.
  • Technical logs from the hosting infrastructure (Vercel), e.g. IP address, user agent, request path, timestamp, and error information.
  • What you write to the Ask Malte assistant yourself. See the dedicated section below.
  • If you download a free ebook: a hashed, redacted event (not a raw IP address), sent to DeskDude Ops, my internal operations tool. See the cookies page.

The public site sets no cookies. There's a theme toggle in the header that saves your light/dark choice in localStorage under the name deskdude-theme, so the choice is remembered on your next visit. See the cookies page for details.

What I use the information for

  • Responding to messages and assessing whether an inquiry is something I can help with.
  • Scoping websites, automation, AI workflows, industrial automation support, training, or technical review.
  • Delivering the work we've agreed on and keeping a useful project history.
  • Maintaining the site, fixing bugs, keeping the service secure, and preventing abuse.
  • Seeing how many times a free ebook gets downloaded, and roughly from where, based on the redacted events in DeskDude Ops.
  • Getting better at writing public resources based on real questions and recurring problems.

Legal basis

Most of what I do rests on a legitimate interest in running the site, responding to inquiries, keeping it secure, and developing services that make sense. When we're discussing paid work, or starting it, some processing may be necessary to prepare or perform an agreement. Some information I keep because Danish bookkeeping law or other mandatory documentation requires it.

Transfers outside the EU/EEA

Vercel, which hosts and deploys the site, is a US company. That can mean information is processed or stored outside the EU/EEA as part of hosting and operations.

Vercel's own data processing agreement uses the 2021 Standard Contractual Clauses (European Commission decision 2021/914) as the transfer safeguard for data from the EU/EEA, and the UK IDTA for transfers from the UK. That applies both to hosting deskdude.dk and to the Ask Malte widget at ask-deskdude-ai.vercel.app, which is also hosted on Vercel.

Sharing and vendors

I don't sell your personal data. Some information is handled by the infrastructure and work tools I use to run the site: Vercel for hosting and deployment, an email provider when you write to me, and DeskDude Ops for redacted ebook-download events. See the subprocessors page for more detail. If I need to work with personal data for you as part of a specific job, we agree on vendors and roles before anything is processed.

How long I keep things

General inquiries that don't lead to an engagement are normally deleted or anonymised within 12 months of the last contact, unless bookkeeping rules, an ongoing matter, or security reasons require longer retention. Customer material I keep while we're working together, and for up to 5 years afterward for what's bookkeeping-relevant under Danish law (e.g. invoices and agreements), while other project material is normally deleted sooner.

Want something deleted sooner, and there's no obligation to keep it? Let me know at hello@deskdude.dk.

Your rights

Depending on the situation, you can ask for access, correction, deletion, restriction, data portability, or object to the processing. Write to hello@deskdude.dk. You can also complain to the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet) if you think I'm handling your data incorrectly.

The Ask Malte assistant

Ask Malte is a chat assistant that answers questions about DeskDude Services. It loads from ask-deskdude-ai.vercel.app, a separate system I run, isolated from the deskdude.dk site itself by the site's Content Security Policy. What you type in the chat is sent to that system, not to this static website.

What's sent Whatever you type in the chat window.
Model/API provider Google Gemini (gemini-2.5-flash-lite) generates the answers themselves. Retrieval (finding relevant sources) uses OpenAI's embedding model (text-embedding-3-small). An additional OpenAI-compatible backup provider may be configured for chat answers.
Logging Questions that pass the assistant's built-in safety and relevance filter are logged together with a session ID and technical event data (e.g. response time and error status), to monitor failures, follow up on quality, and find questions the assistant couldn't answer well.
Retention Conversation logs are normally kept for up to 12 months.
Model training Conversations are not used to train or fine-tune the underlying AI model. Questions the assistant can't answer well are instead placed in a queue that I answer myself. My answer is added to the assistant's knowledge base so it can find it next time a similar question comes up.

Don't send sensitive personal data, passwords, payment details, national ID numbers, or confidential client data to Ask Malte. The assistant can answer incorrectly or incompletely and doesn't replace professional advice.

No hidden tracking, with one narrow exception

I don't use marketing pixels, retargeting, session recording, newsletter tracking, or analytics cookies on the public DeskDude Services site today. The one exception is the redacted ebook-download event described above, which is a server event, not a cookie. If I ever add non-essential analytics, ads, or similar technology, I'll update this notice and the cookies page and set up a real consent flow before that kind of technology loads.

Restaurant Training

Restaurant Training has its own app at app.deskdude.dk and its own privacy page at /restaurant-training/en/privacy.