By accessing or using the PEARL Intelligence Network ("PIN") platform, you agree to the following terms. If you do not agree, you must discontinue use of the platform immediately.
Permitted Use
PIN is provided for informational and decision-support purposes only. You may use PIN data, scores, and visualizations to inform internal planning, research, education, and operational awareness.
You may share PIN-generated reports and exports with colleagues, stakeholders, and regulatory bodies, provided you include the standard PIN disclaimer (Section 9) with any shared materials.
You may not represent PIN outputs as official regulatory assessments, certified laboratory results, or legally binding determinations.
Prohibited Use
Using PIN data to make public health claims without independent verification from certified sources.
Scraping, bulk downloading, or programmatically extracting data from PIN beyond normal platform usage, except through provided export features.
Reselling, sublicensing, or redistributing PIN data, scores, or derived products as a commercial data service.
Attempting to reverse-engineer PIN scoring algorithms, circumvent access controls, or interfere with platform operations.
Misrepresenting your identity, role, or organizational affiliation to gain unauthorized access to restricted features.
Data Accuracy & Liability
PIN aggregates data from third-party federal, state, and local sources (see Section 6: Source Catalog). While PIN applies quality assurance processes (Section 7), PIN makes no warranty, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the data presented. Local Seafood Projects Inc. shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from the use of or reliance on PIN data, scores, or reports. Users assume all risk associated with using PIN outputs for decision-making.
Account & Access
You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials. Do not share login credentials with unauthorized individuals.
Access levels (role-based permissions) are assigned by your organization's administrator. PIN reserves the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms.
PIN may modify, suspend, or discontinue features or data sources at any time without prior notice.
Intellectual Property
The PIN platform, including its scoring methodologies, user interface, and branding, is the intellectual property of Local Seafood Projects Inc. Third-party data displayed within PIN remains the property of its respective publishers (EPA, USGS, NOAA, state agencies, etc.) and is subject to their individual terms of use. Project Pearl™, Pearl™, PIN™, PEARL Intelligence Network™, ALIA™, and AQUA-LO™ are trademarks of Local Seafood Projects Inc.
Changes to Terms
These terms may be updated periodically. Continued use of PIN after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised terms. Material changes will be communicated via platform notification.
11.Privacy & Data Handling
PIN is committed to protecting user privacy. This section describes what data PIN collects, how it is stored, and how it is used.
PIN does not collect personal health information, financial data, or government-issued identifiers.
PIN does not track individual user behavior for advertising or sell user data to third parties.
PIN does not store voice recordings. Dictated questions are transcribed and only the resulting text is processed. Transcription is always performed by a third party, never by PIN: in browsers that expose the Web Speech API (Chrome, Edge) the browser vendor's own speech service receives the audio and PIN never sees it; in every other browser PIN uploads the clip to OpenAI and discards it after transcription. PIN retains no audio in either case. Dictation is optional and the microphone is only active while you hold a recording open.
Data Retention & Deletion
Account data is retained for the duration of an active account. Upon account deletion or organizational off-boarding, user data is removed within 30 days.
Cached environmental data from third-party sources is refreshed on cron schedules (see Section 3: Data Age Thresholds) and is not permanently archived.
Audit logs (who accessed what data, when) are retained for 12 months for security and compliance purposes.
Third-Party Services
Service
Purpose
Data Shared
Supabase
Authentication, database, real-time subscriptions
Account data, application state
Vercel
Hosting, edge functions, cron scheduling
Request logs (IP anonymized)
Sentry
Error monitoring and performance tracking
Anonymized error traces, device metadata
OpenAI
AQUA assistant queries and voice transcription
User text queries (no PII attached); dictated audio clips, only in browsers without the Web Speech API
Browser speech service (e.g. Google, for Chrome and Edge)
Speech-to-text for dictated questions, performed by the browser itself
Dictated audio, sent by the browser directly to its vendor — it does not pass through PIN
Your Rights
Access: You may request a copy of all data PIN holds about you by contacting your organization's administrator or PIN support.
Correction: You may update your profile information at any time through the platform settings.
Deletion: You may request account deletion, which will remove your personal data within 30 days.
Portability: You may export your PIN-generated reports and data at any time using the platform's export features.
Contact
For privacy inquiries, data requests, or to report a security concern, contact your organization's PIN administrator or reach out to Local Seafood Projects Inc. at the address listed on pinwater.org.