Pile Section Privacy Notice

Pile Section performs its work in your browser, not on hetGE's servers. The section you draw, the bar arrangement, the material properties and the load cases are held in the page while you work on them. The drawing, the steel quantities, the clear-spacing check and the ACI 318-25 strength calculations are all computed on your device, and the PDF report is rendered there as well.

We say this plainly because it determines everything below: your engineering inputs do not leave your device when you use the application, and we could not produce them if asked.

Nothing you design. There is no project database and no file storage behind this application; the only server endpoints it has are for signing in, checking your license, and reporting service health.

Your designs persist as files you control. Saving a design downloads a file to your computer, and opening one reads a file you select; neither operation sends anything to us. PDF reports are produced the same way, as an ordinary download.

Because we hold nothing for you, there is nothing for us to delete, and keeping your own backups of any design you wish to retain is your responsibility.

Authentication is handled by hetGE Account (account.hetge.com). After you sign in we set session cookies on section.hetge.com: an access token and a refresh token, both httpOnly and therefore unreadable by page scripts.

One further cookie is deliberately readable by the page, so the application can show who is signed in. It holds the profile hetGE Account returns for you, being your name, email address, account identifier, and your profile picture if you have one, and nothing your hetGE Account profile does not already hold.

While you are signed in, the application periodically asks our server whether your session is still valid, so that access revoked elsewhere takes effect here. That check carries your session cookie and nothing about your design.

Like every web service, our servers keep standard technical logs (IP address, timestamp, requested URL, user agent) for security and operations. Pile Section contains no advertising and no third-party analytics or tracking cookies.

The application stores three values in your browser, none of which describes a design:

• Theme, your light or dark preference.
• Unit system, whether you work in metric or US customary units.
• Welcome completed, so the first-run screen is not shown again.

The public landing page offers a short product video hosted by Vimeo. Nothing is requested from Vimeo until you press play: until then the player is a placeholder drawn by our own page. If you do press play, your browser then contacts Vimeo to stream the video, and that request is governed by Vimeo's privacy policy. We ask the player not to track viewers, and we receive no report from Vimeo about who watched.

Your hetGE account (profile, credentials, purchases) is operated by hetGE Account and governed by its Privacy Policy at account.hetge.com/privacy.

Pile Section is professional software and is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly process personal information of children under 16.

We will post any changes to this notice on this page with a new "Last updated" date. Questions, or requests about your data: [email protected].