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, forwarding usage statistics to hetGE Account (see §3), 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 any of your design to us — each, like generating a PDF report, is only counted as a usage event, described in §3, without its content. 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.

When your hetGE account's "Share usage statistics" switch is on — it is on unless you turn it off — Pile Section reports to hetGE Account which actions you took: that a design was created, opened, or saved (and in which unit system), that a PDF report was generated (and whether it included the strength section), and that you started comparing two designs (and how — restoring a prior comparison, duplicating the current design, or loading a file). It also reports how long the application was actively used, meaning the window was visible, focused, and in use, but only while you are signed in and working in a design (never on this notice or the other public pages). No content of your design is ever sent this way: no names, dimensions, load values, bar counts, coordinates, or any other detail of what you drew or calculated leaves your browser — only that one of the actions above happened, and which of a short list of fixed choices it involved. Your browser sends this to Pile Section's own server, which forwards it to hetGE Account using your signed-in session; hetGE Account is the only other party that receives it. See the hetGE Account Privacy Policy for how it handles what it receives, including your IP address and browser user agent, which are used only at the moment of collection and are not kept for these statistics (the standard technical logs this notice describes are unaffected).

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. Usage statistics, described above, are first-party — sent only to hetGE Account, our own service — and set no cookie of their own. Your browser's Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal stops them being sent at all, and so does turning "Share usage statistics" off on your hetGE account.

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].