Privacy Policy

This policy describes what Sentinel collects when you use the platform, why, who can see it, and how to reach us about it. It is written in plain language on purpose — the specifics matter more than the boilerplate.

Who we are

Sentinel is operated by Sentinel Patrol LLC, Texas, USA. Sentinel is software you use to watch your own cameras with better tools. It is not a central-station or guard service: nobody at Sentinel continuously observes your cameras, we do not dispatch emergency services, and detection of any particular event is not guaranteed. You are solely responsible for reviewing notifications and determining whether any response is necessary.

What we collect

Only what the product needs to do what you configured it to do:

• Account data. The name, email address, and role of each user your organization adds — nothing more is required to sign someone in.
• Camera configuration. The cameras you connect, their names, zones, detection rules, and the stream credentials needed to reach them. Stream credentials are encrypted at rest and decrypted in one place in our systems; they are never sent back to a browser once saved.
• Event snapshots and clips. When a rule you configured matches, we keep the snapshot image and a short clip of that event — footage of your own premises. Live video is never sent to Sentinel; we only ever hold the snapshot and clip attached to a detected event.
• Audit logs. A record of configuration changes and of who viewed a given snapshot or clip, and when.
• Escalation contacts. The names, phone numbers, roles, notes, and preferred contact method you enter for the people your plan calls when something happens. If you set a verification passcode for a contact, it is encrypted the same way stream credentials are, and is never shown to anyone but your own account admins.
• Alert recipients. The email addresses or webhook endpoints you designate to receive alerts.
• Billing. We bill through Stripe. We never see or store your card number — card entry happens on Stripe's own page. We keep Stripe's identifiers for your account and your subscription status, not payment details.

Why we collect it

To run the service you configured: analyse the camera feeds you select, identify the events you configure, and notify the people you designate. Escalation contacts and their passcodes exist so the right person can be reached and verified when something happens. Audit logs exist so you (and we, if you ask us to help) can answer "who saw this, and when." Billing data exists to run your subscription. Nothing here is collected for advertising, and nothing is sold or shared with anyone outside of running the service.

Email

This section describes exactly what email Sentinel sends, to whom, and how to stop it. It is deliberately specific.

What we send

• Alert notifications — one transactional message per matched camera event (for example "[Sentinel] Person detected — Front Lot"), from alerts@sentinelpatrol.com, with a snapshot attached.
• Account email — sign-in links, password resets, and an optional once-a-day digest of the previous night's events, if you turn it on.
• Nothing else. No marketing, no newsletters, no promotions, no campaigns.

How recipients get on the list

• Only one way: an account owner signs in to their own panel and types the addresses that should receive alerts — typically their own staff.
• We do not buy, rent, import, enrich, or discover addresses. We never email an address a customer did not enter.
• Addresses are validated on entry and each alert channel is capped at 20 recipients.

How to stop receiving email

• From the message itself: every alert carries one-click "silence this alert for 1 / 4 / 8 / 12 / 24 hours" links. No sign-in required.
• From the panel: the account owner can remove a recipient, disable a rule, or delete a channel at any time; the change takes effect immediately.
• Automatically: hard bounces and complaints are suppressed account-wide, so a mailbox that bounces or reports us as spam is not mailed again — with no manual step.
• If you are receiving alerts and don't know why, email us (below) with the address and we will remove it and tell the account owner.

What we keep, and for how long

• Event snapshots and clips are kept for the retention period the customer's plan sets and are then deleted. Live video is never sent to Sentinel.
• Recipient addresses are stored only to deliver the notifications the customer configured, and are deleted when the customer removes them.
• We do not sell or share customer data. Infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services in the United States; transactional email is sent through Amazon SES with DKIM signing and TLS.

Retention

Event and snapshot retention windows are set by your plan — see pricing or your account settings for the exact number of days on your tier. A clip shares the retention period of the snapshot it accompanies; when the snapshot is deleted, so is the clip.

Removing a camera, an escalation contact, or an alert recipient deletes the data tied to it. Audit log entries are kept independently of the events they describe, so a deleted event's access history remains reviewable.

Who can see your footage

Your own users, according to the role and the site/camera access you assign them. Sentinel staff access footage only to provide support you have requested, and every view of a snapshot or clip — by your users or by ours — is written to the same audit trail your account can review, recording who looked and when.

We are not a central-station monitoring service. Nobody at Sentinel continuously watches your cameras, we do not dispatch emergency services, and detection of any particular event is not guaranteed.

Subprocessors

We use a short, fixed list of vendors to run the service — infrastructure and payment processing, nothing else. The full list, with what each one does and where, is on the subprocessors page.

Security

• Tenant isolation is enforced in the query layer, with tests that check one customer's data cannot be reached from another's account.
• A resource that isn't yours returns "not found," never a response that confirms it exists somewhere else — so a wrong guess can't be used to map another customer's account.
• Camera stream credentials and escalation-contact passcodes are encrypted at rest and decrypted in one place in our systems.
• Agent keys and tokens are stored as hashes, not as plain text.
• Events are buffered at the edge (on the agent, at your site) and replayed after a network outage, so a blip doesn't lose an event.
• The agent connects out to Sentinel over HTTPS only. Nothing is opened inbound to your network.

Biometric and video state law

Stated factually, before the open legal question below: Sentinel detects classes of objects — a person, a vehicle — not the identity of any individual. It does not perform facial recognition, and it does not create, store, or compare biometric identifiers (such as a faceprint or fingerprint) anywhere in the product.

Children

Sentinel is a business product for commercial properties. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 through the site or the product. If you believe a child's information has reached us, contact us below and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. For a material change, we will also notify account admins by email.

Contact

Questions about this policy, a demo, or a removal request: sales@sentinelpatrol.com.