About Spot

What is Spot?

Spot is a bot. Talking to Spot is like texting or using a messaging app, but with a machine instead of a friend. Our bot is a program that responds to what you write and can ask meaningful follow-up questions.

Is Spot a person?

No. We tried to make interacting with the bot feel natural and conversational, but Spot is definitely not a person.

Will any person read my Spot conversation?

No. Unless you tell us to send your report to someone, no human will ever read your conversation.

Why a bot?

People are often afraid to report workplace harassment and discrimination and don’t want to talk about it with others at their organization. A bot is helpful because:

• It'll never judge or assess you.
• It's available anytime, anywhere, for as long as you need.
• It won't share your conversation with anyone, unless you explicitly tell it to do so.

Is Spot free to use?

Yes. Our priority is to give individuals an accessible tool to report harassment and discrimination. Spot is funded by and built out of All Turtles, an AI studio based in San Francisco, Tokyo, and Paris.

Is Spot for me?

Can I use Spot if I’m not sure what I experienced was really harassment or discrimination?

Yes. If what you experienced felt inappropriate, use Spot. For an overview of harassment and discrimination with examples of each, see our handbook on the legal concepts.

Can I use Spot if I witnessed inappropriate behavior?

Yes. You can use Spot if you witnessed someone else being harassed or discriminated against.

When is the best time to use Spot? What if the event happened months or years ago?

Use Spot as soon as you can after the event, to capture as many details as possible. If the event happened some time ago, you can still report it.

How Spot works

There are 3 main steps to record and report your experience with Spot.

1. Interview with Spot. Spot asks a series of questions about what you remember. You can answer or skip any question. The chat takes as little as 10 minutes or as long as you need.
2. View your private report. Email yourself a timestamped PDF of your private report and keep it safe. It can be used as high-quality evidence if you need it.
3. Optional reporting. Edit and submit the report to your organization. Delete the parts of your interview that you don’t want to share. Spot sends reports from our email server, so you can choose to stay anonymous. Read more about reports.

How do I save my private report?

You can email yourself your private report as a securely signed PDF. We temporarily store your email address to 1) send your PDF and 2) allow you to save your report to edit and submit to your organization later. Your email address won't appear in your Spot documents.

If you’re a verified employee whose organization uses Spot, we keep your email address so that your employer can follow up on your report through Spot. We will never reveal your email to your organization.

Can I stop before I’ve finished creating a report and come back later?

Yes. As long as you keep the browser tab or window open, your information will still be there. If you close the tab or window where you’re using Spot, we immediately delete your data to protect your private information. You can also save your report to edit and submit to your organization later.

I’m interested in the technology behind Spot. How does it work?

Spot is a basic artificial intelligence that uses natural language processing to interact with you. The program can identify some words and phrases and accordingly change what it asks you. This analysis is done on our own servers.

Optional reporting

When I submit a report, what does the recipient get?

The recipient gets an email from reporting@talktospot.com (they will not see your email address). The email contains a link to a webpage where they can download your report as a PDF. After downloading the report, the recipient has 30 days to download it again before it’s automatically deleted from our servers. If you’re a verified employee whose organization uses Spot, your organization receives the report in their Spot dashboard. We store the report on our servers until your organization decides to delete it.

Why does Spot automatically delete reports?

To keep your data private and safe. We aim to minimize the amount of time your sensitive information is available to a third party.

How do I know the status of the report I sent?

You’ll get a link to a status webpage (keep this link in a safe place). The status page will show when the recipient has downloaded your report. If you submit a report as a verified employee of an organization that uses Spot, you won’t receive a status webpage link because you can be certain that your employer received the report.

What if the recipient doesn’t download my report?

If the recipient doesn’t download your report, it will remain unread on the Spot servers. Starting 24 hours after you send the report, you can go to your status webpage and send a reminder to the recipient.

To edit and resend your report, you’ll need to go through the bot interview again. We recommend cutting and pasting from your original report to speed up this process.

Can I send a report to myself?

Yes. You can email yourself your report.

How can a recipient trust the report hasn’t been tampered with?

Spot reports are PDFs that are securely signed and timestamped. Each also has a unique ID consisting of numbers and letters.

What does ‘securely signed and timestamped’ mean?

Your report is securely signed by Palace Inc., Spot’s legally incorporated entity. This process adds a special mark to the PDF detailing when Spot created the file and prevents it from being modified. Secure signatures protect you in case someone tries to tamper with your report after you create or send it.

If I submit a report anonymously through Spot, can I identify myself later?

Yes. From your own email address, send the full original report that you downloaded. Since your report is securely signed and has a unique ID, your organization can see that it’s identical to the one they received previously.

What if I’m not ready to submit a report yet?

You can talk to Spot, create a report, and then decide to save the report for later. If you save it for later, you can come back to Spot to edit and submit the report to your organization when you’re ready.

Can a report be un-sent?

No. If you’ve already submitted a report to someone, it cannot be un-sent by us or by you. However, if the recipient has not yet downloaded the report, you can manually delete it on the status webpage.

Is my information safe?

How does Spot protect my information?

We understand that what you tell Spot may be very sensitive. We take data protection seriously. Three things we do to protect your data:

• We delete reports from our servers 30 days after initial download. Once you’ve downloaded your private report, you can manually delete that document from our servers.
• We never share your Spot interviews, reports, or other private data with anyone outside of Spot unless you explicitly ask us to or we are legally obligated to. Once you’ve downloaded your private report, we delete your chat history with Spot.
• We use industry-standard encryption for all communications between your web client and our servers.

What information does Spot keep?

We believe that, when it comes to keeping your data, less is more. Here’s what we keep for each type of interaction with Spot:

• If you just talk to Spot, we can see that someone has used Spot, but we don’t keep any information that identifies who you are or what you talked to Spot about.
• If you download a report for yourself, we can see that someone has used Spot, but we don’t keep any information that identifies who you are or what you talked to Spot about.
• If you submit a report through Spot or save a report for later, we can see that someone has used Spot, but we don’t keep any information that identifies who you are. We keep the report that you’ve sent on our servers until it’s downloaded by the recipient.

Where should I store my private report?

After the interview with Spot, you’ll email yourself a PDF of your private report. We recommend that you use a password-protected personal computer or device with an updated operating system. If anonymity is important to you, don’t save any Spot documents on your work computer or other work devices. We also recommend saving copies of your Spot documents to a personal Dropbox or Evernote account or to an external hard drive.

Is everything I tell Spot encrypted?

Spot uses industry-standard encryption to protect data you send to our servers. Once you end the session with Spot, all data is immediately deleted from our servers. Spot will confirm the deletion with you.

If you submit a report, it can only be accessed through the link we send to the email address you give us.

For Teams FAQ

I just received a Spot report. What now?

Spot reports should be treated as a starting point for an investigation, not as definitive proof that something has happened. Your organization likely has a process for dealing with internal complaints or allegations of harassment and discrimination. Initiate that process upon receiving a Spot report.

What happens if I ignore a Spot report?

Responding to all allegations of harassment and discrimination is essential to maintaining the trust of your employees. If it feels like such issues are ignored or dealt with insufficiently, your employees’ satisfaction suffers, as does your ability to recruit and retain a qualified and diverse workforce.

Are there legal benefits to using Spot?

Yes. One of the main benefits is that by encouraging your employees to use Spot for problems as they arise, you’re more likely to find out about issues early. It allows you to deal with problems internally and try to prevent them from escalating to resignations, legal action, or bad press.

Am I legally liable after I receive a Spot report?

If you ignore an allegation of workplace harassment or discrimination, you might be putting your organization at risk. Companies have legal responsibilities to deal with such allegations. Initiating a fact-finding internal investigation is the appropriate response to receiving a Spot report.

How do I know that the person who sent the report is who they say they are?

If the person included their own name on the report, you should contact them to acknowledge that you received it. Spot cannot verify any user’s identity unless your organization uses Spot.

How do I know whether the report actually came from one of my employees?

If the person didn’t identify themselves, you may not be able to verify that a report was sent by an employee. However, if you receive a complaint of harassment or discrimination, you should still investigate, even if you’re unsure of who the person is.