Privacy Policy

App: Don't Spiral — Effective date: March 16, 2026

1. What data we collect

• Account information — email address (or Google/Apple account identifier) used to create your account.
• Personal context — optional "life facts" you choose to save (e.g. relationship details) to improve AI responses.
• Session feedback — optional ratings and comments you leave after a session.
• Usage statistics — number of sessions, message counts, and session categories (no message content).

Chat messages are not stored. Your conversation text is processed in real time to generate AI responses but is not persisted on our servers after the session ends.

2. Health & mental health data

Don't Spiral is an AI-powered mental health companion app — it is not a therapist and does not provide medical or clinical advice. When you use the app, the following health-related data may be accessed, collected, or processed:

• Conversation content — the topics you discuss may include mental health concerns, emotional states, relationship difficulties, and personal struggles. This text is processed in real time to generate supportive AI responses but is not stored on our servers after the session ends.
• Emotional distress indicators — the AI estimates a distress level (1–5) during each conversation to calibrate its responses (e.g. offering breathing exercises at high distress). These indicators are stored as anonymised session statistics (no message content) and are used solely to improve the quality of your experience.
• Life facts — optional personal context you share (e.g. relationship status, therapy history, recurring emotional patterns). These are stored on our servers to provide continuity across sessions, are only accessible to you, and can be deleted at any time from Settings.
• Crisis detection — the AI monitors for crisis-level language (e.g. self-harm, suicidal ideation) to display safety resources. Crisis flags are recorded as session metadata only (no message content is stored).

Health data is never sold, shared with third parties, or used for advertising. It is processed exclusively to provide the Don't Spiral service. Health data sent to the Anthropic Claude API for response generation is subject to Anthropic's zero-retention policy and is never used to train AI models.

3. How data is stored

All data is stored in compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on servers hosted by Hetzner in the European Union (Helsinki, Finland). All connections use TLS encryption.

4. AI processing

When you send a message, the conversation text is transmitted through our servers to the Anthropic Claude API to generate a supportive response. Only the conversation text is sent — no personal identifiers (email, name, account ID) are included in AI requests.

Anthropic operates a zero-retention policy for API data: your messages are not stored by Anthropic after processing and are never used to train AI models. Learn more about Anthropic's commercial data practices.

5. No selling, sharing, or advertising

We do not sell your data. We do not share your data with third parties for advertising or marketing purposes. Your data is used solely to provide the Don't Spiral service.

6. Data deletion

You can delete all your data at any time from within the app: Settings → Delete Account. This permanently removes your account, all chat sessions, life facts, preferences, and feedback from our servers.

7. Children's privacy

Don't Spiral is not intended for users under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

8. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Significant changes will be communicated through the app. Continued use of the app after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

9. Contact

For questions about this privacy policy or your data, contact us at apps@burkharts.net.