Privacy Policy

Scope

This Policy applies to information processed through the Service. It does not govern Apple, Google, or another third party when that party acts under its own privacy policy, such as when an app store processes a purchase or your mobile carrier delivers an SMS. Our Terms of Service govern use of Catharone.

Information you provide

• Account and authentication information: your phone number, one-time-code authentication events, account-lifecycle records, and the internal account identifier assigned by our authentication provider. We do not ask for an account password.
• Catharone conversations: messages and instructions you send, Catharone replies, message timestamps and identifiers, and limited metadata needed to stream, order, resume, and recover conversations.
• Peer conversations and connection activity: messages you choose to send to an introduced person, whether you open, ignore, leave, or report a connection, and names or contact details you voluntarily disclose in peer chat.
• Support and safety requests: information you include when you contact support, request access or correction, appeal a safety decision, report another user, or report a security concern. Please do not send passwords, verification codes, payment credentials, or unnecessary private conversation text.
• Subscription information: the store, product, entitlement, purchase and renewal state, expiration or grace-period information, and actions such as opening, purchasing, restoring, or managing a subscription. Apple or Google processes your payment instrument; Catharone does not receive your full card or bank details.

Information collected automatically

• Device and app information: platform, app version, build environment, device time zone, notification authorization state, Expo push token, and technical identifiers needed to authenticate a session and deliver the Service.
• Usage and service events: conversation and feature usage, quota reservations, model and embedding usage, background-job completion, subscription-surface actions, safety and rate-limit events, and timestamps. These records help us operate the Service, enforce limits, investigate failures, and understand cost and reliability.
• Website and network information: our hosting, security, and infrastructure providers may process IP address, browser or network information, request time, and similar server logs needed to deliver and protect the website and APIs. The public Catharone website does not currently use third-party advertising trackers.

Information Catharone derives or generates

Catharone is designed to create continuity from conversation. It may derive or generate:

• durable memories, summaries, embeddings, preferences, goals, relationships, events, and other facts drawn from conversation;
• evidence-bound personality traits, interests, communication patterns, observed languages, general city, and time zone, including a low-priority time-zone hint from your device;
• usage eligibility, quota, cost, subscription, and service-health records;
• reciprocal-match scores, non-identifying introduction descriptions, generated pseudonyms, introduction state, and proactive-message timing; and
• automated peer-message moderation categories, provider signals, delivery decisions, restricted safety cases, and pair-level blocks.

Catharone's structured-profile controls reject secrets, precise or live location, and inferred intimate traits such as medical conditions, sexuality, or religion. However, the messages you write are retained as conversation content and may themselves contain sensitive information. Do not share information you do not want processed as part of the Service.

How we use information

We use this information to:

• authenticate accounts and protect access to the Service;
• generate, stream, store, and recover Catharone conversations;
• capture and retrieve memory so conversations can retain useful continuity;
• personalize language, timing, tone, proactive check-ins, and other behavior;
• operate reciprocal matching, non-identifying introductions, and peer messaging;
• screen peer messages, investigate reports, enforce safety rules, and hear appeals;
• deliver notifications you have allowed and route you to the relevant conversation;
• offer subscriptions, restore access, reconcile entitlements, and prevent billing fraud;
• enforce usage limits and measure model, infrastructure, and subscription economics;
• respond to support, privacy, security, and legal requests;
• debug, secure, maintain, and improve the functionality and reliability of the Service;
• comply with law and protect users, XYSOFT, and the public.

Memory is part of Catharone's core service and is not a separate permission. Your plan determines the amount of memory processing and deep retrieval available. You can correct Catharone in conversation, request access or correction through support, or permanently delete your account.

AI and automated processing

We send conversation content and relevant context to third-party AI service providers to generate replies, embeddings, memories, profile observations, delegated results, introductions, and peer-safety classifications. Context can include prior messages, retrieved memories, internal profile facts, general location or time-zone context, and the current request. These providers process information for these functions under their applicable service and data-processing terms with XYSOFT.

After phone verification and before the first transfer to a third-party AI service provider, Catharone describes the information and purposes above and asks you to allow or decline that processing. The account-linked choice is saved with the disclosure version and time so it follows the account across devices. If you decline, Catharone does not send your information to those providers and AI-powered features remain unavailable. You can withdraw a prior permission at any time from Settings > AI & Privacy in the app. Withdrawal stops future transfers to third-party AI service providers but does not delete your account or information already retained under this Policy. Account deletion remains a separate action in Settings. Provider selection may change over time, but this permission covers only the information, purposes, and protections described here. We will update this Policy and ask again before relying on permission for materially broader processing.

Applicable language-model requests include your internal pseudonymous account identifier as a safety identifier so AI service providers can help detect abuse without receiving your phone number. Where provider controls allow, Catharone disables provider-side application-state storage. This is not the same as zero data retention: providers may retain limited security or abuse-monitoring data under their terms with XYSOFT and applicable law.

XYSOFT does not use private Catharone conversations to train a generalized or foundation AI model or for advertising, and does not permit AI service providers to use them to train generalized or foundation models for their own purposes. Catharone's application code does not invoke provider feedback or data-sharing features.

Automated systems influence what Catharone says, what it remembers, whether and when it proposes an introduction, how it applies usage limits, and whether a peer message is delivered, blocked, or escalated for restricted review. Automated output can be wrong. You may leave or report a peer conversation and may request review of a safety decision by contacting support. Catharone does not provide continuous human monitoring or emergency response.

Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy

Catharone is not a health-care or mental-health service, but a private conversation may contain information that identifies or could reveal your physical or mental health. This can include symptoms, conditions, diagnoses, medication, treatment, reproductive or sexual health, behavioral or psychological experiences, and efforts to seek health care. Depending on where you live, some of this information may be “consumer health data” or “sensitive personal information” under applicable law.

We collect this information directly from what you choose to write and from automated processing needed to respond, maintain conversation continuity, and apply safety rules. We do not obtain medical records, insurance records, or health-provider records about you. Sensitive information can remain in raw conversation content even though Catharone's structured-profile controls reject medical or psychological conditions, sexuality, religion, precise location, and other intimate traits.

We use and disclose consumer health information only to provide the Service you request, secure and troubleshoot that Service, comply with law, and protect rights and safety. The categories we disclose are the categories described above, but only to the extent they are included in conversation content or context needed for those purposes. They may be processed by Supabase and third-party AI service providers, disclosed to a peer when you choose to include them in a peer message, or disclosed for a legal or safety reason described below. We do not sell consumer health information, use it for advertising, or allow third parties to collect it through Catharone over time across unrelated websites or services.

Where consumer-health law applies, you may ask us to confirm whether we process your consumer health information, provide access or a copy, identify the third parties and affiliates with whom it was disclosed and their available contact information, correct or delete it, withdraw consent, or otherwise stop future collection or disclosure. You may also appeal a refusal. Email contact@cathar.one with “Consumer Health Request” or “Privacy Appeal” in the subject. We will authenticate and respond to the request as required by applicable law. Because processing conversation content is necessary to provide Catharone, stopping that processing may require you to stop using or delete the Service.

How we disclose information

We do not sell personal information, share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, or use it to serve third-party ads. We may disclose information in the following limited circumstances:

• Other users: an introduction shows the other participant only a synthesized description and generated display name. It does not show raw memories, evidence, internal scores, precise location, phone number, or direct account identifier. A peer receives the messages and any personal information you later choose to send.
• Service providers: Supabase provides authentication, database, Edge Functions, and related infrastructure; SMS delivery providers and mobile carriers may deliver one-time codes; third-party AI service providers supply AI generation, embeddings, and moderation; Expo, Apple, and Google help deliver notifications; RevenueCat, Apple, and Google operate subscription infrastructure; and Vercel hosts the public website. These providers process information under their applicable service and data-processing terms for the services they provide to us.
• Authorized review: if authorized XYSOFT personnel access information, they may do so only when reasonably necessary to answer a support or privacy request, investigate a security or safety issue, troubleshoot a service failure, enforce our Terms, or comply with law.
• Legal and safety: we may preserve or disclose information when we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with law or valid legal process, investigate fraud or abuse, enforce our Terms, protect rights or safety, or respond to a credible emergency.
• Business transfers: information may be reviewed or transferred as part of a financing, merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale of assets, subject to applicable law and continued protection of personal information.
• De-identified information: we may use or disclose aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be linked to an individual. We take reasonable measures not to reidentify it and require recipients to preserve its de-identified form.

Retention and deletion

We use the following periods or criteria to decide how long information is retained:

• account information, conversations, memories, profile information, settings, connections, and active entitlement state are retained while your account is active so Catharone can provide continuity and operate the Service;
• operational, usage, security, and diagnostic records are retained only as long as reasonably necessary to measure service and model usage, maintain reliability, investigate failures, prevent fraud or abuse, and comply with law, considering the sensitivity of the record and available provider controls;
• subscription, store, refund, accounting, audit, and dispute records are retained as needed for reconciliation and the applicable financial, contractual, or legal period;
• support, privacy, safety, and legal correspondence is retained as needed to answer the request, maintain an appropriate record of the response, resolve disputes, and meet legal obligations; and
• backups are protected from ordinary product use and overwritten or deleted according to provider backup-rotation schedules unless preservation is legally required.

Peer-safety retention is more specific: allowed or failed screening metadata expires after 7 days; medium-risk blocked evidence after 90 days; and high-risk, critical, or user-reported evidence after 365 days. Pair blocks retain no message body and remain until either account is deleted or an authorized correction removes the block.

You can delete your account immediately in Settings or through the web account-deletion page. Deletion removes the authentication record and user-owned Catharone data from the active service, including conversations, messages, memories, profiles, settings, push tokens, notifications, introductions, and entitlement mirrors. Limited records may remain when reasonably necessary for store reconciliation, refunds, fraud prevention, security, safety, accounting, audit, dispute resolution, legal compliance, or backup rotation. We restrict retained records from ordinary product use and delete or de-identify them when the retention purpose ends.

Where applicable law requires, an authenticated privacy deletion request also requires us to notify relevant processors or other recipients to delete covered information, subject to lawful exceptions and backup-rotation periods.

Account deletion does not cancel an App Store or Google Play subscription and does not erase a message already delivered to another user from that person's device or records. Manage or cancel store billing before deleting your account.

Your rights and choices

• Access and correction: you may correct Catharone in conversation or contact us to request access to, or correction of, account-linked information. We may verify your identity before responding.
• AI processing:after allowing third-party AI processing, open Settings > AI & Privacy in the app to withdraw permission at any time. Withdrawal stops future transfers and makes AI-powered features unavailable; it does not delete your account or information already retained under this Policy.
• Deletion: delete your account in the app or on the web, or contact us if you cannot access either path.
• Introductions and peers: ignore an introduction, leave a peer conversation, report a peer, or appeal a safety decision.
• Notifications: allow or revoke notification permission in iOS or Android settings.
• Subscriptions: restore access in Catharone and manage or cancel billing through the store where you subscribed.
• Local privacy rights: depending on where you live, you may have additional rights to know, access, correct, delete, restrict, object, or receive a copy of personal information, withdraw consent, identify recipients, or appeal a refusal to act on a request. We will honor non-waivable rights and will not discriminate against you for exercising them.

Security

We use measures designed to protect information, including HTTPS/TLS in transit, account-scoped database access, restricted service roles for sensitive operations, secure on-device session storage, provider access controls, and deletion cascades for user-owned records. No transmission or storage system is completely secure. Contact us promptly if you believe your account or information has been compromised.

Age and geographic scope

Catharone is intended only for people who are at least 18 years old and for initial use in the United States. We do not knowingly permit minors to create accounts. If you believe a minor has provided information, contact us so we can investigate and delete it as appropriate.

International processing

XYSOFT and its providers may process information in the United States and other countries where they operate. Those countries may have different data-protection laws. Where applicable law requires a transfer mechanism or additional protection, we will use it.

Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy as the Service, providers, or law changes. We will update the date above and provide additional notice of material changes where appropriate or required. We will not use previously collected personal information in a materially incompatible way without notice and consent when applicable law requires it.

Contact us

For privacy questions or requests, email contact@cathar.onewith “Privacy” in the subject line. Do not include verification codes or unnecessary conversation content.