Privacy Policy

Untangle is a private space for your thoughts. We collect the minimum data needed to run the app, we encrypt it in transit and at rest, we never sell it, and you can export or delete your data at any time.

If you choose to use personalisation, the context you give us is used only to shape how AI features speak to you, is never sold or used for advertising, and can be edited, reset or deleted by you at any time in Settings → My Context.

• Account data: email, hashed password, optional display name, account creation date.
• Content you write: journal entries, brain dumps, reflections, and any input you submit to AI features.
• Personal Goals: if you use the Goals section, we store the goal title, the life areas you tag it with, the reason you wrote for it (the “why”), the next step you noted, an optional target date, and the goal's state (for example not started, taking shape, in progress, completed or archived). When you add a goal check-in we also store what you wrote in it: how you felt, what moved forward, the next step, and your check-in reflection. This is separate from the older planner / life-organiser “goals” used by the planning and AI features described below.
• Support entries: if you choose to use the Support section, we store what you voluntarily write in a guided wellbeing exercise, together with which pathway you opened and any optional prompts or options you selected. What you write is up to you and may include information about your thoughts, feelings, worries, stress, wellbeing or personal circumstances. Support entries are stored in your account so that you can return to your own Support history. See “The Support (wellbeing) feature” below.
• Personalisation context (“My Context”, optional): if you use the personalisation walkthrough or the My Context screen, we store the answers you choose — life stage, age range, what is taking up mental space (including an optional short note you type), what you want more of, what helps you, your preferred response style and help preferences — plus an optional short free-text line about your faith or spiritual perspective and a separate on/off setting for whether it may be used in AI responses. We also store a short list of recurring themes the app has derived from your own reflections, which are only used once you confirm them. See “Personalisation (“My Context”)” below.
• Subscription data: plan, status, billing cycle, renewal date, Founding Member number where applicable. Untangle does not directly collect or store users' full payment card details — those are handled by the payment provider you use (Stripe on the web, Google Play Billing in the Android app).
• Device and log data: IP address, browser type, OS, timestamps, and basic event logs needed for security and reliability.
• Product analytics and app-install data (optional): unless you turn analytics off, we record product events and a randomly generated installation identifier together with platform, device type, app version, language, a country code derived from your IP address by our hosting provider, and how you arrived (for example the Play Store, a search engine, a campaign link or a referral). See “Analytics and app install measurement” below.
• Cookies: a session cookie to keep you signed in and a small number of essential cookies for security.

If you are in the UK or the EU, data protection law asks us to say which “lawful basis” each use of your data rests on. In plain terms:

• To give you the app you signed up for — your account, the things you write (journal entries, brain dumps, reflections, Personal Goals, goal check-ins and Support entries), your preferences, and any connections you choose to make between them. Basis: performance of our contract with you. If you don't want us to hold this, the option is to delete the content or your account.
• To run the AI features you choose to use — sending the relevant content to our AI provider so a response can be generated, as described under “AI processing” below. Basis: performance of our contract with you, because that is the feature you asked for. You control it by choosing whether to use those features.
• To keep the service secure and working — security logging, error reports, abuse and fraud prevention, and rate limiting. Basis: our legitimate interests in operating Untangle safely. This continues even if you turn analytics off, because we cannot run the service without it.
• To understand which features help people — non-essential product analytics, app-install / first-open measurement, and email open tracking. Basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in Settings → Privacy & data.
• To send optional emails such as weekly insights or product news. Basis: your consent, withdrawable in Settings → Notifications. Essential account, security and billing emails are sent on the basis of our contract with you.
• To take payment and keep records — subscription, entitlement and transaction records. Basis: performance of our contract with you for the subscription itself, and compliance with a legal obligation for tax, accounting and dispute records we have to keep.
• To confirm you meet the age requirement — we store only the timestamp of your confirmation. Basis: compliance with a legal obligation and our legitimate interests in not offering the service to people below the minimum age.

Personalisation. If you use the optional personalisation feature, we process the answers you give and the themes you confirm to shape how AI features speak to you. Basis: performance of our contract with you for that feature, and our legitimate interests in making the product relevant for the part where the app derives candidate themes from signals your own reflections already produced. Any faith or spiritual information you enter is used for personalisation only on the basis of your explicit consent, given by switching on the separate setting for it. Full detail is under “Personalisation (“My Context”)” below.

Sensitive information in what you write. With one exception, we never ask you for special category data (such as health, religious or sexuality information) and we do not require it to use Untangle. The exception is the optional faith or spiritual perspective field in the personalisation feature, which you may leave blank and which is only used in AI responses if you switch on the separate consent setting described below. Beyond that, journaling is open-ended, so what you write in a brain dump, journal entry, reflection, goal check-in, Support exercise or personalisation note might describe your mental or physical health, your beliefs or your relationships. We treat everything you write as private content that only your own account can read; we do not classify it, diagnose from it, score your mental health, build health profiles, or use it for advertising or for training AI models. We process it only to give you the features you asked for, and you can delete it at any time. Please only write what you are comfortable storing in an online service.

We do not use your content for profiling that has a legal effect on you, or for automated decisions of that kind. The Support section is optional and its prompts are open-ended: you decide what, if anything, to write in it, and you can use it without writing about your health.

We use a managed authentication provider to handle sign-up, sign-in, password reset, and session tokens. Passwords are hashed — we never see your raw password.

Payment information may be shared with the payment provider you choose at the point of purchase. Untangle only receives limited transaction and entitlement information from that provider.

• Website purchases are processed by Stripe. Your card details go directly to Stripe and never touch our servers.
• Android app purchases are processed by Google Play Billing / Google Payments. Untangle never sees your card details.

For Android subscriptions, Untangle may receive and store limited purchase information needed to verify and manage subscriptions, including:

• Google Play subscription product ID
• Purchase token
• Order or transaction reference
• Subscription status
• Purchase and expiry dates
• Cancellation, grace-period and renewal status
• Whether the subscription is in a free-trial or introductory phase, and whether Google Play reports your store account as eligible for a trial offer (we receive this eligibility signal from Google Play in order to show the correct offer — we do not calculate it ourselves)

This information is used to:

• Verify purchases
• Unlock paid features
• Prevent fraud
• Restore purchases
• Manage cancellations and expiry
• Provide customer support
• Maintain accounting and legal records

Which plans and prices are offered to you is determined by Google Play and our subscription provider based on your Google Play store account country, not by your IP address, device language or any profiling by Untangle. We store the purchased product identifier so we can apply the correct plan.

Untangle's reflection, planning and insight features are powered by AI models operated by OpenAI. When you use one of those features, the relevant content is sent from our server to OpenAI's API over an encrypted connection so a response can be generated.

Based on how the app is currently built, that means:

• The text you write in a reflection or brain dump, including any voice note after it has been transcribed to text.
• The context you choose alongside it — mood, energy, how heavy things felt before and after, and your written check-in answers.
• Planner items you have saved in Untangle where a feature needs them — for example the titles and notes of tasks, habits, projects, planner goals and the names or labels of people you have added, so suggestions and drafts can refer to them. “Planner goals” here means the older life-organiser items created by the planning features, not the Personal Goals section.
• Summaries of your own past reflections for features that look at patterns over time, such as weekly summaries and clarity reports.
• Your selected language, so the response is written in it.
• Your personalisation context, if you have set one up — a short summary of only the relevant parts (for example your life stage, what is taking up mental space, how you want responses written, and any theme you have confirmed), and your faith or spiritual line only if you have switched on the setting that permits it. See “Personalisation (“My Context”)” below.

We do not send your email address, your name, your password, your payment details or your Untangle account identifier to OpenAI, and we never send another user's content into your request.

Personal Goals are not sent to an AI provider. As Untangle is currently built, the Goals section has no AI features: your goal titles, life areas, the reason you wrote, your next steps, target dates and your goal check-ins (including the check-in reflection) are stored in your account and are not sent to OpenAI or any other AI provider by the Goals feature. If you write about a goal yourself inside a brain dump or reflection, that text is part of that reflection and is processed as described above. If we ever add an AI feature to Goals, we will update this policy and tell you before it takes effect.

Suggested next steps when you first start using Untangle. The guided start walks you through your first reflection and can then offer a few suggested next steps. To write those suggestions we send that one reflection (the text you wrote and the reflection Untangle produced from it) together with the personalisation details you chose to share to OpenAI, in the same way as described above. The suggestions are ideas only: nothing is added to your Goals unless you tap to add it, and once you add one it is an ordinary goal that is not sent to an AI provider by the Goals feature. Suggested steps are not advice, not a diagnosis and not a treatment plan, and they are not medical, psychological or professional advice.

Support entries are not sent to an AI provider. As Untangle is currently built, the Support section has no AI features: what you write in a Support exercise, the pathway you opened and the options you selected are stored in your account only. They are not sent to OpenAI or any other AI provider, and they are not used for AI analysis, diagnosis, mental-health scoring, risk scoring or any automated mental-health profiling. Nothing in Support reads, classifies or reacts to what you write. If you write about the same subject yourself inside a brain dump or reflection, that text belongs to that reflection and is processed as described above. If we ever add an AI feature to Support, we will update this policy and tell you before it takes effect.

What we do not claim: we make no representation here about OpenAI's retention periods, whether data is excluded from model training, which country processes the request, or the contractual terms that apply to it. Those are matters between us and OpenAI under their terms and documentation, which may change. If that detail matters to you, please read OpenAI's privacy policy and contact us before submitting sensitive information.

AI output can be wrong. It is a reflection aid, not medical, psychological, legal or other professional advice.

Untangle has an optional personalisation feature. If you use it, the app holds a small profile of context about you — shown to you as “My Context” — and uses it to shape how AI features speak to you. It is entirely optional: you can skip the walkthrough, leave any question blank, use every part of Untangle without it, and remove it later. Nothing is inferred from you and stored here unless described below.

1. Information you provide yourself. Only what you choose to select or type:

• Life stage — chosen from a fixed list (for example studying, early in your career, a parent, caring for someone, self-employed, retired).
• Age range — a broad band chosen from a fixed list. We do not ask for your date of birth here.
• What is taking up mental space — areas chosen from a fixed list (for example work, family, health, money, time), plus an optional short free-text note of your own.
• What you want more of — desired outcomes chosen from a fixed list (for example feeling calmer, focusing on what matters).
• What helps you — chosen from a fixed list (for example gentle encouragement, very small steps, plain honesty).
• Response style and help preferences — how you would like AI responses written (for example warm, practical, brief) and what kind of help you want (for example just listen, ask questions, suggest next steps).
• Faith or spiritual perspective (optional) — a short free-text line, plus a separate on/off setting controlling whether it may be used. See “Faith and spiritual information” below.

We also store, for each of these, the time it was last changed and a version counter, so the app knows when your context changed. Whether you completed or dismissed the personalisation walkthrough is recorded so we do not keep asking.

2. Themes the app has noticed (app-derived, not written by you). Separately from the answers above, Untangle may derive a short list of recurring themes from signals already produced by your own reflections in the app (such as the theme and recurring-loop labels created when you run a reflection). These are single short labels — for example “work pressure” or “sleep” — counted over roughly the last two months, and only kept when the same label recurs several times. Each carries a count, a rough confidence value and when it was last seen. They are derived by the app, not stated by you, and we present them as such: they may simply be wrong.

• A noticed theme is not used to personalise AI responses until you confirm it. Unconfirmed themes are only shown to you in Settings → My Context so you can accept or remove them.
• Removing a theme marks it as dismissed so it is not used and is not suggested to you again.
• This is not diagnosis, mental-health scoring, risk scoring or automated profiling with legal or similarly significant effects, and it does not change what you pay, what you can access, or any decision about you. It only affects wording.

3. How it is used. When you use an AI feature, the app builds a short plain-text summary of only the parts of your context that feature needs and includes it with your request to our AI provider, alongside the content you were already sending as described under “AI processing of your input”. Its purpose is tone, framing and relevance — so responses sound like they are written for you, in the style you asked for, rather than generic. Your context does not unlock or restrict features, and it is never sent with another user's request. Confirmed themes are included; unconfirmed ones are not. Your free-text note and faith line are length-limited by the app.

Not sold, not advertising. Your personalisation answers, your note, your faith line and your themes are never sold, rented, shared with advertisers, used for advertising or ad targeting, used to build marketing audiences, or used to train AI models by us.

Analytics records names, not answers. When you move through the personalisation walkthrough or change a field, we record only the fact that it happened — an event name (for example that a step was saved, a field was updated, or your context was reset) and, for a field update, the name of the field changed. Your actual answers, your note, your faith line and your themes are never sent to analytics. If you have turned non-essential analytics off, these events are not recorded at all.

4. Faith and spiritual information. Information about religious or philosophical beliefs is treated as special category data under UK and EU data protection law, so we handle it more carefully than anything else in this feature:

• It is completely optional. The field can be left blank, and leaving it blank changes nothing else about the app.
• It is free text you write — we do not offer a list of religions and we do not infer your beliefs from anything else you write.
• It is not used for personalisation unless you switch on the separate “use this in AI responses” setting. That switch is our record of your explicit consent under Article 9(2)(a) UK GDPR, and it is off unless you turn it on. With the switch off, the text is stored in your account only and is not included in any request to our AI provider.
• You can turn the switch off at any time, which stops it being used from that point on, or clear the text in Settings → My Context, which deletes it. Clearing the text also switches the setting off automatically.
• It is used only to shape the language of responses you asked for. It is not used to categorise you, to target anything at you, for advertising, or for any purpose other than the feature itself.

5. Your control. Everything in this feature is visible and editable in Settings → My Context:

• See it — every stored answer is shown back to you on that screen.
• Change it — edit or clear any individual field at any time; clearing a field removes that value.
• Reset it — “forget everything about me” clears all of the personalisation fields above and deletes every noticed theme, in one action. It does not delete your journal entries, reflections, goals or account.
• Export it — your personalisation fields and your noticed themes are included in your data export (Settings → Privacy & data → Download my data).
• Erase it — both “Delete my data” and full account deletion remove your personalisation fields and all noticed themes along with the rest of your content.

Lawful basis. We process the answers you give and the confirmed themes on the basis of performance of our contract with you — personalisation is part of the feature you chose to use — except for any faith or spiritual information, which we use for personalisation only on the basis of your explicit consent as described above. Deriving candidate themes from signals your own reflections already produced rests on our legitimate interests in making the product you are using relevant; you can stop it by resetting your context and, if you prefer, by not confirming any theme.

You can optionally connect a journal entry or a reflection to one of your Personal Goals. When you do, we store a small connection record containing a pointer to the goal, a pointer to the journal entry or reflection, and the date the connection was made. It does not copy the text of your journal entry or reflection, and it does not create a second version of that content anywhere.

Connections are private to your account and are covered by the same database-level access rules as the content itself, so no one else's goals, entries or reflections can be connected to yours.

• Removing a connection deletes only the connection record. Your goal stays, and your journal entry or reflection stays exactly as you wrote it.
• Deleting a goal deletes its connections. The journal entries and reflections that were connected to it are not deleted.
• Deleting a journal entry or reflection deletes its connections. The goal is not deleted.

Connection records are included in your data export and are removed by both “Delete my data” and account deletion.

Support is an optional self-help area with guided written exercises drawn from widely used, evidence-informed self-help approaches such as cognitive behavioural self-help, behavioural activation and grounding. It is not therapy, not diagnosis, not medical treatment, not professional healthcare and not an emergency or crisis service, and it is not clinically validated or endorsed by any health body. It does not assess, monitor or score your mental health.

You choose whether to use it and what to write. What you enter is saved to your account so that you can read your own Support history later. Support entries are private to your account and are protected by the same database-level access rules as the rest of your content, so only your own account can read them.

• What we store: the text you enter in each step, which pathway you opened, any optional prompts or options you selected, an optional private note, and the date and time.
• What we do not do: we do not send Support content to OpenAI or any other AI provider, we do not send Support text to analytics, we do not use it for diagnosis, mental-health scoring or automated profiling, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not share it with anyone else.
• Deleting a single entry: you can delete any individual Support entry from your Support history at any time; this removes that entry from the database.
• Export and erasure: Support entries are included in your personal-data export and are removed by both “Delete my data” and full account deletion, in the same way as your other content.

Urgent help. Support includes an “I need urgent help” screen. This is a static, manually maintained list of third-party emergency numbers and helpline directories, shown to everyone who opens it. Untangle does not detect crisis, does not monitor what you write, does not contact anyone on your behalf, and does not call emergency services for you. Opening that screen sends nothing to us beyond the fact that a page was viewed, and following a link or dialling a number takes you to a third party whose own terms and privacy practices apply. The list may be incomplete or out of date for your country — in an emergency, contact your local emergency services.

We record basic product events — such as a page being opened or a reflection being created — to understand which features help people. These events can include a randomly generated identifier stored in your browser, a session identifier, page path, referrer, platform, device type, language and country-level location. They do not include the content of your reflections. They also do not include anything you write in the Support section: no Support text is sent to analytics, and Support page paths do not contain your content. For the personalisation feature we record only event names and, when you change a field, the name of the field — never your answers, your note, your faith line or your themes.

App install / first-open measurement. So that we can tell how many people install and open Untangle and roughly where they came from, the app creates a randomly generated installation identifier and stores it durably on your device (browser local storage on the web, app storage on Android, under the key untangle.install_id). It is generated by your device, is not derived from anything about you, and is not an advertising ID or a device identifier such as IMEI, MAC address or Android ID. Clearing app data or reinstalling produces a new one. Alongside it we record only:

• platform (android, web, iOS browser or installed web app) and device type (mobile, tablet, desktop);
• the Android app version, where the app can read it;
• your language code (for example en);
• a country code derived by our hosting provider from your IP address at the edge — we receive the country, not a stored IP address, in this record;
• an acquisition channel classified into a fixed list (for example play store, search, social, referral, email or direct), any utm_campaign value in the link you arrived from, and the referring web address, where there is one;
• the date of the first open and the most recent open, and — once you sign in — a link to your account, so we can tell how many installs go on to create an account.

This is used only for aggregate acquisition reporting to us as the operator. It is not used for advertising, ad targeting, cross-app tracking, audience selling or profiling. Because the identifier can be linked to your account after you sign in, we describe it as pseudonymous rather than anonymous.

You can turn non-essential analytics off in Settings → Privacy & data. When it is off we stop sending product events and stop reporting app opens, including the installation identifier. Security, error and abuse-prevention logging continues either way, because it is necessary to run the service. Optional emails may contain an open-tracking image; this is disabled when you turn analytics off, and is never used in account, security or billing emails. Full detail is in the Cookie & Local Storage Policy.

Your data is stored with reputable cloud providers in managed, access-controlled databases. Traffic between your device and our servers is encrypted using HTTPS/TLS. Data at rest is encrypted using disk- or database-level encryption provided by our cloud infrastructure. Access to your reflections is restricted at the database level so that only your own account can read them.

We share data only with vendors who help us run Untangle:

• Supabase — authentication, database, and server-side functions (all account data and reflections are stored here).
• OpenAI — AI model provider for reflection, planning, drafting and insight features (see “AI processing” above).
• Stripe — website payments, billing and subscription management.
• Google Play Billing / Google Payments — Android subscription purchases and renewals.
• Google Play Developer API, authenticated with a Google Cloud service account — a server-side fallback for checking an Android purchase directly with Google. Day-to-day entitlement checks in the app go through RevenueCat.
• RevenueCat — subscription entitlement management for the Android app, including receipt validation and purchase webhooks.
• Resend — delivery of account, security and optional emails.
• Google (Sign in with Google) — if you choose to sign in with a Google account.
• Cloudflare — serving and hosting the web application.

We do not hold, and therefore do not publish, security or privacy certifications of our own; each provider publishes its own.

We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect users, or as part of a business transfer, in which case you will be notified.

We do not sell your personal data. We do not rent it. We do not share your journal content with advertisers. The same applies to your personalisation context, including your note, any faith or spiritual line and your noticed themes: never sold, never rented, never used for advertising, ad targeting or marketing audiences, and never used by us to train AI models.

If you are in the UK or the EU, you have the following rights over your personal data. Most of them you can exercise yourself, immediately, in the app:

• Access — see the data held on your account.
• Portability — download it in a machine-readable JSON file (Settings → Privacy & data → Download my data).
• Rectification — correct your display name, email, language and preferences in Settings, or ask us. Your personalisation answers can be edited or cleared individually in Settings → My Context.
• Erasure — delete your content while keeping your account, or delete your account entirely, subject to the limited records described under “How long we keep data”. You can also clear your personalisation context and every noticed theme on their own in Settings → My Context.
• Restriction and objection — turn off non-essential analytics and optional emails in Settings, or ask us to restrict or stop a specific type of processing. You can also stop personalisation being used by clearing your context, and stop any faith or spiritual information being used by switching its setting off.
• Withdraw consent for faith-based personalisation — switch off the “use this in AI responses” setting, or clear the field, in Settings → My Context.
• Withdraw consent — where we rely on your consent (product analytics, email open tracking, optional emails), you can withdraw it at any time in Settings without affecting anything done before you withdrew it.
• Not be subject to solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects — we do not make any.

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@untanglely.com from the address on your account. We do not charge for this and we aim to respond within one month. The Data & Privacy Requests page explains each option in detail.

Complaints. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or to the data protection authority in your own country if you are in the EU. We would rather hear from you first so we can put it right.

We do not set an arbitrary expiry on the things you write: your journal entries, brain dumps, reflections, Personal Goals and Support entries are kept for as long as your account exists, because the point of the product is being able to look back. You can delete any of it, or all of it, at any time.

• Your personalisation context and noticed themes — kept while your account exists, or until you clear a field, remove a theme or use “forget everything about me”, whichever comes first. Noticed themes are recalculated from recent activity, so a theme you no longer reflect on stops being reinforced; removed themes stay marked as dismissed so they are not suggested again.
• Your content and account data — kept while your account is open. When you delete it, it is removed from live systems straight away and rolls out of backups on our provider's standard backup cycle.
• Subscription and transaction records (such as invoices, order references and entitlement history) — retained where we need them for tax, accounting, fraud prevention, dispute and chargeback handling and legal compliance, which in the UK generally means six years.
• Security, error and audit logs — kept for a short operational period, then rotated out by the provider.
• Product analytics and install records — kept in aggregate for trend reporting; the link to your account is removed when your account is deleted.
• Email suppression list — kept indefinitely, because it exists to make sure we never email an address again after it has opted out.

Deleting an Untangle account does not automatically cancel an external Google Play or Stripe subscription. You must cancel through the original payment provider. Before deleting your account, the app will warn you to cancel any active subscription first.

Untangle is currently available only to people aged 16 or older. This is our current service eligibility requirement rather than a claim about the legally guaranteed minimum age in every country; where local law requires a higher age, that higher age applies. You must explicitly confirm that you are 16 years of age or older before an account can be created or onboarding completed — on the website, in the Android app, and after signing in with a social provider such as Google.

We store only the timestamp of that confirmation (age_confirmed_at) and we do not collect your date of birth. Untangle is not designed for children, we do not knowingly collect data from anyone below this age, and we do not currently offer a parental-consent route for under-16s. If you believe a child has created an account, email privacy@untanglely.com and we will remove it.

Our providers may process your data outside the country where you live — including in the United States. Where required by law, transfers rely on the safeguards published by each provider (such as Standard Contractual Clauses). We do not make any independent claim about a specific data-residency region.

We will update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced in-app or by email before taking effect.

Privacy questions or requests: privacy@untanglely.com. You can also see the Data & Privacy Requests page and the Cookie & Local Storage Policy.

Data controller: AE TECHNOLOGIES GROUP LTD (trading as Untangle), a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17419062. Untangle is operated by AE TECHNOLOGIES GROUP LTD, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17419062, with its registered office at 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. Please use the privacy email address above for data protection requests; the registered office address may be used for formal legal correspondence.