Your privacy, in plain language

Who this policy is for

The Companion is a whole-life thinking partner for women over 40. We are based in Australia and handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). If you use the product from elsewhere, your information may be processed in Australia and other countries where our providers operate.

What we collect

We keep this deliberately small:

• Account details — your email address and an encrypted password, so you can sign in.
• Your reflections — the conversations you have with your companion, journal entries and saved reflections.
• Chat messages — what you write, and the responses generated for you.
• Preferences — your preferred name, tone, topics to avoid and notification choices.
• Memory — a small, visible set of notes your companion keeps so it can pick up where you left off. You can see, edit, pause or clear all of it.
• Minimal safety events — content-free breadcrumbs (a category and severity, never the text) if our safety layer steps in, so we can keep the product safe.

We do not ask for your date of birth, and we don’t build hidden profiles of you. We collect no more than we need to offer a calm, useful reflection space.

How your data is stored and protected

Your data lives in a managed PostgreSQL database (Supabase). Every user table is protected by row-level security, so each person’s data is technically walled off to their own account — you can only ever reach your own. Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and encrypted at rest by our database provider. Administrative keys are held server-side only and are never exposed to your browser.

How your reflections are used

Your messages are sent to an AI provider to generate the responses you see — that processing is the whole point of the companion, and it happens so the product can reply to you. Beyond that:

• We never sell your reflections, and we never will.
• We do not use your reflections to train third-party AI models without your explicit, opt-in consent.
• We don’t use your private writing for advertising or creepy personalisation.

We choose AI providers that offer business/enterprise terms under which submitted content is not used to train their base models.

Data retention

We keep your data for as long as your account is open, so your companion can remember you. When you delete your account, your data is removed — deleting your account cascades to your profile, conversations, messages, journal, reflections, memory, preferences and insights. Backups held by our infrastructure providers age out on their own short cycles. Minimal, content-free safety records may be retained where we’re required to for safety and legal reasons.

Your rights and controls

You stay in control. From Settings you can:

• Export your data — download a complete copy as a single JSON file, anytime.
• Delete your account — permanently remove your account and everything in it.
• Manage memory — view, edit, pause or clear what your companion remembers.

Under the Australian Privacy Principles you may also ask us to access or correct your personal information, or raise a concern about how it’s been handled. Reach us any time at privacy@northsidedesign.com.au.

Changes and contact

If we update this policy, we’ll change the date above and, for anything significant, let you know within the product. Questions, requests or concerns are always welcome at privacy@northsidedesign.com.au.

See also our Terms of Use.