These terms may be updated before our official launch. If they change in a meaningful way, we'll ask you to review them.

Privacy Policy

What Chattypod collects, why, who it's shared with, how long it's kept, and your rights.

Version 2026-10-27

1. Who is responsible

[Operator legal name, registered address and company number] is the controller of your personal data. Contact: support@chattypod.com. [EU/UK representative and data protection officer, if required: to be completed.]

2. What we collect

• Account: username, display name, password (stored only as a one-way hash), bio, social media handles you add, profile photo, and account settings (theme, notification choices, mutes, last-seen visibility, the name and message colours you choose, which everyone can see, and your chat wallpapers).
• Wallpaper photos: photos you upload as a chat wallpaper are stored privately for you alone. They are checked by our automated image moderation like other uploads, but nobody else, our staff included, can view them. Deleting a photo or your account erases it.
• Stickers: the sticker packs in your library, your favourite and recently sent stickers, packs you unlocked, and sticker packs you create (with their images).
• Email address: required to sign up (one account per address) and verified with a code we email you. We use it to let you reset your password, to send security notices (for example when your password or email address changes) and to answer you when you contact us. Other people never see it.
• Mobile number: only if we ask you to verify one (one account per number), verified with a text message. Other people never see it.
• Date of birth: used once at sign-up to check you are 16 or older. We keep only the year and month of birth (to show the check was done); the day is never stored. If you are too young we create no account and don't keep your date of birth; we keep the email address or phone number you entered only briefly, up to 7 days, in our verification request log for abuse prevention.
• Your content: room messages, direct messages, GIFs you send, save or upload, reactions, reports you file, room proposals and votes, and the edit history of your messages.
• Room moderation: warnings, mutes, kicks and room bans you received, and "@bot mods" calls you made (so moderators are notified and the limits on calls can work).
• Room bot usage: when the bot replies with AI we log how much AI processing each reply used (for cost and abuse limits), with the room, but not the text.
• Points ledger: every points change on your account (reactions, daily bonus, sticker unlocks and creator shares), so balances stay correct.
• Devices and sessions: for each signed-in device, its platform, the device name your app reports (for example "Pixel 9" or "Chrome on macOS"), the app version, and when it was last active. If you turn on push notifications, the device's push token. We don't use device location.
• Technical logs: IP addresses and request metadata in our servers' security logs, used to prevent abuse and kept for a short time. Each verification code request (the email address or phone number, the IP address it came from, and when) is logged to enforce sending limits and erased after 7 days.
• Crash reports: if the app or server crashes we send an error report to Sentry. These reports are filtered so they don't include message text, email addresses, phone numbers, passwords, codes, tokens or IP addresses; they may include your user id.
• Legal acceptance: which version of the Terms you accepted and when.

3. Why we use it (and our legal bases)

• To provide Chattypod: deliver messages, show profiles and presence, keep your settings (performance of our contract with you).
• To send you sign-up and password reset codes and security notices by email (performance of our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in keeping accounts secure).
• To keep Chattypod safe: verify email addresses (and phone numbers where we ask for one), gate new accounts, filter words and images, investigate reports, enforce bans, and stop spam and fraud (our legitimate interests in a safe service, and legal obligations).
• To check your age (legal obligation and legitimate interest in protecting minors).
• To send push notifications you turned on (consent; switch them off any time in Settings).
• To run the room bot: answer commands, post warnings, welcome new members and, when AI chat is on, write AI replies (our legitimate interest in helpful, well-moderated rooms; room owners can turn AI replies and welcomes off).
• To fix bugs and keep the service running (legitimate interests).

We don't sell your personal data, we don't show ads, and we don't use your messages to build advertising profiles.

4. Link previews

When a message contains a link, our servers (not your device) fetch the page to build a preview, and store a copy of its thumbnail. The website sees a request from our servers, not from you. Opening a video in the in-app player loads the provider's official player (for example YouTube or TikTok), which then receives your device's request under that provider's own privacy policy.

5. The room bot and AI

Each room has a bot. Its commands (help, rules, report, mods and the moderators' commands) are handled entirely by our own servers.

AI chat and AI welcomes: when someone mentions the bot with a question, or the bot welcomes a member who joins a room for the first time, we send the following to Anthropic, PBC, our AI provider, which processes it on our behalf to write the reply: the room's name, description and rules; the display names and text of the last 20 messages in that room (including yours, if you posted recently); and the question or the new member's display name.

We never send your account's phone number, e-mail address or date of birth, direct messages, photos, GIFs, stickers, IP addresses or other private account data to the AI provider. Before room messages are sent, we remove phone numbers and e-mail addresses we detect in message text (detection is automatic and may miss some, so don't post contact details in public rooms). Anthropic does not use data received through its API to train its models, and keeps it only for a limited period under its commercial terms [retention period and data processing terms: to be confirmed by the operator].

The bot's AI replies are posted in the room like other messages (marked AI) and follow the same retention and deletion rules. They are generated automatically, can be wrong, and are not medical, legal or financial advice.

Room owners can turn AI chat and welcomes off for their room. If AI chat isn't set up on our server, nothing is sent to the AI provider.

6. Who we share data with

• Other users: what you post in rooms, your public profile (display name, username, bio, socials, photo, rank, points) and, if you allow it, your last-seen time. Direct messages go only to the recipient.
• Hosting: our servers, database and file storage run on Microsoft Azure, in its Central US region.
• Email: Microsoft Azure Communication Services (data location: United States) receives your email address and the emails we send you (verification and password reset codes, and security notices).
• Text messages: if we ask you to verify a phone number, our SMS provider (Twilio) receives it to send the verification code.
• Push notifications: the Expo push service, Apple Push Notification service and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging receive your device's push token and the notification content (you can hide message text in notifications in Settings).
• Image moderation: profile photos, uploaded GIFs and link-preview thumbnails are sent to our image-moderation provider [AWS Rekognition / provider name: to be completed] to detect inappropriate content.
• GIF search: your search terms go to GIPHY through our servers. GIFs from GIPHY are loaded directly from GIPHY's servers when shown, so GIPHY receives your device's IP address and browser or app information under its own privacy policy.
• AI provider: Anthropic, PBC (United States) receives the room context described in section 5 when someone uses the bot's AI chat or the bot welcomes a new member, only to write the bot's reply.
• Crash reporting: Sentry receives filtered error reports.
• Authorities: when required by law, or to protect someone's life or safety.

Some of these providers process data outside your country, including in the United States. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

7. How long we keep it

• Your account data: for as long as you have an account.
• Deleted messages: disappear for everyone immediately. For safety investigations, a hidden copy is kept for up to 30 days, visible only to Chattypod administrators, then permanently erased. Reported content is kept with the report.
• Reports and moderation records: kept for as long as needed to enforce our rules, with a pseudonymous id once the account is deleted. Room warnings count toward automatic mutes only for a day, but stay in the room's moderation records.
• Data exports: your download link works for 48 hours, then the file is erased.
• Verification codes (by email or text message): expire after at most 15 minutes, and the record is erased a day later. The verification request log (email address or phone number, IP address, time) is erased after 7 days. Signed-out devices are removed from your account; their records are deleted after 30 days.
• Server logs and crash reports: kept for a limited period [e.g. 30-90 days: to be confirmed], then deleted.
• Backups: our database backups are kept for up to 14 days (point-in-time restore window) and then overwritten; if a backup is ever restored, deletions are re-applied.
• Deleted or replaced media files (for example avatars) can stay in storage soft delete for up to 14 days before they are permanently removed.

8. When you delete your account

After a 7-day grace period (signing in cancels it), we remove your profile, photo, email address, phone number if you added one (including our verification request log for them), date of birth, social handles, saved GIFs, blocks, devices, push tokens and settings. Your messages are replaced by "Message deleted" and shown as from "Deleted user", so conversations stay readable for others; their hidden copies follow the 30-day rule above.

Some records stay without your profile details, under a pseudonymous id: the points ledger (so other people's balances stay correct), reactions you gave, reports and moderation records, and any active ban. If your account was banned when it was deleted, we keep a one-way cryptographic fingerprint of your email address (and of your phone number, if you had one) until the ban would have ended, to stop banned users signing up again; nothing else about you is kept for this.

Anonymous feedback you choose to give when deleting is kept for up to 180 days without any link to you. Full details: https://chattypod.com/delete-account.

9. Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR, UK GDPR or the California Consumer Privacy Act) you can ask to access, correct, delete or export your data, object to or restrict some uses, and withdraw consent. You can do most of this yourself:

• Access and portability: Settings › Download my data gives you a copy of your data as a JSON file.
• Correction: edit your profile at any time.
• Deletion: Settings › Delete account.
• Notifications: Settings › Notifications.

For anything else, email support@chattypod.com. We answer within one month. You can also complain to your local data protection authority. We don't sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising.

10. Age

Chattypod is not for anyone under 16. If you believe a child under 16 is using Chattypod, tell us at support@chattypod.com and we will delete the account.

11. Security

We use encryption in transit (HTTPS), hash passwords, keep sign-in tokens tied to device sessions you can revoke, and limit staff access to what's needed. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you we will tell you as the law requires.

12. Changes

We'll ask you to review this policy when it changes in a meaningful way (see the version date below).