Privacy Policy

Who We Are

Gentle Journeys creates personalized stories, routines, and token boards for people with autism. It is not a medical device and is not a replacement for care from a professional. The service is operated by Sean in the United States.

Who Uses This Service

Parents, caregivers, therapists, and educators sign up and manage accounts. They create personalized content on behalf of the people they support. People receiving support do not create accounts or interact with the service directly.

What We Collect

• Account details you provide (name, email)
• Profile details you provide (first name, age, and descriptions)
• Content you create (stories, routines, token boards, and illustrations of real places you choose to keep)
• Messages you type to the chat assistant while creating content
• Optional: photos you upload and voice recordings
• Payment data is handled by our payment processors (we do not store card numbers)
• Anonymized usage patterns to help us understand and improve the service

How We Use Your Data

We only use your information to deliver and improve the service. We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. Specifically, we use your data for:

• Account management and authentication
• Generating personalized stories, routines, and token boards
• Processing payments
• Sending transactional emails (password resets, confirmations)
• Sending marketing emails (only with your consent)
• Monitoring for errors and improving reliability
• Understanding usage patterns through anonymized analytics

Who Helps Us Run the Service

When you use an AI feature, the content you give it (your words, a photo you choose, a voice recording) is processed by a specialized AI service to create your result, then comes back to Gentle Journeys. Those services, and a few others that handle things like payments and hosting, work under agreements with us: each receives only what it needs for the job, none may use your data for their own purposes, and none may use it to train their models. We stay in control of how your data is used. Here is who does what:

Photos

Photos help our AI make illustrations accurate. We use a photo once to create what you asked for, then discard it. We never store your photos.

Avatar photos. A photo can give a person's avatar their real appearance.

• A photo you upload for a person's avatar is sent to our AI provider to create the avatar and to write a short description of appearance
• The photo is discarded as soon as the avatar is created

Photos of real places in the creation chat. You can share a photo of a real place, like a bedroom or a classroom, so the illustrations can look like that place.

• The photo is sent to our AI providers so the chat assistant can see what you shared and your content can be created
• If you choose to keep an illustrated version of the place, we keep that illustration and a short written description of the place. The photo itself is still deleted.
• Kept illustrations live under Personalization, where you can view, rename, or delete them anytime

In every flow the photo itself is deleted after that one use. Photos are never saved to our servers and are never used for anything else.

GentleVoice (voice cloning)

• You can record 30 to 120 seconds of audio to create a private voice profile
• Original recordings are deleted from our servers after your voice profile is created
• Your cloned voice profile is created and stored with our voice provider under an identifier tied to your account, and is only usable within your account
• You can delete your voice profile at any time from your account settings, or by emailing sean@gentlejourneys.ai. Deleting the profile or your account also deletes the voice at our voice provider.

Payments

On the web we use a third-party payment processor. Your card information goes directly to them and never touches our servers. In our mobile apps, subscriptions are billed by Apple through your App Store account or by Google through your Google Play account, and we never see your card at all; our subscription manager links the purchase to your account so your subscription works everywhere you sign in.

Sharing

You can share a story, routine, or token board with a link. Sharing is off until you turn it on for an item, and you can turn it back off at any time, which disables the link.

• Anyone with the link can open that content, including the first name, age, and descriptions it was personalized with
• Shared pages are not listed anywhere and we ask search engines not to index them
• Only share a link with people you trust with what is in it

Privacy for People Receiving Support

We collect minimal personal information about the people you create content for: a first name and age, provided by you (the parent, caregiver, therapist, or educator). People receiving support do not interact with the service directly. We do not require them to provide any personal information.

• Photos, if uploaded, are used to create the avatar and a short appearance description, and are then discarded. They are never stored on our servers.
• Photos of real places shared in the creation chat are used to make the content. If you choose to keep an illustrated version of a place, we keep the illustration and a short written description, never the photo itself.
• We do not use profile data for advertising or marketing
• Where the people you support include children, we follow COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) best practices

Your Rights

• Access: You can view all data associated with your account directly in the app
• Deletion: Delete your account any time from your account settings, on the web or in the app. Deletion is immediate and permanent. Any card-billed subscription is canceled as part of it; a subscription billed through the App Store is managed by Apple and must be canceled in your device's subscription settings. You can also email sean@gentlejourneys.ai and we will delete the account for you.
• Marketing opt-out: Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link
• California residents (CCPA/CPRA): You have the right to know what data we collect, request deletion, and opt out of the sale of personal information. We do not sell personal data.

Cookies and Tracking

We use essential cookies for authentication and session management, and privacy-focused analytics to understand usage. We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels. We do not build advertising profiles.

International Users

Gentle Journeys is operated in the United States. If you access the service from outside the US, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States.

Data Retention

• Your content (stories, routines, token boards) is retained as long as your account is active
• AI-generated narration audio is cached to reduce processing costs
• Voice clone input recordings are deleted after processing
• Kept place illustrations stay until you delete them, delete the person they belong to, or delete your account. The photos they came from are never retained.
• Account deletion removes your people, content, and voice profiles immediately. We keep a minimal record that the deletion happened (including the account email) so we can honor it and keep you unsubscribed.

Security

• Encryption in transit and at rest
• Row-level security on all database tables
• Signed URLs for file access
• HTTP-only secure cookies
• Least-privilege access and strict logging

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make significant changes, we will notify you by email.

Contact

Questions? Email sean@gentlejourneys.ai.