Privacy Policy

We collect only what the app needs to work for you:

• Account & profile. Your email address and name, and an optional profile photo. If you create a password, we store only a securely hashed version of it — never the password itself.
• Your writing. The reflections and journal entries you write, including their edit history. This is yours; it is never used for advertising and is never sold.
• Your learning activity. The pieces you open and complete, your daily picks, streaks, ratings, saved “rabbit holes,” and preferences (such as your chosen topics and language).
• Social features (optional). If you use them: your friendships, invite codes, content you share or suggest, the notes you attach to suggestions, messages you posted in discussions, and any reports or blocks you make.
• AI recaps. Weekly and monthly summaries of your learning that the app generates for you (see “AI features” below).
• Technical information. Your IP address, used to rate-limit sign-in attempts and prevent abuse, plus the basic request information every website receives. The rate-limit records are deleted within about a day, once their time window has closed.

We do not use advertising networks, and we do not add third-party analytics or tracking tools of our own. The iPhone app includes Google’s sign-in library so you can sign in with Google; Google says that library may collect basic device and usage information for its own purposes, as described in Google’s privacy policy. It is not used to track you across other apps.

Voice notes (website). If you speak a reflection on the website, the recording is turned into text on your own device and the audio is never uploaded. The speech model it uses is downloaded from Hugging Face and jsDelivr, which see your IP address as any website would.

• Your friends see your name and photo, when you joined, how many entries you’ve written, and the pieces whose reflections you chose to share, with a short excerpt of each. Reflections you keep private, and the pieces they belong to, are not shown. Your friends do not see your email address.
• Someone you send a friend request to sees your name and email, so they know who is asking. If you invite someone who isn’t using One New Thing, we send them one email with your name and your invite code.
• A friend you send a suggestion to sees the piece and any note you add.
• Everyone using the app sees the pieces you contribute once we approve them, with your name, photo and recommendation.

You can report anything another person wrote and block that person. A report comes to us with a copy of the words you reported, and we review every one. Blocking someone ends your friendship, stops their notes and friend requests reaching you, and removes their contributions from what you see. We keep reports so we can act on them and spot repeated abuse.

• To create your account and keep you signed in.
• To choose each day’s content, surface connections between ideas, and tailor recommendations to your interests and chosen depth.
• To save your journal, streaks, and progress over time.
• To power the social features you choose to use.
• To send you essential emails (for example, friend invitations and requests).
• To keep the service secure and prevent abuse.

You can sign in with email and password, or with Google or Apple. When you use a sign-in provider, we receive your email address and basic profile details (such as your name) so we can create your account. We never receive your Google or Apple password. With Sign in with Apple, you may choose to hide your email, and we will work with the relay address Apple provides.

To write your weekly and monthly recaps, we use a third-party AI provider (Anthropic’s Claude). For this we send the titles and tags of the content you engaged with and short excerpts of your reflections — never your name, email, or account identifiers. This information is used solely to generate your summary and is not used to train AI models.

We do not sell your personal information. We share data only with the service providers that help us run the app, and only as needed:

• Our hosting provider (Vercel) runs the app and receives every request made to it.
• Our database provider — a managed cloud database that securely stores your account and app data.
• Our email provider (Resend) — to deliver friend invitations and notification emails, including invitations to people who aren’t using the app yet.
• Anthropic — to generate your AI recaps, as described above.
• Google / Apple — only if you choose to sign in with them.

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, and security of our users and the service.

• Edit or delete your writing. You can edit and remove your reflections at any time within the app.
• Manage your preferences. You control your topics, language, and the social features you use.
• Delete your account. You can permanently delete your account and all associated data from within the app. You may also email us at hello@onenewthing.app to request deletion. When you delete your account, your data is removed from our active systems. If you contributed a piece that we approved, the piece and its recommendation stay in the catalog, without your name.

We keep your information for as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, we delete your associated personal data from our active databases, and it is purged from routine backups within a reasonable period.

We protect your data with encryption in transit, hashed passwords, and access controls that scope your data to your own account. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we work to safeguard your information.

One New Thing is not directed to children under 13 (or under 16 where a higher age applies), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us information, please contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this policy as the app evolves. When we make material changes, we will update the effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app.

Questions about your privacy? Email us at hello@onenewthing.app.