Privacy Policy

Effective 30 September 2026.

People By Heart is a private memory of the people in your life. You tell it what you learned about someone, and it files that for you. This policy says exactly what we collect, what we do with it, who else touches it, and what we never do. It covers the People By Heart app, the website at peoplebyheart.com, and the services behind them (together, the “Service”), which are run by People By Heart (“we”, “us”). By using the Service you agree to what is described here. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

What you give us

Account: your name and email address, and either a password (stored hashed) or, if you sign in with Apple, the identity token Apple issues for your Apple ID. Apple may give us a name and an email address of your choosing, which can be a private relay address.
Your notes: what you type or say about people, the facts the app files from those notes, the names of the people and places they mention, and your answers to the questions the app asks back.
Voice: when you speak a note, your iPhone turns it into text itself, using Apple’s speech recognition on the device. The recording never leaves your phone and is not kept. Only the text reaches us, where it is tidied (filler words removed, punctuation fixed) and kept as your note, with the words as first heard kept beside it. Early test versions of the app sent the recording to OpenAI to transcribe instead; they stop doing so once updated.
Photos: a photo you choose is read by OpenAI to write a note. It is stored only if you switch on “Keep the photo”.
Contacts: if you choose to pick people from your phone's contacts, only the contacts you tick are sent to us, as their name and the contact details on the card. Your contact list is never uploaded.
Calendar: if you connect a calendar, the app reads the calendars you switch on, on your phone, to show who you are about to see. So that the website can show the same weeks, the phone sends us a lean copy of the next month of events: each one's title, time, place and the people on file who are on it. It is replaced each time the phone checks in, and events older than a day drop out. Event notes and attendee email addresses never leave the phone, and which calendars are on is stored only on the phone.
Your card: whatever you choose to write about yourself to share with people you pick, and the record of who you shared it with.
Invite requests: if you ask for an invite on the website, your email address and any note you add.

What we collect automatically

Very little. Our servers keep logs of requests with identifiers, timings and error codes, never the text of a note. The invite form records the IP address and browser identifier of the request and runs a silent bot check provided by Vercel, so that scripts cannot flood it. The website sets one cookie, to keep you signed in; there are no advertising or analytics cookies. We do not collect your location, advertising identifiers or usage analytics, and we do not track you across other apps or websites.

How your notes are read

To file a note, our server sends its text (and a photo, if you added one) to a model run by OpenAI, together with the names already in your book so the model can tell who is who. A spoken note’s text is first tidied by an OpenAI model. When the app asks you a follow-up question, or you ask it about someone, the relevant notes are sent to an OpenAI model to write the question or the answer. OpenAI processes all of this under its API terms, which do not allow your data to be used to train its models; OpenAI may retain API inputs for up to 30 days to check for abuse and then deletes them. Nothing is filed until our own code and your answers confirm it, and every fact shows the words it came from so you can check and correct it.

The people you write about

Your notes are about people who have not signed up for anything. They are yours, kept for your own personal, non-commercial memory. A note you write about someone is never shown to that person, never linked to any account they may have, never combined with anyone else's notes, and never used to connect accounts or to contact them. The Service is not a channel to the people written about, and you are responsible for what you choose to keep about them.

Sharing with a partner

If you join a household with your partner, the two of you share one book of your people alongside your own. Ordinary lines you write flow to that shared book by default; lines you mark private are held back; you can change either, line by line, at any time. Joining shares nothing you wrote before. If you leave, nothing further is shared, and the shared book stays with your partner. What your partner does with what they have seen is between the two of you.

Your card

The only other thing that ever leaves your book is your card, and only when you send its link to a specific person. Whoever receives it can report it to us. You can edit or withdraw your card at any time.

What we never do

We never sell your data, rent it, or use it for advertising, and we show no advertising.
We never buy or collect information about you from other sources.
We never read your notes ourselves, with one exception: if you ask us for help with a specific note, the person helping you may need to look at that note.

Who else touches your data

We use a small number of providers to run the Service. Each may use your data only to do its job for us.

OpenAI (United States): tidying spoken notes, filing of notes, questions and answers, as described above.
Vercel (United States): hosts the servers and the website, keeps the request logs, and runs the bot check on the invite form.
Neon (United States): the database that holds your account and your book.
Amazon Web Services (United States): stores photos you choose to keep, in a private bucket.
Apple: Sign in with Apple, and the App Store through which the app is delivered.
Resend (United States): sends the password reset email, which means it receives your email address.

Beyond these providers, we share personal information only:

If the business changes hands. If People By Heart is involved in a merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets or bankruptcy, your account and book may transfer as part of it. Whoever takes over is bound by this policy for the data they receive, and we will tell you before it happens, with a way to export or delete your data first.
If the law requires it. To comply with a legal obligation, a court order or a lawful request from a public authority, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our users, ourselves or others.
With your consent. In any other way you expressly ask for.

Security

Everything travels over encrypted connections and is encrypted where it is stored. Photos sit in a private bucket that the public cannot reach. Passwords are hashed, never stored. Every query our code makes to the database is scoped to one book, so one account cannot read another's. Access to production systems is limited to the people who run the Service, and we keep an incident response plan. If we ever learn of a breach affecting your data, we will tell you without unreasonable delay and within the time the law requires, and say what happened and what we did. Our Security page says more.

The safety of your account also depends on you. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us at once if you think someone else has used your account. No method of transmission over the internet is completely secure; we cannot guarantee the security of information in transit to us, and you send it at your own risk.

How long we keep things

Voice recordings: never leave your phone and are not kept.
Photos: not stored unless you keep them; kept photos stay until you delete them or your account.
Your account, notes, people and facts: until you delete them, or delete your account.
Invite requests: until they are handled.
Server logs: on Vercel's standard log retention, and never containing note text.
A paused account: everything stays exactly as it was until you resume or delete it.

We may keep aggregated or de-identified information that cannot be tied to you. Where the law requires us to keep a record longer, we keep only what it requires.

Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your personal information, including in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia, and in other places whose laws apply to you. Most of these rights are built into the Service so that you never have to ask:

Access and portability: download everything you have said and everything filed from it, as one file of plain JSON or as a folder of notes, from the app or the website (under your profile, Account and data).
Correction: reply to any fact in the app and it is corrected; every fact shows the words it came from.
Deletion: delete any note, any person, or your whole account, in the app or on the website (under your profile, Account and data). Account deletion is immediate and permanent.
Marketing: we send none, so there is nothing to opt out of. The only emails we send are the ones you ask for, such as a password reset.

To exercise any other right, or if you cannot use the app, email support@peoplebyheart.com. We will confirm your identity through your account email before acting. These rights may be subject to exceptions under the law that applies to you, and you may appeal a decision by writing to the same address.

Pausing your account

You can pause your account for a week, a month or longer instead of deleting it. While it is paused nothing new is taken in, no follow-ups are raised, and nothing is removed; everything stays as you left it, and every right above still applies. It resumes on the date you chose, or sooner if you ask.

Children

People By Heart is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly create accounts for them. If you believe a child has an account, tell us and we will remove it. Notes you keep about children in your own life are your notes, covered by everything above.

Where your data lives

We are based in Texas, United States, and your data is stored and processed there and by the providers listed above, all in the United States. If you use the Service from elsewhere, you understand that your data will be processed in the United States, where privacy law may differ from your own.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. When you create an account, we record the date and the version of the policy you agreed to. If a change matters to you, we will tell you in the app and ask you to agree again before it takes effect for you. Continuing to use the Service after a change you have been told about means you accept it.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request under this policy: support@peoplebyheart.com. A person answers.