Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Sakinah is an independently operated digital wellbeing service based in New South Wales, Australia. In this policy, "Sakinah", "we" and "us" mean Sakinah's operator, and "you" means a person who uses the app.

Sakinah is a wellbeing app for adults. It offers private reflection tools, optional AI support and a members' community called Sisterhood. What you share in Sakinah can be very personal, including information about your emotional wellbeing, health, relationships and faith. This policy explains what we collect, why, who it is shared with, how long it is kept, and the choices you have.

Sakinah is not a medical, counselling or emergency service. AI responses and reflections are not a diagnosis and are not a substitute for professional care.

2. Information we collect

Your account. Your email address; your password, which our authentication provider stores only in a scrambled (hashed) form that we cannot read; the one-time codes we email you; and records of your sign-in sessions.

Your profile and setup answers. The name you ask Sakinah to call you, and your setup answers: what you are looking for, your hopes and goals, your preferred support and journaling style, your acknowledgement of Sakinah's safety information, and your confirmation that you are 18 or older. We also keep your language and app preferences, and each privacy choice you make, with the time you gave or withdrew it.

Private content you create. Depending on the features you use:

• Journal entries, including titles, text, mood, tags, collections and drafts
• Companion conversations: your messages and the replies
• Situations you described to Companion in an earlier version of the app, and what Companion created from them: Clarity Maps, suggested words, decision notes and follow-up results. The current version does not create new ones.
• Daily check-in words
• Heart Mirror reports and insights, any translations of them you ask for, and your responses to them
• Life Threads, the items you link to them, and their reflections
• Library resources you save to your support kit

This content can reveal sensitive information about your health, emotional wellbeing and religious beliefs.

Safety records. If Companion detects that a message may indicate risk, we record the level of concern and the time. We do not record the message text with it.

Sisterhood activity. If you use Sisterhood, we process:

• your pen name, preset avatar and life-stage tags
• the circles you join, and your posts, replies and hearts
• the posts you save, the members you block or mute, and the keywords you choose to hide
• your acceptance of the community guidelines
• reports you make, and any requests you send for a new category
• your translation choice and when you made it, and saved translations

Your pen name is kept separately from your account details, and other members cannot see your email address or the name in your profile.

Feedback and support. If you send feedback in the app, we store your message, its category and rating, and your app language, linked to your account. If you email support@withsakinah.com, we receive your email address and whatever you include in the message.

Subscriptions. If you subscribe to Sakinah Plus, Apple handles your payment, and we never receive your card details. Apple tells us:

• the product, and the subscription's start and end dates
• its transaction identifiers
• whether it was bought in the App Store or in Apple's test environment
• whether it has renewed, been refunded or been revoked

When you buy, the app gives Apple your Sakinah account identifier, a random code that does not contain your name or email address, so that your purchase can be matched to your account.

Technical and usage records.

• AI usage records. For each AI request we record the feature, the AI model, the amount of text processed (tokens), the cost and the time. These records do not contain your content.
• Rate limits. We keep counters that limit how often features can be used.
• Service logs. Our infrastructure provider, Supabase, keeps request logs. These may include your IP address, device or browser details, and the address and time of each request.
• Error logs. Our own error logs are designed to leave out your content.

On your device. The app stores your sign-in session, language, theme, reminder settings, your chosen Today experience, and whether you have already been asked about Sisterhood translation. Reminders are scheduled as notifications on your own device, so no push-notification token is sent to us. If you try the demonstration mode, its fictional content stays on your device.

What we do not collect. Sakinah does not use your camera, photos, microphone, contacts, location or Health data. It does not include advertising, third-party analytics or crash-reporting tools, and it does not track you across other companies' apps or websites.

3. How we use information

We use information to:

• create and secure your account
• provide the features you choose and save your content and settings
• generate AI support and reflections when you have allowed it
• translate Sisterhood posts where the author has allowed it
• run and moderate Sisterhood
• respond to feedback, support and privacy requests
• manage subscriptions
• limit costs and prevent misuse
• keep the service working

We do not sell personal information. We do not use it for advertising, and we do not share it with data brokers.

4. AI features and Anthropic

Some features use Anthropic, PBC, an AI provider in the United States.

We ask first. Before any of your content is sent to Anthropic, Sakinah asks for your permission ("AI support"). The request explains what is sent and where.

• If you decline, you can still use the features that do not need AI, including Journal, check-ins, Journeys, Library and Sisterhood.
• To withdraw, go to Profile → Privacy & Consent. Withdrawing stops future AI requests. It does not delete what has already been created; section 8 explains how to delete it.

There is one exception. If a Companion message contains clear signs of immediate danger, Sakinah shows crisis support straight away, using checks that run on our own server and send nothing to Anthropic.

What is sent, by feature:

• Companion. Your message and the recent messages in that conversation. If the conversation is linked to a situation you described in an earlier version of the app, it also includes that description, its latest Clarity Map, earlier suggested words or decision notes, and your follow-up results. Each message also goes through an AI safety check, which is processed by Anthropic.
• Heart Mirror. The week's check-in words and your Companion conversations, except any you have excluded from Heart Mirror. Your language is also sent. Your time zone is used by our server to find your week and is not sent to Anthropic. Two kinds of content are included only if you separately switch them on in Profile → Privacy & Consent, and both switches start off:
  • Journal entries, with the "Journal → Heart Mirror" switch.
  • Faith reflection, with the "Faith and meaning" switch.
• Heart Mirror translation. Only if you choose to read a saved reflection in another language: the text of that reflection (without its faith section if "Faith and meaning" is switched off) and the language you chose. The check-ins, conversations and Journal entries it was based on are not sent again. The translation is saved privately for you, so reading it again sends nothing.
• Life Threads. The thread's title and the items you link to it.
• Sisterhood translation. Only the title and text of a post or reply, and the language it is being translated into. This happens only if the author of that post or reply has allowed translation.

We do not send your email address, your name or your account identifier to Anthropic. Anything identifying that you write in your own content is sent as part of that content.

Sisterhood translation is voluntary. Each member is asked once, when joining Sisterhood or on their next visit after this feature was introduced.

• If you choose "Not now", you can still read, post, reply, react and save as usual, and your writing stays in its original language for other members.
• To change your choice, go to Profile → Privacy & Consent → Sisterhood translation.
• If you withdraw, saved translations of your posts and replies are deleted straight away, and no further translations are made.
• Saved translations. Translations are saved so that other readers can see them without another request to Anthropic. Text already sent to Anthropic is subject to Anthropic's retention, described below.
• Sakinah's starter conversations. These were written by Sakinah, not by members, and Sakinah allows them to be translated.

Anthropic's handling.

• No training. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, Anthropic may not train its models on Sakinah's API content. Anthropic can use content for training only if a customer sends it feedback or chooses to share data. Sakinah's Anthropic organisation does not allow user feedback and has not joined Anthropic's Development Partner Program, and the app has no way to send feedback to Anthropic.
• Retention. Sakinah's Anthropic organisation is set to keep API inputs and outputs for 30 days, after which Anthropic deletes them. This matches Anthropic's standard retention. There are some standard exceptions:
  • content flagged by Anthropic's automated systems under its Usage Policy may be kept for up to 2 years
  • safety classification scores for flagged content may be kept for up to 7 years
  • data may be kept longer where the law requires it

These periods are separate from how long Sakinah keeps your content in its own database (section 8).

See Anthropic's Privacy Center for details.

AI features may sometimes be unavailable, for example when usage limits or safety controls apply.

Automated checks. Some of how Sakinah responds is decided automatically, by software rather than a person:

• Companion safety. Companion messages are checked for safety, partly by Anthropic's AI, so that crisis support can be shown. This uses the content of your messages.
• AI limits. Usage and cost limits can make AI features temporarily unavailable. These use your usage counts.
• Posting limits. A limit on how often you can post in Sisterhood uses your posting counts.
• Sisterhood posting filter. Before a post or reply is published, software checks its text for contact details (email addresses, phone numbers and social media handles) and for terms on a list of slurs and abusive phrases. If it finds one, the post or reply is not published or saved, and the app tells you why so that you can change it.

Decisions on reports, removals and suspensions in Sisterhood are made by a person, not automatically. If you have a question or concern about an automated check, contact us.

5. Sisterhood visibility and moderation

Sisterhood is a members' community, not a private or confidential service. Your posts, replies and hearts, with your pen name and avatar, can be seen by other signed-in Sakinah members, except members you have blocked or who have blocked you. Please do not share another person's private information.

Before publication. Posts and replies that contain contact details, or terms on our list of slurs and abuse, are refused automatically (see section 4). This helps protect members' privacy and safety. It cannot catch everything, so members can also report content.

Reports and moderation. Members can report, block or mute. Reports are reviewed by Sakinah's moderator, who is currently Sakinah's operator. Moderators can see reported content and content that has been removed.

Removing your own post or reply. This hides it from other members straight away. We keep the hidden copy until your account is deleted, so that any reports about it can still be reviewed. You can ask us to erase it sooner, and we will unless a safety or legal reason requires us to keep it.

If you delete your account, your Sisterhood profile, posts, replies and hearts are deleted. This includes replies other members wrote on your posts.

Moderation records. Records of moderation actions are kept after an account is deleted, but without the link to that account. Free-text notes in them could still contain identifying details, so we write them as briefly as possible.

6. Service providers and where information is processed

We share personal information only with these providers, and only as they need to run Sakinah:

This means your personal information may be disclosed to, or stored in, the United States and other countries where these providers operate.

• Supabase, Anthropic and Resend process personal information for us under data processing terms that form part of their customer agreements. Those terms require them to protect it, and to use it only to provide their services to us.
• Porkbun and Microsoft handle support email under their own terms and privacy statements.
• Apple handles App Store purchases under its own privacy policy.

We do not give your information to any provider for advertising.

When you open a Library resource, you leave Sakinah for an independent website, and that website's own privacy terms apply. Sakinah does not add tracking parameters to those links.

7. How we protect your information

These protections apply:

• Encryption. Information is encrypted in transit, and our database provider encrypts stored data.
• Access rules. Database rules allow each account to reach only its own private content.
• Permission checks. AI requests are checked against your permissions on our server before anything is sent.
• Backups. Database backups are encrypted, and can be opened only with a passphrase held by Sakinah's operator.
• Staff access. Only Sakinah's operator can access service data, and only to run Sakinah, help you, keep the community safe or meet legal obligations.
• Separation from Sisterhood. Your private Journal, Companion conversations and reflections are never posted to Sisterhood.

No online service can guarantee complete security. If a data breach is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify affected people and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as the law requires.

8. How long we keep information, and how to delete it

Deleting your account. Go to Profile → Privacy & Consent → Delete my account. Deletion from Sakinah's live database is immediate and permanent. Copies may remain in existing encrypted backups until those backups are deleted (see the table above). It removes your account, profile, private content, privacy choices, subscription records, AI usage records and Sisterhood profile and content, apart from the moderation records described in section 5.

Deleting your account does not cancel an Apple subscription. Cancel it first in your Apple account settings.

Other deletion requests. You can email us to delete particular content that the app cannot yet delete. We will confirm when it is done.

9. Your choices and rights

In Profile → Privacy & Consent you can:

• allow or withdraw AI support
• switch on or off Journal → Heart Mirror, Faith and meaning, Companion memory and Personalisation
• allow or withdraw Sisterhood translation
• delete your account

Companion memory currently has no effect, because Sakinah does not yet save memory notes.

Requests by email. Email support@withsakinah.com to:

• get a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• correct it
• ask a question about consent or deletion

We may ask you to email from your account's address, so we can confirm the request is yours. We will respond within 30 days. If we cannot do what you ask, we will explain why.

Sakinah is not currently offered in the European Union, the wider European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland. Depending on where you live, you may have other rights under local law.

10. Age

Sakinah is only for people aged 18 and over.

• Before you sign up. When you choose to create an account, the first question is whether you are 18 or older. We ask only yes or no, not your date of birth.
• If you answer no, you cannot continue, and nothing is sent to us or saved.
• Unfinished sign-ups. When you ask for a verification code, our sign-in system creates a record holding your email address, and we email you the code. If you never enter the code, that record stays until it is deleted. Your password is saved only after the code is confirmed. You can email us to delete an unfinished sign-up.
• Asked again during setup. If you answer no at that point, setup stops and your setup answers are not saved. You can then remove your sign-in details yourself on that screen, or email us and we will delete them.
• If we learn an account belongs to someone under 18, we will delete it.

11. Questions and complaints

Email support@withsakinah.com with the subject "Privacy". Tell us what happened and how to contact you. We will acknowledge your message within 7 days, and aim to resolve it within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or to the privacy regulator where you live.

12. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when Sakinah's features, providers or practices change, and we will change the effective date at the top. Before any change that affects how your personal information is used or shared, we will tell you in the app, and ask for your permission again where it is needed.

13. Contact

Privacy Officer — Sakinah
support@withsakinah.com
An independently operated digital wellbeing service based in New South Wales, Australia.