Privacy policy

Who this covers

This policy covers your use of the Ask Arden website and app.

Ask Arden is invitation-only. You sign in with a Google account we have invited.

You must be 18 or older to use Ask Arden. Ask Arden is not directed to children, and there are no child accounts, teen profiles, household accounts, or shared family access. If you believe someone under 18 has used Ask Arden, tell us and we will delete the account and its data.

What we collect

Your account. When you sign in with Google we ask for your name and email address. The email confirms you are on the invite list and produces a stable account identifier that cannot be turned back into your address. Your display name is stored so the product can greet you and so we can help you.

Your conversations. We store what you send a coach and what it sends back, so your history is there when you return. Conversations are stored on our own systems. They are not sent to advertising networks or analytics products.

Saved notes. Ask Arden can save details from a conversation so later conversations are more useful. Some of that happens automatically: when a detail is clear and not sensitive, it may be saved without asking you first, and it then appears in your saved notes where you can read, correct, or delete it. Anything sensitive, or anything Ask Arden is unsure about, is never saved automatically — it is held as a suggestion until you keep it, edit it, or reject it. Saved notes are scoped to one coach: what the money coach saved is not visible to the fitness coach.

Ratings. If you rate a response, we store the rating and a pointer to the message it refers to.

Operational records. To run the service and keep it safe we keep a record of each turn: which coach answered, how long it took, roughly how large the request and response were, the model used, and estimated cost. Sensitive actions on your account — correcting or deleting a saved note, filing a privacy request — are written to an audit log, as are safety flags.

Waitlist. If you joined the waitlist before being invited, we hold the name, email, and survey answers you gave us.

Sensitive information: money, fitness, and nutrition

Some of what you tell a coach is more sensitive than a typical account detail — health information you share with the fitness or nutrition coach, and financial information you share with the money coach. We handle it the same way we handle every other conversation: stored on our own systems, scoped to the coach you shared it with, never sold, never used to show you ads, and never used to train a model automatically (see “Reading your conversations” below).

Because this category of information deserves extra care, we’re building a dedicated consent step for it — a clear, separate confirmation before you start your first conversation with the fitness, nutrition, or money coach, distinct from simply agreeing to this policy. Until that ships, starting a conversation with one of these coaches is how you tell us you’re comfortable sharing that kind of information with us on the terms described here.

What we do not collect

• No advertising trackers, marketing pixels, or third-party analytics products.
• No account numbers, passwords, or payment credentials — do not send them, and coaches are instructed to refuse them.
• No file or photo uploads; the product does not accept them.
• No precise location, contacts, or device identifiers.

Ask Arden is free during the beta, and we do not collect any payment information. If that changes, we will update this policy and ask for your consent before collecting any payment details.

How we use it

• To run the service: show your conversations, let a coach use the notes you kept, and keep your account working.
• To keep it safe: enforce the boundaries coaches operate under, investigate abuse, and act on safety flags.
• To support you: answer what you send us and fix what you report.
• To improve the product: understand what works, using ratings and, during the beta, the limited conversation review described below.

Reading your conversations

By default, we do not read your conversations.

During the beta, a small number of people on our team — and, for the fitness and nutrition coaches, an outside fitness professional we’ve engaged to help us — read a limited set of conversations to check response quality: every conversation you rate, and a sample of conversations you don’t. This is a deliberate, limited review process, not general access. Reviewers see conversation content only for this purpose, and coach authors never get access to your data (see “What we do not do” below).

Nothing you write becomes training material automatically. Rating a response unhelpful puts it in front of a person; it does not queue anything for training. Any use of conversation excerpts to improve coaches beyond this quality review is a separate, deliberate, recorded step, taken only on conversations you’ve agreed to.

What we do not do

• We do not sell, rent, or share your conversations, saved notes, or account details for anyone else’s marketing.
• We do not show you ads, and we do not use your conversations to target ads elsewhere.
• We do not put conversation content into third-party monitoring tools. We use a service to track performance and cost, deliberately configured so it never receives your messages — it gets timings and identifiers, not content.
• Coach authors never get access to your data.

Who else is involved

Ask Arden runs on Google Cloud, and coaches are powered by Google’s Gemini models running in Google Cloud. Your messages are processed by Google Cloud in order to produce a response.

We use a small number of additional service providers to operate, secure, and monitor the product. A complete, named list of these providers is available on request, and we’ll publish it here as it’s finalized.

How long we keep things

We keep your account, conversations, and saved notes for as long as your account is active.

When you ask us to delete something, we act on that request within 30 days. Backups take longer to cycle out: deleted data is purged from backups within 90 days.

What you can do yourself

Signed in, from your privacy settings, you can do all of this immediately and without contacting us:

• See everything a coach has saved about you.
• Correct a saved note — the coach uses the corrected version from then on.
• Delete a saved note.
• Review suggested notes: keep, edit and keep, or reject each one. A rejected suggestion is never saved.

Asking for a copy, or asking us to delete

You can ask for a copy of your data, or ask us to delete it, from your privacy settings. Today that request is recorded and handled by a person; we act on deletion requests within 30 days, and backups are purged within 90 days, as described above.

Deleting your account is not yet self-service. We’re building that; until it ships, request it the same way — from your privacy settings — and we’ll handle it by hand.

Your privacy rights

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to: know what personal information we hold about you and how we use it; access a copy of it; correct it; delete it; and not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights. You can exercise any of these rights from your privacy settings, or by contacting us at privacy@askarden.ai.

If you’re a California resident, these rights are provided under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act. We’ll verify your identity before acting on a request, using the information already on your account.

Security

Your account is protected by Google sign-in and short-lived, narrowly scoped access tokens. Saved notes are isolated to your account and to the individual coach they belong to, and that isolation is enforced by the system rather than by policy alone. Sensitive actions on your account are recorded in an audit log.

If we experience a security incident that affects your personal information, we will investigate it and notify affected users and, where required, regulators without unreasonable delay and in accordance with applicable law.

Where things are processed

Ask Arden is currently offered in the United States only. We’re finalizing the details of exactly where your information is processed and will publish them here.

Changes, and contact

If we make a material change to this policy, we’ll tell you — by posting the change here with an updated date, and, for significant changes, by emailing you directly. Continuing to use Ask Arden after a change takes effect means you accept it.

Questions about this policy, or about your data? Contact us at privacy@askarden.ai.