Privacy Policy

Who we are

Talk Deep is a conversation card game. It is an app for iPhone and Android and a website at talkdeep.me. It is run by an independent developer, who is the controller of the personal data described in this policy.

Questions about this policy or your data go to hello@talkdeep.me.

What we collect without an account

• Usage events. Which screens, decks, cards and games you open, how you rate a card, what you pick in the short setup when you first open the app, the code of a room you host or join, whether a purchase screen was shown and what you chose there, the app version and platform, and a random identifier created on your device. On the website this also covers page views and clicks.
• Screen recordings (Android app). For the first three days after you install the Android app, our analytics provider records how you move through its screens: what you tap, where you scroll, which screen opens next and how long you stay. The recording shows the screen as you see it, with the text on it and what you type, so it can include the names you choose and the answers you give. Pictures and photos are left out. We watch these recordings only to find where the app is hard to use. The iPhone app and the website do not record.
• Technical data. When the app or the site connects to our servers, your IP address and basic device and browser details reach us and the providers listed below. Our analytics provider works out an approximate location (country and city) from the IP address. We never ask your device for its location.
• Purchases. If you buy something in the app without an account, the purchase stays with your App Store or Google Play account. The app reads it from the store on your device to unlock what you bought.
• Messages. If you write to us, we keep your message and your address so that we can answer.
• Waiting list. If you join the waiting list on the website, we store your email address, where on the site you joined, your browser language, the country your connection comes from and the time. If you arrived through one of our ads, we also store which ad and campaign it was (from the link you followed), so that we can tell which ads work. We use your address only to email you once, when the app opens.

What we collect with an account

You sign in with Apple or with Google. We never see your Apple or Google password. With an account we store:

• Sign-in details. Your email address (or the private relay address Apple gives us if you hide your email), your name if the provider shares it, and the identifier the provider uses for you.
• Display name. The name you choose to show to other players.
• Daily question. If you pair with someone: the pairing, the relationship you picked, the names the two of you are shown under, and the answers you both give. Your partner sees an answer only after both of you have answered that day.
• Photo answers. Some daily questions ask for photos. The photos you take for them, a smaller copy of each and a blurred preview are stored privately on our servers. Only you and your partner can see them, and your partner sees them only once the day’s answers open. Photos are taken with the camera in the app; the app does not read or save to your photo library.
• Voice answers. You can answer a written question with a short voice note instead of typing. The app records only after you tap the microphone and stops when you tap stop. The recording stays on your phone until you send the answer. Sent notes are stored privately on our servers. Only you and the person you sent it to can listen to it, and they hear it only once the day’s answers open. A person who answers your invite on the website can also answer with a voice note, which is stored the same way.
• Online rooms. The rooms you host or join, the name and character you play under, your picks and answers in the game, and the scores. The other players in a room see your name, your character and whatever the game reveals.
• Purchases. What you bought, the store’s transaction identifier and the date a subscription ends, so that a purchase follows your account to your other devices. For a purchase made on the website we also store the customer identifier our payment provider gives us.

Payment card details are handled by Apple, Google or Stripe. They never reach us.

AI companions

You can add an AI companion to your daily question: a character that asks you one question a day and writes back in the evening. Its questions and replies are written by Claude, a model run by Anthropic. Every companion is labelled AI in the app.

To write a reply we send Anthropic your answers to that companion, its earlier replies and notes, your first name if your account has one, and the language of your app. We do not send your email address or your account identifier, and nothing from a human pair ever reaches Anthropic: what you and a person answer each other stays between the two of you and us.

Anthropic keeps what we send for up to 30 days to run its service and to detect abuse, and it is not used to train its models. The replies, and the short notes a companion keeps about you so that it remembers, are stored with your account on our servers.

A reply that reads wrong can be reported from under it. To stop a companion, remove it from your list: it asks nothing more and nothing more is sent. A companion is not a doctor, a therapist or a professional of any kind, and the life coach and fitness companions say so under every reply.

What stays on your device

The name you type into your profile before signing in, your theme, your progress through the decks and a copy of what you have unlocked are kept in the app’s storage on your device.

Reminders for the daily question are local notifications that the app schedules on your device. If you turn notifications on, the app registers a push token for that phone with us (with its language and time zone) so that we can tell you when answers open; deleting your account deletes it.

Games on the website

The mini games on the website need no account. Played on one phone, your answers stay in your browser and are not sent to us. What a game remembers on your device (your first name, which questions you have seen, your votes) stays there.

If you send a game to someone with a link, your first name and your answers are either carried inside the link itself, or kept by us for 30 days so the other person can compare, along with their first name and answers, and then deleted. Anyone with the link can answer it.

Live votes are counted as totals, with no record of who voted. To count one vote per person, we keep a scrambled code made from your address, which cannot be turned back into it, for one day.

We never send your answers to analytics. The attachment style quiz stays on your device entirely, has no link and no share card, and its page loads no advertising tags.

Cookies and advertising on the website

The website uses the Meta Pixel, so that we can see whether our ads on Facebook and Instagram bring people to Talk Deep and show those ads to people likely to be interested. When you visit the website, Meta receives the pages you open, that you joined the waiting list, your IP address, browser details and a cookie identifier, and may link this to your Meta account. When you join the waiting list, our server also tells Meta about the sign-up (through Meta’s Conversions API) with a hashed copy of your email address, your IP address, browser details, country and the same cookie identifier, so that Meta can match the sign-up to an ad. A hashed copy is a scrambled code that cannot be turned back into the address, though Meta can compare it with the addresses it already knows. Meta handles that data under its own privacy policy. The website also uses the Google tag for Google Ads, for the same purpose with Google’s ads: Google receives the pages you open, your IP address, browser details and a cookie identifier, and may link this to your Google account. Google handles that data under its own privacy policy.

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland the website asks first, in a small cookie banner, and loads the Meta Pixel and the Google tag, and tells Meta about a sign-up, only if you agree. You can change your choice at any time under Cookie settings at the bottom of every page. Wherever you are, you can also block it with your browser’s tracking protection or an ad blocker, and change how Meta and Google use it in your Facebook, Instagram or Google ad settings. The app does not contain the Meta Pixel or the Google tag.

Measuring our ads in the app

The app, on iPhone and Android, uses Google Analytics for Firebase, so that we can see whether our Google ads bring people who install the app and use it. Google receives that the app was installed and opened, and when you first reach a few moments in it: sending an invite, finishing a number of cards, answering a number of questions, finishing a game, having several pairs. It never receives your names, your answers, your photos or who you play with. With these events Google receives an identifier for this installation of the app, your IP address and basic device details, and your device’s advertising ID, and may link them to your Google account and to the Google ads you saw or tapped. On iPhone the app sends these events only after it has asked for permission to track you, and the advertising ID only if you tap Allow; you can change your answer at any time in the Settings app, under Privacy & Security, then Tracking. If you do not allow it, Google gets the events without the advertising ID and does not use them to personalise ads, and Apple’s own ad attribution (SKAdNetwork) tells Google, without saying who you are, that an install came from a Google ad and how far it got in the app. On iPhone, when you are signed in, the app also gives Google’s software your email address, which stays on your phone: it is matched there against the Google ads you saw, and only the result that an ad led to the install leaves the phone, without your email. On Android you can reset or delete the advertising ID in your device’s settings. Google handles that data under its own privacy policy.

On Android you can reset or delete your advertising ID in your settings (Privacy, then Ads, on most phones). Wherever you are, you can choose how Google uses data for ads in your Google ad settings. The website does not use Google Analytics for Firebase.

What we do not do

• No ads in the app. The app sends the advertising ID to Google only to measure our ads, and on iPhone only with your permission (see “Measuring our ads in the app”).
• We do not sell your data. The only data shared for advertising is described under “Cookies and advertising on the website” and “Measuring our ads in the app”.
• Apart from measuring our own ads with Google (on iPhone with the advertising ID only with your permission), the app does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.
• The app does not ask for access to your location, contacts or photo library. It asks for the camera only when you answer a photo question, and for the microphone only when you tap it to record a voice answer.
• The names you choose and the answers you give, in rooms and in the daily question, are not sent to PostHog or Google Analytics for Firebase as events. They can appear in the screen recordings of the Android app’s first three days (see “Screen recordings” above).

How we use it

• To run the game: sign you in, keep rooms and pairs working, and carry your purchases across your devices.
• To see which decks, cards and features are used, so we know what to keep, fix or drop.
• To measure and target our ads on Facebook and Instagram (website only).
• To see whether our Google ads bring people who install and use the app.
• To write the replies of the AI companions you add (see “AI companions”).
• To try out prices and limits. Different people may be shown a different price or number of free cards while we learn what works.
• To answer you when you write to us.
• To send one email to the people on the waiting list when the app opens.
• To keep the service secure and to meet legal obligations.

Where the law asks for a legal basis (for example in the EEA and the UK): we process account, room, pairing and purchase data to provide the service you asked for; your waiting-list email on the basis of your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by writing to us; usage and technical data on the basis of our legitimate interest in understanding and securing the service; the app’s ad measurement data on the basis of our legitimate interest in knowing which of our ads work; and the Meta Pixel and Google tag data on the basis of your consent, which you give or refuse in the website’s cookie banner.

Who processes it for us

We use these providers. Each receives only what it needs for its job.

• Supabase: the database, sign-in and live rooms. Data is stored in Singapore.
• Cloudflare: hosts the website and the API the app talks to, on its worldwide network.
• PostHog: product analytics, feature flags and, in the Android app, screen recordings. Data is stored in the United States. In the app, events are linked to your account identifier after you sign in, together with whether you signed in with Apple or Google. Your email address is not sent. Your name is not sent with events, but it can appear in a screen recording.
• Apple: Sign in with Apple and App Store purchases.
• Google: Google sign-in and Google Play purchases. The website also loads its fonts from Google Fonts, so Google sees the IP address of a website visitor.
• Stripe: payments made on the website only.
• Meta: the Meta Pixel on the website and the Conversions API on our server, for measuring and targeting our ads (see “Cookies and advertising on the website”). Meta processes this data in the United States and elsewhere.
• Google: the Google tag on the website, for measuring and targeting our Google ads (see “Cookies and advertising on the website”). Google processes this data in the United States and elsewhere.
• Google: Google Analytics for Firebase in the app, for measuring our Google ads (see “Measuring our ads in the app”). Google processes this data in the United States and elsewhere.
• Anthropic: writes the replies of the AI companions, from what you tell them (see “AI companions”). Anthropic processes this data in the United States.

Apple, Google and Stripe handle sign-in and payments under their own privacy policies, and Meta and Google handle the ad data under their own. We do not give your data to anyone else, unless a law requires it.

Where it is processed

Your data is stored in Singapore and in the United States, and passes through Cloudflare’s network in the country you connect from. That may be outside the country where you live. The providers above offer contractual safeguards for such transfers, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

• Account data: until you delete your account.
• Rooms: deleted automatically, at most about two days after they were created, with everything in them.
• Daily question pairs and answers: for as long as the pair exists. Removing the pair, or either partner deleting their account, deletes the pair and all of its answers.
• AI companions: the questions, your answers, the replies and the companion’s notes, for as long as the companion is on your list or your account exists. Removing a companion hides it and keeps them, so that it can come back; deleting your account deletes them.
• Photo answers: for as long as the answer they belong to. A photo you remove before the answers open, or one that belongs to a deleted pair or account, can no longer be seen and its files are deleted from storage within a few days.
• Voice answers: for as long as the answer they belong to. A note you delete or record again, or one that belongs to a deleted pair or account, can no longer be heard and its file is deleted from storage within a few days.
• Purchase records linked to an account: until the account is deleted. Apple, Google and Stripe keep their own records of your purchases.
• Screen recordings: deleted automatically after 30 days.
• Usage events: until we no longer need them to understand how Talk Deep is used. Ask us and we will delete yours.
• Messages to us: for as long as it takes to help you, and a reasonable time after.
• Waiting list: until we have sent the launch email, then deleted. Ask us and we remove you sooner.

Deleting your account

In the app, go to Profile, then Account, then Delete account. This deletes, right away, your sign-in record, your name, your pairs and the answers in them, the rooms you host and the purchase records linked to the account. The files of your photo and voice answers can no longer be seen or heard and are removed from storage within a few days. It also cancels a subscription bought on the website and, when you delete from the iPhone app, revokes Sign in with Apple.

It does not cancel a subscription bought through the App Store or Google Play. Cancel that in the store’s subscription settings. Purchases stay with your store account and can be restored on your device.

Usage events collected earlier remain under an identifier that no longer points to an account. Write to us if you want those removed as well.

If you cannot use the app, see how to delete your account.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to stop or limit how we use it, or to hand it over in a portable format. Write to hello@talkdeep.me from the address of your account and we will answer within 30 days. We do not charge for this.

If you live in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland you can also complain to your data protection authority. If you live in California: we do not sell personal information. The Meta Pixel and the Google tag on the website may count as “sharing” for advertising under California law; you can opt out under Cookie settings at the bottom of every page, by blocking it in your browser, or by writing to us.

Children

Talk Deep is not directed to children under 13, or under 16 in the EEA and the UK where that age applies, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will delete it.

Security

Data travels over encrypted connections. In the database, each account can read only its own rows and the rooms and pairs it belongs to, and purchase records can be written only by our server. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot promise that nothing will ever go wrong.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we change the date at the top. If a change is significant we will say so in the app or on this page before it takes effect.

Contact

Talk Deep, hello@talkdeep.me.