Altr Ego privacy policy

Altr Ego is a social identity app: your friends answer questions about you without ever being named, and we assemble a profile from their answers. This policy says what we collect, what we do with it, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read.

Who this covers.

Two kinds of people use Altr Ego: account holders, who start rounds and receive profiles, and witnesses, friends who answer questions about an account holder through an invite link without creating an account. Both are covered here, separately where it matters.

What we collect from account holders.

Your email address and name, to run your account. Your answers to your own self-assessment. The profile we assemble about you. Product usage events tied to your account id, so we can tell what works. Each event also notes, when we can tell, whether it came from our app, a web browser, or another app's built-in browser, and whether on iOS, Android or something else; from our app, it also notes the app's version. Your account notes the first two, when we can tell, for when you created it. If you subscribe to the paid tier, your subscription status: that you subscribed, through which store, and when the current period ends. Apple bills you; we never see your payment details. What you add on the group board: your answers to weekly questions, the meme and anthem entries you submit, your votes, and the titles and verdicts you accept or decline. What you tell us about other people: who you have blocked, the reports you file, and the charges you pick when a friend is on trial. Each of these is stored with your account. If you send feedback, your words and the version of the app you sent it from, stored with your account. Nobody in the app ever sees them. What you write may mention other people; we use it only to improve Altr Ego, and it never reaches anyone you name. What starting a round creates: the twelve questions chosen for it, whether it is still open, and the invite links you send. If you allow notifications, the device token we use to send them. That is the list.

What we collect from witnesses.

Your answers about the person who invited you, your consent confirmation, and the invite link your answers came through. You do not create an account and we do not collect your name or email when you answer.

Opening a link.

Anyone can open an invite link, or a profile someone has shared, without an account. When someone does, we record which link was opened and when, and, when we can tell, whether it was opened in our app, a web browser, or another app's built-in browser, and on iOS, Android or something else. We note the same on what happens next on that page, such as a friend sending their answers. Until someone makes an account, none of this is tied to a name, an email or an account.

What we never collect.

No location. No access to your contacts. No photos today; if image features ship, this policy will say exactly what changes before it changes. No advertising identifiers and no tracking across other apps or sites. No ads, so no ad data.

GIFs, honestly stated.

Members can now add a GIF to a meme week from GIPHY's catalog, restricted to their two mildest content ratings, and re-checked on our servers before anything is saved. Nobody can upload their own images; that has not changed. When you search for a GIF, the words you type go to GIPHY to run the search, from our servers, with nothing about you or your friends attached. We store the chosen GIF's catalog id and title as part of the submission. GIFs stay inside the app: they are never part of anything shared out.

Anthems, honestly stated.

Members can put a song forward for the anthem on the group board, chosen from Apple's music catalog. The search leaves out songs Apple marks as explicit. When you search for a song, the words you type go to Apple to run the search, from our servers, with nothing about you or your friends attached. We store the chosen song's catalog id, title and artist, and links to its preview, its cover and its store page, as part of the submission. The preview and the cover play and show straight from Apple's servers, not ours, so Apple can see that your device asked for them. GIFs show the same way, straight from GIPHY's servers.

The one promise at the center.

The person you answered about is never shown who said what. Anonymity to the subject is how the product works, not a setting.

One technical honesty about that promise.

If a witness later creates their own account through the same invite link, our database can technically connect that account to the answers that came through the link. The app never shows this to anyone, and we do not use it to reveal who said what. The same is true of weekly question answers, which are stored with the answering account. We state this because a privacy policy that hides it would be lying by omission: the promise is about what anyone can ever see, and we also want you to know what the database itself holds.

Who can see your profile.

Your profile is not public. You can see it, and so can the people you have shared a round with. Nobody else can unless you share it. If you share it, as a link or an image, anyone with that link can see it. Sharing is your decision each time, and a shared profile never names the friends whose answers built it.

Who can see your page.

Your page is the part of your profile you have said yes to: the titles, quotes, memes and anthems you accepted. A verdict you accepted is read by the group that tried you, not by your whole circle. Your page is read by your mutual circle, which is everyone who has held a seat in a round you started and everyone whose round you have held a seat in. One shared round, in either direction, is enough, and the circle does not end when the round does. A friend who answered through your invite link and never made an account is in nobody's circle. Your personality profile is read by your circle too: the archetype and the trait scores your friends' answers produced. The four longer written descriptions, your habitat, what's most dangerous between you and someone, your fatal flaw, and your reputation, are not shown to your circle. If either of you has blocked the other, neither of you can see the other's page from then on. You can take an entry off your page at any time, and your circle stops seeing it; what someone has already read or saved is beyond our reach, and we will not pretend otherwise. Deleting your account removes your page with it, and nobody can read it afterwards.

AI processing, named.

To assemble a profile, we send the questions, the answer options, and how many friends picked each one to Anthropic, the AI company, for synthesis. Self-assessment answers go the same way for scoring. We do not send your name, your email, or your account id: the questions go to Anthropic with the name left blank. This is disclosed at signup and on the witness consent screen before any answer is collected. We do not use your data to train AI models, and we do not use stored answers for anything except generating and maintaining the profile they belong to.

Deletion.

Account holders can delete their account in the app. Deletion cascades: your account, your rounds, the answers collected in them, and your profile are removed together. Feedback you sent from the app is deleted with your account. Words we already copied into our notes stay, with no name or account attached. We honor deletion requests within 30 days.

Witness deletion, honestly stated.

If you answered as a witness and want your answers gone, write to support@altr-ego.app with the invite link you answered through; we hold nothing else that identifies the answers as yours. We will delete your raw answers, and they are then unrecoverable. Two limits, stated plainly. First: a profile that was already generated from your answers keeps what it learned from them. Your contribution is blended into it beyond attribution, it cannot be pulled back out, and deleting your answers does not regenerate the profile. Second: the round's answer count drops, and anything already unlocked stays unlocked; deletion is not an undo of what your answer helped open. If you later created an account through your link, deleting that account removes everything through the full cascade instead.

Retention.

We keep your data while your account exists. Delete your account and the cascade above runs. Witness answers live as part of the subject's profile data and are removed when the subject's account is deleted or when the witness asks, within the limits stated above.

Export.

There is no self-serve export today. Write to support@altr-ego.app and we will send you what we hold about you within 30 days.

Age.

Altr Ego is 18+. No one under 18 may create an account or answer questions, and we answer the app stores' age questionnaires accordingly.

Child safety.

Our child safety standards are published in our terms of service. The dedicated contact for child safety concerns is safety@altr-ego.app.

Contact.

support@altr-ego.app, and safety@altr-ego.app for child safety specifically.

Changes.

If this policy changes, the change is dated here and material changes are told to you in the app before they take effect.