PRIVACY POLICY
This Privacy Policy describes how the operator of Backmonkey (the "Operator", "we", "us") may collect, use, and share information when you use the Backmonkey app and website (the "Service"). The Operator is currently Sebastian Larsen, an individual doing business as Backmonkey. If the Service is transferred to a company or other entity, that entity becomes the Operator and this policy applies to it.
This policy describes our practices. It is not a contract and does not create contractual rights or obligations; our Terms of Service govern your use of the Service. By using the Service, you acknowledge and agree to the collection, use, and sharing of your information as described here.
Backmonkey is an early-stage app. It is built and run by a very small team, and its features, data practices, and service providers change often. Assume that anything you enter into the Service, including information about your health and habits, is collected, stored, and can be seen by us. We make no promise that your use of the Service is private, confidential, or anonymous. If you are not comfortable with that, do not enter the information and do not use the Service.
1. The short version
- We may collect everything you enter into the Service and information about how you use it, and we can see all of it, including your notes, reflections, slips, and other health information.
- We make no representation or guarantee that your information will stay private, confidential, anonymous, or secure (Section 5).
- We use your information to run, study, and improve the Service and for the other purposes in Section 3.
- We never see or store your full card number. Stripe does.
- People you keep a monkey with can see your name and how the monkey is doing, including pledge amounts on paid crews.
- You can delete monkeys and your account from Settings (Section 8).
2. What we collect
We may collect any information you provide or that is generated by your use of the Service. The categories below are examples, not a complete list, and we may collect new kinds of information as the Service changes.
2.1 Information you give us
- Account: your email address and a password hash, or your Apple user identifier and any name and email Apple passes to us, plus the name you enter for your profile.
- Monkeys and habits: each monkey's name, species, and personality; the habit it represents; and the system you build for it, such as your cue, tiny action, friction, identity statement, and reward style.
- Everything you log: check-ins and their outcomes, slips and relapses, cravings, techniques used, rest days, targets, proof labels, reflections, notes, and any other text or selections you enter.
- Pledges and payments: pledge amounts, modes, and window dates; the pledge terms you accepted and when; the ledger of judged days, corrections, and settlements; and the identifiers Stripe assigns to you, your saved payment method, and each charge. Your card number, expiry, and security code go directly to Stripe.
- Crews and tribes: memberships, invites, joins and departures, consents, and nudges and other interactions between members.
- Communications: anything you send us, including feedback, support messages, and refund or can't-pay requests.
2.2 Information collected automatically
- Usage and interactions: the screens you view, the actions you take and their outcomes, the features you use, and when and how long you use the Service. We may use analytics tools that record how you interact with the app in detail, which can include session replays of your screens.
- Device and technical data: device model, operating system, app version, language, time zone, screen size, identifiers assigned by us or our providers, push tokens, crash and error reports, and diagnostic data.
- Network and location data: your IP address and the approximate location that can be inferred from it. If you give the app permission, we may also collect precise location.
- Device features: if you give the app permission to use your camera, motion sensors, or other device features, we may process what they capture to provide the feature.
2.3 Information from others
We may receive information about you from Apple, from Stripe, from our other service providers, and from other users, for example when a crew member invites you, nudges you, or logs something that involves a shared monkey.
2.4 Health and other sensitive information
Backmonkey is a habit-change app, so assume that we collect and process health information and other sensitive information about you. That includes the habits you are trying to change (which may involve substances, alcohol, gambling, sexual behavior, or other conduct), your slips, relapses, and cravings, your emotional and mental state as you describe it, your reflections and notes, the fact that you use a habit-change app at all, and anything that can be inferred from your use of the Service. Usage data can reveal this information too.
You provide this information voluntarily. By entering it or using the features that generate it, you consent to our collecting, using, and sharing it as described in this policy. You can withdraw consent by no longer entering it and by deleting it or your account (Section 8), but withdrawal does not affect what happened before.
We are not a healthcare provider, health plan, or other entity covered by HIPAA, and nothing you enter is a medical record. Laws that protect medical records or substance-use treatment records do not apply to it.
2.5 The website
Our website's host and providers receive standard technical information when you visit, such as your IP address, browser type, and the pages you request. We may add analytics or other tools to the website.
3. How we use it
We may use any information we collect for any of the following purposes, and for any other purpose we describe to you when we collect it:
- To provide, operate, maintain, and personalize the Service, including judging days, running pledges, and running crews and tribes.
- To process payments, send receipts, collect amounts owed, and handle refunds and disputes.
- To analyze and understand how the Service is used, to research habits and behavior change, and to develop and improve the Service and new features, including with automated and AI tools.
- To communicate with you, including reminders, service messages, support, and news about the Service.
- To find and fix bugs, and to monitor and protect the security and integrity of the Service.
- To enforce our Terms, prevent fraud and misuse, and protect the rights, property, and safety of the Operator, our users, and others.
- To comply with the law and legal process, including tax and payment-network rules.
- To create de-identified or aggregated information and use it for any purpose.
4. Who can see it
4.1 Us
The Operator, and anyone the Operator authorizes to work on the Service, can access all information in the Service, including everything you write and log. When the app describes something as private or "only you", it means other users cannot see it. It does not limit our access.
4.2 Other users
- Crew members can see your name, your identity statement, your check-ins, slips, and misses, notes you attach to the shared monkey, and, on a paid crew, the amounts you committed, defended, and lost.
- Tribe members can see your name, your monkey's progress, and your committed, defended, and lost amounts on any paid monkey in the tribe.
- Invite recipients can see the monkey's name, habit, seat count, and, on a paid crew, the buy-in.
What other users do with what they see, including taking screenshots or sharing it, is outside our control.
4.3 Service providers
We share information with providers who help us run the Service. They currently include Supabase (database, authentication, and server functions), Stripe (payments), Expo (push notifications), Apple (sign-in and app distribution), PostHog (usage analytics), Sentry (crash and error reports), Notion (feedback and support records), Vercel (website hosting), and ImprovMX and Google (support email). We may add or replace providers at any time without notice.
4.4 Business transfers
If the Service or its assets are transferred to a company formed by the Operator, or to another operator through a sale, merger, reorganization, financing, or similar transaction (including negotiations toward one), your information may be disclosed and transferred as part of it, and the new operator may use it as described in this policy.
4.5 Legal and safety
We may disclose information when we believe in good faith that it is necessary to comply with the law or legal process, including a subpoena, court order, or government request; to handle a payment dispute or collect an amount owed; to enforce our Terms; to investigate fraud, security issues, or misuse; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Operator, our users, or the public.
4.6 Other sharing
We may share de-identified or aggregated information for any purpose, and we may share any information with your consent or at your direction.
We do not currently sell personal information, and we do not share health information with third parties for their own advertising. If that changes, we will update this policy and obtain any consent the law requires.
5. No promise of privacy or anonymity
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE MAKE NO REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY, OR PROMISE THAT YOUR INFORMATION WILL REMAIN PRIVATE, CONFIDENTIAL, ANONYMOUS, OR SECURE, OR THAT IT WILL BE HANDLED IN ANY WAY OTHER THAN AS THIS POLICY PERMITS. The Service is early-stage software and may contain bugs, misconfigurations, or design choices that expose information in ways neither of us expects. Identifiers we assign are linked to your account, so your use of the Service is not anonymous. Do not enter anything you would not be comfortable with us, the people you keep a monkey with, or others seeing.
6. Security
We take steps we consider reasonable to protect information, but no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of anything you send us or store in the Service. You are responsible for keeping your login private. If the law requires us to notify you of a security incident, we will do so electronically, in the app or by email.
7. Retention
We keep information for as long as your account is active and afterwards for as long as we consider it useful for the purposes in Section 3 or as the law requires. Deleting a monkey or your account removes the related information from our active systems, except for records we keep for payments, disputes, legal obligations, fraud prevention, and enforcing our agreements, information held by our providers under their own retention periods, de-identified or aggregated information, and copies in backups until they are overwritten.
8. Your choices and rights
- Delete monkeys any time from Settings.
- Delete your account from Settings once you have no open pledge and no pending charge. It leaves any monkey you keep with others and deletes the rest, subject to Section 7.
- Notifications, camera, and other device permissions can be turned off in your device settings.
- Payment method can be updated in the app, and transaction history is in Settings.
- Service and news emails: you can unsubscribe from non-essential emails using the link in them.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete your information, to withdraw consent, or to object to certain processing. Email us at support@trybackmonkey.com. We may need to verify your identity, and we may decline a request where the law allows. We respond within 45 days, or sooner where the law requires. If we decline, you can appeal by replying to our answer.
9. Children
Backmonkey is for adults. You must be 18 or older to use it. If we learn that we hold information from someone under 18, we will delete it.
10. Where the Service is offered
The Service is intended for people in the United States, as described in our Terms. We and our providers store and process information in the United States and wherever our providers operate. If you use the Service from anywhere else, you do so on your own initiative and consent to that transfer. We do not respond to Do Not Track or similar browser signals.
11. Changes
We may change this policy at any time. We will post the new version here with a new effective date and, for material changes, tell you in the app or by email. Continued use of the Service after the effective date means you accept the change. Where the law requires your consent before a change applies to information we already hold, we will ask for it.
12. Contact
Backmonkey is operated by Sebastian Larsen.
You can also reach us from Settings in the app.