What you say stays yours.

Who is responsible for your data

Élan is published by Benjamin Tunaru, based in Switzerland at Avenue de Mategnin 75, 1217 Meyrin, Switzerland. He is the data controller — the party that decides why and how your data is processed.

Because we serve users in the EU from Switzerland, an EU representative may be required. We have not yet designated one; we will do so before Élan’s full commercial launch in the EU, and this page will name them.

What we collect, and why

We keep this list short on purpose. We only collect what the app needs to work.

• Your email address — to create your account and sign you in. Nothing else.
• Your first name — optional. Only so Élan can address you. You can leave it blank.
• Your interview answers (transcripts) — what you type during the conversation. They exist for one reason: to produce your portrait.
• Your personality portrait — the result of the interview. Because it describes your character, we treat it as sensitive data and protect it accordingly.
• Your purchase record — that you unlocked the full portrait. The payment itself is handled by Apple; we never see your card details.
• Minimal technical logs — server-side operational events needed to run the service (for example, that a request succeeded or hit a rate limit). Today Élan uses no analytics service at all: no advertising identifiers, no third-party ad networks, no cross-app tracking, no behavioural profiling. If we ever add a privacy-respecting analytics tool, we will name it here first.

“No human ever reads your answers” — what that really means

Your conversation is handled by software, end to end. When you send a message, an automated server relays it to the AI that conducts the interview, and streams the reply back to you. There is no person in that loop — not to check, not to moderate, not out of curiosity.

We want to be honest about the limit of that promise, because you deserve the whole picture:

To run any online service, the publisher necessarily holds the technical keys to the database where your data lives. In plain terms: we could technically open the database. We do not read your transcripts as part of running Élan, and nothing in the product surfaces them to us. But “no human reads them” is a commitment about how we operate — not a claim that access is physically impossible.

Access outside normal operation would only happen in three narrow cases: (1) a binding legal obligation — a court or competent authority order, never an informal request; (2) a security incident, strictly to protect your data and limited to what the investigation requires; (3) your own explicit, written request for help with your account. Any such access is limited to the minimum necessary and, unless the law forbids it, disclosed to you.

Where your data lives, and how the AI sees it

Storage — in the EU

Your account, transcripts and portrait are stored on Supabase, on servers located in the European Union (Ireland — AWS eu-west-1, Dublin).

AI processing — sent to Anthropic to write your portrait

To conduct the interview and write your portrait, the content of your conversation is sent to Anthropic’s API for processing. Under our commercial agreement with Anthropic, your data is not used to train any AI model — theirs or anyone else’s.

Anthropic processes API requests in the United States. That transfer is covered by the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its Swiss–U.S. extension, which Anthropic has certified to, complemented by standard contractual clauses in our agreement. Anthropic retains API inputs and outputs for a short period (up to about 30 days, for abuse prevention), then deletes them — and never uses them to train models.

How long we keep it

While your account exists, we keep your data so the app can show you your portrait and let you continue where you left off. There is no automatic purge: your data stays until you delete it. We chose to make deletion instant and total rather than promise expiry timers we don’t run. If we ever introduce automatic deletion after inactivity, it will be announced here first.

You can delete everything yourself, from inside the app, at any time — immediately and for good (see your rights below). Today our database keeps no long-term backups, so in-app deletion is effectively immediate and complete. If we enable automated encrypted backups in the future, residual copies will persist for at most 7 days before being overwritten — and this page will say so.

Who else touches your data (subprocessors)

We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. The only third parties involved are the services we need to run Élan:

If we ever add or change a subprocessor, we will update this page.

Our legal basis for processing

Under the EU GDPR and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP / nLPD), we rely on the following bases. These are proposed and must be confirmed by legal review:

• To provide the service (account, interview, portrait): performance of our contract with you.
• Your interview content and portrait, which may be sensitive: your explicit consent (GDPR Art. 9(2)(a); sensitive personal data under the Swiss FADP), given before the interview begins and withdrawable at any time by deleting your data.
• Minimal technical logs: our legitimate interest in keeping the app reliable and secure, balanced against your privacy.

Your rights, and how to use them

You control your data. You can:

• Delete everything — the fastest route is right in the app: Profile → Delete account, in two taps. It erases your account, transcripts and portrait, permanently and without delay. You don’t need to write to us.
• Access a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Correct anything inaccurate (for example, your first name).
• Take your data with you (portability) in a common, machine-readable format.
• Object to or restrict certain processing, and withdraw consent where processing relies on it.
• Complain to a supervisory authority — in Switzerland, the FDPIC; in the EU, your local data protection authority.

To exercise any right other than in-app deletion, email us at [email protected]. We’ll respond within the timeframe the law requires.

Children

Élan is not intended for children: you must be at least 16 to use it. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a minor has used Élan, write to [email protected] and we will delete the account.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your data, we’ll update this page and change the “last updated” date above. Significant changes will be signalled in the app.