Aatlas Privacy Policy

Who we are

Aatlas, Inc., a Delaware corporation in the United States. We are the controller of the information described below. You can reach us at support@aatlas.com.

What we collect

Your account. Your name and email address, and — if you sign in with Google, Apple, or Facebook — the basic profile information that provider returns. We do not receive or store your password for those services.

What you put in an Aatlas. The memories you write, the photographs, video and audio you upload, the dates and places you attach, and the names of people you tag. If a photograph carries the date and place it was taken, we read those to suggest a date and place for the memory. This is the heart of it, and it is the most personal thing we hold.

People who are not our users. A memory almost always describes someone other than the person writing it — the person the Aatlas is about, and anyone else who was there. You can tag people by name without those people having an Aatlas account. We hold that information because you chose to record it. It is visible only inside the privacy settings you have chosen, and we do not use it to build profiles of anyone, to match faces, or to market to people who never signed up.

Payment information. Handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.

How the product is used. To understand how people use Aatlas and give everyone a better experience, we record how pages in the app are used. In those recordings, every word on the screen and every word you type — including names — is hidden, and every photo, video and voice recording is blocked out. We keep the recordings for 30 days. We also count what people do — which pages they open, which buttons they press — and keep error reports so we can fix what breaks.

IP addresses. We use IP addresses only to keep accounts secure, prevent fraud, and see roughly which cities and countries our visitors come from. Never anything more precise.

Support correspondence. If you write to us, we keep the conversation for up to 3 years for reference after it closes, then it is automatically deleted.

Nominations. If you nominate someone, we keep what you send us and use it only to choose each month's Aatlas; we never contact the person you nominate or publish a nomination without asking you first.

Our mailing list. If you join our mailing list, we keep your email address to send you news about Aatlas. You can leave any time from any email we send.

Why we use it

To run the product you paid for: storing your Aatlas, showing it to the people you have shared it with, building the timeline, map and slideshow, sending invitations you ask us to send, taking payment, fixing faults, understanding how Aatlas is used so we can make it better, and answering you when you write.

We do not sell your information. We do not use the contents of your Aatlas for advertising. We do not use your memories to train AI models, and neither do the AI companies that process them for us. We can be specific about what that means, because it's written into our contracts with them:

Voice recordings (Deepgram). When you record a memory and we turn it into text, that audio is covered by a signed agreement with zero data retention. In their own contractual words: "Deepgram does not retain Personal Data for customers who have opted out of model improvement. Such data is processed only in-memory and is not written to persistent storage." Your recording is transcribed and never written to their storage. We pay a premium for this. We think it is worth it.

Written suggestions (Anthropic). When Aatlas suggests a title, a date, a place or a topic for a memory from what you wrote or said, that text is sent to Anthropic under their standard commercial terms, which do not permit training on customer data. They keep it for up to 30 days for safety and abuse monitoring, then delete it.

We asked Anthropic for zero retention too, and we did not get it — it is offered only above a usage volume we have not reached. We are telling you that rather than leaving it out, and we will ask again as we grow.

Where a photo was taken (Google Maps). When a photograph carries the location it was taken, we send that location to Google Maps to turn it into a place name, which you can accept, change or ignore.

Who receives it

We use these companies to run Aatlas. Each receives only what it needs.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.

Cookies and similar technologies

We don't show a cookie banner, because the list is short — and we don't use advertising cookies at all.

• To make things work. Signing in stores a token in your browser so you stay signed in. A small cookie remembers which page to bring you back to after you sign in; it lasts an hour. The company that delivers our website sets a technical cookie to keep the site running.
• To understand how the app is used. In the app, PostHog keeps an identifier in a cookie and in your browser's storage so it can tell one visit from the next.
• On our website. Your visit is counted, never identified. We count visits only to learn which pages help and how people find us. The counter stores nothing on your device, forgets you as soon as you move to another page, and never links a visit to your account. No screen recordings, and no advertising. Fonts load from Google Fonts, so Google sees your IP address.

Do Not Track

Some browsers can send a "Do Not Track" signal. Aatlas does not currently respond to that signal differently. We don't allow advertising or tracking companies to follow what you do across other websites through Aatlas.

Connecting an AI assistant

Aatlas lets you connect an AI assistant of your own — Claude, and in future ChatGPT — so it can help you gather memories: reading documents you already have, drafting from them in bulk, and helping you find photographs you had forgotten. This is optional. Nothing is connected unless you connect it.

You should understand plainly what it means:

• When you connect an assistant, the words and photos in that Aatlas can be read by the company that makes it — Anthropic for Claude, OpenAI for ChatGPT — because that is how the assistant sees them. Their handling is governed by their own privacy policies, and by the settings on your own account with them.
• The connection reaches only the Aatlas you authorised, never another family's, and never an Aatlas you do not have access to yourself.
• Anything the assistant writes is saved as a draft. It does not appear in the Aatlas until a person reviews and approves it.
• You can disconnect at any time, and the connection stops immediately.

We built it this way deliberately: an assistant can do things the app cannot — read a box of letters, work through thirty memories in an afternoon — and we would rather explain the trade honestly than bury it.

How long we keep it

Your Aatlas is kept until you delete it, on purpose. You pay once, we never charge you to keep it, and we never delete an Aatlas for inactivity — so we do not put a retention clock on what is inside it. If Aatlas ever has to close, we will tell you at least 90 days ahead and send every Aatlas owner a complete copy (see our Terms).

Everything else has a limit:

What you can do

• See everything in your Aatlas, and correct what you wrote, at any time.
• Delete a memory or a photograph you added, or an entire Aatlas you own.
• Get a copy. Your Aatlas belongs to you. Ask any time and we'll send you all of it. Write to support@aatlas.com; if you own the Aatlas, we reply within 3 business days and send the link only to the email address on your account. If you added memories to someone else's Aatlas, write to us and we'll send you a copy of what you wrote.
• Choose who sees it. Every Aatlas is private by default.
• Disconnect any AI assistant you have connected.
• Close your account by writing to support@aatlas.com. We remove your sign-in and contact details within 30 days. Memories you wrote in other people's Aatlases stay, with your name on them. At any time, you — or anyone with the legal right to act for you — can ask us to take your name off the memories you wrote (they stay, credited to "A contributor"), or to remove the memories themselves (they're removed from Aatlas straight away; stored copies of their photos and any voice recordings are erased once our tools for that are in place). If you own an Aatlas, we send you a complete copy first and you choose what happens to it.

For any of these, write to support@aatlas.com. We reply within 3 business days and finish within 30 days.

If you are in California, you have rights under the CCPA/CPRA including access, deletion, correction, and limiting the use of sensitive personal information. If you are in the UK or EU, you have rights under the UK GDPR / GDPR including access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of on that front. Exercising any of these will never get you worse service.

If a memory is about you and you are not an Aatlas user — for example, someone has written about you and you would like it changed or removed — write to us at support@aatlas.com. You do not need an account, and you do not need to explain yourself. We will pass your concern to the owner of that Aatlas. If you ask, we will remove your name or tag from the memory ourselves. We remove the memory itself only where the law or our acceptable-use rules require it — for example harassment, or private information exposed without consent.

If someone has nominated you, or someone whose story you keep, and you'd like the nomination removed, write to us at support@aatlas.com. You don't need to explain why. We'll delete it and won't consider it.

Children

You must be 13 or older to use Aatlas. If you're under 18, a parent or guardian must agree to our Terms for you.

We don't ask for anyone's date of birth. If we learn that a child under 13 has given us personal information without a parent's or guardian's consent, we will remove it from Aatlas. Stored copies of its photos and any voice recording are erased once our tools for that are in place, as described under “How long we keep it.”

Memories often describe someone's childhood — that is the point of the product — and that is different from a child using Aatlas.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you by email before it takes effect.

Contact

Aatlas, Inc. · support@aatlas.com