Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026

Hertis exists to keep families close — and that only works if your family's moments are truly yours. This policy explains, in plain language, what we collect, why, and the choices you have.

Hertis ("Hertis", "we", "us") is operated by Itechglo Solutions Pty Ltd, Australia. This Privacy Policy applies to the Hertis mobile application and the website at hertis.app (together, the "Service"). By using the Service, you agree to the practices described here.

Who uses Hertis

Hertis is a private space for a family "circle" — adult children, their parents, and the relatives they invite. It is intended for use by adults (18+). It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information directly from them. Where a family shares photos or videos that include children, that content is created and controlled by the adult family members who post it, within their own private circle.

What we collect

Information you give us

Account details — your phone number (used to sign in), your name, and optionally a profile photo.
Your family circle — the people you invite, how they relate to you, the circle's settings (including any festival traditions you choose to follow) and, with a Legacy Guarantee, the names (if given) and email addresses of up to ten people the organiser names in the app under “Who gets a copy”.
The moments you share — photos, videos, voice notes, written notes, stories, and reactions you create within your circle.
Support messages — anything you write to us when you ask for help.

Information collected automatically

Usage and presence signals — timestamps of when the app was opened or a moment was shared, used to power gentle "recently here" signals for the family. While you are looking through your circle's memories, others in the circle can see that you are there right now, and when a parent does, the family gets a gentle notification; to make this work, we note which memory is open at that moment. The app never asks your phone for your location. Since version 1.3.5, the app removes the location from photos, and the location a phone's own camera saves in a video, before they are uploaded.
Device information — a push-notification token and basic device/app details needed to deliver notifications and run the app reliably.
Crash reports — if the app fails, technical details such as the device model, operating system, app version and what the app was doing at the time, so that we can fix it. These go to Sentry (see below) and never include your photos, videos or voice recordings.
Subscription status — whether a circle has an active plan. Payments are processed by the Apple App Store or Google Play; we never receive or store your card or bank details.

Information from guests

Guest wishes — when someone outside the app leaves a wish through a circle's occasion link, we keep the name, the optional relationship and the message they write, inside that circle's occasion.

On our website

The waitlist — if you joined it, we keep your email address and which page or link brought you, so we can tell you when Hertis opens on your phone.
Deletion requests — if you ask us to delete an account from our deletion page and the number matches an account, we keep the number with the request so that we can act on it.
Visitor counts — the site is hosted by Vercel, and we use Vercel's web analytics to count page visits, taps on the site's buttons (such as the App Store and Google Play buttons), plays of the site's films, how far down a page visitors scroll, and whether the App Store and Google Play buttons came into view. It does not use cookies.
A remembered link — if you arrive through a link that names who sent you, your browser keeps that name for 30 days. Our visitor counts note it, and the App Store or Google Play link carries it, so we can credit them and the store can tell us how many downloads it led to.
Fonts — the site's fonts load from Google Fonts, so your browser's request for them, including your IP address, reaches Google.

How we use your information

To provide the Service — deliver your moments to your circle, keep your memory archive, send notifications, and run features like the yearly film and keepsakes.
To run the AI features described under "AI features" below.
To keep the Service secure, prevent abuse, and fix problems.
To manage subscriptions and respond to your support requests.
To comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information, and we never show you third-party advertising. Inside the app we do suggest Hertis's own plans and gifts, and to choose when, we use your circle's plan status and your family's occasions.

Who can see your content

The moments you share are visible only to the members of your own family circle. They are not public and are not shared with other users. Our team has no tool for browsing them, with one narrow exception: if someone in your circle reports a moment, a chat message or a guest wish to us, our moderation queue shows up to the first 140 characters of its text (for a photo, video or voice note, only its kind and the start of its caption) so that we can act, for example by hiding it from the circle. Every time that queue is opened is recorded in an audit log. We share information with third parties only in the limited ways below.

Service providers we rely on

We use trusted providers to run Hertis. They process data only to provide their service to us, under their own privacy and security obligations:

Amazon Web Services — stores and delivers your photos, videos and voice notes, and keeps a daily encrypted copy of our database. Both are in the Mumbai region.
Render — runs the Hertis application and database (Singapore).
Anthropic — text only: the Companion, story prompts, sorting stories into chapters, gentle notes to the family about how a parent seems, composing the yearly film, and translation between languages.
OpenAI — turns voice recordings into text, and powers search.
Google Firebase — verifies your phone number when you sign in.
Expo, with Apple and Google — delivers push notifications.
Apple, Google and RevenueCat — subscription and purchase processing. We never receive your card details.
Sentry — crash reports from the app, held in the EU (Germany). It never receives your photos, videos or voice recordings, and the app never sends it your name, phone number or messages.
Zoho — hosts our email, so it holds whatever you write to us (Australia).
Vercel — hosts this website, its visitor counts and our internal support console.

AI features

Several features use AI, and some of them run on their own rather than only when you ask:

Anthropic receives text only. It writes the Companion's replies, suggests story prompts and questions nobody has asked yet, sorts stories into chapters, composes the yearly film from the year's moments, translates between languages, and writes the wording of a Legacy Guarantee.
When a parent finishes talking with the Companion, Anthropic also reads the conversation for a general sense of how they are: for example, that they seem in good spirits, or that they might like a little hello because they sound low or are missing everyone. It never looks for anything about their health: if a parent mentions feeling unwell, the Companion encourages them to tell their family themselves. The family sees a short line of our own wording; it never repeats what the parent said.
The Companion may look up public facts on the web, such as the news, a score or the weather, when a parent asks. The search is run by the AI service we use. The Companion is told to search with the question only, never with your family’s names or private details, and we check every search for the names it knows from your family circle.
OpenAI turns voice recordings into text: spoken stories, voice messages to the Companion, and voice notes someone asks to translate. It also powers search, using the words searched for and the text of your circle's moments and stories.

Using the Companion, the Story Vault, the yearly film, translation or search sends the content involved to these providers for that purpose only. Under our agreements, they do not use it to train their models.

Hertis is not a medical, emergency, or safety-monitoring service. The gentle presence and "peace of mind" signals are for warmth and connection only. They are not a medical alert system and must never be relied upon in an emergency. In an emergency, contact your local emergency services.

How long we keep your information

Hertis is built to preserve family memories, so what your circle shares is kept for as long as the circle exists. Nothing is deleted because a plan ends.

You can delete your account at any time from within the app, or ask us to from hertis.app/delete-account. When your account is deleted, your name, phone number, email address and profile photo are removed from it, and no one can sign in to it again. A circle that no other family member has joined (a parent's place in it does not count), and which holds no Legacy Guarantee, is erased with your account, including everything in it. In circles you share with others, what you shared stays in the family's archive, shown as from "A family member", so the family's history is not broken. There is not yet a way to delete a single moment from inside the app; if you want one removed, write to us and we will help.

Some copies take longer to go. When your account is deleted, we also remove the stored photo, video and voice files behind any circle that was erased with it and the file of your profile photo (except any file that a circle which carries on still uses, such as the welcome message on a gift you gave), and the record of your phone number that Google Firebase keeps for sign-in. This happens automatically; if a step ever fails, we finish it by hand. None of these can be reached through Hertis once your account is deleted. Our file storage keeps removed files for 30 days as a guard against mistakes, then deletes them permanently. Deleted information can also remain in our encrypted database backups for about 30 days, until those backups are deleted. We keep a record of each deletion request, and limited records where required for legal, tax, or security reasons.

Security

We protect your information with encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, and strict isolation between family circles so one family can never see another's content. No system is perfectly secure, but we work hard to keep your memories safe.

International transfers

Hertis is offered in many countries, and our providers may process data in countries other than yours (including the United States, India, Singapore and Germany). Specifically: your photos and recordings are stored in Amazon Web Services’ Mumbai region, our servers and database run in Singapore, crash reports are held by Sentry in Germany, and our email is hosted by Zoho in Australia. Every day we also send an encrypted copy of our database to Amazon Web Services in Mumbai, so that we can recover from a serious failure. It holds account details, such as names and phone numbers, and the text of what is shared and said in Hertis, but not the photo, video or voice files themselves. It is encrypted before it leaves our servers, the key that opens it is kept away from our servers and from Amazon Web Services, and each copy is deleted after 30 days. We rely on our providers’ safeguards for these transfers.

Australian privacy law

Hertis is operated from Australia by Itechglo Solutions Pty Ltd, so we handle your personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. If you live somewhere else, the rights your own country gives you still apply — this does not replace them.

Your rights and choices

Access and correction — view and edit your profile in the app, save photos and videos to your phone, or write to us for a copy of your information.
Deletion — delete your account from the app's settings, or from hertis.app/delete-account if you no longer have the app. To have a single moment removed, write to us.
Notifications — turn push notifications off in your device settings at any time.
Requests and complaints — depending on where you live, you may have additional rights (such as access, portability, or objection). Write to us and we will help. If you are in Australia and we have not resolved a privacy complaint to your satisfaction, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the date above and, where appropriate, let you know in the app.

Contact us

Questions about your privacy? Write to us at hello@hertis.app. Hertis is operated by Itechglo Solutions Pty Ltd (ACN 634 554 313), 5 Peters Way, Williams Landing VIC 3027, Australia.