Privacy Policy
1. Who we are & how to reach us
Discoball Chat is a communication tool operated by Liminal Abundance. For any privacy question or to exercise your rights, contact us at our contact form. A mailing address is available on request.
2. Information we collect
- Account information — your name, email address, and a securely hashed version of your password (we never store your password in readable form). If someone referred you, the name you enter as your referrer.
- Your AI connection — the API key you provide for your chosen AI provider. It is encrypted at rest and used only to run your side of a conversation. We never display it back to you and never share it.
- Your profile ("About you") — the background you optionally provide so your AI can translate others' messages into your world.
- Your conversations — the messages you send and receive, and your private "you + your AI" workspace chats. Message content is encrypted at rest.
- Relationship notes — the private notes your AI keeps to help future conversations. These are yours alone and encrypted at rest.
- Technical data — a session cookie (essential for keeping you logged in) and standard server logs (e.g., IP address, timestamps) used for security and reliability.
- Aggregate usage counts — to understand which parts of the tool are used and where people get stuck, we keep anonymous daily tallies of events (e.g. "a self-survey was started today"). These are counts only — not tied to your identity, and they never include the content of anything you write. We use no third-party analytics, trackers, or advertising pixels.
3. How we use your information
- To provide the service — routing your words through your connected AI to shape, translate, and deliver messages, and to store your conversations for you.
- To operate accounts, authentication, password reset, and — during alpha — invite-based and admin-approved sign-up.
- To keep the service secure and working, and to review conversations you explicitly flag to us for feedback.
Our legal bases (where the GDPR applies) are performance of a contract (providing the service you signed up for), your consent (which you give at sign-up and can withdraw by deleting your account), and our legitimate interests in operating and securing the service.
4. How your messages reach an AI — and what that means
Discoball Chat works by sending your message to an AI model to reshape or translate it. That means the content of a message is processed in the clear at the moment the AI runs, both on our server and by the AI provider you connect. Because of this, Discoball Chat is not end-to-end encrypted: we protect your data with encryption in transit and at rest and strict access controls, but we are not a zero-knowledge service, and the AI provider you choose receives the message content needed to do its work, under their own terms and privacy policy.
5. Who we share information with
We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with the service providers ("sub-processors") needed to run Discoball Chat:
| Provider | Purpose | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| The AI provider you connect (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) | Shaping & translating your messages | Message content and context you send |
| Resend | Sending transactional email (password reset, approvals) | Your email address and message text |
| Render | Application hosting & database storage | Data at rest, as encrypted by us |
Each provider processes data under its own terms. We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, and security of our users and the service.
6. Security & encryption — and why we are not end-to-end
What we encrypt
We encrypt the following at rest in our database using AES-256-GCM, so that a copy of the raw database does not reveal them:
- Your connected-AI API key.
- Your message content — the words you send, the original message that crosses between people, and your AI's translations of what you receive.
- Your private notes — the relationship memory your AI keeps, and the notes you write about friends.
- Your account's identity signing keys.
Your password is never stored in a readable form — it is hashed (a one-way transformation), so we could not read it even if we wanted to. All traffic between you and Discoball Chat travels over HTTPS/TLS. Sessions use hardened, HTTP-only cookies, and a conversation is readable only by its two participants.
Why Discoball Chat is not end-to-end encrypted
End-to-end encryption — the kind a private messenger like Signal provides — means that no one but you and the person you're talking to can read a message, not even the service running it. Discoball Chat cannot make that promise, and we want to be upfront about exactly why.
The entire purpose of Discoball Chat is its "bring your own AI" model: the message you send is reshaped by your AI before it goes out, and rebuilt in your world by the other person's AI when it arrives. For an AI to do that, it has to read the message in plain text. So at the moment a message is processed:
- our server briefly holds it in the clear in order to orchestrate the exchange, and
- the AI provider you connect (for example Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google) receives the content it needs to generate the translation or reply, under that provider's own terms and privacy policy.
This is a deliberate trade-off, not an oversight: a message an AI can understand and rewrite is, by definition, a message that is readable at the point of processing. Rather than promise zero-knowledge secrecy we cannot deliver, we protect your data with strong encryption in transit and at rest, strict access controls, and plain honesty about how it flows. And because you bring your own AI, you choose which company reads your messages to power the translation — so pick a provider whose data practices you trust.
No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
7. Retention & deletion
We keep your information for as long as your account exists. You can delete any conversation at any time, and you can delete your entire account from Settings — which permanently erases your messages, notes, friends, connected-AI key, and identity. Deletion is immediate and cascading. Routine server backups and logs may persist for a limited period before rotating out.
8. Your rights
Depending on where you live (including under the EU/UK GDPR and similar laws), you have the right to:
- Access & portability — download a copy of your data (Settings → "Download my data").
- Erasure — delete your account and all associated data (Settings → "Delete my account").
- Rectification — edit your profile and name, and "Forget these notes" to erase your AI's notes about a person.
- Withdraw consent — by deleting your account.
- Object or restrict processing, and to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.
Most rights are self-serve in the app; for anything else, email our contact form.
9. International data transfers
Our hosting and the AI/email providers we use are largely based in the United States, so if you are outside the U.S., your information may be transferred to and processed there and in other countries where these providers operate. Where required, transfers rely on appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses under our providers' terms.
10. Minors
Discoball Chat is for adults: it is not directed to anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe someone under 18 has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as Discoball Chat develops. We will change the effective date above and, for material changes, provide a more prominent notice.