Privacy Policy

This policy explains how Lorelet (“Lorelet,” “we,” “us”) handles information when you use the Lorelet app for iPhone and iPhone Duo and this website. We’ve tried to write it the way we’d want it written for us: plainly, and without anything hidden in the fine print.

The short version

What we collect

Your account

When you make an account with Sign in with Apple, Apple gives us a unique identifier for you and, if you choose to share them, your name and an email address (which can be a private relay address that forwards to you). If you sign in with email, we store that address. You can add a display name and, optionally, a profile photo. We don’t need an account to let you read and listen to featured lorelets.

What you ask Lorelet to research

The topics, questions and links you enter or share with the app, the options you pick (such as depth or angle), and, when you share a link, the text of that page as your iPhone reads it, so Lorelet can work from what you saw.

What Lorelet makes for you

Your lorelets (the writing, citations, confidence score and the pictures chosen for them), their narrations, and the idea lists, episodes and run-of-show notes you create. We also keep your preferences (such as your preferred narrator) and a record of the kinds of stories you make and save, so daily story ideas can lean toward what you like.

Studio recordings

Recordings are made and kept on your device and, if you use iCloud, in your iCloud Drive. Our servers only receive a short summary of each recording (its title, length, date and the episode it belongs to) so it can appear in your episode list. We never receive the audio.

Purchases

Subscriptions and top-ups are purchased through Apple. Apple handles your payment details; we never see them. Apple tells us which product you bought, when it renews or expires, and a transaction identifier, which we use to unlock Lorelet Plus and keep track of your monthly lorelets.

Diagnostics

If the app crashes or something goes wrong (a failed download, a server error), it sends us a report: the device model, iOS and app versions, and a short trail of what the app was doing, with no personal content. We use these only to find and fix problems.

Device and security information

A random identifier for your installation of the app, used to keep you signed in and to prevent abuse of free trials and featured content, and standard technical information such as IP addresses in our servers’ logs.

What we don’t collect

We don’t collect your location, contacts, browsing history, or advertising identifiers, and we don’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites. The app only uses the microphone when you record in Studio, and only adds to your photo library when you choose to save a picture.

How we use it

• To research, write, illustrate and narrate your lorelets, and to show them to you on your devices.
• To run your account, including sign-in, your subscription and your monthly allowance.
• To suggest daily story ideas that fit what you like.
• To keep Lorelet secure and reliable: preventing abuse, diagnosing crashes, and understanding which parts of the research pipeline fail so we can fix them.
• To answer you when you contact us, and to send essential service messages (for example, about a change to these terms). We don’t send marketing email unless you ask for it.

If you’re in the European Economic Area or the UK: we process your information to provide the service you asked for (contract), to keep it secure and working (our legitimate interests), and, for sending your requests to AI services, with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by deleting your account.

AI processing

Lorelet is built on AI models from other companies. When you make a lorelet, what you asked for (your topic, question or links) and the research material Lorelet gathers are sent to AI models that plan the research, search the web, choose pictures, write the lorelet and narrate it. These requests don’t include your name, email or account details. Before your first lorelet, the app explains this and asks for your permission.

We don’t use your content to train AI models, and we only send it to AI providers whose terms for business customers don’t allow them to train on it. The companies involved are listed below.

Who we share it with

We share information only with the service providers that run Lorelet for us, only what each one needs, and under contracts that limit how they can use it:

Public research sources. To research a lorelet, our servers search and read public sources such as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, Openverse, NASA, the Library of Congress, museum collections, scholarly databases (OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Europe PMC, Crossref), public forums such as Hacker News and Reddit, and the web pages you link to or that the research cites, sometimes through page-reading services like Jina Reader or the Internet Archive. They receive search terms based on your topic and requests from our servers, not your identity.

Otherwise, no. We don’t sell your information, share it for advertising, or give it to data brokers. We’ll disclose information only if the law requires it (and we’ll push back on requests that are overbroad), to protect people’s safety or Lorelet’s rights, or as part of a merger or sale of Lorelet, in which case this policy’s protections would continue to apply to your information.

How long we keep it

• Your account, lorelets, narrations, ideas and episodes: until you delete them or your account.
• After you delete something: it’s removed from our live systems right away and from our backups within 30 days.
• Diagnostics and server logs: up to 90 days.
• Purchase records: as long as tax and accounting law requires.

Your choices and rights

• Delete your account in the app: Settings, then Account, then Delete Account. This permanently deletes your account, lorelets, narrations, ideas, episodes and recording summaries. It doesn’t cancel an App Store subscription; manage that in your iPhone’s Settings.
• Get a copy, correct, or delete your information by emailing privacy@lorelet.app. We’ll respond within 30 days and may need to confirm it’s you.
• Withdraw permission for AI processing by deleting your account; without it, Lorelet can’t make lorelets.

Depending on where you live (including the EEA, the UK, and US states such as California), you have rights to access, correct, delete and port your information, to object to or restrict some processing, and to complain to your local data protection authority. We honor these rights for everyone, wherever you live, and we won’t treat you differently for using them. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under California law.

Lorelet is run from the United States, and your information is processed there and wherever our service providers operate. Where the law requires it, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses, for these transfers.

Children

Lorelet isn’t intended for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has given us information, email privacy@lorelet.app and we’ll delete it.

Security

Information travels between the app and our servers over encrypted connections and is encrypted at rest by our hosting provider. Access to our systems is limited and protected. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will tell you promptly if a breach affects you.

This website

lorelet.app uses no cookies, no analytics and no third-party scripts, and loads its fonts from its own server. Our hosting provider keeps standard logs (such as IP addresses) to deliver and protect the site. The “Hear it” button uses your browser’s built-in speech, so nothing is sent to us.

Changes

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. For significant changes, we’ll also tell you in the app before they take effect.

Contact

Questions or requests about privacy: privacy@lorelet.app. Anything else: support@lorelet.app.