Privacy Policy

Introduction

Arc ("we," "us," or "our") operates the Arc personal growth application for iOS and the website at meetarc.app (together, the "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use and share it, and your choices regarding your data. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

If you have questions about this policy, contact us at privacy@meetarc.app.

Geographic availability

Arc is currently launching in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand only. We are not yet able to offer the Service to residents of the European Union, European Economic Area, United Kingdom, Switzerland, South Korea, or other regions. The Arc iOS app will not be listed in App Stores for those territories at launch, and our waitlist signup form on meetarc.app rejects signups from visitors in the European Union, European Economic Area, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and South Korea, as well as from visitors whose region we cannot identify.

If you signed up for our waitlist before this Geographic availability section was published and you reside outside the launch regions, we may contact you to confirm your country. If you reply that you are outside the launch regions, or if we do not hear back within 30 days, we will remove your record from our waitlist database. You are welcome to re-subscribe once Arc expands to your region — we will announce expansion at meetarc.app.

This Privacy Policy describes the data practices that will apply when Arc becomes available to you. Until then, only limited website-related processing (waitlist signup, Future Self Letter tool inputs) occurs, in accordance with the sections below. See also our Terms of Service for the refund process applicable to founding-member purchases from regions we do not yet serve.

Age requirement

Arc is intended for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an Arc account and use the iOS app. During onboarding, Arc asks for your date of birth and calculates your age locally on your device. If your calculated age is under 18, the onboarding flow ends and no Arc account record is created on your device (no profile, no personalization, no journal). The date of birth you entered is held in encrypted local storage during the onboarding session so the "I entered my date of birth incorrectly — go back" option can correctly reset the picker; this local copy is cleared when you correct your date of birth via "go back," when you successfully complete onboarding with a valid 18+ date, or when you sign out. Signing in with Apple creates a local sign-in session that typically persists until you sign out from inside the app, but may also end automatically if the session expires or becomes invalid (for example, on a token refresh failure). Local sign-in state stored in iOS Keychain may persist across app uninstall on some iOS versions and device configurations; the reliable way to clear Arc's local session state is to sign out from inside the app. For users who successfully complete onboarding (18+), we store the date of birth on the local Arc account record so we can demonstrate, on request, that we made a reasonable, good-faith attempt to keep minors off the Service. If we later learn that an account belongs to a user under 18, we delete the account and associated data within 30 days. See also the Eligibility section of our Terms of Service.

Information we collect

Account information

When you create an Arc account, we collect your name, email address, and any profile details you choose to provide (such as goals or interests). If you sign in with Apple, we receive only the information you authorize Apple to share.

Date of birth (age verification)

During onboarding we ask for your date of birth so we can verify you are at least 18 years old (see the Age requirement section above). The date of birth is captured into an in-progress onboarding draft held in encrypted local storage (iOS Keychain) so a force-quit between picking the date and completing onboarding does not lose your progress. For users who complete onboarding (18+), the date of birth is moved to the Arc account record (an on-device SwiftData store) and used only for age verification and to demonstrate, on request, that we made a good-faith effort to keep minors off the Service; the Keychain draft is cleared on successful completion. For users who fail the age check (under 18), no Arc account record is created; the in-progress draft (including the date of birth) is cleared when the user corrects the date via "go back" on the age block screen, when the user successfully completes onboarding with a valid 18+ date on a subsequent attempt, or when the user signs out. We do not use date of birth for personalization, marketing, profiling, or analytics, and we do not send it to our AI provider, payment processors, or external analytics services. The SwiftData store has iOS Data Protection class "Complete" applied — it is unreadable while your device is locked. If you later enable iCloud sync (a planned future Arc feature), Apple may process the date of birth to provide iCloud sync and storage under Apple's iCloud terms; Apple is not an independent marketing or analytics recipient of this data in Arc's processing flows. If you delete your account, the date of birth is deleted with all other account data within 30 days.

Journal entries (planned future feature)

A journal feature is planned for a future Arc release. The current Arc release does not include a journal. When the journal feature ships, journal entries will be stored on your iOS device and encrypted using iOS Data Protection. This policy section will be updated with the specific data flow at that time.

Usage data

We collect anonymized usage data such as feature interactions, session duration, and app performance metrics. This data does not identify you personally and is used to improve the Service.

Waitlist and website data

If you join our waitlist or sign up for weekly letters, we collect your email address and signup source. If you use the Future Self Letter tool on our website, your first name, goal, and optional life context are processed in real time to generate your letter. This data is not stored on our servers unless you explicitly choose to share your letter (see "Shared Letters" below). If you sign up for email delivery, your generated letter is transmitted to our email provider (Resend) to deliver it to your inbox; it is not stored in our database.

Shared Letters

If you choose to share your letter, the letter text and your first name are stored on our servers for 30 days to enable a shareable link. During this period, anyone with the link can view the letter. After 30 days, the letter is automatically deleted. You can request early deletion at any time by emailing support@meetarc.app. Shared letters are not indexed by search engines.

Purchase and subscription data

If you subscribe to Arc through the Apple App Store, Apple processes your payment. We receive a transaction confirmation but do not receive or store your payment card details, Apple ID password, or billing address. For website purchases processed by Stripe, Stripe handles your payment data under its own privacy policy.

Device information

We may collect device type, operating system version, language setting, and a randomly generated device identifier for crash reporting and support purposes.

AI-powered features and third-party AI disclosure

Arc uses artificial intelligence to generate personalized future-self narratives, growth reflections, and goal-tracking insights. Our AI features are powered by Anthropic's language model API (a third-party AI service). All AI-generated content displayed inside the iOS app is clearly labeled as AI-generated.

Current state of AI processing (as of this Privacy Policy's "Last updated" date)

At this time, AI processing for Arc occurs at build time: we generate a library of seed stories using Anthropic, narrate them with a third-party voice service, and store the resulting audio files on our infrastructure. The iOS app fetches those pre-generated audio files at runtime; your personal data (name, email, goals, life-phase context, journal entries) is not sent to Anthropic or any other third-party AI service during normal app use today. The "What data will be shared with AI (when runtime AI features ship)", "Your consent (when runtime AI features ship)", and "AI content safeguards" subsections below describe how AI processing will work when runtime AI generation features ship in a future Arc release (the safeguards subsection also covers the editorial review that applies to the build-time seed-story library today).

What data will be shared with AI (when runtime AI features ship)

When runtime AI generation lands and you ask Arc to generate a new story for you, the goal text you wrote in onboarding and your life-phase context will be sent to Anthropic alongside an anonymized account identifier. Your name, email, Apple ID, date of birth, and any future journal entries will never be sent.

Your consent (when runtime AI features ship)

Before your data is processed by any third-party AI service, you will be clearly informed and asked for explicit consent within the app. You will be able to withdraw this consent at any time in the app's Settings, which will disable AI-powered personalization features.

AI content safeguards

For seed stories generated at build time, we review outputs before publishing them to the iOS app. When runtime AI generation features ship, we will implement content filtering and automated safety review on all AI-generated outputs before they are displayed to you.

How the AI provider handles your data

Anthropic processes data sent through its API in real time and does not use API inputs or outputs to train its models. For details, refer to Anthropic's privacy policy at anthropic.com/privacy.

How we use your information

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Service
• Deliver AI-authored stories from a library we generated at build time (today): the App selects stories from that library locally on your device based on your goals and life phase, without sending your personal data to a third-party AI service. When runtime AI generation features ship in a future release, also generate personalized AI content from your goals and progress at request time
• Process transactions and manage your subscription
• Send you service-related communications (account verification, security alerts, subscription confirmations)
• Send you optional marketing emails (launch updates, growth prompts) that you can unsubscribe from at any time
• Analyze anonymized usage patterns to improve the Service
• Detect, prevent, and address technical issues or abuse

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

Third-party services

We share data with the following third-party service providers, solely for the purposes described in this policy:

• Apple — App Store distribution, in-app purchase and subscription processing, and Sign in with Apple authentication
• Anthropic — AI content generation. Today, Arc uses Anthropic only at build time to produce the pre-authored seed-story library shipped with the app; your personal data is not sent to Anthropic during normal app use. When runtime AI generation features ship in a future Arc release, your goal text and life-phase context will be processed via Anthropic's API at request time. Anthropic's commercial API terms confirm that API inputs and outputs are not used to train Anthropic's models.
• RevenueCat — Subscription entitlement state. We send Apple's signed transaction (StoreKit-2 JWS) and an anonymous account identifier so RevenueCat can mirror your subscription status back to our server. No payment card data is sent to or seen by RevenueCat.
• TelemetryDeck (when shipped) — Anonymized product-interaction analytics. TelemetryDeck receives event names and an install-level random identifier; it does not receive your name, email, Apple ID, or any content you write in Arc.
• ElevenLabs — Build-time only. Arc's pre-authored story scripts are converted to audio in a one-time batch job before each release. Your personal data is never sent to ElevenLabs.
• Resend — Transactional and marketing email delivery
• Stripe — Payment processing for website purchases
• Cloudflare — Website hosting, CDN, R2 object storage for pre-rendered story audio, KV storage for session and subscription state, and privacy-first web analytics (no cookies or fingerprinting)

Each third-party provider processes your data according to their own privacy policy. We require all providers to handle your data securely and only for the specified purposes.

Data storage and security

On your iOS device, app data is encrypted using iOS Data Protection when your device is locked. When the future journal feature ships, journal entries will benefit from the same iOS Data Protection. Account data and anonymized usage data are stored on servers in the United States, protected by industry-standard encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest using our infrastructure provider's standard encryption (AES-256). We follow security best practices to protect your information, but no method of electronic storage is 100% secure.

Data retention

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we will delete your personal data within 30 days, except where we are required by law to retain it (for example, transaction records for tax compliance). Anonymized, aggregated data that cannot identify you may be retained indefinitely for analytics purposes.

Your rights and choices

Account deletion

You can delete your account and all associated personal data at any time from within the Arc app by going to Settings > Account > Delete Account. You may also request account deletion by emailing privacy@meetarc.app. If you have an active subscription, please note that deleting your account does not automatically cancel your subscription. You must cancel your subscription through your Apple ID settings (Settings > [your name] > Subscriptions) to stop future billing.

Data access and portability

You can request a copy of the personal data we hold about you by emailing privacy@meetarc.app. We will respond within 30 days.

Data correction

You can update your profile information directly in the app at any time, or contact us to correct inaccurate data.

Marketing opt-out

You can unsubscribe from marketing emails using the link at the bottom of any email we send, or by adjusting your notification preferences in the app.

AI consent withdrawal

When runtime AI generation features ship in a future Arc release, you will be able to disable AI-powered features at any time in the app's Settings, which will stop all data sharing with our third-party AI provider. Today, because Arc does not perform runtime AI calls with your personal data, there is no in-app AI toggle to flip; the underlying commitment — that you can opt out of runtime AI processing of your personal data — applies from the moment any such feature ships.

California residents (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). You have the right to know what personal information we collect, to request deletion of your data, to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information, and to not be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We do not sell or share your personal information as defined by the CCPA/CPRA. To exercise your rights, email privacy@meetarc.app.

European residents (GDPR)

If you are located in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) including the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, data portability, and to object to processing. Our legal basis for processing your data is your consent (which you may withdraw at any time) and the performance of our contract with you. To exercise your rights, email privacy@meetarc.app.

Children's privacy

Arc is an adults-only service. The Service is not directed at, marketed to, or intended for anyone under the age of 18. As described in the Age requirement section above, we verify age during onboarding by asking for your date of birth and reject accounts where the calculated age is under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has nonetheless created an Arc account, please contact us at privacy@meetarc.app and we will delete the account and associated data within 30 days.

Analytics and tracking

We do not use tracking cookies or third-party advertising trackers. Website analytics are provided by Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is privacy-first and does not use cookies, fingerprinting, or cross-site tracking. In the iOS app, we use Apple's built-in analytics framework for crash reporting and basic usage metrics, which respects your device's privacy settings.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the updated policy in the app and on our website, and updating the "Last updated" date above. For significant changes, we will also notify you by email or through an in-app notice. Your continued use of the Service after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, contact us at:

Arc
Email: privacy@meetarc.app
Website: meetarc.app