Ask Austin Privacy Policy

DRAFT — PENDING LEGAL REVIEW. Version 2026-10-08-draft2. Updated from the earlier draft served at /legal/privacy (Oct 7, 2026). This draft has not been reviewed or approved by a lawyer and is not a statement that Ask Austin complies with any privacy law.

1. Who is responsible

Ask Austin is provided by Austin James Gauthier, an individual, who personally reads your requests and provides the answers. Contact: support@getaskaustin.com, or Help in the app.

2. What we collect

• Account: your email address (used to send sign-in codes), an optional display name, the date you confirmed you are 16 or older or a parent or guardian buying for someone in your care, and whether your account is active, blocked or being deleted.
• Your requests: your questions, follow-ups, call topics, and video clips you choose to upload, plus Austin's written and video answers to you. Video files can contain information embedded by your phone, such as the date and sometimes the location where they were recorded.
• Purchases: order records: service, price, currency, payment status, dates, and the Apple or Stripe transaction identifiers. For App Store purchases we also store the price, currency, storefront country and environment that Apple reports for the transaction. Stripe and Apple handle your payment details. We never receive full card numbers.
• Calls: the time you booked, any topic you enter, and the meeting link Austin adds.
• Terms acceptance records: when you accept the Terms of Service and acknowledgments, we record your account ID, the server time, the exact versions you accepted with a fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) of their text, and the app version and build you used.
• Support and safety: emails you send to support, reports, refund records and an internal log of account and order actions (for example "refund requested" or "account blocked").
• Technical data: our hosting provider keeps request logs, which can include IP addresses and device or browser information. They are used for security, troubleshooting and abuse prevention.

We do not use advertising identifiers, third-party analytics or tracking, and we do not collect your contacts, photos you don't choose to upload, or your precise location.

3. How we use it

Only to provide and support the service: sign you in, deliver answers and calls, process payments, refunds and disputes, send transactional emails (sign-in codes and service updates), keep the records described here, prevent fraud and abuse, enforce our terms, and meet legal obligations.

We do not sell or rent personal information, share it for advertising, use your questions or videos in marketing, post them publicly, use them to train artificial-intelligence models, or record calls. Any of those would need your separate, specific opt-in.

4. Who processes it for us

These providers process data under their own terms and privacy policies. We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or in connection with a sale or transfer of the business.

5. How long we keep it

• While your account is open, we keep your account, chats, videos and records so you can use what you bought.
• When you delete your account (Account, Delete account, type DELETE), you are signed out on every device right away, and we remove your sign-in account, email address and display name, your questions, chats, follow-ups, call bookings, reports, and the videos and photos stored for your requests, including Austin's replies to you. If removing something fails, it is retried automatically, and the app does not show the deletion as complete until everything is removed.
• What we keep after deletion: a minimal record of each paid order and refund (service, price, currency, payment status, dates and the Apple or Stripe transaction ID, with no name, email address or message content), and the terms acceptance record linked to each of those orders (account ID, time, terms versions and app build). We keep these for tax and accounting, for refunds, chargebacks and disputes that arrive later, and to stop a purchase from being reused. Unpaid orders are deleted.
• Terms acceptance records not linked to an order are deleted after account deletion, and older superseded acceptances are deleted after a period (not yet decided in this draft). The acceptance for the terms currently in force is kept while your account is open.
• Copies can remain in our hosting provider's backups and logs for a limited time until they are rotated. Apple and Stripe keep their own records under their own policies.

6. Your choices and rights

You can read, correct (display name) and delete your information in the app, or email us to ask for a copy or a correction. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights. We will not discriminate against you for using them.

7. Children

Ask Austin accounts are for people 16 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and children under 13 may not create an account or send us their information. A parent or guardian may buy for, and submit information or video about, a younger child in their care using the parent's or guardian's own account. If you believe a child under 16 has created an account, or a child has given us personal information without a parent's involvement, contact us and we will delete it. The "I am 16 or older" and "who is buying" confirmations in the app are self-reported. We do not ask for a birthdate or ID, they do not verify age, and they are not verifiable parental consent.

8. Security

Your data is stored with access controls that limit each customer to their own chats, a private file store, and links to media that expire. No system is perfectly secure.

9. Changes

If we change this policy in a material way, the app will ask you to review it before your next purchase or submission.