Privacy Policy

DearIntus · Version 1.1 · Effective 11 November 2026

Before you read on

If you are reading this page, you probably care about one thing: when you write what is hard to say out loud into an app, what does the app do with those words? We built DearIntus thinking about that from the side of the person writing.

DearIntus (“DearIntus”, “we”, “us”) is an iPhone app for looking inward through tarot, astrology and Inner Weather. It is provided and operated by Hongtao Liu, an individual developer, and we are responsible for your personal information. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, how we look after it and who it goes to. If anything is unclear, write to us at support@dearintus.com.

This policy covers the DearIntus app, our support email and the information pages on dearintus.com. The rules for using the service are in our Terms of Service. DearIntus is not currently offered on the App Store in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland.

Why some things have to leave your phone

We start from collecting less: if something can be done entirely on the phone, it doesn’t go through a server. Drawing cards, reading their meanings, casting charts, checking in and keeping a journal all work that way. Three things can’t be done on the phone alone, and we want to explain why:

1. Writing replies. Replies are written by large AI models that a phone cannot run. So when you ask for a reply, your letter and the cards or chart that go with it pass through our server to an AI provider.
2. Keeping your records with you. What lives on one phone is gone if the phone is lost or broken, or the app is deleted. Members’ records are kept in their account, so they survive a new phone or a reinstall, and replies can recall what you said before. On the free tier we don’t keep these records for you; the trade-off is that backing them up is in your hands (see section 1).
3. Accounts and purchases. Signing in, recovering a password, checking what you bought and restoring purchases on a new phone all need a server that knows your account.

Content kept on our server is not end-to-end encrypted in the sense that only you could unlock it: writing replies, weekly letters and memory all need the server to read the relevant content. Section 7 explains who can reach that content and when anyone looks at it.

1. What stays on your phone

The following is stored only on your iPhone and is not sent to our servers, unless stated otherwise below:

• Free card draws and readings: shuffling, drawing, spreads and free-tier readings all happen on the phone.
• Astrology charts: horary, natal, “this year” and the advanced tools are calculated on the phone.
• The sign-up questionnaire: your age confirmation, birthday, birth time and city, gender, occupation, relationship status, recent concerns (such as anxiety, depression or sleep) and whether you are in therapy. These answers stay on your phone, are not sent to us and are not used to write replies. If you give your birth details, the app creates a birth profile for you on the phone (see “Birth profiles” in section 2).
• Inner Weather for non-members: check-ins, journal entries, lists, practices, plans, kitchen and meal records.
• Photos: photos in your journal and meals stay on the phone that took them, with location and other embedded metadata removed before they are saved.
• Reminders, alarms and Lock Screen timers: scheduled by the phone’s own system.
• Preferences: interface and reply language, stationery, music and switches such as “Enable knowledge base”.

This information is in your hands. If you delete the app, clear local data in the app, or move to a new phone without importing a backup, it is gone. You can save it to a file with Settings › Data & privacy › Export data, and with Life backup in Inner Weather.

2. What we collect and what we use it for

The following does reach our server. Each item says what it includes and what it is used for.

• Account and sign-in: your email address; how you sign in (Apple, Google or email); the name Apple or Google provides, if any; your account ID; an ID for the current sign-in. Passwords for email sign-in are stored in irreversible form by our sign-in provider; we cannot see them. Used for creating and maintaining your account, signing in, password recovery, verification codes and account notices, and for signing out older devices when you sign in on a new one.
• What you write and ask us to reply to (paid features): your questions to the reader, the background you add, the cards and spread you drew; follow-ups; the chart your phone cast when you ask Lilly (including the time and place of the question, birth date, time and place, and the gender option you chose); what you write in Talk; text you choose to have sorted in Inner Weather; the ingredients you pick in the kitchen; and the replies written to you. Used for writing replies and follow-up replies, and for sorting journal entries, plans and recipe ideas. This content may reveal sensitive information such as health, mental state or beliefs; we process it only with your explicit consent. See section 3.
• Members’ records: tarot records, favourites, decisions and revisits, astrology records and birth profiles, Inner Weather records and Talk conversations (synced automatically for members), daily timeline notes, weekly letters, daily insights. Used for keeping your records with your account so they survive a new phone or a reinstall, and for providing member features.
• Memory (“Understanding you”): only if you turn on “Remember what I say”. It holds notes drawn from what you have written, about you, what you care about, the people around you and what you are still carrying, plus answers you gave to check-in questions. Used for letting replies recall what you said before, so you don’t have to start over each time. This rests entirely on your consent, and you can turn it off at any time.
• Birth profiles: profile name, birth date and time, birth city with its coordinates and time zone, gender option. Used for casting natal charts on the phone; members’ profiles are kept in their account; sent with the chart when you ask Lilly for a natal or “this year” letter.
• Purchases and subscriptions: product, price, currency, time, subscription status, renewals, cancellations and refunds, Apple transaction IDs. We never receive your card details. Used for unlocking and checking what you bought, restoring purchases, handling refunds and support, and bookkeeping.
• Approximate location: when you tap “Use my current location” for a horary chart, the app reads the reduced-accuracy location the system provides, once, to cast the chart for the place you ask from. The chart is cast on the phone; the location reaches our server only with the chart when you ask Lilly for a letter, and is kept in members’ astrology records.
• Place search: the city name you type. Used for looking up your birth city in our own place database and returning results.
• Push notifications: your device’s push token. Used for telling you when a reply is ready. Notifications never include your question or the text of a letter.
• Feedback and support: feedback you submit, its category, an optional email, an optional screenshot (resized and stripped of metadata on the phone before upload), and our replies; and emails you send to support@dearintus.com. Used for answering you, fixing problems and improving the service.
• Device and operational information: a random device credential the app creates, app version, interface language, time zone; the last day you were active; records of errors and response times; how much AI capacity each letter used and what it cost; a hash of your IP address for rate limiting; IP addresses and request details in server logs. Used for security, preventing abuse, calculating members’ allowance and our costs, troubleshooting and knowing whether the service is reliable.

The app contains no third-party advertising or analytics tools, and we do not build a behavioural profile of you. We do not use your information for automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you. The only automated judgement is the self-harm safety notice described in section 3, which only decides whether to show you help information first.

3. How AI handles your content

Replies are written by AI

Replies from the reader, Lilly and DearIntus are written by AI, not by a person. Every reply carries the label “Written by AI · not by a person”, and the app reminds you again after every 3 hours of use on letter pages. Replies are not reviewed by a person before they reach you. They can be wrong, and they are no substitute for medical, mental health, legal or financial advice.

We ask before anything is sent

Before you first use a feature that needs AI, the app shows a consent sheet (one sheet for tarot, Lilly and Inner Weather) naming the AI provider your content goes to. If you say no, those features are unavailable and everything else works as usual. If you connect your own model account, tapping “Agree and connect” is that consent, and no separate sheet appears before you write.

You can withdraw at any time in Settings › Data & privacy › AI & permissions: nothing new you write is sent after that, and you can still read replies already written. If we change AI provider, we will ask you again.

What is sent

• Your questions, letters, follow-ups and the background you add, and the cards you drew or the chart your phone cast;
• What you write in Talk, text you choose to have sorted in Inner Weather, the ingredients you pick in the kitchen;
• If memory is on, what has been remembered that relates to the letter;
• For members’ weekly letters, daily timeline notes and daily insights: the records you left in the three rooms over that period (for example moods, notes, decisions and revisits) are passed to the AI to write them, and the source material is not stored again afterwards. Inner Weather material is passed only if both “AI & permissions” and “Remember what I say” are on.

Never sent: your email, account details, payment information, sign-up questionnaire answers or photos. Anything you write into a letter yourself (including names or other people’s details) is sent as written, so please only write what you are comfortable having processed by AI.

Who writes the replies

The AI provider that currently writes our replies is DeepSeek (a company based in China, Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd.), which processes the content it receives on servers in the People’s Republic of China. We ourselves do not use your content to train AI models. DeepSeek handles content received through its API under its Open Platform Terms of Service and Privacy Policy: its privacy policy sets no separate rule for the API and says it may use inputs and outputs, after de-identification, to train and improve its models; it keeps personal data for as long as it needs to provide its service, and keeps network logs for at least six months under China’s Cybersecurity Law. That part is not ours to decide, so we tell you exactly as it stands and leave what you write up to you.

Own members and your own model account: if you connect your own model provider account (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter or an OpenAI-compatible service), your letters are written by the provider you chose, under your agreement with that provider, and it charges you for usage. Your API key is stored encrypted on our server, used only to write your letters and never shown to anyone. You can disconnect at any time, and it is deleted with your records when you close your account or your membership ends.

Classic texts and the knowledge base

With “Enable knowledge base” on, the reader and Lilly draw on classic card meanings and traditional astrological rules and cite their sources; turn it off for a free reading. The switch changes how replies are written, not what personal information we process.

Self-harm safety notice

If what you write includes words about self-harm or suicide, the app first checks it on the phone against a fixed word list; for paid letters our server checks again with the same list. When it matches, we don’t write a reply and show you help lines for your region first. If the list does not match but the AI reads that meaning while writing, it writes a letter asking you to reach a help line and someone you trust now, with help lines for your region shown below the letter. No person reviews any of this, and nobody is notified.

4. The third parties that help us run the service

We share information only with service providers that help us run the service. Supabase, Resend, RevenueCat and Cloudflare process it under data processing terms with us, only on our instructions and for these purposes. Alibaba Cloud runs our servers and stores our data under its product service agreement, which says it does not access the data we store without authorization, but will provide it when government authorities lawfully require it. Apple, Google when you sign in with Google, and DeepSeek handle it under their own terms and privacy policies.

• Alibaba Cloud (a Chinese company, Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., Ltd.; data center in Silicon Valley, California): runs our servers and database, and stores feedback screenshots, export files and database backups. It handles everything that passes through our server, and the records kept on it.
• Supabase (United States): sign-in service (accounts, verification-code emails, Sign in with Apple and Google). It handles your email address, sign-in method and sign-in records.
• DeepSeek (China): writes replies. It handles the content listed under “What is sent” in section 3, never your email or account details.
• Resend (United States): sends verification codes and account emails. It handles your email address and the email content.
• Apple (United States and Apple’s other locations): App Store purchases and refunds, Sign in with Apple, push notifications. It handles purchase details, sign-in details and push tokens.
• RevenueCat (United States): checks App Store purchases and subscription status. It handles your account ID and purchase and subscription records.
• Google (United States): verifies your identity only if you choose Sign in with Google. It handles the email and name Google provides.
• Cloudflare (United States and Cloudflare’s other locations): forwards email sent to support@dearintus.com to our support mailbox. It handles your email address and the content of your message.
• Google (Gmail) (United States): stores and replies to support email. It handles your email address and the content of your message.
• The model provider you choose (location depends on the provider): writes your letters, only if you connect your own model account. It handles the content listed in section 3.

Each of these providers has its own privacy policy explaining how it handles the information that passes through it.

5. What we will not do with your content

The letters, journal entries and records you write are the most important thing in this app. Apart from the hand-offs in section 4, which are needed to provide the service:

• we do not sell your personal information or pass it to data brokers;
• we do not use it for advertising, “share” it for cross-context behavioural advertising, or track you across apps or websites;
• we do not use your content to train AI models (an AI provider’s own practice is described in section 3);
• we do not publish or make public your content, or use it for promotion or as a case study.

We disclose information to anyone outside section 4 only in these cases: when required by law, a court or a public authority; when genuinely necessary to protect you, others or our rights and safety; or in a merger, acquisition or asset transfer (the new owner must keep to this policy, and we will tell you beforehand).

6. International transfers

Our servers and database are in the United States, run by Alibaba Cloud, a Chinese company; DeepSeek, which writes our replies, is in China. Your information is stored and processed in the United States, and the content needed for a reply is sent to China. Data protection rules in these countries may differ from those where you live. To protect it, we:

• bind our US service providers with data processing terms (see section 4);
• send only what is needed to write a reply, never your email or account details;
• encrypt data in transit;
• pass content to an AI provider only after your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time.

You can write to us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.

7. Security

• Encrypted in transit: data travels over encrypted connections between the app and our server, and between our server and each provider.
• Keys stay on the server: keys for AI and other third-party services are kept on our server, never in the app; members’ own model keys are stored encrypted.
• Separated by account: database access is separated by account, so one account cannot read another’s content.
• Who can reach it: only staff who genuinely need to can reach data on our server, and only with the least access needed for the task.
• When anyone looks: only to handle feedback or a request you sent, fix a problem, check a payment or meet a legal requirement, and then only at the information needed. Otherwise nobody reads your letters and records, and no person reviews a reply before it reaches you.

No system is perfectly secure. If a security incident affects your personal information, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

8. How long we keep it, and how it is deleted

• Tarot letters, Lilly letters and their follow-ups bought one at a time: deleted from our server after 24 hours; your copy stays on your phone.
• Inner Weather AI sorting and Talk, for non-members: held on our server for at most 24 hours. Inner Weather’s Life backup shows how many items are held and lets you delete them now.
• Members’ records (tarot, astrology, Inner Weather, Talk, memory, daily notes, weekly letters, daily insights, own-model connection): kept while your membership is active; Own is a one-time purchase and has no end date. Deleted at the next routine clean-up once 3 days have passed since a subscription ended (expired after cancelling, or refunded) or Own was refunded. After expiry the app tells you the date they are kept until, so you can export a copy first.
• Memory: until you delete it in “Understanding you”, choose to forget it when turning memory off, close your account, or 3 days after your membership ends. A deleted check-in question leaves behind a keyed marker from which the original words cannot be recovered, used only to avoid remembering it again.
• Inner Weather sync deletion markers: when you delete a synced record, we keep a marker with no content for up to 180 days so your other phones delete it too.
• Export files (Export cloud records): downloadable for 24 hours, then deleted.
• Rate-limit records, unfinished uploads: cleared after 1 day and 1 hour respectively.
• Server logs: 30 days.
• Account, feedback and everything else: until you close your account.

Backups: so that data can be restored after a failure, we back up the database every hour and keep those copies on the server for two days; we also take a daily snapshot of the server’s disk and keep the last two. The periods above describe the live database; content you have deleted may remain in backups for up to 30 more days and is then removed with them. Backups are used only for recovery, never to write replies or for anything else.

Closing your account: go to Settings › Account › Manage account › Close account. This immediately deletes your content on our server (records, letters, memory, birth profiles, feedback, push tokens and so on) and stops the account from signing in; uploaded files and your sign-in identity are deleted in the following routine clean-ups, all within 30 days. If you signed in with Apple, we also revoke the app’s Sign in with Apple authorisation. Closing your account does not cancel a subscription; please cancel it in Apple’s subscription settings first.

What remains after you close your account: none of these records contain your letters or journal entries.

• Purchase and financial records: kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires, no longer linked to your content.
• AI usage and cost records: unlinked from your account when you close it, and kept afterwards only as cost statistics that point to no one.
• Emails you sent to support@dearintus.com: these stay in our support mailbox and are not deleted automatically when you close your account; you can write and ask us to delete them.

9. Your rights

Wherever you are, you can:

• See and take your data: Settings › Data & privacy › Export cloud records downloads everything on our server as a JSON file; “Export data” and Inner Weather’s Life backup export what is on your phone.
• Correct it: edit your details in Manage account; in “Understanding you”, correct anything remembered wrongly or mark it “Only that time”.
• Delete it: Settings › Data & privacy › Delete all records deletes your tarot records on our server and your phone; deleting an Inner Weather record also removes its server copy; delete remembered notes in “Understanding you”; or close your account to delete everything. To delete a single tarot or astrology record from our server without closing your account, write to us.
• Withdraw consent: turn off “AI & permissions” or “Enable memory” at any time; turn off notifications and location in iPhone Settings. Withdrawal does not affect processing that took place before.

For anything the app can’t do, email support@dearintus.com from your account’s email address so we can confirm it’s you. We reply within one month; if a request is complex we may extend this and will tell you why.

10. Additional information for California residents

This section is provided under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA (CCPA).

Categories of personal information collected in the past 12 months: identifiers (email, account ID, device credential, IP address); customer records (name, email); characteristics of protected classifications (birth date and gender option, only when a member keeps a birth profile or writes a natal letter); commercial information (purchase and subscription records); internet or other electronic network activity (usage and error records); approximate geolocation (horary location); inferences (the understanding drawn by the memory feature); and sensitive personal information: account log-in details, and any health or mental-state information contained in what you write. Sources: you, your device, and Apple and Google when you use them to sign in or pay. Purposes and retention are in sections 2 and 8.

Disclosure: this information is disclosed for business purposes to the service providers in section 4. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, including that of consumers under 16. We use sensitive personal information only to provide the services you request and not to infer characteristics about you.

Your rights: to know and access, to delete, to correct, and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. Use the app or support@dearintus.com; you may also use an authorised agent (we will verify the authorisation and your identity). We respond within 45 days.

Residents of other US states with similar laws (for example Virginia, Colorado and Connecticut) have similar rights and can use them the same way.

11. Minors

DearIntus is only for people aged 18 or over, and we ask you to confirm this when you sign up. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18; if we learn we have, we delete the account and its information. If you believe a minor is using DearIntus, please tell us.

12. Changes to this policy

We will update this page and change its version number and effective date. We will tell you in the app in advance about important changes (such as changing AI provider or adding a new purpose), and ask for your consent again where it is needed.

13. Contact

If you have any question about this policy or how we handle your information, write to us.

Hongtao Liu
Email: support@dearintus.com