Via Companio Privacy Policy
Via Companio is a weight-loss support app. It gives you a private AI companion to talk to, and — on paid plans — a small peer support group. This notice explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, and how long we keep it.
The short version
We collect health-related information about you — your weight, height, how you eat, and anything you choose to tell us about medical conditions, medication or an eating disorder. This is the most sensitive data we hold and it gets the strictest handling described below.
Your conversations are read by an AI, not by staff. We send what you write to Anthropic and OpenAI so the companion can reply. There is one exception: if our safety system flags a message as suggesting you may be in danger, an authorised member of our team may read that message and a short amount of surrounding conversation.
We delete conversation text on a rolling schedule — between 7 days and 3 months depending on your plan. Voice recordings are never stored at all.
On every plan, your companion also keeps short notes of what matters to you — the dates you care about, what went well and what was hard. These are kept for as long as you have an account, and you can see, change or delete any of them in Settings.
We do not sell your personal information, and we never use health information for advertising or to decide who is placed in a group with you.
Via Companio is for adults. You must be 18 or over to use it.
1. What we collect
Information you give us when you sign up
- Your name (a first name or nickname — we never ask for a legal name), and your email address, from Google or Apple when you sign in
- Gender, as you describe it yourself; year of birth; language; country and time zone; and whether you prefer metric or imperial units
- Your height and your starting weight
Health information
This is special-category data and we treat it as such. During onboarding and while using the app you may tell us:
- Whether you have diabetes, and any other health conditions you choose to disclose
- Any medication or treatment you are receiving, including weight-loss medication
- Whether you have been diagnosed with an eating disorder
- Whether you are pregnant
- Your weight over time, what you ate, whether you were active, and how you felt
Every one of these is optional. The app works without them. We ask because standard eating and activity advice can be wrong or unsafe for someone in those situations.
What you say to your companion, and to your group
- The messages you send your AI companion and the replies it writes
- Photographs of meals, if you choose to send them
- Messages you post in a peer support group, which other members of that group can read
- A short weekly recap of your week, written by your companion and kept with your conversation
- Short notes of what matters to you — your life memory, described below
Life memory
Once a day, an AI reads that day's conversation with your companion and writes down the few things worth remembering for longer: something that went well, a moment that was hard, a date that matters to you (a birthday, an anniversary), something coming up (an exam, a wedding, an operation), or a pattern it has noticed across several days. Most days it writes nothing. The notes are short and neutral — for example, "Late-night pizza after a tough work day" or "Sister's wedding, 12 December".
- What it is used for. Your companion reads these notes before it replies, so it can remember what you have told it without keeping your whole conversation. It also uses the dates: it mentions a birthday or an event on the morning of the day, mentions a big event the day before, and asks how it went the morning after (on the free plan, it says something kind instead of asking).
- What is never written down. Weights, calories or other numbers about your body or food; anything about self-harm, suicide or being in danger; anything about an eating disorder; and any diagnosis, illness, medication, treatment or therapy. An operation may be noted as an event, never what it is for. Any day on which our safety system flagged something is not used at all.
- Other people. A note may mention someone close to you only as far as it explains a date — "Daughter's birthday" — and never anything else about them.
- How long it is kept. For as long as you have an account — on every plan, including the free plan, and after a paid plan ends. It is deleted when you delete your account.
- Your control. You can see every note under Settings → What your companion remembers, and change or delete any of them. The notes are written by an AI and can be wrong; if one is, correct it or delete it.
Voice
During onboarding you may answer questions by speaking instead of typing. The recording is never stored. It is sent to OpenAI, converted to text, and discarded — it is not written to any database, file or backup of ours, and the text is what we keep. We do not create or store voiceprints and we do not use your voice to identify you.
Technical information
- A push-notification token for each device you install the app on, so we can send you notifications
- Standard server logs
Payment
Payments are handled by Stripe, or by Apple or Google if you subscribe through an app store. On our website the sale is made through Link, a Stripe company, which receives your name, email, billing address and payment details directly from you to take the payment and work out tax. We never see or store your card number. We keep a record of which plan you are on, whether it bills monthly or yearly, and when it started, renews or ended.
2. Why we use it, and our legal basis
| What for | Legal basis (UK/EU GDPR) |
|---|---|
| Providing the coaching, the daily messages and the weekly plan | Performance of a contract |
| Remembering what matters to you between conversations — life memory and weekly recaps | Performance of a contract |
| Processing health information to make that guidance safe and relevant | Your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)) — you can withdraw it at any time |
| Placing you in a peer support group | Performance of a contract |
| Checking group messages before they post, so the group stays a safe place | Legitimate interests |
| Detecting messages that suggest you may be in danger, and responding | Vital interests (Art. 6(1)(d) / Art. 9(2)(c)) and legitimate interests |
| Taking payment and preventing fraud | Performance of a contract; legal obligation |
| Understanding how the product is used, in aggregate | Legitimate interests |
We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising as those terms are defined under California law.
3. Automated processing and AI
Your companion is an AI, not a person. Everything it writes is generated by a large language model. Nobody at Matchi Inc. reads your conversation in the ordinary course of using the app.
We send your messages, your profile details and your health disclosures to Anthropic so the companion can reply, write your weekly plan and your weekly recap, write the short notes of your life memory, and comment on meal photos. We send audio to OpenAI for transcription and use it to generate the pre-recorded onboarding questions. Both act as our processors and are contractually barred from using your data to train their models.
Automated systems also make two decisions about you: whether a message you post to a group is suitable to post, and whether a message you write suggests you may be in danger. Neither has a legal or similarly significant effect on you, but you can contact us to ask a human to review either one.
Via Companio does not diagnose you and does not give medical advice. See our Terms of Use.
4. Who we share it with
| Who | What they get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Everything we store | Our database and authentication provider |
| Anthropic | Your messages, profile and health disclosures | Generating what your companion says |
| OpenAI | Voice recordings, transcribed then discarded | Speech-to-text and question audio |
| Google Cloud | Data in transit through our servers | Hosting |
| Expo | Your push token and notification text | Delivering notifications |
| Apple / Google | Notification delivery; sign-in; store purchases | Operating on their platforms |
| Stripe and Link | Name, email, billing address and payment details you enter with them | Taking payment and calculating tax |
| Other members of your group | Your first name and what you post there | It is a group conversation |
We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or where we believe in good faith that it is necessary to prevent serious harm to you or someone else.
5. How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Conversations with your companion, including weekly recaps | A rolling window: 7 days on the free plan, 1 month on Entry, 2 months on Standard, 3 months on Premium, 60 days during the trial. Older messages are deleted automatically as each one passes the window. If you pay, or move to a smaller paid plan, nothing already written is deleted for at least 7 days. |
| Life memory | While your account exists, on every plan. You can change or delete any note at any time in Settings. |
| Voice recordings | Never stored. Discarded immediately after transcription. |
| Meal photographs | 48 hours, then deleted from storage. |
| Group messages | For as long as the group exists. |
| Your profile, weight history and check-ins | While your account exists. |
| If you stop paying | Paid features end after 7 days. Your account, profile, weight history and check-ins survive; conversation text collapses to the free window after 60 days. Your life memory is kept. Your account is not deleted. |
| Safety flags | Kept until reviewed. 90 days after review, the flagged words and surrounding conversation are erased; only the category, the dates and the reviewer's notes remain. |
| Push tokens | Deleted when you sign out, or after 90 days without the app being opened. |
| Payment records | As long as tax and accounting law requires. |
6. Safety, crisis detection and staff access
We check messages for signs that you may be in serious distress or danger. If one is flagged:
- A record is created containing the message and up to six surrounding messages. This copy deliberately outlives the normal deletion schedule above, so that the context is still there when a person looks at it.
- An authorised member of our team may read it. This is the only routine circumstance in which a human at Matchi Inc. reads your conversation.
- Every time a member of staff opens a flagged record, that access is logged with who, when and why. The log records the category, never the words.
- Ninety days after the flag is dealt with, the words and the context are erased.
We tell you this plainly because it is the one place where the general rule — nobody reads your conversation — does not hold.
Via Companio is not an emergency service and does not monitor for emergencies in real time. If you are in danger, contact your local emergency number. The app has a page of emergency numbers under Settings → Help.
Information that never feeds anything else
An eating-disorder disclosure, and anything else you tell our safety system, is kept separate from the systems that personalise your coaching. It is never used to decide who is placed in a group with you, never used for marketing, and never used to segment you.
7. Peer support groups
If your plan includes a group, we place you in one with up to nine other people, matched on gender, language and age only. Nothing you disclose about your health is ever used for matching.
What you post in a group is visible to its other members, alongside your first name. Please do not post anything you would not want them to keep. Every message is checked by an automated system before it posts; if it would not land well, you are told why and nobody else sees it.
8. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- Give you a copy of what we hold about you
- Correct anything that is wrong — the app lets you do most of this yourself, under Settings
- Delete your account and your data
- Withdraw consent for health information, which you can do by deleting it or by closing your account
- Object to or restrict certain processing, and ask for your data in a portable form
If you are in the UK, EU or EEA you may also complain to your local supervisory authority. If you are in California you have the rights described above, and we will not discriminate against you for using them. If you are in Israel, you have the rights given by the Privacy Protection Law, 5741-1981.
Deleting your account deletes your profile, conversations, life memory, weight history, check-ins, health disclosures and group membership. Ask us at the address below.
9. Children
Via Companio is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone younger, and the sign-up form will not accept a date of birth under 18. If you believe a minor has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
10. Where your information is held
We are based in the United States, and our providers process data in the United States and the European Union. If you are in the UK, EU or EEA, transfers out of your region rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
11. Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access by our own staff is restricted, requires a second factor, and — for anything safety-related — is logged. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise.
12. Changes
If we change this notice we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use health information, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
13. Contact
Matchi Inc.
Email: support.viacompanio@gmail.com
To request a copy of your data, or its deletion, email the same address.