What Happens to What You Share

Change: one paragraph added after "Story to Soul also limits how the information is used," disclosing the de-identified excerpts use so the booklet matches the actual Privacy Policy. Nothing else altered.

If you are going to spend an hour or two answering questions about your life, privacy needs to be clear.

You may write about relationships, family history, difficult periods, regrets, fears, losses, or experiences you have rarely described in detail. Even when the material is ordinary, it is still personal.

Story to Soul starts with a simple principle: ask only for what the reflection actually needs.

Exact names, dates, locations and other identifying details are not required. "My sister," "someone I worked with," or "when I was in my thirties" may provide enough context. Participants can decide how specific they want to be and can leave out anything they do not want to share.

The information that is provided has to move through digital services so the reflection can be created and delivered. Story to Soul uses established service providers for those parts of the process, and the services involved use standard protections such as encryption while information is transmitted and stored.

Story to Soul also limits how the information is used. Reflection responses are used to create and deliver the personalized reflection. Personal information is not sold for advertising or profiling, and identifiable excerpts are not published without explicit permission.

[new] Story to Soul may also draw on de-identified excerpts, themes or patterns from reflections to improve the experience or in future writing, research or educational material. Names and identifying details are removed or changed before any material is used this way, and nothing that could reasonably identify you is used without your specific, separate permission first.

The material is also intended to be temporary. Under the current policy, reflection responses and generated reports are deleted from Story to Soul's systems within 30 days, subject to the backup and retention practices of the service providers involved.

AI processing takes place through OpenAI's API rather than through an ordinary consumer chat. Under OpenAI's standard API terms, inputs and outputs are not used to train the underlying models by default.

There are limits to any digital privacy promise. The services involved need access to the information in order to process it, so Story to Soul does not describe the experience as anonymous or end-to-end encrypted. Limited human access may also occasionally be needed for technical support, troubleshooting or quality review, as described in the Privacy Policy.

The aim is straightforward: collect as little identifying information as possible, use the material only for the purposes explained to the participant, keep it for a limited period, and be clear about the services involved.

Privacy begins with asking only for what the reflection actually needs.