Privacy policy

This policy covers the Akina website and the companions you talk to on it. It is written to be checkable: nearly every claim below names the thing it refers to, so you can hold us to it. Where we haven't built something yet, it says so.

The operator of this service — the data controller, in GDPR terms — is Akina, at 335 Elta Center, Garrison, IA 52229, United States. For anything in this policy, including a request we haven't automated, write to [email protected].

The short version

• AI companion messages go to a language-model provider to generate replies. Member-to-member messages are stored on our servers and delivered to the other participant, without a language-model call.
• Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. Connections use HTTPS. Authorised staff and infrastructure providers can access stored data; we do not claim independently verified encryption at rest.
• No ads, no ad tech, no third-party scripts. Nothing on the page phones anyone but us.
• We never sell your data. Your public member profile is shared through discovery when you opt in. Private messages are shared with the other participant. Service providers are described below.
• You can export everything and delete everything yourself, from your account page, without emailing anyone.

What we store

Member profiles ask for a display name and your age in years, not a full birth date. Please avoid sharing sensitive personal details in conversations. AI messages are sent to the model provider; private member messages are delivered to the other member.

Who your messages go to

For AI companion conversations, we do not run our own language model. To generate a reply, we send the configured model provider your message, recent conversation, relevant quiz profile and recalled memories. The default provider is DeepSeek, whose API servers are in China; an operator can configure another provider. Private member conversations do not use this process.

For people in the UK or EU, processing outside those regions can involve international data transfers. Naming a provider does not by itself establish the required transfer safeguards. Contact our privacy address for the current processing arrangements and applicable safeguards before sharing sensitive information.

Hosting and model processing are separate. Account data and stored conversations are processed on our hosting infrastructure; AI message context is also sent to the configured model service. A postal contact address is not evidence of where staff work or every processing location. Our privacy contact can provide the current location and provider details.

The other third parties, all of them there to make something work:

There is no analytics service, no advertising network, no session recorder, and no social media pixel. Web fonts are downloaded at build time and served from our own domain, so loading a page does not tell Google you were here.

What people at Akina can see

The member moderation page shows profile information, your report explanation and the particular message you choose to attach. A profile report does not attach private messages. Review staff can see internal notes, the assigned reviewer and decisions. You can see your own report status and a standard outcome in Your reports; internal notes and staff identities are not included. Blocking prevents further messages in either direction and removes mutual discovery. It does not erase the existing conversation.

Your member profile and private conversations

You can edit your member profile or turn discovery off in Meet people. When discovery is on, other signed-in members with a profile can see your display name, age, introduction, interests, virtual location and online status. Existing conversation partners can still see your profile and message history when discovery is off, but your online status is hidden.

The account export includes memberProfile, memberConversations, memberBlocks and memberReports. Member conversations include both sides of your own threads, with no access to unrelated conversations. Deleting either participant's account deletes the shared threads, their messages and associated blocks and reports from the live database. Other members may retain copies they downloaded or saved, which we cannot recall.

In principle an administrator can read a conversation. That is true of essentially every product that stores messages, and anyone claiming otherwise is describing an architecture they would have to prove. What we can describe is how narrow the doors are.

• The admin console needs two independent things: being signed in as one of a short list of accounts, *and* entering a separate password on that visit. Being logged in on somebody's unlocked laptop is not enough.
• To everyone else it does not exist. Anyone not on that list gets a 404, not a “forbidden” — a permission error confirms there is something there.
• The safety queue keeps fragments, not conversations. When a message trips a content rule, what is stored for review is the text immediately around the match. Deciding whether a rule is misfiring does not require a copy of somebody's evening.
• Operational CSV exports include account and usage metadata, such as email, message volumes, spend and levels. They exclude message bodies and flagged excerpts.
• A full database backup contains everything, in full. There is no way to operate a product without the ability to take one. The button that produces it carries a warning saying it is the single most dangerous artefact this product can create. That is a label on a sharp object, not a control, and we would rather name it than bury it.

Safety operations and access records

AI chats show an AI identity label and a help link. Narrow text rules can route direct crisis signals to support resources before a model call; this does not notify emergency services. We keep daily totals of these referrals and withheld outputs without message text or user identifiers. An active-chat timer is stored in this browser tab to show a break reminder after about two hours of focused, visible use.

Protected conversation views, report-queue access, exports, backups, report decisions, member restrictions, moderation-rule changes and operational setting changes create administrator audit entries. These contain the staff account, action, time, a keyed digest of the target and a short administrative summary. They do not automatically copy chat bodies or credentials. Staff must not paste sensitive evidence into audit reasons. These logs are pseudonymous records, not an anonymous substitute for account data.

Your controls

• Read and correct what she remembers. Every companion has a memory page listing the facts kept about you, which of them are currently in play, and a button to edit, delete, or add one. Your account page links to one for each companion you have talked to.
• Export everything. Your account page produces a single JSON file containing your profile, every quiz result and answer, every message on both sides, every memory, summary and companion entry, your characters, and your usage counters.
• Delete everything. The same page deletes your account and all of the above. It is immediate and cannot be undone.
• Sign in without Google. An email address and a password works, and it means we never talk to Google about you. So does a one-off email link, if you would rather not have a password here at all.

If you are in the UK or EU you also have the rights the GDPR gives you — access, correction, erasure, portability, objection, and complaint to your data protection authority. The first four are the buttons above; for anything else, write to [email protected]. We do not charge for any of it.

How long we keep things

• Your account and conversation history: until you delete them. We do not expire registered accounts for inactivity. The shorter retention periods for resolved reports and operational logs are listed below.
• Resolved or dismissed member reports: removed by a daily job after 180 days from the latest closing review. Open or reopened reports remain until reviewed, or until a related account is deleted.
• Administrator audit entries and daily safety totals: removed by a daily job after 90 days. The latest job time is visible in the admin safety console.
• When you delete, the rows are deleted — profile, quiz results, messages, memories, summaries, companion entries, characters, usage counters, and any safety fragments recorded from your messages. Not flagged as deleted. Deleted.
• Trial conversations without an account expire after 7 days.
• Backups lag. A backup made before deletion may still contain your data. Backup rotation is administered separately; we do not promise an automated backup deletion deadline. Restoring an older backup requires staff to reapply subsequent deletions before reopening access. Contact our privacy address about retained backup copies.

Security

Connections use HTTPS. Database files and backups are restricted on the server; encryption at rest has not been independently verified. Sign-in sessions and the trial cookie are HTTP-only, so page scripts cannot read them, and the trial cookie is signed so it cannot be edited to point at someone else's conversation. The admin console is behind the two independent doors described above, with lockout after repeated wrong passwords.

None of that makes a stored conversation unreadable to us, and we are not going to imply that it does.

Cookies

All of them are strictly necessary — there is nothing here to opt out of, because there is nothing here for advertising or analytics.

The last two are only ever issued to administrators. They are listed anyway, because a cookie table that quietly omits the staff ones is the kind of omission that makes the rest of a policy less believable.

Children

Akina is for adults aged 18 or older. Age and identity are self-declared, not independently verified. Suspected underage use should be reported for priority review and access restriction. Confirmed underage accounts must be removed by the operator; a report is not an automatic age determination.

A note on what you tell a companion

People tell an AI companion things they have not told anyone. That is most of the point, and it means some of what is stored here may be sensitive in ways ordinary account data is not — how you feel, who you have fallen out with, what you are afraid of.

We do not use any of it to train models, target advertising, or build a profile for anyone else. It is used to generate the next reply and to let her remember you, and that is all. But it is stored, and it is sent to the provider named above, and you should decide what to type knowing that.

Service usage and checkout records

For up to 90 days we keep resourceUsage and checkoutAttempts: model names, token or character counts, success or failure, cache use, estimated service costs, and checkout creation status. Browser speech outcomes are client-reported. These operational records contain no conversation text or audio. They are included in your account export; deleting your account removes their link to you. Payment records remain subject to the separate billing retention rules above.

We also record recallDeliveries: the AI character, sending time and whether our mail server accepted or rejected a return email. These records contain no email body and are included in your account export. We compare sending times with subsequent chat activity to understand returns, without tracking pixels. Delivery records are removed when you delete your account. Promotion links keep daily aggregate opening counts without IP addresses; a first-arrival campaign reference may be linked to your account and verified payment events to measure acquisition. We do not send your conversations or individual payment records to Google Search Console.

Changes

When this policy changes materially we will say so on the site rather than silently update the date at the top. The date at the top is when this version took effect.

How to reach us

For anything in this policy — a question, a complaint, a request we have not automated, or withdrawing consent — write to us. We answer from a real address, not a ticket system.

• Privacy and data requests: [email protected]
• Anything else: [email protected]
• Operator (data controller): Akina
• Postal address: 335 Elta Center, Garrison, IA 52229, United States
• Website: akina.chat
• More ways to reach us, and the things you can do yourself without waiting: our contact page

If you are in the UK or EU and you are not satisfied with how we handle a request, you can complain to your national data protection authority. You do not have to go through us first.