PsychPod, Mental Wellbeing Tracker | Version 2026-05-29 | Effective: 29 May 2026
PsychPod (“we,” “us,” “our”) is committed to protecting your personal data. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights under the Qatar Personal Data Privacy Protection Law (Law No. 13 of 2016, “PDPPL”), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), and other applicable data protection laws.
Special-nature processing notice (PDPPL Article 16). PsychPod processes mental-health data, which is classified as special-nature personal data under the Qatar PDPPL. We are actively engaged with the National Data Privacy Office (NDPO) on the required permission process and have completed the Organization Level Privacy Compliance Assessment. We process this data only on the basis of your explicit consent (PDPPL Article 4) and never share it for purposes outside what is described in Section 5 below.
By using PsychPod, you agree to the collection and use of your information in accordance with this policy. If you do not agree, please discontinue use of the Service immediately.
Contents
PsychPod is a personal mental wellbeing tracking application. For the purposes of applicable data protection law, PsychPod is the data controller responsible for your personal data.
We are registered as a data controller with the Compliance and Data Protection Department (CDPD) under the Qatar Ministry of Transport and Communications, as required by Article 15 of the Qatar PDPL.
Contact: support@psychpod.org
Website: https://psychpod.org
When you create an account, we collect:
The core function of PsychPod is self-reported check-ins. We collect:
If you choose to record a voice note during a check-in, we store the audio file securely in your account. Voice notes are associated with the check-in they were recorded for and are only accessible to you. The microphone permission is only requested when you explicitly tap the voice note button.
If you use the friends and messaging features, we collect:
We track which badges and achievements you have unlocked, along with the timestamps of those unlocks.
To deliver push notifications, we collect:
We do not collect persistent device identifiers beyond what is needed for push delivery.
We collect limited technical data to operate the Service:
On the website (psychpod.org) we use privacy-preserving, cookieless web analytics, Vercel Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights, to understand aggregate traffic and page performance. These do not use cookies, do not track you across other sites, and do not build an advertising profile; you can decline optional analytics via the cookie banner. We use Sentry to capture diagnostic error and performance reports, with text and images masked and no clinical data sent. We do not use invasive analytics SDKs such as Firebase Analytics, Mixpanel, or Amplitude. We may show a small number of hand-picked, non-personalized sponsor messages on our public blog; these are not targeted using your data, set no advertising cookies, and we never share your personal data with advertisers. Signed-in members can remove blog ads with a one-time upgrade. We do not build advertising profiles, use behavioral ad networks, or sell your personal data.
If you opt in to research participation in Settings, we may use anonymized and aggregated versions of your check-in data to improve the Service and contribute to mental health research. This data cannot be linked back to you individually. Participation is entirely voluntary and can be disabled at any time.
| Purpose | Data Used |
|---|---|
| Provide and operate the Service (check-ins, scoring, history) | Account info, check-in data, voice notes |
| Social features (friends, messages, updates) | Profile, messages, friend connections |
| Push notifications (reminders, alerts) | Push tokens, notification preferences |
| Badge and achievement tracking | Check-in history, usage patterns |
| Security and fraud prevention | IP address, session data |
| Compliance with legal obligations | Account info, ToS acceptance records |
| Improving the Service (with consent) | Anonymized, aggregated check-in data |
| Responding to support requests | Account info, relevant usage data |
We do not use your data for advertising, profiling for commercial purposes, or selling to third parties. We do not use automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.
Under the Qatar PDPL, we process your personal data on the following bases:
For users in the European Economic Area, our legal bases under GDPR Article 6 are:
We do not sell your personal data. We share data only with the following third-party service providers (“processors”) who act on our instructions and are bound by data processing agreements:
| Processor | Role | Location | Privacy Policy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, authentication, file storage, Edge Functions | US / EU | supabase.com/privacy |
| Expo / EAS | App build infrastructure, push notification delivery | US | expo.dev/privacy |
| Anthropic / Claude AI | AI-powered analysis of anonymized wellbeing patterns | US | anthropic.com/privacy |
| Apple | iOS App Store distribution, APNs push delivery | US | apple.com/legal/privacy |
| Google / Firebase | Android distribution, FCM push delivery | US | policies.google.com/privacy |
| Vercel | Website hosting (psychpod.org) and privacy-preserving, cookieless analytics | US / global edge | vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy |
| Sentry | Error and performance monitoring (diagnostic crash reports) | EU | sentry.io/privacy |
We may also disclose your data if required by law, court order, or regulatory authority, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of PsychPod, our users, or the public.
Your data is processed outside Qatar.
Our third-party processors (listed above) are located in the United States and the European Union: Vercel serves the website from a global edge network with a US origin, Sentry processes diagnostic error reports in the EU, and Supabase may operate in both the US and the EU. By using PsychPod and accepting our Terms of Service, you expressly consent to this international transfer of your personal data, as required by Article 13 of the Qatar PDPL.
We implement appropriate safeguards for these transfers, including data processing agreements with our processors. For EEA users, transfers to the US may rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) or other approved mechanisms under GDPR Chapter V.
You may withdraw consent at any time by deleting your account. Upon deletion, we will request erasure of your data from all processors within 30 days.
We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service.
30-day soft-delete grace period. When you tap Settings → Delete my account, we mark your account for deletion but do not destroy the data immediately. Sign back in within 30 days and tap “Cancel deletion and recover account” to restore everything. After 30 days, all your personal data is permanently deleted from our servers, except where retention is required by law (e.g. ToS acceptance records up to 5 years).
Inactive-account auto-deletion. If you do not sign in for 24 months, we will email you 30 days before automatically deleting your account, on the same 30-day grace period. This implements PDPPL data-minimisation and storage-limitation principles (Article 10).
Under the Qatar PDPL and GDPR (where applicable), you have the following rights regarding your personal data:
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@psychpod.org. We will respond within 30 days. In some cases we may need to verify your identity before processing your request.
If you are in Qatar and believe we have violated the PDPL, you may lodge a complaint with the Compliance and Data Protection Department (CDPD). If you are in the EEA, you may lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.
PsychPod can send you push notifications for daily check-in reminders, messages from friends, badge achievements, and other activity. We only send notifications with your permission.
You can also manage all notification preferences inside the PsychPod app under Settings → Notifications.
Minimum age: 18. PsychPod is not intended for users under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. Mental-health data is classified as special-nature personal data under PDPPL Article 17, and we have not implemented a guardian-consent mechanism that would meet that bar. The minimum age was previously 16; it was raised to 18 on 9 May 2026 as part of our PDPPL compliance work.
If we become aware that a user is under 18, we will immediately terminate their account and delete all associated data, in compliance with Qatar’s Child Law (Law No. 25 of 2007), the Qatar PDPPL, and the GDPR.
If you believe a person under 18 has provided us with personal data, please contact us immediately at support@psychpod.org.
We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your personal data, including:
Despite these measures, no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security of your data.
In the event of a personal data breach, we will notify the National Data Privacy Office (NDPO) within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach and inform affected users without undue delay, as required by PDPPL Articles 13 and 14. Our Personal Data Breach Response Runbook describes our internal process; you can request a copy by emailing support@psychpod.org.
Reporting a security issue. Email support@psychpod.org, see our responsible disclosure page. Privacy and rights requests also go to support@psychpod.org; we acknowledge within 72 hours and aim to resolve within 30 days, in line with PDPPL Articles 5 and 6.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you through the app and/or by email, and update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy.
For any privacy-related questions, requests, or complaints, contact our Data Protection Officer at:
For legal inquiries relating to these Terms, contact: support@psychpod.org