Privacy Policy

Who We Are

HarkEcho is run by Ali Vahidinasab, a sole trader (Einzelunternehmer), Lothringer Straße 17, 63450 Hanau, Germany. He is the controller of your personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For anything about your data, email support@harkecho.app. We have not appointed a data protection officer, because we are a one-person business and the law does not require one.

The Short Version

We collect what the app needs to keep your tasks and remind you about them. We do not sell your data, show ads, or use third-party analytics or tracking. Your data is stored on our own servers in Germany. Some of it goes to Apple to deliver notifications and purchases, and, only if you allow it, to OpenAI for the AI features. You can delete your account and everything with it from inside the app at any time.

What We Collect

Account: your email address. If you sign up with email, your password, which our own sign-in service stores only in scrambled (hashed) form. If you use Sign in with Apple or Google Sign-In, the identity Apple or Google confirms to us.

Profile and settings: an optional display name, your time zone, your language, your reminder, call and morning-alarm preferences, quiet hours, ring pause, light day, the escalation delay, whether you take part in product tests, whether you want a weekly note, and your answer to the AI-features question (allowed or not, when you answered, and which version of the explanation you saw).

Tasks and routines: the titles, notes, priorities and due dates of your tasks, and anything you add to a task such as an outcome line, a time anchor or a first step. For routines: the title, the cue, the days and time, and whether you marked each day done or skipped.

AI suggestions: when the AI suggests an outcome line, time anchor or first step for a task, we keep whether you used, edited or skipped it. The text of a suggestion you did not use is deleted once you answer.

Voice recordings: only for Pro Voice Dump, and only if you have allowed AI features. The recording is sent to OpenAI to be turned into text and is deleted from our server as soon as that is done. We never store recordings.

Activity: when you complete, snooze, dismiss or start a task; whether a reminder or call was delivered, opened, answered or acted on; check-ins; your points, badges and streaks, including the date a streak was kept for you when you came back after time away.

Follow-through record: a log of due dates set or cleared, tasks completed, dismissed or reopened, the reminder step you were at, and signals such as turning calls off or a reminder no longer reaching your phone. Each entry holds dates, times, your time zone and codes. It never holds a task title, note or anything else you wrote. We use it to show you your own follow-through numbers, to measure whether HarkEcho helps, and to decide whether an extra reminder is needed (see below). We also note each time you open the follow-through screen.

Last opened: one calendar date, the last day you opened the app. No time of day and no screens.

Sign-up steps: a random install number with a few events (app installed, notification permission asked and given, signed up, trial started, subscribed) and your platform. These stay on your phone and reach our server only after you sign up.

Device tokens: the codes Apple gives your phone so we can send notifications and update lock-screen cards (Live Activities).

Purchases: your subscription and trial records, verified with Apple.

We do not collect your location, contacts, photos, health records, phone number or advertising identifier.

Why We Use It, and On What Legal Basis

To run the app you signed up for (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b), performance of our contract with you): your account and sign-in, your tasks and routines, scheduling reminders, escalation calls, the morning alarm and the lock-screen cards, streaks, points and badges, your follow-through screen, and checking which plan you have.

For the AI features, only with your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): Voice Dump, the AI-written script of your morning alarm, and AI ordering of equally urgent tasks. See "Your Choice About AI Features".

For our legitimate interest in running and improving HarkEcho (Art. 6(1)(f)): the follow-through record used to measure, in aggregate, whether the app helps people follow through; the sign-up steps and last-opened date, used to see where sign-up gets stuck and whether people keep using the app; deciding whether an optional reminder is needed; and product tests. You can object to each of these at any time (see "Your Rights").

To meet legal duties (Art. 6(1)(c)): keeping purchase records as tax law requires.

We never use your task content or account data for advertising.

Reminders That Adapt to You

On Pro, a task with a due date can escalate: a reminder, a second reminder, then an escalation call. The call is a full-screen alarm with a synthesised voice, made by your phone itself. It is not a real phone call, and no phone number or telephone provider is involved.

Fewer reminders when you are on track: our server may skip two optional reminders (the second reminder and the nudge about a task left untouched) when your own record shows you are on track: over the last three weeks at least 80% of your dated tasks were done on time, with at least five such tasks, nothing is left over from an earlier day, and today's tasks are done. It also caps optional reminders at a fixed number per day. This only ever means fewer reminders; it never changes your tasks, your plan, your price or anything else. Your first reminder and your escalation call are never skipped this way.

Quiet days: on a day when no task needs you, the morning alarm can stay silent.

Product tests: now and then we may test a small change to reminder timing, for example one extra reminder before the call, and compare how often tasks get done. You always still get your call. You can switch this off in Settings under Product experiments, and then your reminders are never part of a test.

What Appears on Your Lock Screen

Notifications and lock-screen cards (Live Activities) can show a task's title, its outcome line, a routine's title and cue, and a countdown to the next reminder or call. They pass through Apple's push service to reach your phone. What others can see on your lock screen depends on your iPhone's notification-preview settings. When you write a task or routine, leave out details you would not want on your lock screen.

Your Choice About AI Features

HarkEcho sends data to OpenAI only after you tap Allow. The first time you use an AI feature, or once after you start using the app, a screen names OpenAI, says it is in the United States, and lists what each feature sends.

Voice Dump (Pro): your recording, which OpenAI turns into text; then that text, with your local date, time, weekday, time zone and app language, so OpenAI can pick out your tasks and suggest how to shape them.

Morning alarm script (Pro): your display name and the titles of today's top tasks, so OpenAI can write what the morning alarm says.

Task ordering: when several tasks are equally urgent, their titles and due dates, so OpenAI can help choose which to show first.

Your email address, account ID, task notes, routines and follow-through record are never sent to OpenAI.

If you tap Not now: Voice Dump stays off, your morning alarm reads a standard script, and equally urgent tasks are ordered by simple rules. Everything else works as usual.

You can change your answer at any time in Settings under AI features. Our server checks your answer on every request, so no version of the app can send data without it. Turning it off stops new data from being sent; it cannot recall what OpenAI has already received. Withdrawing consent does not make earlier processing unlawful.

Who Receives Your Data

Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany) rents us the servers our app, database and sign-in service run on. The data stays in Germany.

OpenAI (United States): only for the AI features you have allowed, and only what is listed above.

Apple (United States and elsewhere): delivers notifications and lock-screen updates, processes and verifies purchases, and handles Sign in with Apple if you use it.

Google (United States): only if you use Google Sign-In.

Amazon Web Services (EU region): sends our sign-up confirmation and password-reset emails.

Cloudflare and Google: when you email support@harkecho.app, Cloudflare forwards your message to a mailbox hosted by Google.

These companies act on our instructions as processors, except Apple and Google when you choose to sign in with them, which they handle under their own terms. No one else receives your data.

Transfers Outside the EU

OpenAI, Apple, Google and Cloudflare may process data in the United States. Where a recipient is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework we rely on that; otherwise we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. Email us for a copy of the safeguards that apply.

How Long We Keep It

Most of your data: as long as your account exists.

Follow-through record: 24 months per entry, then deleted automatically.

Routine done or skipped marks: 90 days.

Voice recordings: only until they are turned into text, then deleted.

Server backups: 7 days.

Support emails: until your question is resolved, then for up to 2 years.

Purchase records: as long as tax law requires, even after you delete your account.

Deleting Your Account

You can permanently delete your account at any time in the app: Profile, then Delete Account. No email or waiting period needed. This deletes your sign-in account and everything stored with it: tasks, routines, settings, activity, follow-through record, rewards, subscription records, device tokens and sign-up steps. Copies in our server backups disappear within 7 days. Data already sent to OpenAI or Apple is governed by their own retention.

Your Rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

Access: get a copy of the data we hold about you.

Correction: fix data that is wrong. You can edit your tasks and settings yourself in the app.

Deletion: delete your account in the app, or ask us.

Restriction: ask us to limit how we use your data.

Portability: receive the data you gave us in a common machine-readable format.

Objection: object to any use based on our legitimate interest. For example, you can ask us to stop recording your follow-through record: we will stop and delete the entries we hold, and the app keeps working as before. You can leave product tests yourself in Settings.

Withdraw consent: turn AI features off at any time in Settings.

To use any of these rights, email support@harkecho.app. We reply within one month. You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. Ours is the Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Der Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit), Wiesbaden, Germany; you can also complain where you live or work.

Automated Decisions

The only automatic decision about you is whether to skip an optional reminder (see "Reminders That Adapt to You"). It never has legal or similarly significant effects on you, so it is not automated decision-making in the sense of GDPR Art. 22. If you would rather always get every reminder, email us.

How We Protect Your Data

All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted (HTTPS), and data on our servers is encrypted at rest. Your sign-in session is kept in the iPhone's Keychain. Only the operator can access the servers and database. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep only the data we need.

Children

HarkEcho is for people aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us data, email us and we will delete it.

Changes to This Policy

When we change this policy, we update it here and in the app and change the date below. If a change affects how we use data you have already given us, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect and, where the law requires, ask for your consent again.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Email support@harkecho.app, or write to Ali Vahidinasab, Lothringer Straße 17, 63450 Hanau, Germany.