Aurora Journal Privacy Policy
Effective Date: November 1, 2025
I. Our Privacy Philosophy: Privacy By Design
This Policy describes the data practices of Quantum Forge LLC (referred to as "we," "us," or "our"), the dedicated company that operates and develops the Aurora Journal application ("Aurora"). We want to be clear: Aurora was designed from the ground up to minimize your data footprint.
Our Core Promise: We cannot read your journal entries. The same security architecture required to keep hackers out is the same security that keeps us out too. Our business model is based on your subscription, not on your data. We do not, and will never, sell your Personal Information or journal content to any third parties, advertisers, or data brokers.
II. Data Protection: The Core Zero-Access Principle
A. Your Journal Content and Passkey
B. The LLM Feature on Server (Ephemeral Processing)
Aurora's LLM features (journal insights and the Aurora Chat) require the readable text of your journal and chat history to function. As there is no way to reliably run these advanced psychology engines on user devices, this means a temporary, necessary server processing:
- Ephemeral Processing: To provide you with LLM insights, the unencrypted (readable) text of your current journal entry or chat message is sent to our server (Google Cloud Run).
- No Logging/No Storage: This data is processed ephemerally—meaning stateless, isolated containers spin up only for the duration of a single response—no data is stored before, during, or after processing. This container exists entirely in the server's active memory (RAM) for the few seconds required for analysis. This data is volatile, meaning it requires constant electricity to prevent it from purging forever. As such, even a full-center power outage during processing would merely instantly and permanently purge the data.
- Data Purge: The moment the analysis is complete in less than 45 seconds, the processing container is immediately abolished, resulting in any readable text being completely purged from our server's RAM. It is never logged, written to any disk, or saved in any way.
- Encrypted Storage: After analysis, the original text and the LLM's response are immediately encrypted on your device and saved to your secure vault. Your chat history itself is stored in your encrypted vault as well, along with all of your journals and other sensitive data.
We do not log the raw journal text, the LLM's output, or any derived metrics (for example, we do not store sentiment scores, topic labels, or any kind of insight data).
III. Personal Information We Collect and Why
We strictly limit the Personal Information we collect to what is necessary for account creation and billing.
Payment Processing Clarity
We use Stripe for all billing. When you pay for a subscription, you are directed to a secure, industry-standard checkout portal hosted entirely by Stripe. Quantum Forge LLC never receives, sees, or stores your full credit card number or sensitive payment details.
IV. Data We Deliberately Do Not Collect
- No Crash Logs or Device Identifiers: We deliberately do not collect crash logs, device models, operating system versions, or unique device identifiers. We forego the convenience of bug reporting to ensure we have no way of identifying your specific device.
- No Location, Contacts, or Photos: The Aurora app never asks for, and cannot access, your GPS location, phone contacts, or photo library.
- No Promotional Email: We will only use your email address to send you essential, non-promotional communications related to your account (e.g., security alerts, password resets, billing notices).
V. Anonymous Usage Data (Google Analytics)
We use Google Analytics to understand how our website and app are used, which helps us improve the service.
The information collected is anonymous and minimal. We see aggregated data only, such as:
- Aggregated data on total traffic, which pages are most popular, which devices users are on (e.g., "70% of visitors use desktop"), and where traffic comes from (e.g., "50% of visitors came from a Google search").
- What We Cannot See: This data is anonymous and cannot be used to identify you personally. It is completely segregated from your Aurora account and journal vault.
- We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or any other tools for ad retargeting.
VI. Data Location and Legal Compliance
- Data Location: All of your data (account info and encrypted blobs) is processed and stored on secure Google Cloud servers located entirely within the United States (specifically in Iowa, with redundant backups in multi-regions like Iowa and Oklahoma).
- Age Restriction: Aurora Journal is intended for use by individuals who are 18 years of age and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18.
Our Response to Legal Requests
Quantum Forge LLC is legally bound to comply with valid legal process (like a warrant or subpoena). If we receive such a request, we will comply to the fullest extent permitted by law. However, because of our architecture:
- The only information we can produce is the existence of an account tied to a specific email address and the user's first name.
- We will simultaneously be forced to attest that we have zero ability to decrypt or provide the user's journal content, as it is protected by the user's Passkey, which we do not possess, store, or ever have access to. By design, no actionable data exists to produce.
VII. Your Rights and Control Over Your Data
You have complete control over your Personal Information and content. Some companies like to store your private data for months after you request deletion. We destroy it as quickly as humanly possible.
VIII. Changes to This Policy
We will post a clear notice inside the Aurora application if any significant changes are made to this Privacy Policy. Continued use of the Service after any change will constitute your acceptance of the new Policy.
IX. Contact Us
For all requests to access, export, or delete your data, or any and all other privacy-specific questions, please contact our dedicated Privacy Officer:
Privacy Email: privacy@aurorajournal.app
If you need a privacy request fulfilled urgently, please begin your email’s subject with “URGENT”.
For all other technical support or general questions about Aurora:
General Support Email: support@aurorajournal.app