Helpmiki Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-09-16. This Privacy Policy explains how Helpmiki collects, uses, shares, stores, and deletes information when you use the Helpmiki iPhone app, website, support pages, and related services. Helpmiki is operated by MONTEBIOM LLC, a California limited liability company.

Short Version

1. Who Helpmiki Is For

Helpmiki is an educational storytelling app for parents and adult caregivers. It creates fictional stories, discussion questions, and optional conversation ideas about everyday family situations. Adults choose, review, and decide how to use the content with a child.

Helpmiki does not provide therapy, mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or professional advice. It does not assess a child’s condition, needs, or development and does not replace a qualified professional.

Adults must manage accounts, requests, purchases, and shared reading. Children must not independently create accounts or submit information.

2. Information We Collect

Account Information

• Email address and account identifiers.
• Authentication information handled by our authentication provider, such as sign-in identifiers and session tokens.
• Account status, creation date, update date, and deletion status.

Story Creation Information

• The parent situation text you submit to create a story.
• Selected age range, generated language, and generation status. The app does not ask you to select the child's gender or pronouns.
• Generated story title, story text, Think Together prompts, Words to Try, and parent-facing reflection content.
• Story classification metadata, such as broad situation category, emotion, and skill focus.
• Story feedback you choose to provide, such as like or dislike signals.

Audio Narration Information

If you request audio narration, Helpmiki may process the generated story text with a text-to-speech provider and store audio metadata such as status, provider, storage key, file URL, file size, duration, and error information. The audio file itself may be stored so you can play it back in the app.

Purchase And Entitlement Information

• Apple App Store product identifiers, transaction identifiers, original transaction identifiers, signed transaction information, subscription status, and credit balances.
• We do not receive or store your full payment card number. iOS purchases are processed by Apple through App Store In-App Purchase.

Support And Privacy Request Information

• Support messages, support category, account email, status, and timestamps.
• Data deletion requests, request scope, details you provide, status, and timestamps.
• If you contact us about a specific story or safety concern, we may review the relevant account and story information needed to handle that request.

Technical Information

We may collect technical records needed to operate, secure, debug, and protect the service, such as timestamps, request metadata, error records, app or server diagnostics, and security events. We design production logs not to store raw parent situation text.

Notifications And App Interaction Information

• If you enable notifications, an Apple Push Notification service device token and a server-issued installation identifier.
• App version, locale, and time zone used for compatible delivery, language selection, and quiet-hour scheduling.
• Story interaction choices such as like or dislike feedback. These choices are linked to your account so the selection can be displayed and may be counted in aggregate to understand content usefulness.

Free-Story Eligibility And Abuse Prevention

To enforce the one-time free-story allowance, we may use Apple DeviceCheck, an app installation identifier, and protected matching values derived from your account email and installation identifier. DeviceCheck tokens are encrypted while a check is pending. A record that the allowance was used can remain after account deletion so that deleting an account or reinstalling the app does not reset the allowance. These records are used for eligibility and abuse prevention, not advertising, and are not treated as anonymous data.

Local Device Information

The iOS app may store app-only settings and local cache information on your device, such as onboarding state, authentication-session state, and local story cache metadata. You can clear local cache data through app controls where available.

3. Information We Ask You Not To Enter

Please do not enter a child's full name, school name, home address, precise location, diagnosis, medical record, phone number, email address, photograph, voice recording, government identifier, or other identifying or sensitive details about a child or family.

Use a fictional name such as Miki, a nickname that is not identifying, or a short general description of the situation. Helpmiki is designed to work without real child profiles or identifying child details.

4. How Parent Situation Text Is Handled

We use your original description to process your story request. For queued requests, it is temporarily stored while the request is waiting or being processed. After processing ends, we clear the original description from the generation job. Saved stories, Parent Notes, and related information may contain details from your description and remain subject to our retention and deletion rules.

Your personal library is not a public feed. We and the service providers needed to operate its features may process the content under this policy. Authorized personnel may review relevant information for a support, security, or legal matter. Avoid identifying or sensitive information.

5. How We Use Information

• To create, review, classify, save, display, export, and read aloud generated stories.
• To authenticate accounts and keep user-owned records private.
• To run safety checks and block high-risk or unsupported requests.
• To verify App Store purchases, maintain subscriptions, and manage story or audio credits.
• To provide support, investigate story issues or safety feedback, and respond to privacy requests.
• To operate, secure, debug, and monitor Helpmiki.
• To comply with legal obligations, enforce our terms, and prevent fraud or misuse.

6. AI Processing

The archived September 15 AI Data Sharing Notice is an earlier version. The current recipients and available choices are described below. The next account-level permission update will use a notice that reflects these recipients.

With your separate permission, Helpmiki sends your situation description, selected reading-age group, and relevant draft content to OpenRouter and the AI provider used for the feature. The current service uses OpenAI text models through Microsoft Azure endpoints selected by OpenRouter, and Google narration models through Google Vertex endpoints selected by OpenRouter. OpenRouter is the routing service; Microsoft and Google operate the compatible processing endpoints. We do not currently call a separate direct OpenAI API for these features. These services create and check stories and Parent Notes; narration processes story text to create audio.

You can decline AI processing and continue using features that do not require it. The upcoming beta update introduces account-level permission for future story creation, Parent Notes retries, and requested narration, with an allow/withdraw control in Settings → Privacy & Data → AI data sharing. This control is not available in older beta builds. Until your build includes it, decline a new AI request and do not request new stories or narration if you do not want further processing; contact support for help with your data. In builds with the control, withdrawal stops new requests that rely on permission; processing already requested may finish. Withdrawal does not delete saved stories. A material change to recipients or purposes requires a new notice and permission.

We do not use private story content for advertising or publish or sell it as training data. Our server requests endpoints that do not train on request content and meet OpenRouter’s Zero Data Retention routing policy. We have disabled OpenRouter input/output logging and broadcast of request traces to external observability services. These settings do not justify a promise of immediate deletion of all provider records: providers also process technical metadata under their service terms and retention policies. See OpenRouter’s Privacy Policy, Microsoft’s Privacy Statement, and Google’s Privacy Policy.

AI content may be inaccurate or unsuitable. Helpmiki does not provide therapy, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, or professional advice. Review all content before using it with a child.

7. Children's Privacy

Helpmiki is designed for adults. We do not knowingly allow children to create accounts or submit information directly to Helpmiki. If we learn that a child created an account or submitted personal information directly we will take reasonable steps to delete the information or disable the account.

Parents and caregivers control the information they choose to enter. Because parent-submitted stories may relate to children, we treat this content with care and ask adults not to include identifying child details. You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of account or story data by using in-app controls where available or by contacting us.

8. How We Share Information

We share information only as needed to operate, secure, and support Helpmiki, or as legally required. Categories of recipients may include:

• Cloud hosting, database, storage, and backend infrastructure providers.
• Authentication providers.
• AI, safety, text-generation, classification, and text-to-speech providers.
• Apple, for App Store purchase processing, transaction verification, subscription status, refunds, and App Store operations.
• Email, support, or communication providers, if used to respond to your requests.
• Professional advisers, authorities, or other parties when required to comply with law, protect rights, prevent fraud, or respond to legal process.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not use third-party advertising trackers in the Helpmiki iOS app.

9. Service Providers

Helpmiki uses Supabase for authentication and database services, DigitalOcean for backend hosting and Spaces audio storage, and Apple for sign-in, purchases, optional push notifications, and DeviceCheck eligibility checks. OpenRouter routes AI requests to the providers described in Section 6. Support requests are delivered through Resend to our Namecheap Private Email mailbox. These email providers process the email address, request content, and related delivery information.

If we add analytics, crash reporting, attribution, advertising, marketing audience sync, or materially different AI providers, we will update this Privacy Policy and our App Store privacy disclosures where required.

10. Retention And Deletion

• Original queued descriptions: cleared when processing ends. Unfinished queued descriptions are configured to expire after one hour and are cleared by a recurring cleanup process. Service interruptions can delay cleanup. Saved results may reproduce details you submitted.
• Saved library content: stories, Parent Notes, classifications, and audio remain to provide your library until you delete them or your account, subject to necessary legal or security restrictions. Ending a subscription or making content inactive does not itself erase it.
• Generation records: completed queue records without the original description are cleaned up after 30 days. Separate records of generation stages, model usage, timings, and errors remain with the related story or account and are removed when you delete the relevant personal content or account; they do not have a separate automatic expiry.
• Purchases and security: account deletion removes account access and personal story content. Limited purchase identifiers, credit history, deletion-confirmation records, and records used to prevent duplicate grants or fraud may remain linkable. Protected free-story eligibility values may remain while the one-time allowance is enforced. These retained records currently have no automatic expiry; deletion requests are assessed against the specific transaction-verification, dispute, fraud-prevention, security, or legal purpose that requires retention.
• Support correspondence: website and in-app requests use a temporary database queue. We remove each queued record from the active database after the email service accepts it; unsuccessful attempts remain queued for retry. Acceptance does not mean a person has read it. Resend retains email content, metadata, and delivery logs for 30 days under its standard retention policy. Our Namecheap mailbox is managed manually and has no automatic deletion schedule. Account deletion does not delete mailbox copies. Contact us to request deletion of correspondence, subject to necessary legal or security restrictions.
• Operational records: server-capacity samples are retained for 30 days. Application log files rotate when they reach configured size limits, rather than after a fixed number of days. Administrative audit records and incident records have no automatic expiry and are retained for access accountability, investigation, and security purposes. Service providers also maintain technical records under their own policies.
• Upcoming permission records: the account-level consent update will store the account ID, notice version, choice, adult confirmation, and server timestamp. Those records will be removed on account deletion. This server-side record system is not yet active in the existing beta.
• Other copies: provider recovery copies, where present, follow their respective retention and recovery cycles. Deletion does not promise immediate removal from every recovery copy or from content you exported or shared. Contact us about a specific deletion request.

Request deletion through Settings → Privacy & Data or support@helpmiki.com. We may verify account control and explain any specific reason for retaining limited records.

11. Your Privacy Choices

• Access and update certain account or story information through the app where available.
• Delete individual stories or request deletion of story data where available.
• Request account deletion or broader data deletion.
• Contact us about support records, privacy questions, or safety feedback.
• Manage App Store subscriptions, refunds, and payment methods through Apple.
• Decline new AI requests. The upcoming beta update adds an AI data sharing control in Settings → Privacy & Data; see section 6 for current choices and build availability.

See Privacy Choices for more details.

12. U.S. State Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live and whether applicable law covers Helpmiki, you may have rights to know, access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of certain personal information, and to opt out of certain forms of sale, sharing, profiling, or targeted advertising. Helpmiki does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

To exercise privacy rights, email support@helpmiki.com or use in-app privacy controls where available. We may need to verify your request before acting on it. You may also ask us to reconsider a privacy request decision by replying to our response.

13. Security

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect personal information, including authentication, access controls, private user-owned records, row-level access rules where applicable, and secure transport. No online service can guarantee perfect security, but we work to reduce risk and limit unnecessary data collection.

14. International Processing

Helpmiki is operated from the United States and may use service providers in the United States or other countries. If you use Helpmiki from outside the United States, your information may be processed in countries whose privacy laws differ from those in your location.

15. Changes To This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as Helpmiki changes. If we make material changes, we will update the date above and may provide additional notice in the app, on the website, or by email where appropriate.

16. Contact

Email: support@helpmiki.com
Company: MONTEBIOM LLC, a California limited liability company.
For legal notices, contact support@helpmiki.com. We will provide the appropriate postal contact where required.