AiThao Privacy Policy

An account is created on first launch and needs no phone number, no email and no name. What it has is an opaque identifier, a randomly allocated AiThao Number and a username, which you can change. You may add a display name, a photo, a banner and a short status if you want to; all of them are optional and all can be removed.

At first sign-in, you can give your gender (man or woman) along with your name, or skip it. We store it on your account and show it only to you. You can change it in Settings → profile. We do not share it with anyone or use it for advertising or analytics.

None of these is required to use AiThao. Each exists so you can return to your account on a new phone:

• Apple, Google or Facebook. We receive only a stable account identifier and, if the provider sends it, an email address. We ask for nothing else — no contacts, no calendar, no files — and we neither post nor read anything in your Apple, Google or Facebook account. The identifier is stored so a later sign-in matches the same AiThao account.
• Telegram. If you sign in with Telegram, Telegram tells us your Telegram user id and the name you use there. We store the id so that a later sign-in — in the app or in our Telegram bot — opens the same AiThao account. We neither read nor post anything in your Telegram account.
• Email. You can attach an email address; we send a one-time code to it through our email delivery provider. We store a hashed form of the address and a short masked hint (so you can recognise it), not the address itself. It is never shown to your contacts and never used for marketing.
• Recovery code. A one-time code you save yourself. We store only a hash of it. Using it signs out every other device on the account and removes their keys, so a phone you no longer have cannot keep using the account.

AiThao news by email is optional. Only if you tick «Get AiThao news» — when signing in or in Settings — do we keep your email address in full, for that alone: the address Apple, Google, Facebook or our sign-in code has just confirmed, or one you type and confirm with a code we mail to it. We use it only to write to you about AiThao, through our email delivery provider; it is never shown to anyone or shared for advertising. Every such email has a link to stop them, and stopping — there or in Settings — deletes the address. It is also deleted with your account.

A linked computer has its own session and encryption keys. We keep its name, platform and account/device association. Old messages are not transferred. Unlinking revokes the computer’s session and removes its server-side encryption keys.

Messages are end-to-end encrypted. What you write in a chat — text, reactions, edits, photos, files, voice messages, locations and contact cards — is encrypted on your phone for the phones of the person you are writing to, and for your own other devices, using the Signal Protocol. Only those phones can decrypt it. Our server stores and delivers encrypted copies it cannot read, and deletes each copy once the phone it was made for has it, or after 30 days.

What our server does see: who wrote to whom and when, how large a message is, whether it was delivered and read, and which message a reply points to.

Your conversation history is kept on your phone, protected by iOS Data Protection and excluded from iCloud and computer backups. You can compare a safety number with the person you are writing to, in person or by scanning a code, to check that nobody is in between.

Conversations that started before end-to-end encryption keep their earlier messages on our server as before, until you delete them.

If the person you are writing to has not finished setting up their phone, there are no keys to encrypt for, and the app sends nothing at all — it tells you to wait rather than falling back to sending in the clear. The keys come from our server, so this is the one moment where we could have made a chat unencrypted by answering that we had none; the app refuses instead of letting us. The one exception is a person our server names as using AiThao in Telegram: the app then says so at the top of the chat every time it is opened, and only then sends there in the clear.

If you turn on disappearing messages in a chat, each new message in it is deleted from our server when its timer runs out, for both of you. Deleting a message for everyone removes its content on our server. Deleting a conversation or your account is described under Your rights and choices.

You can also use AiThao through our Telegram bot, @AiThaoBot. Writing to it makes an AiThao account for your Telegram account: we keep your Telegram user id, the name and language Telegram tells us, and the chat in which the bot answers you.

If you have a Telegram @username, we keep that too — from your messages to the bot and from signing in with Telegram — so that we can write to you in Telegram about your AiThao account. It is deleted with your account.

Chats and calls through the bot are not end-to-end encrypted. Your messages and voice messages pass through Telegram and through our server, which keeps them and translates them like messages that are not end-to-end encrypted, until you delete them. Voice messages are recognised and spoken by our speech providers. Calls opened from the bot run through our call server and are translated there. Telegram processes what passes through it under its own privacy policy.

When somebody in the AiThao app writes to or calls a person who uses AiThao in Telegram, that chat is not end-to-end encrypted either, because Telegram cannot open encrypted messages. The app says so at the top of that chat. Every other chat stays end-to-end encrypted.

Your choice first. After you sign in, and once after the update to this version, the app shows a "Cloud features" window: cloud translation, ✨ writing help and call summaries, each with its own switch. Nothing from these features leaves your phone before you have answered it. You can change each one any time in Settings.

Translation is the point of this app, and it is not done on your phone. In an end-to-end encrypted chat, a message is delivered encrypted. When it is in a language you do not read and Cloud translation is on (Settings → Translation; on unless you turn it off), your phone sends the decrypted text or voice recording to our translation service after decrypting it. The service passes it to a translation provider and returns the translation; we do not store what it translated, except as described under «Improved translation» below. The app says this once, the first time it happens, and marks each message translated this way. Translated calls are not end-to-end encrypted: live speech has to reach the translation service, and translating on the phone instead would add more delay than a conversation can bear. Translation uses these providers:

• AI speech and translation provider — real-time call translation, voice-message transcription, and speech synthesis.
• Cloud AI translation provider — text translation, and a fallback for the same real-time and voice work when the first provider is unavailable.

Only the content being translated is sent — the message text or the call/voice audio, plus the source and target languages, and for your own messages the short description of who is writing to whom described below, if you filled it in. Your name, your contacts, your AiThao Number and your other conversations are not. A translated call or voice message is therefore not private between the two of you alone: a provider processes the content in order to translate it. The app states this on the screen where you turn translation on. These providers process the content on their own infrastructure under their own terms; we do not control how long they keep it or whether they use it to improve their services, and we make no claim on their behalf.

We use the gender you give for your account only for the grammar of translations and to choose the voice used for translations. If you have not given it, the app uses the latest chat's context as before.

Who writes to whom. In a chat's settings you can tell the translator how you talk to that person: a style (family, friendly, everyday, business or formal), what they are to you, whether each of you is a man or a woman, and who is older. It is optional. It is stored on our server with your account, used only to translate your own messages to that person, and never shown to them or to anyone else. When you have filled it in, the translation provider also receives a short description made from these choices — for example, “the writer is a woman writing to her husband” — with no names. You can change or clear it at any time in that chat's settings, and turn it off for all chats in Settings → Translation; it is deleted with your account.

The messages just before it. When a message is translated in a one-to-one chat, your device also sends the text of up to six messages just before it in that chat — yours and the other person's, each cut to 500 characters, with no names, photos, files or voice — so that the translation provider can tell what is being answered and which meaning of a word is meant. They are used only for that one translation, are not translated themselves, and our service does not keep them. Turning off cloud translation stops this too.

Improved translation. To find and fix mistakes in translations, while Improved translation is on (Settings → Translation, and the "Cloud features" window), our server keeps the text messages you write that it translates — including messages in end-to-end encrypted chats, which your phone sends to our translation service to be translated — each with its translation, the two languages, the other person's account identifier and, if you said so in that chat's settings, what they are to you. They are kept for 30 days and then deleted. This is the one exception to not storing what is translated, said above. Only your own switch keeps your words; the other person's switch decides about theirs. Voice messages, calls and the earlier messages sent along for context are not kept. It is on unless you turn it off — except in the European Union, the EEA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and where we do not yet know your country, where it stays off until you turn it on. Turning it off stops this at once; what was already kept is deleted when its 30 days are up, and all of it is deleted with your account.

On aithao.com you can try the translation yourself: what you type or say there is sent to a translation provider and comes back translated. We keep neither the recording nor the text, and the demo needs no account.

By default, the translation provider reproduces your voice from your speech in the current call or voice message while translating it, so the other person hears the translation in a voice like yours. For voice messages, the voice made from your recording also reads your next voice messages in the same language for up to 30 minutes after it was made, and is then deleted; a call’s voice is deleted when the call ends. AiThao does not create a voice model in advance and does not keep one longer than that. Older app versions may send a setup recording to our server; it is discarded there and is not sent to a voice-model provider. You can turn your own voice off in the app's settings; then, and wherever the provider cannot reproduce a voice, translation uses a preset synthetic voice. For languages the translation provider cannot speak, a separate speech-synthesis provider says the translated text; it receives only that text and its language. Voice messages longer than one minute, or ones whose live translation fails, use transcription, text translation and a synthetic voice.

Calls are carried by media server software that runs on our own server — the company behind it receives nothing. Where a direct path between two phones cannot be established, audio and video are relayed through that server; a relay may also carry the media, and the operator of that relay is a third party.

Calls between two phones that support it are end-to-end encrypted: each call has its own key, sent to the other person's phone through your encrypted chat, and the media server relays audio and video it cannot decrypt. When translation is turned on during a call, the call's key is given to our translation worker so it can hear the call; from that moment the call is not end-to-end encrypted, and the lock on the call screen goes. Video is never sent to the translation provider. We store a call log — who called whom, when, and for how long — so you can see your own call history. We do not record calls.

Calls are not recorded. The call log — who, when and how long — stays until you remove the entry or delete your account. Removing your entry does not remove the other participant’s; the shared record is deleted once no participant keeps it.

Group calls use transport encryption, not end-to-end encryption. With a speaker’s consent, their speech is sent to a cloud translation provider. Video is not sent for translation.

Summaries of calls with or without translation. Enable the feature during the call: the other person sees a notice and may prohibit summaries. With supported speech recognition, text stays on your device until you remove the call, clear its history or erase the device’s data. A copy goes to your other devices end-to-end encrypted; our server cannot read it. iPhone requires iOS 26+.

To create the summary, the written transcript goes to a cloud AI provider. This is text, not an audio recording. AiThao does not retain the transcript on the server. The summary is temporarily kept in memory so repeated requests within 6 hours can reuse the result.

If the other person has refused summaries in Settings, you cannot make a summary of a call with them.

Two features use the ✨ button next to the message field, and only when you press it. With text in the field, ✨ tidies it: the text goes to a cloud AI provider, which returns it with punctuation and obvious recognition errors fixed. With the field empty, ✨ suggests a message to send: the recent messages of that chat — up to the last three days, at most 60 messages, both yours and the other person's, as your phone shows them after decrypting them — go to a cloud AI provider, which returns a few suggestions. Nothing is sent by itself: the text appears in the field and you decide whether to send it.

AiThao does not keep this text on the server, and the AI provider is used only to produce the answer. You can turn ✨ writing help off in Settings.

How long a file is kept. A file sent in a message is kept for 180 days if it is a photo, and 90 days if it is a video, a voice message or any other file, counted from when it was sent. After that the file is deleted from our storage. The message itself stays in the conversation and says the file is no longer kept. Anything already downloaded to a phone stays on that phone; we cannot reach it and do not try.

My files. Notes and files you keep in My files are stored on your own devices, not on our server. To reach your other devices they are sent through our server end-to-end encrypted, and the server deletes its copy as soon as your other devices have collected it, and within 24 hours at the latest.

In an end-to-end encrypted chat, each photo, file or voice message is encrypted on your phone with its own key before it is uploaded. Object storage (cloud storage and network provider) holds only the encrypted file; the key travels inside the encrypted message. A translated voice message is produced when the listener's phone asks for it and is not stored on our server. Attachments sent in conversations from before end-to-end encryption are stored as they were.

Your own stickers. A sticker you make from your own photo is stored on our server as an ordinary file, without end-to-end encryption, so that everyone you send it to can see it. After you delete it from your pack, the file is deleted like other photos sent in messages.

Links and videos in chats. When a message contains a link, the app on your phone or computer fetches that page itself to show a card with its title and picture; the site sees your device's IP address, and our server is not involved. You can turn link previews off in Settings. A video from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, VK Video, Vimeo or Dailymotion can be played inside AiThao. The site's player does not load until you tap play. Once you do, its official player loads directly from that site, which receives your IP address and device data and handles them under its own privacy policy; AiThao sends it nothing else. YouTube videos play from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode.

Chat backup is optional (Settings → Chat backup). Your phone encrypts a copy of your conversation history with a random key before uploading it. That key is itself locked with a recovery key that is kept in your iCloud Keychain — which Apple encrypts end to end between your own devices — and never sent to us. Our server stores the encrypted backup and the locked key, and can open neither. A new iPhone signed in to the same Apple ID gets your chats back by itself. You can also write the recovery key down. If you lose your phone, your Apple ID and the recovery key, the history cannot be restored, by you or by us. Turning backup off, or deleting your account, deletes the backup from our server.

Moving chats to a new phone: the new phone shows a code, the old phone scans it and sends the history encrypted with a key that travels only in that code. Our server relays the encrypted data and deletes it within an hour.

A group chat works like a one-to-one chat with more people in it: everything this page says about messages, translation, calls and files applies to every member, and each member reads the group in their own language. In addition, our server stores the group's name and picture, who is in it, who created it and who can manage it. Leaving a group removes you from its member list; messages you already sent stay in the group, as they do in a one-to-one chat.

Contacts are people you added inside AiThao — by their AiThao Number, their username or their QR code. Anyone who knows your AiThao Number or username can find your profile; what they see of it is your setting. The version in the App Store can still offer to find people by phone number. If you open that screen and allow access to your contacts, numbers from your address book are sent to our server over an encrypted connection, where each becomes a keyed hash; the plain numbers are never stored and the names are never sent. It finds nobody, and it is being removed in the next version, along with the app's request for access, because we cannot verify that a number belongs to the person who gave it to us and would rather offer nothing than offer that. This page will be updated the day that version ships.

"Online" and "last seen" are a single expiring timestamp, never a log, and who may see them is your setting. Hiding looks exactly like being offline.

Push notifications are delivered by Apple (APNs). For an end-to-end encrypted message, our server sends "New message" together with a short preview that the sender's phone encrypted for your phone; your phone opens it and shows the words, according to your preview setting and iOS's. Neither Apple nor our server can read the preview. The key your phone uses for this is replaced every 30 days. To deliver notifications and calls we store a push token and a device identifier for each of your devices.

On an iPhone or a Mac the app asks once whether Siri may be used with it. If you allow it, the app tells Siri the names of the people you write to and call, so that "write to…" and "call…" can find them. Siri is never given what you wrote or said. You can change this at any time in the device's Settings, under AiThao.

Ordinary chats and calls are free. Translated calls and translated voice messages use minutes. New accounts receive a one-time allowance of free minutes to get started. When you buy more minutes, Apple processes the payment; we receive a signed receipt from Apple and store a record of the purchase, your minute balance, and how minutes are used (call or voice message, languages, provider, cost) so we can meter the service and support the paid feature.

We keep operational data needed to run and secure the service: request logs (URL, status, error, timestamp), call-quality and latency metrics, and an opaque anti-abuse marker tied to a device rather than to you. The only third-party SDKs in the apps that send data on their own are Meta's and Google Analytics for Firebase, both only to measure our own advertising, and Google's maps — all described below. We do not build profiles of you and make no automated decisions about you.

The apps send the device type and model, operating system version, app version, app language, whether notifications are allowed, and the network type (Wi-Fi or mobile). On Android, they also send the store campaign the app was installed from. The server derives an approximate country from the connection address and stores only the country, not the address, for these statistics. We use these data for service statistics and fixing problems. They are not used for advertising, sold, or shared with others.

If you installed AiThao on iPhone after tapping an Apple Ads ad, the app sends Apple's attribution token to our server once; the server asks Apple which ad campaign it was and keeps only the campaign, ad group and keyword numbers with your account, to see which advertising brings people who use the service. No device identifier is used and there is no tracking across other apps.

We advertise AiThao on Facebook and Instagram. To learn which of those ads bring people to the app, the apps include Meta's SDK (Facebook App Events). It tells Meta when the app is opened and when an account is created, and may report purchases made in the app (the product and its price), together with technical data the SDK collects: the device model, the system and app versions, language, time zone and the connection's IP address. On Android it also sends the device's advertising ID, which you can reset or delete in Android settings (Google → Ads). On iPhone, iPad and Mac the advertising identifier is not collected and the app does not ask to track you. Your messages, contacts, calls and name are never sent to Meta. Meta processes these data under its own terms and privacy policy.

We also advertise AiThao through Google Ads. To learn which of those ads bring people who really talk, the iPhone, Mac and Android apps include Google Analytics for Firebase. It tells Google when the app is installed and opened and, once each, that you have had your first conversation in which both of you wrote, and that you have exchanged messages with somebody who writes in another language — those facts alone, with nothing of the messages — together with technical data the SDK collects: an identifier of this app installation, the device model, the system and app versions, language, country and the connection's IP address. On Android it also sends the device's advertising ID, which you can reset or delete in Android settings (Google → Ads). On iPhone and Mac the advertising identifier is not collected and the app does not ask to track you. Your messages, contacts, calls, name and the people you write to are never sent to Google. Google processes these data under its own terms and privacy policy.

The apps include Google's Maps SDK to show and share places. It contacts Google's servers, which receive the connection's IP address and technical data about the device and app, and, when you open a map, the area shown. If you choose Apple Maps or OpenStreetMap instead, that service receives the area you view.

When the iPhone, iPad or Mac app crashes or freezes, Apple's MetricKit gives the app a technical report on its next launch, and the app sends it to our server with your account. It contains program addresses, the device model and the system and app versions — no messages, contacts or other content. We use it only to fix the problem and keep it for 90 days. The Android app does the same: after a crash or freeze it reads the system's record of it at the next launch and sends the same kind of report — the error type, program frames, the device model and the system and app versions, with no content.

We use the following providers to run AiThao. Each receives only what its role needs, and processes it under its own terms.

We will tell you the names of the providers we use on request: write to privacy@aithao.com.

• No ads in the app, and no data sold. Meta and Google receive only the events described above, to measure our own advertising.
• No third-party analytics beyond that measurement of our advertising, and on iPhone, iPad and Mac no tracking across other companies' apps and websites.
• No profiling, and no automated decisions about you.
• No access to your photo library, microphone or location except when you use the feature that needs it, and only for that.

• Access and export. Write to privacy@aithao.com and within 30 days we send you a file with the data our server holds about your account: your account, contacts and messages as you see them. The export contains what our server holds. For end-to-end encrypted chats that is who wrote to whom and when, not the words — those are only on your phones and in your chat backup.
• Correction. You can edit your profile in the app at any time.
• Deletion. Settings → Account → Delete account removes the account, its identities, devices, contacts, invites, blocks, call history and presence, and frees the username. Your profile picture, cover image and any upload that never reached a conversation are deleted from our storage at the same time. So are your chat backup and any chats in transit between your phones. Messages and files you already sent to another person stay in their conversation, because they are theirs too: there is one copy on the server and it is as much the recipient's record as yours. What goes is your name on them — the account is gone, the files stop recording who uploaded them, and you appear to the other person only as “Deleted account”. If you want a particular message and its file gone from both sides, delete it for everyone before you delete your account; that is a separate action and closing the account never does it for you. Deletion is irreversible.
• Automatic deletion. If you do not open AiThao for the period set in Settings → Privacy → Delete account if away for — six months unless you choose 1, 3 or 12 months — your account is deleted in the same way as above. A week before, we send a notification to your phone.
• Objection and restriction. You can turn off presence sharing, message previews and translation at any time in Settings.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the rights to access, correct, delete, port, and object to the processing of your personal data, and to complain to your data protection authority. Our legal bases are performance of our contract with you (running the messenger and the paid feature), your consent (optional features such as translation), and our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and preventing abuse. If you are a California resident, you have the rights to know, delete, and correct your personal information and not to be discriminated against for exercising them; we do not sell or share personal information. To exercise any right, write to privacy@aithao.com.

Our servers and those of our providers may be in different countries, and where they are can change. Your data may therefore be processed outside your own country. To find out where your data is processed, write to privacy@aithao.com.

AiThao is not directed to children under 13, or under the age of digital consent in your country where that is higher. We do not knowingly collect data from them.

When this policy changes in a way that matters, we update the date above and, for a significant change, tell you in the app. Continuing to use AiThao after a change means the updated policy applies.

Questions, or a request about your data: privacy@aithao.com.