Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Aura is operated by Vigyaan LLC, a private company registered in the United States. When this policy says "we", "us", or "our", it refers to Vigyaan LLC. When it says "the app" or "Aura", it refers to the Aura mobile and web application.

Contact for privacy questions: [email protected]

2. What Aura collects

Account information

• Email address (used for sign-in)
• Display name, optional preferred name and nickname
• Hashed password (we never store passwords in plain text)
• Which mentors you select (e.g., Marcus Aurelius, Krishna, Elon Musk)

Wellness data you choose to share

• Conversations with Aura (your messages and Aura's replies, including transcripts of voice calls)
• Life events you ask Aura to track — goals, reminders, habits, tasks, anniversaries
• Optional onboarding details: date of birth, gender, height, weight, occupation, hobbies, fitness goal, diet preference, communication style
• If you connect with a friend using an invite code, we store the fact that your two accounts are linked. What each of you tells Aura about the other stays in your own private memories — neither of you can see the other's conversations or memories.

Memory across sessions

Aura is designed to feel like a continuous companion. To do that, it stores short summaries of things you've shared so it can reference them in future conversations. These memories are visible to you inside the app and can be deleted at any time.

Optional permissions you grant

• Microphone — only when you actively use voice input. Audio is streamed to our voice-AI provider for live speech recognition (see section 4) and is not retained beyond the active session — only the text transcript is kept.
• Health data (Apple Health / Google Fit) — only if you explicitly connect them. Aura reads metrics like sleep and steps to offer better check-ins; it never writes data back.
• Location — only with your permission, and never in the background. Used two ways: when you ask for nearby places, your coordinates are used just-in-time and never stored; and, if location is enabled, the app keeps one coarse, city-level “current area” (like “Jersey City, New Jersey”) so Aura can speak to where you are. It is refreshed when you open the app and replaced each time — precise coordinates never leave your phone, and we never keep a location history. This coarse area may be included as conversation context with our AI provider under the zero-data-retention terms described in section 4. Turning location off removes it.
• Notifications — only if you opt in. Used for daily check-ins or reminders you set up.

Product usage events

To understand which parts of Aura people actually use, the app records lightweight usage events — for example which screens you visit and for how long, which features you tap, and technical counters such as how many AI tokens a conversation used. These events never contain the content of your messages or memories, are stored only on our own infrastructure, and are not shared with any third-party analytics service.

What Aura does NOT collect

• Advertising identifiers (IDFA, AAID)
• Cross-app tracking
• Your contacts, photo library, calendar, or browsing history — a photo you deliberately share in a conversation is covered under “Where your data lives” below
• Audio recorded outside of an active conversation
• Any third-party social media accounts

3. Why we collect it

We collect data for three reasons only:

1. To run the app for you — auth, conversation history, reminders, your Memory tab
2. To make Aura feel personal — memory of past sessions, mentor adaptation, personalized check-ins
3. To keep you safe — crisis detection looks at your message in real time for high-risk language and surfaces helpline information when appropriate

4. Where your data lives

Your data is stored on infrastructure owned and operated by Vigyaan LLC. We do not use advertising networks, third-party analytics services, or data brokers — the only outside parties that ever touch your data are the narrowly-scoped service providers described on this page.

Your profile and long-term memories are stored on hardware Vigyaan LLC controls, and your conversations are never used to train anyone's AI models. The AI that writes Aura's replies — for both text chat and voice — is our AI partner xAI's Grok model. Here is exactly what that means for your data:

• Chat replies. To generate a reply, the recent conversation is sent to xAI. Before anything is sent, your saved personal details are stripped out on our own servers — xAI receives what it needs to write that one reply, not your stored profile or memory archive. A language model running on our own hardware serves as the fallback when xAI is unavailable.
• Voice conversations. When you start a voice conversation, your microphone audio is streamed in real time to xAI to power live speech recognition and the spoken response. We store only the resulting text transcript so the conversation appears in your history — we do not store the raw audio recording. The app shows you a clear disclosure before your first voice conversation.
• Live lookups. If you ask Aura something that needs current information (news, weather, live facts), the question is sent to xAI's search-enabled API to fetch an up-to-date answer. Only what's needed for that lookup is sent.
• Photos. A photo you share is stored with your conversation and treated like anything else you tell Aura. Understanding it and writing your reply may involve xAI, under the same agreement that covers your messages: processed only to generate the response, not retained afterwards, not used for advertising, and not used to train their models.

In every case above, xAI processes the data only to generate the response and does not retain it afterwards; it is not used for advertising and not used to train xAI's models. These commitments are part of our signed data-processing agreement with xAI.

Sensitive details stay local. Before anything is sent to xAI for any of the features above, memories you have marked sensitive — and the conversations that produced them — are automatically withheld. Those details remain on infrastructure we control and are never included in what we send to xAI.

Backups. We keep encrypted backups of our database so your data survives hardware failure. Backup copies are stored in encrypted form with a cloud storage provider and are automatically aged out on a schedule, which is how the 30-day backup-deletion window in section 6 is honored.

For app stability we use industry-standard tools for error monitoring (so we can fix crashes you encounter). Where those tools receive any data, that data is limited to technical context (device type, OS version, stack trace) and never includes the content of your conversations or wellness data.

5. Crisis intervention

Aura includes automatic detection of acute crisis language in user messages. When such language is detected, Aura's response includes contact information for professional 24/7 crisis lines (988 in the United States, iCall and Vandrevala Foundation in India, and international directories).

Important: Aura is NOT a substitute for professional mental health care, medical advice, or emergency services. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please contact local emergency services or one of the helplines listed in the app.

6. How long we keep your data

• Active account data: retained for as long as your account is open
• Deleted conversations and memories: hidden immediately and held in a restorable folder for 30 days, then permanently removed from active databases and from backups within 30 days of that purge
• Deleted accounts: all personal data permanently removed within 30 days of your deletion request
• Anonymized usage statistics (e.g., total message counts, never including content): may be retained indefinitely for product improvement

7. Your rights

Regardless of where you live, Aura offers all users these rights:

• Access — see what we have about you in your in-app profile and history
• Export — request a copy of your data via the in-app Settings or email
• Correct — edit or update your profile at any time
• Delete — delete individual conversations, life events, or your entire account from inside the app
• Withdraw consent — disable optional permissions (microphone, health, location, notifications) in your device settings at any time

To exercise any of these rights, use the in-app Settings screen or email [email protected]. We respond within 30 days.

8. Children's privacy

Aura is intended only for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 and, as a baseline, never from children under 13 years old (in the United States) or under 16 years old (in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom). If you believe a minor has created an account, please contact [email protected] and we will delete the account.

9. International users

Aura is offered globally. If you access Aura from outside the United States, please be aware that your data will be stored on servers that may be located in the United States or in regions where Vigyaan LLC operates infrastructure. By using Aura, you consent to this transfer.

If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with comprehensive data-protection laws, you have additional rights including the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.

10. Sharing with third parties

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data. We do not share it with advertisers. We share data only in these specific situations:

• With service providers strictly necessary to operate Aura (xAI for generating chat and voice replies and for live lookups, as described in section 4; encrypted backup storage; email delivery for password reset). These providers are bound to use the data only to provide the service on our behalf.
• To comply with a valid legal request (subpoena, court order). When this happens, we will notify you unless legally prohibited.
• In the unlikely event of a merger or acquisition, only after you've been notified.

11. Security

We use industry-standard practices to protect your data: HTTPS in transit, encryption at rest where supported, password hashing with bcrypt, and access controls limiting which Vigyaan LLC employees can see what. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat your data with the same care we'd want our own treated.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy occasionally — for new features, legal requirements, or clearer language. When we do, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Material changes will be communicated inside the app before they take effect.

13. Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns?

• Email: [email protected]
• Mailing address: Vigyaan LLC — available on request