Privacy & Safety

What BellTide does and how it keeps you safe.

What BellTide does

BellTide calls you at the times you schedule — a short 30–45 second check-in to confirm whether you've completed a planned activity. You set a schedule, BellTide calls, you say yes or no, the call ends. You can skip, delay, or stop at any time via the app or SMS.

Calls are made by our Bellringers — a pool of AI voices that rotate across your check-ins. BellTide is designed to feel like a hotel wake-up service, not a personal relationship: brief, purposeful nudges from a rotating team, not a single AI companion. You can adjust how warm or formal calls feel in Settings, but the Bellringers are built to stay task-focused — not to have conversations.

What BellTide won't do

  • We won't retain what you say. Your response is used briefly to classify "done" or "not done", then discarded.
  • We won't let the Bellringers build a relationship with you. Each call is stateless — they won't reference what you said last Tuesday. (An optional call-context feature is in development — off by default — that would let you share recent history if you choose to with extra safety measures.)
  • We won't sell your data. Your data stays yours. It will never be sold or shared with third parties.
We will never record calls on our live service. That's a firm line. The only exception is our testing environment where if needed, beta participants provide explicit written consent before any recording takes place.

What we store

  • Your name, email address, and phone number.
  • Your schedule — activity names and times.
  • Call outcomes: "done", "not done", "no answer" — plus date and time.
  • App preferences (theme, timezone, notification choices).
  • Billing: payments are processed by Stripe. We store only a secure payment token — your full card details never touch our servers.

Your phone number is used only to place calls and send SMS check-ins you've opted into. It is never shown in logs or error messages.

Data retention: call outcomes are kept while your account is active, then held for 90 days after cancellation before being purged. Billing records are kept for 7 years as required by law. Deleted accounts are fully purged within 30 days.

How we use your data — and your opt-out

We analyse aggregate, anonymised call data to understand how BellTide is performing. Names, emails, and phone numbers are never included. Location data is bucketed by region — not by country — unless a region has more than 30 users, to prevent individuals being identifiable.

You can opt out of your data being included in any aggregate analysis from Settings.

Separately, the Analyse & Tune features let you request AI reviews and suggestions based on your own last 30 days of call data and settings. Recommendations are discarded immediately after your session. Your underlying data is not changed, and you can export it at any time from Settings.

Marketing

Marketing only happens if you explicitly opt in. It is by email only — never by phone call, SMS, or messaging app. You can withdraw consent at any time from Settings or by unsubscribing from any email.

Designed for neurodivergent users

BellTide is built with ADHD and neurodivergent adults in mind. Short calls, predictable structure, and multiple escape mechanisms (passphrase, SMS delay, skip day) are built in to reduce anxiety. You are always in control of when and how BellTide reaches you.

If you are struggling

BellTide is an accountability tool, not a mental health service. If you're in distress, please reach out to a friend, a loved one, or an emergency service.

BellTide listens for distress signals during calls. If one is detected, the Bellringer will acknowledge your feelings warmly, point you toward support, and end the checkpoint without asking you to complete tasks. Nothing you said is stored. The account admin is notified that a concern was flagged — but never told what you said.

Infrastructure

  • Hosting: Hetzner Cloud (EU — Germany/Finland). Databases encrypted at rest. HTTPS only. Nightly backups in EU-region storage.
  • Calls: Routed through Twilio (US). No recordings or transcripts are held by Twilio — calls are processed in real time and not retained.
  • Voice synthesis: ElevenLabs (US). Voice data is not linked to your identity.
  • AI responses: Anthropic Claude API (US). No personally identifiable information is included in API requests.
  • Payments: Stripe (US). We do not handle or store card data directly.

Twilio, ElevenLabs, and Anthropic are US-based — a pragmatic necessity where no equivalent EU providers currently exist. These vendors are reviewed at each major release.

Your rights

  • Access & export. View and download all your data from Settings at any time.
  • Delete. Delete your account and all data from Settings or by contacting us — purged within 30 days.
  • Opt out of analysis. Exclude your data from aggregate reporting in Settings.
  • Opt out of communications. Stop calls, SMS, or email from Settings at any time.
  • If the service closes. Your data will be made available for download before everything is deleted.

BellTide is for users aged 18 and over. We're developing family plans to allow parents to invite under-18s — parental consent will be required when available.

Questions? support@belltide.app — we respond within 2 business days.

Last updated March 2026. This is a plain-language statement, not a legal privacy policy. A full legal ToS and privacy policy will be published before public launch.