Privacy Policy
Last Updated: August 19, 2026
Zachary Chen ("Circa," "we," "our," or "us") provides this Privacy Policy to explain how we collect, use, disclose, and otherwise process information in connection with our website at https://trycirca.org, our mobile application, and any related services, features, and functionality (collectively, the "Services"). Capitalized terms not defined here have the meaning given in our Terms of Service, which incorporate this Privacy Policy by reference.
By accessing or using the Services, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy.
1. Information We Collect
Information you provide. Account and profile details, including your name, phone number, birthday, school or workplace, interests, and optional attributes you choose to add. Content you create or submit, including memories, photos, videos, voice recordings, transcripts, replies, prompts and answers, friend connections, and groups ("User Contributions"). Support messages, feedback, and account-deletion requests.
Information you permit us to access. Location, when enabled, to support city-level presence and nearby-friend features. Contacts, processed on your device into phone-number hashes so Circa can find people you may know; we do not upload your address-book names. Calendar availability, processed on your device into coarse free/busy signals; event titles, attendees, and locations do not leave your device. Microphone, notifications, and photo access only when you use the related feature.
Information from the Circa Mac companion. If you connect it, it reads iMessage metadata locally and uploads hashes and numeric relationship signals. It does not upload message bodies, contact names, or raw phone numbers.
Information collected automatically. Device, app, diagnostic, crash, and performance information, and information about how you interact with the Services, collected to operate, secure, debug, and improve them.
2. How We Use Information
We use information to create and authenticate accounts; operate, maintain, secure, and improve the Services; show content to the people you choose; operate friend, presence, prompt, and reminder features; personalize your experience; deliver notifications; provide support; prevent fraud and abuse; comply with legal obligations; and for any other purpose disclosed to you or permitted by applicable law.
Development and improvement of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The Services include features that use artificial intelligence and machine learning, including transcription of audio you submit and generation, summarization, or refinement of content at your direction. We may use User Contributions and other information — including audio recordings, transcripts, images, and text — to operate, evaluate, develop, train, and improve artificial intelligence and machine learning models and related technologies, and we may engage service providers, vendors, and technology partners, including providers of artificial intelligence models and infrastructure, to process such information for these purposes on our behalf and, where permitted, for the development and improvement of their technologies. You acknowledge that insights, learnings, and improvements derived from such processing may become embedded in models in a manner that cannot practicably be separated or removed, and that we retain rights in aggregated and de-identified data derived from your information, including after deletion of your User Contributions or termination of your account.
3. How We Share Information
With people you choose. Your profile and User Contributions are shared with the friends, groups, and audiences you select.
Service providers and partners. We share information with vendors that perform services for us, including authentication, cloud hosting and storage, notifications, analytics, diagnostics, media processing, transcription, and artificial intelligence and machine learning providers. They may process information to provide those services and as otherwise described in Section 2.
Legal and safety. We may disclose information where we believe it is required or appropriate to comply with law or legal process, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Circa, our users, or others.
Business transfers. We may disclose or transfer information in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets, or during due diligence for such a transaction.
Aggregated and de-identified information. We may create and use aggregated or de-identified information, which is not subject to this Privacy Policy, for any lawful purpose, including research, benchmarking, publication, and the development of our technologies.
4. Retention
We retain information for as long as your account is active and thereafter as reasonably necessary to operate, secure, and improve the Services, to comply with legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements. Content you submit, including audio recordings and transcripts, may be retained after the feature that created it has completed, including for quality, safety, debugging, and the purposes described in Section 2. Retention periods for aggregated and de-identified information, and for information already used in model development, are not limited by deletion of your account.
5. Your Choices
You can change Contacts, Calendar, Location, Microphone, Photos, and Notification permissions at any time in iOS Settings, and adjust location and notification preferences inside Circa. You can delete individual content where that option is available, and you can delete your account in Circa under Settings → Danger Zone. We may retain limited records where required or permitted for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, or as described in Section 4.
Deleting your account. When you delete your account, your profile and your content are hidden immediately — you disappear from your friends' feeds and lists, and nothing of yours remains visible to anyone. Nothing is erased for 90 days. If you sign in during that period, your account and everything in it are restored exactly as they were. After 90 days the deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed.
At that point your profile, your account, and everything visible only to you are erased. Two things are treated differently, and both are deliberate. Memories that include other people are not deleted. A photo or memory in which a friend is tagged is a record that the two of you were there, and it stays on their timeline — with your name, handle, profile picture, and any link back to your account removed, so it is no longer attributed to you. Voice recordings are always deleted, including those in shared memories, because a recording of a voice identifies you in a way a caption does not. Content you posted that includes no one else is deleted along with your account.
Retention limits described in Section 4 continue to apply: aggregated and de-identified information, and information already used in model development, are not affected by deletion of your account.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port your personal information, or to object to or restrict certain processing. To make a request, contact us at team@trycirca.org. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request, and we may decline requests as permitted by applicable law.
6. Security
We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
7. Children
The Services are not directed to children. You may use the Services only if you are at least 13 years of age or, if higher, the age at which an individual is no longer considered a child under the data protection laws of your jurisdiction.
8. International Users
We operate in the United States and may process and store information in the United States and other countries, which may have different data protection laws than your jurisdiction. Where required, we implement appropriate safeguards for such transfers.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes we will post the updated version here and update the date above. Your continued use of the Services after the updated policy becomes available constitutes acceptance of the changes.
10. Contact Us
Questions or privacy requests: team@trycirca.org