Privacy Policy

To create an anima account, we ask for:

• your full name
• your institution-provided email address
• a password

You may also choose to write a description of yourself. Your institution email is used to verify your access and connect your account to the correct college or university. When you first join, anima does not receive additional personal information about you from your institution. The personal context anima develops about you comes from what you choose to share over time.

anima stores your conversation history so you can return to previous chats. You choose what you share with anima. This can include anything you want help with or want anima to understand about you, such as your studies, goals, work or challenges.

Your institution cannot read your conversations, subject to the safety process described in section 7.

As you use anima, it may remember useful information from your conversations so you do not have to start from scratch each time. This could include things such as your goals, preferences, circumstances, challenges and other context that helps anima support you more personally over time.

Your institution cannot access anima’s stored memory about you.

anima may use what you share in your conversations to identify Signals across eight areas of student life:

• Finance
• Belonging
• Academic
• Basic Needs
• Mindset
• Purpose
• Life Demands
• Safety

Signals are designed to help identify how things are going and where additional support may be useful. For each Signal, anima may also generate a short interpretation explaining the context behind it based on what you have shared. Signals are updated periodically so they can reflect changes over time.

Your institution cannot see your conversations or anima’s stored memory about you, subject to the safety process described in section 7.

Staff who have been given access to your institution’s anima account may see:

• your name and institution email
• the description you wrote about yourself, if you provided one
• your Signals
• a short explanation of the context behind each Signal
• broad information about your engagement with anima, such as whether you have been active recently and your message count over the last 28 days

Staff do not see your chat content, chat titles, individual chat threads or the information anima has stored in memory about you, except for information shared through the safety process in section 7.

Your institution may also see aggregate information across groups of students to help understand broader patterns. In V1, student information can be viewed inside anima but cannot be exported or downloaded by institution staff.

anima may use what you share to recommend a relevant person or service from your institution’s support directory. A normal handoff always requires your agreement.

If you agree to be connected, anima may share:

• your name
• your institution email
• the reason for the handoff

If you choose to receive a phone call, anima may also ask for your phone number and share it with the person or service handling the request. Your full conversation history is not shared as part of a handoff.

Your institution may configure a safety escalation process within anima. If anima identifies a serious safety concern, it may follow the escalation process configured by your institution. This may include sharing relevant information with a designated person or service even where you have not separately requested a handoff.

anima can provide information and suggest sources of support, but it is not an emergency, crisis or healthcare service. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, you should contact the appropriate emergency service directly.

You can start an Off the record conversation when you do not want that conversation to become part of your anima history. During an Off the record chat, anima can still use what it already knows about you to provide relevant support. However:

• the conversation is not added to your chat history
• nothing from it is added to anima’s memory
• nothing from it is used to create or update your Signals

Off the record messages are still sent to Anthropic to generate replies. If the conversation is inactive for five minutes or more, the session ends. A server copy may be kept under your institution’s retention settings for up to 365 days.

We use your information to:

• provide and operate anima
• respond to your conversations
• personalise your experience over time
• maintain your conversation history and memory
• generate and update Signals
• recommend relevant information, people and services
• facilitate handoffs you agree to
• follow configured safety escalation processes where applicable
• send notifications and institution outreach
• transcribe voice dictation and read responses aloud when you use those features
• understand basic engagement with the service
• monitor, secure and improve anima
• meet applicable legal and regulatory requirements

anima uses Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet to respond to conversations and support features such as memory and Signals. When you chat with anima, we send Anthropic your message and any personal information you include in it. We may also send relevant earlier messages and information anima remembers about you so it can provide a useful response. This may include sensitive information you choose to share. Off the record messages are also sent to Anthropic for a reply.

Before sending any of this information to Anthropic, we explain this sharing in the app and ask for your explicit permission. If you do not agree, we do not send your information to Anthropic and you cannot use anima’s AI chat features.

Anthropic processes this information to provide anima’s AI features. Student personal information is not used to train general AI models.

We may use information that has been fully anonymised or aggregated to evaluate and improve anima, including its quality, safety and effectiveness.

AI can make mistakes. anima’s responses and Signals are designed to support students and staff, not replace appropriate professional or institutional judgement.

anima’s Signals are designed to support students and staff. They are not used by anima to make important institutional decisions about you.

We use service providers to operate anima. These currently include:

• Anthropic — receives messages and relevant context for AI processing
• Google Cloud Platform — application hosting and data storage
• Sentry — error monitoring, performance and reliability
• Resend — sends service emails
• Expo — delivers push notifications
• AssemblyAI — transcribes audio when you use voice dictation
• ElevenLabs — processes text when you choose to hear a response read aloud

These providers receive only the information needed to perform their services. We require them to protect personal information to the same or an equivalent standard as this policy and applicable App Store requirements. We may update the providers we use as anima develops.

We collect basic information about how anima is used, such as logins, activity and message counts. This helps us understand engagement, maintain the service and improve how anima works. Your institution may see broad engagement information, including whether you have been active recently and your message count over the last 28 days, but does not receive details about your individual conversations.

anima may send notifications related to your use of the service. Your institution may also use anima to send outreach or messages to students. You can control push-notification permissions through your device settings.

Students can create their own anima account using an eligible institution-provided email address. anima uses that email address to connect the account to the appropriate institution.

Your institution can configure parts of its anima environment, including:

• its support directory
• institution-specific knowledge
• outreach
• safety escalation processes
• which staff have access to the institution platform

Your institution does not control or have access to your conversations or anima’s stored memory about you, subject to the safety process described in section 7. Your institution may have its own privacy policies that also apply to information it receives through anima.

We keep your personal information while your anima account is active and for as long as needed to provide the service. If you are no longer eligible to use anima through your institution, your account and personal information may be deleted. Off the record chats follow the retention settings described in section 8.

You can delete your anima account and personal data from within the app. When you delete your account, we delete the personal information linked to you, including your account information, conversation history, stored context and identifiable Signals.

You can withdraw your permission for future AI processing by contacting us at support@meetanima.ai. If you withdraw it, we will stop sending your information to Anthropic and anima’s AI chat features will no longer work for you. Withdrawal does not undo processing that occurred before it.

We may retain information that has been fully anonymised so that it can no longer be linked back to you. This may include anonymised or aggregate information used to understand and improve anima.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your personal information for advertising.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights relating to your personal information, including the right to request access to, correction of or deletion of your information. You can also delete your anima account directly within the app.

If you have a privacy question or would like to exercise your rights, contact us at: support@meetanima.ai

anima is intended for students aged 18 and over. You must be at least 18 years old to create an anima account.

We use technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect personal information from unauthorised access, loss, misuse or disclosure. No online service can guarantee absolute security, but we take reasonable measures to protect the information entrusted to us.

anima and the service providers that support it may process information in countries outside the country in which you live. Where required, we use appropriate safeguards to protect personal information when it is transferred internationally.

We may update this Privacy Policy as anima develops or where our practices or legal requirements change. If we make material changes, we will take appropriate steps to let you know.

anima is provided by:
Reflectrr Ltd
United Kingdom
support@meetanima.ai

If you use anima through a college or university, you may also contact that institution about how it handles information it receives through anima.