1. Who we are
Tochi is a mood tracker and diary app published by The Lazy Hippo Development, a company registered in Seoul, Republic of Korea. In this policy, "we", "us" and "Tochi" mean The Lazy Hippo Development, and "you" means the person using the app or this website.
We are the data controller for the personal data described here. Our contact details are at the bottom of this page.
This policy applies to the Tochi app on iOS and Android and to this website. It does not apply to the App Store, Google Play, or any other service you reach by following a link out of Tochi — those have their own policies.
2. What we collect
We group what Tochi holds into five kinds of data. The most sensitive by far is the first one.
Diary content — what you write
This is the heart of the app and we treat it accordingly. It includes:
- Mood logs: the feeling you selected, any trigger or tag you attached, and the time you logged it
- Written entries, including free typing and answers given during guided writing
- Your side of conversations with Tochi, and Tochi's replies
- Photos or images you choose to attach to an entry
- Which Life Chapter you assigned an entry to, and the pages Tochi wrote from it
- The understanding Tochi builds from the above: people, places, interests, situations and Episodes, plus any corrections you make to them
Under the GDPR, a diary entry about your mood or health may be special category data. We process it only to run the features you asked for, on the basis of your explicit consent, which you give by choosing to write it and which you can withdraw by deleting the entry or your account.
Account data
- Your email address, if you sign up with email, Google Sign-In or Sign in with Apple. If you use Sign in with Apple's private relay, we only ever see the relay address.
- An anonymous account identifier, if you start using Tochi without signing up. You can link an anonymous account to a real one later without losing your entries.
- A display name, if you set one
Subscription data
- Whether your account currently has an active Tochi subscription, and when it expires
- Purchase receipts and transaction identifiers from the App Store or Google Play
- How much of the free weekly allowance you have used
We never see your card details. All payments are taken by Apple or Google under their own terms. We only receive the result.
Technical and usage data
- Device model, operating system version, language and approximate region
- App version, session counts, and which features were opened
- Crash reports and diagnostic logs when the app fails
- A push notification token, if you allow notifications
Advertising measurement
Tochi shows no ads in the app. We do advertise Tochi elsewhere, and to learn which of those ads led people to install it, Google Analytics for Firebase can use your iPhone or iPad's advertising identifier, but only if you allow it in the App Tracking Transparency prompt. On Android, Tochi does not collect the advertising ID. Your diary content is never shared with any advertising service and is never used to target ads.
3. Why we process it, and on what legal basis
If you are in the EEA or the UK, the table below is the GDPR Article 6 (and, for diary content, Article 9) basis we rely on.
| What we do | Data used | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Store and show your diary, moods and chapters | Diary content, account data | Performance of our contract with you; explicit consent for health-related content |
| Let Tochi converse, follow Episodes and write chapter pages | Diary content | Performance of our contract; explicit consent for health-related content |
| Check whether crisis or safety support should be offered | Diary content | Explicit consent; our legitimate interest in user safety |
| Create and secure your account | Account data | Performance of our contract |
| Unlock paid features and enforce the free weekly allowance | Subscription data | Performance of our contract |
| Send reminders and notifications you turned on | Push token, account data | Consent, which you can withdraw in your device settings |
| Fix crashes and understand which features are used | Technical and usage data | Our legitimate interest in a working, improving app |
| Measure which of our ads led to your install | Advertising identifier (iOS only), install and first-open events | Consent, through the App Tracking Transparency prompt |
| Prevent abuse, fraud and misuse of paid features | Account, subscription, technical data | Our legitimate interest in protecting the service |
| Meet legal, tax and accounting duties | Subscription data | Compliance with a legal obligation |
We do not use your diary content for advertising, for profiling that has legal effects on you, or for automated decision-making of that kind.
4. How AI processing works
Tochi's conversations, Episodes, insights and chapter pages are generated by a large language model. This is the part of the app people most deserve a clear answer about, so here it is in full.
What gets sent
When you have a conversation with Tochi, save a guided entry, let Tochi assign or write a Life Chapter page, or when Tochi updates its understanding of an ongoing situation, the relevant text is sent to OpenAI, L.L.C. for processing. That can include the entry you just wrote, recent related entries, and the concise understanding Tochi has already stored about the people and situations involved. We send what the feature needs, not your whole diary.
What does not happen
- Your content is not used to train OpenAI's models. OpenAI's API terms state that data submitted through the API is not used to train or improve their models.
- We do not send your email address, your name or your account identifier to OpenAI along with your text.
- Tochi does not browse the internet, and it does not share what you wrote with other users.
Retention at the processor
OpenAI may retain API data for a limited period for abuse and misuse monitoring before deleting it, in line with their published API data policy. We do not control that window.
Safety checks
Text you write is also screened for signs that you may be in crisis, so Tochi can offer a check-in or point you to a helpline instead of continuing as normal. Simple matches are handled on your device with no model call at all; ambiguous cases may be checked by a model. This is a safety feature, not a diagnosis.
What AI output is worth
Everything Tochi writes is an interpretation, and interpretations can be wrong. Chapter pages, Episode summaries and anything Tochi says it understands about you are editable and deletable by hand, and a correction you make always outranks something Tochi inferred. Nothing Tochi produces is medical, psychological, legal or financial advice.
5. Who else processes your data
We use a small number of service providers. Each one acts on our instructions as a processor, under a data processing agreement, and none of them may use your data for their own purposes.
| Provider | What it handles | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Google Firebase (Google LLC / Google Ireland Ltd) | Account sign-in, diary and account storage, file storage, server functions, push notifications | United States, EU |
| Google Analytics for Firebase & Firebase Crashlytics | Usage statistics, crash reports, and measuring which of our ads led to an install | United States, EU |
| OpenAI, L.L.C. | Language model processing of entry text, as described in section 4 | United States |
| RevenueCat, Inc. | Subscription status and receipt validation | United States |
| Apple Inc. and Google LLC | Payments, in-app purchases, Sign in with Apple, Google Sign-In | Global |
We may also disclose personal data where we are legally required to, for example in response to a valid order from a competent authority, or where it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. If we are ever involved in a merger or acquisition, your data may transfer to the acquiring entity under this same policy.
We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
6. International transfers
We are based in the Republic of Korea, and several of our processors are in the United States. That means your data is transferred outside the EEA, the UK and, for users elsewhere, outside your own country.
Where we transfer personal data out of the EEA or the UK, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where applicable), together with the providers' own safeguards, including certification under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where a provider holds it.
You can ask us for more detail about the safeguards that apply to a particular transfer by writing to the address at the bottom of this page.
7. How long we keep things
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Diary entries, moods, chapters and Tochi's understanding | Until you delete them, or until you delete your account |
| Account data | For the life of your account |
| Deleted content in encrypted backups | Up to 30 days after deletion, then overwritten |
| Crash reports and diagnostics | Up to 90 days |
| Usage analytics | Up to 14 months |
| Purchase and transaction records | As long as tax and accounting law requires, typically 5 years |
When you ask Tochi to forget something it learned about you, Tochi stops using it immediately. The original entry you wrote is not silently rewritten — your own words stay yours until you delete them yourself.
8. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can do the following from inside the app at any time:
- Read, edit or delete any individual entry, mood or chapter page
- Correct anything Tochi has understood about you — a correction always outranks an inference
- Tell Tochi to forget a person, situation or detail
- Delete your entire account, which removes your entries, your chapters and Tochi's understanding
If you are in the EEA or the UK
Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR you have the right to access your data, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to its processing, to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing that already happened. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office.
If you are in the Republic of Korea
Under the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) you may request access to your personal information, correction or deletion, and suspension of processing. You may also raise a dispute with the Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee or report to the Korea Internet & Security Agency's privacy centre (privacy.kisa.or.kr, 118).
If you are in California
Under the CCPA and CPRA you have the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to request deletion, to request correction, to opt out of sale or sharing — we do neither — and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights. You may use an authorised agent to make a request.
If you are in Brazil
Under the LGPD you have the rights of confirmation, access, correction, anonymisation or deletion, portability, information about data sharing, and the right to withdraw consent.
Making a request
Most requests are fastest from inside the app. If you would rather write to us, email the address at the bottom of this page. We answer within 30 days. We may need to confirm that the request comes from the account holder before acting on it.
9. Security
- All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit with TLS
- Stored data is encrypted at rest by our infrastructure provider
- Database rules restrict every document to the account that owns it, enforced on the server rather than in the app
- Subscription status is verified server-side, so it cannot be granted by editing anything on the device
- You can set an in-app passcode so that the diary is not readable by anyone who picks up your unlocked phone
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach ever affects your personal data and is likely to result in a risk to your rights, we will notify you and the relevant authority as the law requires.
10. Children
Tochi is not directed at children. You must be at least 16 to use Tochi in the EEA and the UK, at least 14 in the Republic of Korea, and at least 13 elsewhere — or older, where your local law sets a higher age for consenting to this kind of processing.
We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone below that age. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.
11. Device permissions
Tochi asks for a permission only at the moment a feature needs it, and the app keeps working if you refuse.
| Permission | Why | If you refuse |
|---|---|---|
| Notifications | Reminders you chose to set | No reminders; everything else works |
| Photo library (read) | Attaching an image to an entry | You cannot attach photos |
| App Tracking Transparency (iOS) | Measuring which of our ads led to your install | Your install is not attributed to an ad; everything else works |
12. Changes to this policy
We update this policy when the app changes. The date at the top always reflects the current version.
If a change materially affects how your diary content is processed, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect, and where the law requires it we will ask for your consent again rather than assume it.
Contact the data controller
For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights described above, write to us. We answer in English, Korean and Japanese.
The Lazy Hippo Development38 Deungyong-ro, Dongjak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Business registration number: 1215733103
thelazyhippodevelopment@gmail.com