Privacy Policy
Last updated 16 October 2026
Aeterna is a place to pray and to read Scripture. Much of what you put into it is private in the ordinary sense of the word, and some of it is private in the legal sense too. This page says exactly what we hold, who can see it, and how to make it go away.
Who we are
Aeterna is run by Bruno Gomes Selva, an individual developer in California, United States, who is responsible for your data. Postal address: 12816 Inglewood Ave #440, Hawthorne, CA 90250, United States. For questions about your data, write to privacy@aeterna-app.com.
Under Brazil's LGPD, the person in charge of data protection (Encarregado) is Bruno Gomes Selva, at the same address.
Information about your faith
When you set up Aeterna you choose a tradition — non-denominational, Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox or Mainline — and the prayers you write are, by their nature, about your beliefs. Under the GDPR this is a special category of personal data (Article 9) and under the LGPD it is sensitive data. We rely on your explicit consent to hold it, you give that consent during setup, and you can withdraw it by deleting your account.
We do not use it to target advertising. Aeterna shows no advertising of any kind and we do not sell data to anyone, ever.
What we collect
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your email address | To sign you in. There is no password: we email a code. |
| A display name, if you give one | So the app can greet you. Optional. |
| Language, tradition, the season you are in, your journey | To choose what to read and pray with you. |
| Your prayers, and the dates you asked to be reminded | They are the prayer journal. They exist only for you. |
| Your conversations with the Companion | So it can remember what matters to you. |
| Topics you type into Reflect | To find passages that speak to them. |
| Listening progress and daily counts | To continue where you left off and to apply the free limits. |
| Subscription records, if you subscribe | To know what you are entitled to. We never see your card. |
| Product analytics — which screens are opened, which features are used | To see where the app confuses people. Counts and screen names only; never a word you wrote. |
What we never collect
- Your voice. When you speak instead of typing, the recognition runs entirely on your phone. The audio is never sent to us or to anyone else, and where a phone cannot do it on the device we do not offer the microphone at all.
- Your payment details. Subscriptions are handled by the App Store. We are told only whether you have one and when it ends.
- Your location. We use your phone's country only to show the right crisis helpline, and we do not store it.
- Recordings of your screen. The app tells our analytics service not to record it, because the screen shows prayers. [Confirm the same setting is off at the analytics project level before publishing: the app refusing it is not the same as the account being unable to.]
- Your contacts, photos, or anything else on your phone.
Who can read what
Nobody at Aeterna can read your prayers or your conversations.
That is enforced by the database, not by policy. Every row of that data is locked to your account, and no staff role — including the owner — has permission to read it. Support can see that you have prayers and how many; it cannot see what any of them say.
When something you write is sent to an AI service
Two things you write leave our systems, and only these two: a message you send to the Companion, and a topic you type into Reflect. They go to the AI services that write Aeterna's replies and read them aloud. Those services do not use your words to train their models, and your words are not sold.
Your prayers are never sent to an AI service. Neither is anything you write in the prayer journal. Listening to a daily passage sends nothing at all.
You can turn AI conversations off at any time in Me. Listening, Reflect and your prayer journal all keep working without them.
The companies that process data for us
| Who | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Hosts the database, sign-in and audio storage | United States (AWS us-west-2) |
| Anthropic | Writes the Companion's replies and the study notes | United States |
| OpenAI | Reads passages and replies aloud | United States |
| PostHog | Product analytics — counts, never content | United States |
| Resend | Sends the sign-in code to your email | United States |
| Apple | Distributes the app and handles subscriptions | Worldwide |
Aeterna is run from the United States, so your data is processed there whichever country you are in. Each provider above processes it under data processing terms that include the standard contractual clauses for transfers from Brazil.
How long we keep it
For as long as you have an account. Deleting your account deletes everything — your prayers, your conversations, your progress and your profile — and it cannot be undone. The deletion cascades through the database rather than marking rows as hidden.
One exception, and it is not about you: records of subscription payments are kept for seven years, the longest US tax rules can require, with your account identifier removed once the account is gone.
If you subscribe, deleting your account does not cancel the subscription. Cancel it in your App Store settings first, or you will keep being charged for something you can no longer open.
Your rights
You can, at any time and without giving a reason:
- See what we hold — everything you wrote is in the app, and you can ask us for a copy of the rest.
- Correct anything that is wrong.
- Delete all of it, from Me → Delete account, or by email if you no longer have the app.
- Withdraw your consent to AI conversations, in Me, and keep using the rest.
- Object, restrict processing, or ask for your data in a portable form.
- Complain to the data protection authority where you live: in Brazil the ANPD, in California the California Privacy Protection Agency.
Write to privacy@aeterna-app.com and we will answer within [30] days.
Children
Aeterna is not for children under 18. We do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has an account, write to us and we will remove it.
If you are in crisis
When something you write suggests you may be in danger, Aeterna shows a helpline for your country instead of a normal reply. We count that this happened, so that we can tell whether the safeguard is working. We do not record what you wrote in order to count it, and no person at Aeterna is notified or reads it.
Do Not Track
Aeterna does not track you across other apps or websites, and nobody else tracks you through it. So a Do Not Track setting has nothing to change: the app behaves the same either way.
Changes
If we change something that matters, we will say so in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.