VanZen Privacy Policy

How to request that VanZen delete your data

If you have a vanzen.ai account, you can do this yourself: sign in on vanzen.ai, open Settings › Account & plan, and choose Download my data or Delete my account. Download my data gives you one file with everything our servers keep for your account. Delete my account removes your account and those records at once, cancels a plan bought on vanzen.ai (it does not renew and the days left are not refunded), and signs you out everywhere. Cancel an App Store or Google Play subscription in that store. Stripe keeps the invoices and payment records that tax law requires. Copies in our backups are deleted within 60 days. On the phone app, Settings › Data › Download this phone’s data saves what our servers keep for that app install. You can still email us instead.

Email us to ask that we delete the VanZen data we hold about you.

1. Email info@vanzen.ai with the subject VanZen data deletion.
2. Say that you want Van Zandt, LLC to delete the VanZen data it holds about you.
3. Include the email you used for early access or the beta and, if you subscribed, your App Store or Google Play order number or the email of your vanzen.ai account, so we can find your records. If we cannot identify your records from what you send, we will tell you and ask for what we need.

What we delete when you ask

When we can identify your records, we delete waitlist details (name, email, industry, and request time), beta applications (email, survey answers, campaign tag, and application and consent times), your vanzen.ai account (email, password hash, plan, and Stripe customer and subscription ids), installation and authentication identifiers, entitlement and subscription-verification records we hold, usage counters, operational metadata, the dates an installation connected, agreement-acceptance records, and push tokens we hold. File-attachment job payloads we still have are deleted. We do not keep your chats and do not use them to train a model.

What we do not delete, or cannot delete for you

Chats, bookmarks, and My Protected Terms on your phone or browser stay on that device until you erase them in VanZen settings or uninstall the app. Clearing a chat does not delete server records. Apple, Google, and Stripe keep their own payment records, and we keep the records of web payments that tax law requires. Linkup keeps no searches (zero data retention); SerpAPI may keep image requests, not linked to you. We may keep a limited record when the law requires it, including tax, security, or abuse-prevention records, for the period the law allows.

How long we keep data if you do not ask

If you do not ask, we keep waitlist details until you ask us to delete them or we close the waitlist. Beta applications are deleted 90 days after the beta ends. Service records stay only as long as needed to provide access, enforce allowances, and prevent abuse; then we delete or anonymize them. The dates an installation connected are deleted after 30 days. File-attachment job payloads are removed after completion, cancellation, or a short time-to-live. Provider retention is not controlled by VanZen.

What this notice covers

This notice explains how we use information on vanzen.ai, the web app, and the VanZen iOS and Android apps, including beta access, Free, Plus, Pro, store subscriptions, and plans bought on vanzen.ai. The early-access waitlist is one activity described at the end, not the whole policy.

Two modes

When you use vMask Chat (patent pending), recognized personal details are masked with vMask on your device before processing. Floor types such as passport, bank account, IBAN, card, and SSN stay non-rehydratable. Hidden originals behind vMasks stay on your device. Direct Chat, the default start mode, sends typed messages as written, including hard IDs and My Protected Terms. VanZen answers from its own knowledge index first. When it needs the live web, our server sends the search to our partner Linkup, which handles our searches under a zero-data-retention agreement. The search is not linked to your account, device, or IP address. In Direct Chat it contains the words of your question as written; in vMask Chat it is built only from the masked text. For photos in Direct Chat, such as a public figure, our server requests the image from SerpAPI the same way; SerpAPI may log the request, but not who asked. vMask Chat attempts to mask recognized personal details before sending text, but detection can miss information and masked text is not guaranteed anonymous. Do not submit information you are not authorized to share.

Photos and pictures

A photo you attach is sent to our servers so VanZen can read it, answer about it, or make the picture you asked for. Picture requests are checked automatically against our picture rules. When a picture of a person is edited, the result is compared with the original so the person stays recognizable; this is not used to identify anyone. We do not keep your photos or the pictures made from them. They are held on our servers only while the request is handled, and the pictures stay in the chat on your device.

Write in my voice

If you add samples of your writing, they are stored encrypted on your device, not on our servers. Short excerpts are sent with your messages so the reply can follow your style, and we do not keep them. In vMask Chat the excerpts are masked on your device first, like the rest of your message. Add only writing that is yours or that you have the right to use.

Weather

When you ask about the weather, our server sends the place name from your question to Nominatim (OpenStreetMap) to find its coordinates, and sends those coordinates to the U.S. National Weather Service (api.weather.gov) or MET Norway (api.met.no) for the forecast; these services do not receive your identity.

The knowledge index

VanZen's knowledge index holds public web pages and passages. For public subjects such as market prices, sports results, headlines, and who holds an office, we keep the public pages a search returned, together with a one-way fingerprint of the search, so the same question can be answered again without a new search. The fingerprint carries no identity and cannot be turned back into the question. Questions about a named individual are not kept this way.

What we do not hold

We do not keep your chats. We do not use them to train a model or to improve the product. We do not sell your chats or use them for advertising. VanZen shows no ads on any plan. Clearing a local chat does not delete service records. The privacy report in the app is counted and kept on your device; VanZen does not receive it.

Chat sync

Sync is off unless you turn it on. When sync is on, changes pass through VanZen encrypted, readable only by your devices, and are deleted as soon as your other devices receive them, or after 30 days. Each change is encrypted on the device where you made it, separately for each of your other devices, with keys that stay on those devices. Our servers hold only those encrypted copies, padded to a few fixed sizes, with the time each arrived, and the list of your linked devices: a general name such as "Safari on Mac", their public keys, when each was linked, and roughly when it last synced. The copies are not in our backups. Your projects, the settings you choose to share between devices (such as reply style and language), and My Protected Terms sync the same way. My Protected Terms are the only personal values that sync, so each of your devices can mask them too; they are never sent or stored in the clear. vMask Chat's hidden originals never sync: your other devices get the chat with its vMasks. Pictures and files do not sync. On vanzen.ai, chats synced to a browser are locked with your passkey; in VanZen for Mac, with a key kept in your Mac's Keychain. Removing a device, turning sync off, or resetting sync on vanzen.ai deletes the copies waiting for it. VanZen can't recover your chats. If you lose all your devices and your Apple or Google account, your history is gone.

What we hold

VanZen processes installation and authentication identifiers, entitlement and subscription-verification records, usage counters, operational metadata, agreement-acceptance version and time on your device, and push tokens we hold. For 30 days we keep the dates an installation connected, and whether it was iPhone, Android, or the website. Your messages and personally identifiable information stay out of that record. If you have a vanzen.ai account, we hold its email address, a hash of its password (never the password itself), your plan, and the Stripe customer and subscription ids for a plan bought there. The account never holds your chats. If you join the waitlist or apply for the beta, we also hold the fields described below. File-attachment job payloads are held only until completion, cancellation, or a short time-to-live.

Processors

Cloudflare carries site and API traffic. Cloudflare also runs the bot check on the web sign-in page and the beta form (Turnstile), which receives your IP address and browser signals, and delivers the emails we send: a web-beta invitation to the address invited, and an early-access request (name, email address, and industry) to our own inbox. Apple processes App Store payments. Google processes Google Play payments. Stripe processes payments for plans bought on vanzen.ai, as described below. Apple and Google receive the email address of a beta tester we invite through TestFlight or Google Play. Linkup processes web searches under a zero-data-retention agreement, and SerpAPI processes image searches; neither receives your identity. Expo delivers push notifications and app updates, and receives a push token and basic device and app-version information for that purpose. We do not receive your payment-card details from Apple, Google, or Stripe. We do not allow these providers to use your information for their own advertising.

Plans bought on vanzen.ai

Plus and Pro can be bought on vanzen.ai through Stripe. You pay on Stripe's own hosted pages: Stripe takes your card, and VanZen never sees or stores it. Stripe receives your email address, your payment details, and the billing address and any tax ID you enter, and uses them to take the payment, send receipts, and prevent fraud, under its own privacy policy. Stripe Tax uses your billing address to work out the sales tax or VAT due. From Stripe we receive your customer and subscription ids and whether the plan is paid, and we keep them with your vanzen.ai account. Your chats never go to Stripe and are never part of the account. To ask for a refund, email info@vanzen.ai; the refund terms are in the Terms of Use. App Store and Google Play purchases keep their stores' own refund processes.

Why

We process entitlement, chat dispatch, file-attachment, vanzen.ai account, and web billing records to provide the service you asked for (contract), and keep web payment records where tax law requires it (legal obligation). We process waitlist details, beta applications, and Direct Chat and search sends you start, on the basis of your consent. We process usage counters, operational metadata, and security signals to enforce allowances, prevent abuse, and operate the service (legitimate interest). You may withdraw waitlist or beta consent by emailing us. Withdrawal does not undo email we already sent lawfully.

Where your information is processed

Van Zandt, LLC is a United States company. VanZen runs on servers we operate in Luxembourg, in the European Union, and that is where your messages are processed. Some of the providers listed under Processors are in the United States, so the information they handle for us is transferred there. Those transfers rely on an adequacy decision, including the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. We may be required by law to produce what we hold. That is service records, not chats, which we do not keep. Web searches go to Linkup under a zero-data-retention agreement; image requests go to SerpAPI, which may log them without knowing who asked.

Your rights

Email info@vanzen.ai to access, correct, or delete information we hold. Use the deletion steps at the top of this notice. If you have a vanzen.ai account, you can download your data and delete your account yourself: sign in on vanzen.ai, open Settings › Account & plan, and choose Download my data or Delete my account. Chats, bookmarks, and My Protected Terms stay on your phone or browser until you erase them in VanZen settings or uninstall the app. Legal obligations may limit deletion. If European data-protection law applies to you, your further rights are set out in our GDPR notice.

Children

VanZen is not directed at children under 16.

Waitlist

If you request early access we collect your name, email address, and industry, the time of the request, and the fact that you agreed to this notice. That is all we ask for on the form. Do not send other personal data in the form. We use that information only to decide on access and to email you about VanZen early access. We do not sell it or use it for advertising. We share it only with providers who host this site or deliver mail, and only to run this waitlist. We keep waitlist details until you ask us to delete them or we close the waitlist.

Beta recruiting

If you apply to test VanZen before launch at vanzen.ai/beta, we collect your email address, your answers to the form (which phone you would test on, your country, the language you would mainly use, how often and which AI assistants you use, what you would use VanZen for, how much privacy matters to you, whether you would give feedback or take a short call, and what you would pay), the campaign tag in the link you followed if there was one, the time you applied, the fact that you agreed to be contacted and read this notice, and which version of the Beta Terms you accepted and when. We use this only to choose beta testers and to contact you about the beta. We read every application ourselves; a score worked out from your answers helps us sort them, and no one is accepted or turned down automatically. We do not sell it or use it for advertising. The form and your answers are handled on servers we operate in Luxembourg. We do not use a third-party form service. Cloudflare carries the traffic and runs the bot check on the form (Turnstile), which receives your IP address and browser signals. Your IP address is also used for up to ten minutes to limit repeated sending; it is not stored with your application. If we invite you, we give your email address to Apple (TestFlight, for iPhone) or Google (a Google Play test, for Android) so they can send you the invitation, under their own privacy terms. We delete applications 90 days after the beta ends, or sooner if you ask. To ask, email info@vanzen.ai with the subject VanZen data deletion and the email you applied with. If you send the form again with the same email, we update your answers rather than keep a second copy. We process this on the basis of your consent. You can withdraw it at any time by emailing us; withdrawing does not undo contact we already made lawfully.