Katha Privacy Policy

What we collect

• What your parent says to Katha, as text. Her voice notes are transcribed; Katha does not keep the audio.
• Story summaries, quotes and details (names, places, dates) drawn from those conversations.
• Katha's own spoken replies, as audio files, until the account is deleted.
• Contact details: your parent's name and WhatsApp number, and your email and WhatsApp number.
• For families using conversation cards: what you call your parent, your usual call times and time zone, and any questions or reactions you send back about a card. A question sent as a voice note is transcribed, and the audio is not kept.

How it's used

Transcripts and the details drawn from them are used to keep your parent's stories, make cards, and let Katha remember what she has told it from one conversation to the next. Story summaries are shown to you on the family dashboard. Families set up from October 2026 get conversation cards, described below; families set up before then may instead get a memory card after each conversation, a quote from it sent to your WhatsApp number once you have confirmed it.

If your parent asks for something to stay private, or not to be told to her family, it is never put on a card or shown on the dashboard, and the same holds for anything else she says on that subject. A card already sent before she asked cannot be recalled; it is removed from the dashboard and we are alerted.

Conversation cards are read back to your parent first, and are sent to you (by WhatsApp and email) only if she says yes to that card. She can decline any card, or choose not to share at all. A question you send back may be asked to her, always saying who it is from. Her answer is never sent back directly; it reaches you only as a later card she agrees to.

Who reads it

A member of the Katha team may read what your parent says: to review a conversation card before it is offered to her, to check on her if something she says suggests she may be in danger, and to fix a problem with the service. If she says something that may mean she is in crisis, Katha gives her the iCall India helpline (9152987821) and emails the Katha team at once, with what she said, so a person can read it the same day.

Where it is, and who processes it

Everything we store is stored in India, on Amazon Web Services in Mumbai (ap-south-1): the database, the files, and the nightly backups. Emails are sent through Amazon SES in Mumbai. To work, Katha passes some of it to these companies:

• Sarvam AI (India) turns her voice notes into text, and speaks some replies.
• Anthropic(USA) writes Katha's replies and picks out the stories from what she said.
• Google(USA) speaks Katha's replies, from text, with the request marked not to be stored.
• Twilio (USA) and Meta, which runs WhatsApp, carry the messages. Katha deletes each message and its audio from Twilio once it is no longer needed: her voice note straight after it is transcribed, and every other message within a day. Meta handles WhatsApp messages under its own terms.

The AI companies use what they are sent only to answer each request, and do not train their models on it. The website is hosted by Vercel; your family's data goes from your browser to our servers in Mumbai, not through Vercel.

How long we keep it

• Your family's data: for as long as the account is open, until you or your parent asks us to delete it.
• Backups: each nightly backup is kept for 14 days, so deleted data is gone from backups within 14 days of deletion.
• Server logs: they never contain what your parent says, her number or your email. They are rotated by size, so older entries are overwritten.

Stopping, and deletion

Your parent can stop at any time by telling Katha so, in her own words. Katha stops at once, tells her once, and tells you by email. Everything is then deleted after seven days, a pause in case it was said by mistake; only she can ask us, through you, to keep it.

You can delete all of your family's data at any time from your account settings, or by emailing privacy@katha.life. Deletion removes stories, memory cards, conversation cards and their images, Katha's spoken replies, questions you sent back, session history and profile data, and any messages still held at Twilio. We keep a record that consent was given or declined, for legal audit: it holds the date and the wording agreed to, and a one-way hash of your email address, so we can show consent if asked. Your names and numbers are removed from it.

No AI training on your data

Katha never uses your family's conversations, stories, or any other content to train or fine-tune AI models.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: privacy@katha.life