Privacy

In plain words. Last updated 8 October 2026.

What stays on your device

Your chats, daily check-ins, documents, tasks, settings are stored on your own device only, in the app or browser you use. NeuroHub Connect cannot read or recover them. You can download a backup or delete everything at any time in Settings.

Voice and the microphone

Voice chat (talking to Phoenix with the microphone, spoken conversations and the wake word) is for people who have signed in to a free Phoenix account. Typing to Phoenix, and having a reply read aloud with its Read aloud button for accessibility, never need an account. Talking to Phoenix is optional and starts only when you press a microphone or Talk button, or, if you choose to turn it on in the installed app, when you say “Phoenix”. In Chrome and Edge the browser itself sends what the microphone hears to Google or Microsoft to turn it into text, while it is listening. With the “Phoenix” wake word that means the whole time it is switched on, not just after the name, so please do not use it where private conversations could be overheard. Phoenix does not record, keep or send audio, and the wake word is off until you turn it on. You can turn it off at any time.

Optional account and memories

You never need an account. If you make one (with an emailed sign-in code, no password), your chats, daily check-ins, documents, settings and the short notes Phoenix keeps about you can be saved to it so they follow you between devices (for newer accounts this is part of the supporter plan, described below).

• Your email address is never stored. It is used once to send the code. Only an unreadable fingerprint of it is kept, so nobody can see or recover your address from our records.
• Your synced data is stored scrambled with a key only the server holds. NeuroHub staff do not read it, and it is not used for research, sharing or advertising.
• You are in control of what Phoenix remembers. Every note can be seen, edited and deleted, notes can be switched off, and Phoenix never writes notes after a crisis conversation or keeps whole conversations as notes. When you chat, the notes go to Anthropic’s Claude with your message so Phoenix can use them, like the rest of the conversation.
• You can download everything held, or delete your account and all its data at any time, in Settings. Deleting is permanent. The account is for people aged 18 and over.
• Anonymous counts (for example “an account was made”) are kept for running Phoenix. They contain nothing about you.

The supporter plan and payments

Signing in is free. For accounts made from October 2026, saving your chats, check-ins, documents and settings to the account, and Phoenix’s memory notes about you, are part of the optional supporter plan (£1.99 a month). Accounts made before then keep these for free.

• Payments are handled by Stripe. You enter your card on Stripe’s own page. NeuroHub never sees or stores your card details. Stripe holds your email address and payment details as a processor, under its own privacy notice.
• How Stripe and Phoenix connect. The link to pay carries your account’s anonymous fingerprint, not your email address. Stripe tells Phoenix only that this account’s subscription started, is active or has ended, along with Stripe’s reference numbers for it. Phoenix still does not store your email address.
• Phoenix included with another NeuroHub plan. If you choose Check my NeuroHub plans, Phoenix uses the email you signed in with, once, to ask NeuroHub Connect Community (run on Heartbeat) and Stripe whether you have a paid NeuroHub plan. If you link a NeuroHub Connect Community account with a different email, Phoenix sends a code to your Connect messages. Phoenix keeps only the Connect reference number and the Stripe subscription reference, never the email, checks them once a day while linked, and deletes them when you unlink or delete your account. Phoenix supporters who link Connect are added to its Phoenix Members group. Nothing from your Connect account or your chats there is given to Phoenix AI.
• Legal basis: providing the plan you ask for (a contract), and keeping payment records as the law requires.
• When the plan ends your saved data is kept read-only for 30 days, so you can download or delete it, and then it is permanently deleted. You cannot delete the account while a plan is active, so you are never charged for nothing.
• It works on every website that shows the Phoenix widget, because it belongs to your account. Your browser keeps each website separate, so you sign in once on each site.

Suggestions of guides, courses and products

Phoenix can suggest things that might help, from the websites it is allowed to use only (NeuroHub Connect, Helen Edgar’s Autistic Realms and More Realms, and the openly licensed Stimpunks Foundation sites). A list of what those sites offer, made from their public sitemap.xml files, is built into the app, and matching it to what you are asking about happens on your device. If you use Phoenix AI, a suggestion is sent along with your message like any other background material. Suggestions are occasional, never during a hard moment, labelled with the price, and can be switched off in Settings. NeuroHub and Helen Edgar make their things, so those are not independent recommendations; the Stimpunks sites are independent projects and are named as such.

Where Phoenix’s knowledge comes from

Phoenix’s reference material is the writing of NeuroHub Connect and of Helen Edgar (the websites Autistic Realms and More Realms), used with Helen’s permission and credited by name where Phoenix uses it. It also reads the Stimpunks Foundation website and its sibling sites (★ stuff, Queering.Earth, Cavendish Space, the Map of Monotropic Experiences, Penguin Pebbling, The Why Sheet Press and Stimpunks.World), which are openly licensed (CC BY-SA 4.0, or CC0) and welcome AI use in their robots.txt files. Phoenix names them as the source whenever it uses them. All of this writing stays the property of its authors, and Phoenix refreshes its copy of these websites twice a week.

What the AI sees

• Built-in helper: nothing leaves your device.
• Phoenix AI (limited), where new people start: your messages go to NeuroHub Connect’s server, which passes them to Anthropic’s Claude to write a reply. They are not stored or logged by NeuroHub. Only anonymous counters are kept to enforce a daily limit. Your daily check-ins are not sent unless you allow it. You can opt out at any time in Settings by choosing the built-in helper.

Sharing check-in scores (optional, off by default)

If you are 16 or over, Settings lets you choose to share your daily check-in scores with NeuroHub Connect CIC, so we can see how people are doing over time and what helps. You have to turn it on yourself, and nothing is shared before that.

• What is sent: the date and seven whole numbers from 1 to 5 (your overall score and the six areas) each time you check in, with a random ID made on your own device to link them. That is all.
• What is never sent: your name, anything you write (notes, chats, documents, what you plan to protect), your location, IP address or device details.
• Who can see it: only people at NeuroHub who have been given the Admin role and who sign in with a password and a code from an authenticator app. Results are shown as group trends. Individual lines appear with anonymous labels, and only once at least five people share, so nobody can be picked out.
• Why: to understand wellbeing and improve Phoenix. We may publish combined, anonymous findings, never anything about one person.
• Legal basis and your rights: your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time in Settings. Because the scores are about wellbeing they count as health information, so we treat them with extra care. NeuroHub Connect CIC is the data controller. You can stop sharing, and delete everything you have shared, with one tap in Settings. Scores are deleted after two years at the latest. Because we hold no name or contact details, we can only find your data through the ID on your device.
• Not a safety net: nobody watches this live and we cannot contact you, so it is not a way to get help. If you are struggling, use the red Help button.

Anonymous counts

To learn how many people find and use Phoenix, NeuroHub counts visits to this website, clicks on Install and download, app opens and installs, which parts of the app get used (for example “a check-in was completed” or “the breathing tool was opened”, never what was written), how many AI replies are given and when limits are reached, and, for websites that add the Phoenix widget, the website’s address and how often the widget is opened. It stores only daily totals, plus a coarse device type (for example Android or Windows), a country code and the website that referred you. It uses no cookies and stores no IP address, no identifier, no message or health information. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, nothing is counted. In the app you can switch counting off in Settings, under Your data.

The website and the host

This website is hosted by Netlify, which may keep ordinary server logs (such as IP addresses) for a short time for security and operation. NeuroHub does not use them to identify visitors.

Newsletter sign-up form

Some pages offer a sign-up box for our free newsletter, The Wider Existence. Nothing from Substack loads until you press “Subscribe for free”. If you choose to load the form, it comes from Substack Inc. (USA), which sets its own cookies (such as ab_testing_id and __cf_bm) and handles your email address under its own privacy policy, as its own controller.

Other people’s details

Phoenix’s built-in knowledge comes from NeuroHub’s books, articles, training and talks, with the names and personal details of individuals removed.

Contact

How Phoenix uses AI, and your rights over it, are in the Phoenix AI Policy.

Questions or requests: neurohubcommunity.org/contact-us.