Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 9, 2026

Summary: BrightLog stores your journal entries locally on your device. Your data may be backed up to your private cloud storage (Google Drive on Android, iCloud on iOS) and, only with your consent, sent to Google’s AI service to generate optional insights and therapy session preparations. We never see what you write. We do not sell your data, and we never share it with data brokers or advertisers.

1. Introduction

BrightLog (“the App”) is a personal well-being journal that helps you track daily events and reflect on patterns over time. This Privacy Policy explains what data is collected, how it is used, and your choices regarding that data.

The App is developed by Cristian Milia (“Developer”, “we”, “us”). By using BrightLog, you agree to this Privacy Policy.

2. Data We Collect

2.1 Journal Data (stored locally)

All journal data you create is stored only on your device in a local SQLite database:

  • Entries: event type (good/neutral/bad), situation category, free-text description, intensity level, spectrum score (for neutral entries), date
  • Emotion data (optional): when you use the Feelings Wheel, the chosen core, sub and specific emotion are stored alongside the entry
  • Notes: free-text notes attached to entries
  • Attachments: photos, videos, audio recordings or documents attached to entries (up to 20 per entry)
  • Places (optional): a place you add to an entry — found by search, taken from your device’s current position with your permission, or read from a photo’s location data — stored with that entry
  • Goals & habits: the goals and personal values you set, their tasks, your daily check-in history, and any notes or photos attached to a check-in
  • Gratitude Pot: the gratitude notes you save, each with an optional photo or video
  • AI Insights: generated summaries stored locally after creation

2.1a Microphone & Voice Input

When you tap the microphone icon to dictate an entry, the App requests permission to access the microphone and speech recognition. Recognition is performed by the operating system’s speech service (Apple Speech on iOS, Google speech recognition on Android), which may send the audio to Apple’s or Google’s servers to turn it into text, under their own privacy terms. Only the resulting text is stored as part of your journal entry — no raw audio is uploaded or retained by BrightLog. You can revoke microphone or speech-recognition permission at any time in your device settings.

2.2 Account Information (optional)

You never need an account to use BrightLog. If you choose to sign in — with Google on Android, or with Apple on iPhone and iPad — we receive:

  • With Google: your display name, your email address and your profile photo link
  • With Apple: your name, if you choose to share it, and your email address — which can be a private relay address from Apple’s “Hide My Email” if you choose it
  • An authentication token to verify your identity

This information is used solely to authenticate you and enable cloud backup and the AI features (insights and therapy session preparation). We do not store your Google or Apple credentials.

2.3 Feature-Usage Statistics

We do not collect your data. We count which features get used.

The version of BrightLog published on the App Store and Google Play uses Firebase Analytics (Google) to record a small set of feature-usage events — for example, that the Journal tab was opened for the first time, that the monthly Insights screen was viewed, or which sign-in button was tapped. BrightLog is built by one person. These counts are the only way we can tell whether a feature is ever used at all, and therefore what to improve and what to remove.

What is recorded: the name of the event (such as insights_monthly_open) and nothing else. We record that a screen was opened — never what is on it.

What is never recorded: your journal entries, your moods, your emotions, your gratitude notes, your photos, your videos, your voice notes, your documents, or any word you have written. None of it is ever sent to us, and none of it is ever part of an analytics event. We never see what you write.

These events are attached to a random identifier that Firebase generates for each app installation. It is not your name, your email address or your account, and it cannot be used to read anything you have written — but because it is a per-installation identifier, we describe it here rather than calling it fully anonymous.

Test versions of the App — the Android version shared through Firebase App Distribution, and the versions in Google Play’s internal testing and open testing — send no analytics events at all. TestFlight is different: it installs the same version as the App Store, so it records the same feature-usage events, and the switch below turns them off there too.

You can turn this off. Settings › Privacy & Analytics has a switch for feature-usage statistics. It is on by default; switching it off stops collection and also erases the usage data already held on your device. Nothing else about the App changes.

2.4 Data We Do NOT Collect

  • We do not collect, transmit, or store the content of your journal, moods, emotions, gratitude notes, photos, videos, voice notes, or documents on any BrightLog server
  • We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with data brokers or advertisers
  • We do not currently display advertisements
  • We do not collect crash reports automatically
  • We do not collect device identifiers, internet addresses, or geolocation from sensors. The country you choose at setup and the postcode you may add are stored locally on your device. The postcode is sent only to OpenStreetMap services, to find professionals near you for the Experts tab (see §3.4); a place you add to an entry is looked up the same way and is stored only on your device and in your own backup; the two-letter country code also goes with the AI requests you make (see §3.2)

3. How Your Data Is Used

3.1 Local Storage

Your journal entries, notes, and generated insights are stored in a local SQLite database on your device. This data never leaves your device unless you explicitly use the backup or AI features described below.

3.2 AI-Powered Insights (optional, requires sign-in and your explicit consent)

If you are signed in (with Google on Android, or with Apple on iPhone and iPad) and have given your explicit consent, the App can generate monthly and yearly summaries of your journal entries and help you prepare for a therapy session, using Google’s Gemini AI (via Firebase AI). When you request an insight or a session preparation:

  • Your entries for the relevant period are sent to Google’s servers: for each one, its type, intensity or mood level, date, situation and description, the feelings you tagged, your thought-record answers and the notes you added to it. Photos, audio, video, documents and the places saved on entries are never sent
  • Your goals for that period are sent with them, with their check-ins, plans and notes. Photos and other attachments on your check-ins are never sent
  • The two-letter code of the country you chose at setup is sent with them, so that the information in the reply fits where you live
  • Google’s AI processes the data and returns a summary
  • The generated insight is stored locally on your device
  • Google’s use of this data is governed by Google’s Privacy Policy and Firebase Privacy Policy

Nothing is sent until you agree. The first time you ask for an insight or a session preparation, BrightLog explains what will be sent and asks for your consent. If you decline, no entry ever leaves your device for this purpose, and you can be asked again later. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Settings › Privacy & Analytics; from that moment nothing further is sent.

Withdrawing consent stops future sends but cannot retrieve what was already sent. Google retains prompts briefly for abuse detection under its own terms, and we have no access to those records — so we do not promise an erasure we cannot perform.

3.3 Cloud Backup (optional)

If you enable backup, your journal data is uploaded to your own private cloud storage: Google Drive on Android or iCloud on iPhone and iPad. Backup requires sign-in — with Google on Android, or with Apple on iPhone and iPad.

  • Backups contain your journal data — entries, notes, goals, gratitude notes and AI insights — together with copies of your attachments
  • The newest 3 backups are kept; older ones are deleted automatically
  • You can disable backup at any time from Settings
  • Uninstalling BrightLog or revoking its access in your Google Account settings will remove the app’s access to this data

3.4 Experts Tab — OpenStreetMap (optional)

To list nearby mental-health professionals in the Experts tab, the App queries two free public OpenStreetMap services, Nominatim (run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation) and Overpass (run by independent organisations), when the App starts and whenever the list is refreshed, as long as a country is saved:

  • Your postcode and country code (or the country code alone, if you have not added a postcode) are sent to Nominatim (nominatim.openstreetmap.org) to resolve an approximate latitude / longitude
  • That coordinate is then sent to a public Overpass server (Overpass is an OpenStreetMap query service) to fetch matching healthcare entries from OpenStreetMap. The App asks the servers one at a time and uses the first answer it gets. These servers are run by FOSSGIS e.V. (Germany) at overpass-api.de, VK Maps (Russia) at maps.mail.ru and Private.coffee (Austria) at overpass.private.coffee
  • No account, sign-in token, device identifier, internet address or journal content is included in either request
  • Both look-ups are cached on your device for 24 hours so identical queries are not repeated

Places on entries (optional). When you add a place to an entry — by searching, from your device’s current position, or from a photo’s location data — the search text or the coordinates are sent to Nominatim to look up the place name. Nothing else goes with them: no account, no identifier and no journal content. The place is stored with the entry on your device and included in your own backup; it is never sent to the AI.

Listings are © OpenStreetMap contributors and made available under the Open Database License. See OpenStreetMap’s copyright and licence page for full attribution terms. The OpenStreetMap Foundation’s own privacy policy is published at wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy.

4. Third-Party Services

BrightLog uses the following third-party services:

  • Firebase Analytics (Google) — feature-usage events (see §2.3) in the App Store / Google Play release only. It never receives your journal content. See §2.3 above, and Google’s Firebase privacy documentation

We do not use any advertising or automatic crash-reporting services.

5. Data Retention & Deletion

  • Local data: Remains on your device until you delete it within the App or uninstall the App
  • Cloud backups: On Android, backups remain in your Google Drive until you delete them from the App, revoke BrightLog’s access, or delete your Google Account. On iPhone and iPad, backups remain in your iCloud until you delete them from the App or manage iCloud storage from Settings
  • AI processing: Data sent to Google Gemini for insight generation is processed in real-time and is subject to Google’s data retention policies

To delete all your BrightLog data at once, go to Settings > Delete All BrightLog Data. This will:

  1. Delete all cloud backups (Google Drive or iCloud)
  2. Revoke your sign-in session (Apple token revocation or Firebase user deletion)
  3. Erase all local entries, notes, attachments, and cached AI insights

Your Apple ID or Google account will not be affected. You can also delete data manually:

  1. Delete individual entries within the App
  2. Disable and delete backups from Settings
  3. Optionally, revoke BrightLog’s access at Google Account Permissions
  4. Uninstall the App

6. Data Security

We take reasonable measures to protect your data:

  • Local data is stored in a private SQLite database accessible only to the App
  • Communication with Google services uses encrypted connections (HTTPS)
  • Authentication tokens are stored securely using the device’s secure storage (Android Keystore / iOS Keychain)
  • Cloud backups are stored only in your own cloud account (Google Drive on Android; iCloud on iPhone and iPad)

7. Children’s Privacy

BrightLog is not directed at children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided personal information through the App, please contact us so we can take appropriate action.

7.1 Age signals from your app store

Some regions now require app developers to check the age range an app store reports about a user — a requirement that began with Texas (SB 2420) and is spreading. On Android, BrightLog asks the Google Play Store for that age range when the App opens. Play provides one only for eligible users in covered regions; everywhere else it returns nothing at all.

Where an age range is provided, it is used solely to satisfy that legal requirement. It is discarded the moment the check completes: never written to disk, never included in a backup, never sent to us or to any third party, and never used for analytics, advertising or profiling — Google’s own terms for the service prohibit those uses. Nothing in BrightLog is locked, hidden or changed as a result.

On iPhone and iPad, BrightLog does not perform this check at all. We never ask you for your age or your date of birth.

8. Your Rights

You have the right to:

  • Access your data — all data is visible within the App
  • Export your data — use the App’s export feature to generate a PDF or CSV of your entries, or export AI insight reports as PDF
  • Delete your data — delete individual entries or all data from within the App
  • Revoke access — sign out of Google or Apple, or revoke app permissions, at any time
  • Use the App without an account — core journaling features work without signing in to Google or Apple

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date. Continued use of the App after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

10. Contact

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or BrightLog’s data practices, please contact:

Cristian Milia
Email: mlicst.apps@gmail.com

© 2026 BrightLog. All rights reserved.