LEGAL
Privacy Policy
Effective October 30, 2026. This Privacy Policy explains how Sentient Digital, Inc. ("Sentient," "we," "us," or "our") handles information in connection with our websites, applications, business services, and related features (collectively, the "Services").
1. Scope
This Policy applies to information Sentient processes when you visit getsentient.io, use the Sentient app for iPhone or Android, communicate with another user or with a verified organization through Sentient, use Sentient AI on our website, submit a business application or demo request, use Sentient business services, contact us, or otherwise use the Services.
Third-party websites, applications, payment services, and other products that you may use before or after using Sentient are governed by their own privacy practices. This Policy does not control those third parties.
2. Summary: what Sentient can and cannot see
- Content of your one-to-one messages and attachments: end-to-end encrypted on your device. Sentient's servers store and relay it in encrypted form and cannot read it.
- Voice calls: carried between devices with encryption and never recorded by Sentient.
- Who you message or call, when, and delivery and read status: processed by Sentient's servers, because they are needed to deliver messages and calls. This information is not end-to-end encrypted.
- Conversations you report: when you submit a report, your device sends Sentient a readable copy (Section 3).
- Status pictures, your profile, contacts, and payment links: stored by Sentient without end-to-end encryption so they can be shown to the people you choose.
- Messages you exchange with a business: end-to-end encrypted to that organization's authorized staff (Section 7).
3. Information we collect
Information you provide
When you create an account, you provide your first and last name and your date of birth. Sentient uses them to create your account, check age eligibility, apply protections for users under 18, and show your name to the people and organizations you communicate with. Sentient does not ask consumers for an email address, phone number, or password. Depending on the feature you use, you may also provide profile information (such as a profile picture or whether your date of birth is shown), status pictures, contact nicknames or notes, payment links, recovery information, reports, support or contact submissions, business application information, demo requests, and messages or attachments.
Account, authentication, and recovery information
When the app first connects to our backend, it creates an anonymous authentication session with a random identifier so the app can communicate with our services. This happens before you create an account or enter any personal information. When you create an account, that session is associated with your account, and Sentient creates account and device-credential identifiers for it. An anonymous session that is never associated with an account does not contain your name or date of birth. Sentient does not currently apply a fixed automatic deletion period to those sessions.
Your recovery PIN and recovery phrase are used to recover your account. They are sent to us over an encrypted connection when you set or use them, and we store them on our servers only as one-way hashes, not in readable form. Your six-digit PIN is short and is not meant to protect your account on its own; your 10-word recovery phrase is the main protection. The app also keeps them in your device's secure storage so you can view them. Keep them somewhere safe.
Device, security, and technical information
We process device and account-security information needed to operate and protect the Services. This includes identifiers that Sentient generates for your account and for each device you use (such as a device-credential identifier and an installation identifier used for trusted devices and account security); an identifier provided by your device's operating system, described under "Device recognition" below; your device's platform (iOS or Android), manufacturer, model, and operating-system version, and the installed Sentient app version and build; push-notification tokens and related app-installation identifiers issued by the notification services described below; the IP address and technical request information that our servers and infrastructure providers receive when your device connects; and service logs used to secure and troubleshoot the Services. This information is used for authentication, trusted-device management, fraud prevention, and abuse detection.
Sentient may also keep an approximate location for each of your devices (country, region and city, timezone, and the network operator's name), derived by Cloudflare from the IP address of the app's requests to our website, when the device was enrolled and when it was last seen. This applies to all accounts, including those of users ages 13 to 17. The IP address itself is not stored, no GPS or location permission is used, and the result can be wrong when you use a VPN, proxy or mobile network. These records are visible only to Sentient administrators; they are deleted 90 days after a device is removed, are never kept longer than 13 months, and are deleted with your account.
Device recognition
To keep one trusted Sentient identity per device, recognize a device after the app is reinstalled, and help prevent account takeover and abuse, the app uses two identifiers: an installation identifier that Sentient generates and keeps in your device's secure storage, and an identifier provided by your device's operating system. On Android this is the Android ID (ANDROID_ID), which is specific to the app, the user, and the device. On iOS it is the identifier for vendor (IDFV). These are sent to Sentient over an encrypted connection, including before you create an account, when the app checks whether the device is already linked to a Sentient account. This check runs when the app starts, before you are asked for a date of birth.
Sentient stores the operating-system identifier only as a one-way hash. The installation identifier is stored with your device credential and, as a one-way hash, in Sentient's trusted-device records. These hashes are pseudonymous: they let Sentient recognize the same device again, but they are not anonymous. Records of pre-account checks are pruned once they are older than two days. Trusted-device records are kept while the device is linked to your account and are deleted when the account is permanently deleted, except as described in Section 9. These are not advertising identifiers. Sentient does not use them for advertising or to track you across other companies' apps or websites.
Device integrity checks
Sentient may use platform integrity services, namely Google Play Integrity on Android and Apple App Attest and Apple DeviceCheck on iOS, to help confirm that requests come from a genuine, unmodified copy of the Sentient app on a genuine device, and to limit repeated account creation from one device. These checks are used for security, fraud and abuse prevention, and to strengthen device recognition. When a check runs, your device communicates with Google or Apple under their own terms, and Sentient receives a signed result.
From each result Sentient keeps a short summary. It records the platform and service used, whether the check passed, the integrity level, and, for Play Integrity, the coarse labels Google returns: device and app recognition, app-licensing status, app version, Play Protect status, whether apps that could capture the screen or control the device were detected, without the names of those apps, and, where Google provides them, a coarse measure of recent integrity-check activity on the device and device-recall values that Google keeps for the device. Sentient also keeps one-way hashes of the installation and device identifiers the check was tied to, and a one-way hash of the result token so the same token cannot be reused. It does not keep the raw token. For App Attest, Sentient also stores the public key that your device generated for Sentient.
With DeviceCheck, Sentient can ask Apple to set two bits for your iPhone on Apple's servers when an account is created on it, for example to note that an account was recently created there, and read them back later. Apple keeps these bits for the device even if the app is deleted or the device is erased. Sentient uses them only to limit repeated account creation on the same device.
Sentient's systems prune one-time check challenges older than 2 days, result summaries and related automated security decisions older than 90 days, and App Attest keys that were never linked to an account after 7 days. Remaining records are deleted when the account is permanently deleted.
Camera, photos, microphone, and calling
Camera. Sentient uses the camera only to scan QR codes, for example to add a contact, link a parent or guardian to a dependent, or sign in to a business account. The camera image is processed on your device to read the code and is not saved or uploaded; only the information encoded in the QR code is sent to Sentient to complete the action you requested. The current version of Sentient does not offer video calling and does not use the camera for calls. Sentient does not take photos or video with your camera; when you send a photo or file, or post a status picture, you choose it from your device.
Microphone and calling. Sentient asks for microphone access for voice calls. The current version of Sentient does not let you record new voice messages. During a call, your voice is transmitted to the other participant as audio using WebRTC. To help calls connect across different networks, Sentient uses connectivity services, including Cloudflare's TURN relay service and, as a fallback, a Google STUN server. These services, and the other participant's device, may receive network information such as your IP address as part of establishing and carrying the call. Sentient also processes call signaling and call-history information (such as who called whom, when, and the call's status and how it ended) to route and display calls.
Connection metadata processed by relay infrastructure such as Cloudflare's TURN service may include client IP addresses, network port information, and session timing or other connection metadata needed to relay call traffic. The call media relayed this way is encrypted WebRTC traffic, and a TURN relay forwards it without being able to decrypt it.
Messages, attachments, contacts, and status
Message content and attachments in one-to-one conversations are end-to-end encrypted in the normal service flow, so Sentient's servers are designed to store and relay them in encrypted form. End-to-end encryption does not cover service information that Sentient needs to deliver and display conversations: participants, timestamps, delivery, read and first-seen status, whether a message was edited or deleted, temporary-message settings, presence, and which conversation you have open. Typing indicators are relayed but not stored. It also does not cover profile information, private contact notes, account and contact records, or content you choose to share with us directly.
Your decrypted conversations are stored in the Sentient app on your device so you can read them. Protect your device with a passcode.
You add contacts only through Sentient's pairing features (QR code or PIN). Sentient stores your contact relationships, and any nicknames or notes you add, on its servers. Sentient does not access your device's address book. If you invite someone, the app opens your device's share sheet or messaging app; Sentient does not receive that person's details.
Status pictures you post are stored on Sentient's servers without end-to-end encryption so the people you share them with can view them. They are shown for 24 hours. After that they are no longer shown, but they are not currently deleted from Sentient's servers on a fixed schedule.
Reports and safety
If you choose to report a conversation, the app decrypts the conversation on your device and sends Sentient a readable copy of it, including messages from the other participant, edits, and attachments, so that reviewers can see what was reported. This happens only when you submit a report, and the reporting screen tells you what will be submitted. Sentient keeps reports, moderation decisions, warnings, and restrictions to protect users and enforce our Terms.
Payment links
If you add payment links, such as a handle for a third-party payment app, Sentient stores them and can show them, with your name, on a payment page that anyone with the link can open. You can control whether your payment page is public in Payments. Sentient does not process payments and does not receive payment card or bank account details; payment providers handle payments under their own terms.
Push notifications
To deliver message, call, missed-call, and contact-request notifications, Sentient uses push-notification services, including Expo's push notification service, Google Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android, and Apple's push notification service on iOS. Sentient stores push tokens and related app-installation identifiers issued by these services, together with your platform, so notifications can be sent to your device, and shares them with those services as needed to deliver notifications. Some notifications include the sender's name; for example, a new-message notification shows who it is from, along with a generic line rather than the message text. Incoming-call notifications include the caller's name, a link to the caller's profile picture, and the identifiers needed to show the call screen. On Android, the Google Firebase Cloud Messaging components that support push delivery are part of the app and may create an app-installation identifier when the app starts, including before you create an account. You can turn notifications off in your device settings.
Firebase Cloud Messaging uses app-installation identifiers to direct a notification to the correct installation of the app. To provide push delivery, Google may process those identifiers, push registration information or tokens, app and device information associated with notification delivery, and notification-routing and delivery information. Expo may likewise process and store the push tokens needed to route notifications, and processes notification payloads as necessary to deliver them. According to Expo's documentation, notification contents are not stored in Expo's databases as part of normal push delivery, although they may be visible to the provider during active troubleshooting.
Backups on your device
On Android, if your device's Google backup is turned on, the app includes a small file containing your Sentient account, device-credential, and installation identifiers, and an encrypted copy of your message-history keys, so your account and history can be restored after reinstalling. Google stores these in your Google account under Google's terms. The keys in that backup are protected with a key part held by Sentient: neither Sentient nor Google can use the backup alone, but Sentient together with access to your Google backup could. Your messages themselves are not included in this backup.
First-party product analytics
Sentient records structured usage and reliability events in its own systems. No third-party analytics provider is used, and Sentient does not record your screen, take screenshots, or record keystrokes. Events record, for example, that a session started, a screen was opened, a message was sent or failed, a call connected or ended, or a contact pairing succeeded, along with timings, error categories, app version and build, operating system, device model and general device capability (such as a memory class), and whether the app runs on an emulator. Some events reflect account or security activity, for example that a recovery attempt or a device check did not succeed.
The app also creates a separate, random analytics installation identifier when it is first opened. It is not derived from your device's hardware identifiers, and it is stored in the app and in Sentient's analytics systems. It lets us measure onboarding steps (including before an account exists), app updates and reliability per installation. Events also carry session and journey identifiers so related steps can be connected. Analytics events are linked to your account: once you create an account, events from your installation, including events sent before you signed up, are associated with it.
For calls, the app may record connection-quality measurements such as setup time, round-trip time, jitter, packet loss and whether the call was relayed, never call audio. Crash and error reports include the type of error and a list of the program functions involved, never error messages, content or your inputs. These events never include message or call content, contact names, QR codes, PINs, recovery details, payment details, dates of birth, screen recordings or keystrokes.
We may show optional in-app surveys. Your answers, and any comment you choose to write (with email addresses, phone numbers and links removed), are stored with the app version and platform and are linked to your account through a protected code, so they are not anonymous. We may test variations of features and record which variation the app showed. On a few screens without private content, we may record coarse tap areas (never keystrokes, text or screen images); this is off unless we turn it on, and the results are reviewed in aggregate.
For users under 18, the app sends only a limited set of events needed to keep messaging, calling, sign-in, account setup and security working reliably, without an account identifier or an analytics installation identifier, and users under 18 are not shown surveys.
You can turn off usage analytics in Settings > Privacy. Your choice is saved to your account. After you turn it off, the app stops sending usage events, but it still sends crash, error, reliability, and security events needed to operate and protect the Services; these are stored without your account identifier or analytics installation identifier. Turning analytics off does not delete events that were already collected. You can ask us to delete them (Section 11).
Analytics events are kept in Sentient's cloud database for at least 7 days (diagnostic logs about 14 days). Sentient's analytics system is designed to then move events to Sentient's encrypted offline archive; events stay in the cloud database until they are archived. Archived events are organized by account and labeled with the account holder's first name. Sentient does not currently apply a fixed deletion period to the offline archive or to aggregated statistics, such as daily counts and per-account daily activity summaries. When your account is permanently deleted, Sentient deletes the analytics events and summaries linked to your account in its cloud database, including events linked to your installation before you created your account, and the archived events filed under your account. Archived events that were recorded before you created your account and filed by installation rather than by account are not currently removed.
Website and business-service information
If you contact Sentient, request a demo, create a business account, or use a business-facing service, we may process the information contained in those submissions and information needed to administer the relevant organization, departments, users, permissions, conversations, callbacks, calls, audit activity, billing, and support requests. A business application includes the organization's name, address, website, and number of seats, and the name and email address of a contact person.
Our website (getsentient.io) records page views, clicks on links and buttons, scroll depth, conversions without any form contents, performance measurements, errors, and coarse aggregate click maps, using a per-tab session identifier and a visitor code instead of cookies. The visitor code is recalculated each day from your IP address and browser details using a secret key, so we can count visitors without storing your IP address; because the key does not change, Sentient could recognize the same browser and network on different days. Your country is recorded. Website analytics is turned off on account, business, payment and deletion pages, and it honors Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track.
Our website loads fonts from Google Fonts, so when you visit, your browser may request font files from Google, which receives standard request information such as your IP address and browser details. Some website features use your browser's local or session storage on your device. For example, the Sentient AI chat pages on our website keep chat history in your browser's local storage until you clear it, signed-in business users' session information is kept in session storage for the browser session, and the Business Terminal keeps its encryption keys in your browser.
4. How we use information
We may use information to:
- provide, maintain, and improve the Services;
- create and administer accounts, trusted devices, contacts, and business relationships;
- route and deliver messages, calls, callbacks, attachments, notifications, and other requested communications;
- authenticate users and devices and help detect and prevent fraud, abuse, repeated account creation, compromise, or unauthorized activity;
- apply age eligibility and protections for users under 18, and support guardian linking;
- review reports, moderate, and enforce our Terms;
- measure and improve the reliability, performance, and use of the Services (product analytics);
- operate business-account, support, registry, billing, and administrative functionality;
- respond to questions, applications, requests, and support matters;
- answer questions you submit to Sentient AI on our website;
- comply with applicable law, enforce our terms, and protect users, Sentient, and others; and
- carry out other purposes that we describe when information is collected or that you direct us to perform.
Automated security decisions. Sentient uses automated checks, such as device-integrity results and limits on repeated account creation from one device, to decide whether a device can create or recover an account or use certain features. Some of these protections may run in an observation mode in which results are recorded but nobody is blocked. If a check blocks you, the app shows a reference that you can give to Sentient support so that a person can review it.
5. Sentient AI on our website
Our website offers Sentient AI chat pages where you can ask questions about Sentient or general topics. The current version of the Sentient app does not offer Sentient AI features.
When you use Sentient AI on our website, the text you enter and your recent conversation are sent through Sentient's backend services and may be processed by AI-model and retrieval services operated by Sentient or by third-party service providers to answer you. For questions that need current information, search terms drawn from your question may also be sent to public search and reference services, such as web search engines and Wikipedia, and the results may be used in the answer. Those services receive the search terms under their own privacy practices. Do not enter passwords, authentication codes, financial credentials, identity documents, or other sensitive information that is not necessary for your question. These features are general-purpose tools and are not specifically designed for children.
7. Communicating with businesses
When you message, call, or request a callback from a verified organization, your messages are end-to-end encrypted to the devices of the organization's authorized staff, and the organization decides which of its staff can read them. Authorized staff can see your name and your conversation, and the organization can export conversation transcripts that include your name. An organization may also use options that it controls, such as compliance access or scanning of attachments for malware, that allow additional authorized parties or services to read messages or attachments sent to that organization. Some older business conversations were stored before end-to-end encryption was introduced for business messages and remain readable to the organization and to Sentient. Information you send to an organization is also handled by that organization under its own privacy practices.
8. Data retention
We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, to provide and secure the Services, to comply with legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce agreements. Different categories of information may have different retention periods because the operational, security, and legal reasons for keeping them differ. Some categories, as described in this Policy, do not currently have a fixed deletion period.
Message and call records, including their timestamps and delivery status, are kept while either participant still has an account. Deleting a conversation or clearing your call history removes it from your view; the other participant's copy is not affected. Reported content is kept as evidence while the report is open or supports an active restriction, and may otherwise be kept until it is deleted by a Sentient administrator or the reporting account is permanently deleted. Device recognition, integrity-check, approximate-location, and analytics records follow the periods described in Section 3.
Providers such as Supabase, Cloudflare, Google, Apple, Expo, Stripe, and Brevo keep their own operational records, such as request, delivery, and security logs, under their own retention schedules, which Sentient does not control. Deleted information may also remain for a period in backups maintained by our hosting provider until those backups expire.
9. Account deletion and what we keep
You can delete your account in the app under Settings > Account > Delete account. The account is deactivated immediately. You can cancel within 30 days by signing back in with your recovery information. After 30 days, the account is permanently deleted. That removes the data Sentient holds for it, including profile information, contacts, device credentials, push tokens, keys, recovery information, trusted-device records, and analytics linked to the account, except as described below. The account's profile record is then removed. Account deletion therefore does not remove everything immediately, and it does not remove the information listed below.
Conversations with people who still use Sentient. Your conversations remain in the other participant's history: the encrypted messages and attachments, and their dates and delivery information, are kept for the other participant, and call history entries are kept in the same way. They are attributed to "Deleted Account" and to a random identifier that is never reused. Sentient cannot read the content of those end-to-end encrypted messages. Copies already delivered to other people's devices may remain on those devices.
Safety and moderation records. Reports, warnings, restrictions, and moderation actions involving a deleted account are kept, linked only to that random identifier. Reported content is kept as evidence only while the report is open or supports an active restriction. If a suspension or permanent disable was in force when the account was deleted, Sentient keeps a one-way hash of the device's installation identifier while that restriction would have applied, or indefinitely for a permanent disable, so that deleting an account cannot be used to evade it.
Records of the deletion and security records. Sentient keeps a record of the deletion that includes the account holder's name for 180 days, and technical records of the deletion process, without the name, for 365 days. Some security and audit records, such as records of recovery attempts and approvals of new devices (which can include an installation identifier and device model), do not currently have a fixed deletion period.
Other limitations. Archived analytics described in Section 3 that were filed by installation before the account was created are not currently removed. On iPhone, DeviceCheck bits are kept by Apple as described in Section 3. Information may remain in backups and in service-provider logs as described in Section 8.
Deletion requests made on our website. If you cannot use the app, you can request deletion of your account or of specific data at getsentient.io/delete-account and getsentient.io/delete-data. Requests made on the website are reviewed and carried out by Sentient staff. The identifying details in a request are cleared 30 days after the request is closed, or when the account is permanently deleted if that happens first. A record of the request's type, status, and dates is kept. Optional feedback and any follow-up contact details given with an account-deletion request are deleted at the same time. The hashed rate-limiting identifier is kept for 24 hours.
Under-13 sign-up block and pending guardian sign-ups. The under-13 sign-up block is kept only on the device, for 72 hours (Section 12). For pending guardian sign-ups of users ages 13 to 17, the name and date of birth are deleted from Sentient's servers when the linking window ends (Section 13).
10. Security
Sentient uses administrative, technical, and organizational measures intended to protect information against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, or alteration. Security measures vary by the nature of the information and feature and may include end-to-end encryption, hardware-backed key storage on your device, access controls, one-way hashing of recovery information and device identifiers, device security features, authentication protections, logging, monitoring, and other safeguards. For example, database access rules are designed to limit the app to the information your signed-in account needs, and changes to your date of birth or account status are made only by Sentient's backend processes.
No system can guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for protecting your devices, recovery information, credentials, and other information used to access your account.
11. Your choices and requests
Depending on the Services available to you and applicable law, you can:
- review and change certain profile information and settings in the app, such as whether your date of birth is shown on your profile;
- manage trusted devices and device-level permissions;
- turn usage analytics off in Settings > Privacy;
- remove contacts, and delete messages, conversations, and attachments from your view where the app provides those controls;
- control whether your payment page is public;
- turn notifications off in your device settings;
- delete your account in the app under Settings > Account > Delete account. The account is deactivated immediately and permanently deleted after 30 days, and you can cancel by signing back in during that period;
- if you cannot use the app, request deletion of your account or of specific data through the forms on our website (getsentient.io/delete-account and getsentient.io/delete-data); and
- ask to access, correct, or delete your information, or make another privacy request, by contacting Sentient as described in Section 15.
Sentient does not currently offer an automated tool to download or export your data. Access and correction requests are handled manually. Your date of birth cannot be changed in the app, so a request to correct it is reviewed by Sentient, and we may ask for information to confirm the correction. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under applicable law, such as the right to object to certain processing or to appeal a decision about your request, and you may be able to complain to a data protection authority.
We may need to verify a request before acting on it, and some information may be retained when required or permitted by law or when necessary for security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, or other legitimate purposes.
Deletion requests submitted through our website
To help confirm that a request comes from the account holder, the form asks either for your Sentient recovery PIN and recovery phrase, or for account-identifying details for manual review, such as your name, date of birth, approximate account-creation month, device type and model, approximate last use, contacts or trusted devices you remember, business-connection information, and a description of the data you want deleted.
Recovery credentials entered in the form are used only to verify the request: they are compared against the stored hashes and are not saved in the deletion-request record. To help protect the forms from abuse, we also keep a short-lived hashed identifier derived from technical request information for rate limiting. We may be unable to act on a request if we cannot establish that it comes from the account owner.
When you request account deletion on the website, you may also, optionally, tell us why you are leaving. You may also agree that we can contact you about that feedback, by email or phone. This is separate from the request itself. It does not affect whether or how the request is processed, it is not used to identify or verify your account, and any contact details are used only to follow up about your feedback.
12. Children
The Services are not directed to children under 13, and children under 13 are not eligible to use Sentient. When the app starts, before any date of birth is entered, it performs the device-recognition check described in Section 3 and creates the anonymous session described there; neither contains a name or date of birth. If the date of birth entered during sign-up shows that the person is under 13, sign-up stops on the device. The name and date of birth entered are not sent to Sentient and no account is created. Sentient does not create a list of blocked users for that attempt. Instead, the app keeps only a local marker on the device, holding the time the block ends, which pauses sign-up on that device for 72 hours. The app also sends an anonymous diagnostic event noting that the age check stopped sign-up, together with the device model, operating system, and app version, without any identifier of the person, device, or installation.
If we learn that an existing account belongs to a child under 13, we may disable it and permanently delete the account and its data through an internal process, without the 30-day cancellation period that applies to ordinary deletion. If you believe a child under 13 is using Sentient, please contact us.
13. Age eligibility and guardian linking
Sentient is intended for people age 13 and older. Users under 13 are not eligible to use this version of Sentient. During account setup we ask for a date of birth. If it shows that the person is under 13, account setup stops on the device, as described in Section 12.
Users ages 13 through 17 must complete parent or guardian linking as part of account setup, and the account is not created until linking succeeds. The parent or guardian's role is to consent to the dependent creating and using a Sentient account. The dependent separately agrees to the Terms of Service and acknowledges this Privacy Policy when the account is created. Guardian approval is tied to an adult Sentient account, meaning one whose stated date of birth shows the account holder is 18 or older:
- the person setting up the account displays a temporary QR code that changes every few seconds;
- a parent or guardian scans it from their own Sentient account in Settings > Family Settings, after confirming consent for the child or dependent to create an account; and
- the parent or guardian then enters their date of birth on the device being set up, and Sentient checks it against the date of birth on the adult account that scanned the code.
Sentient checks that the scanning account is an adult account and that the date of birth entered matches it. Sentient does not independently verify that the adult is the dependent's legal parent or guardian.
To make this work, Sentient keeps a record of the relationship between the guardian account and the dependent account, including when consent was given, when the check was completed, and whether the dependent is currently allowed to use Sentient. While linking is in progress, the name and date of birth entered for the new account are held temporarily on Sentient's servers so they can be used when the account is created, and Sentient staff can see a pending sign-up's name and device details to help resolve problems. Until the server-side linking session starts, the app keeps them in the device's secure storage. If linking does not finish, the name and date of birth are deleted when the linking window ends. That is 24 hours after linking starts or, once a guardian has approved, 24 hours after approval if the account has not been created. The rest of the linking session, which holds no name or date of birth, is deleted within about three more days. Nothing about the attempt prevents starting again. The date of birth typed by the parent or guardian is compared and is not stored.
While a dependent is under 18, the linked parent or guardian may control whether the dependent can continue to use Sentient, using a setting in Settings > Family Settings. When access is turned off, the dependent cannot use Sentient until access is turned back on. Turning access off does not delete the dependent's account, contacts, or messages. Parents and guardians cannot see the dependent's messages, contacts, or activity in Sentient. This control is separate from any safety or moderation measures Sentient may take.
Some features may be limited for users under 18 for their safety, such as sending attachments and using payment links.
When a dependent turns 18, the guardian's access-control authority ends and the account continues as an independent adult account. Sentient may keep a record that the guardian relationship existed.
If the linked parent or guardian deletes their own Sentient account while the dependent is under 18, the dependent's account and data are not deleted because of it. From the time the guardian requests deletion, the dependent can use Sentient only to link a new parent or guardian, through the same QR code, consent, and date-of-birth process. Normal access returns once a new guardian is linked, or if the original guardian cancels their deletion within the 30-day period. If the dependent is already 18, no new guardian is needed.
When users ages 13 through 17 use supported Sentient features, service providers may process the technical information described elsewhere in this Policy as necessary to provide those features. For example, this can include push-notification delivery, QR-based linking or contact pairing, network communications, and voice-call relay infrastructure. The approximate device location described in Section 3 also applies to their devices.
14. International data processing
Sentient is based in the United States. Information is processed in the United States and in other countries where our service providers operate. If you use Sentient from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in those countries, whose data protection laws may differ from those where you live.
15. Changes and contact
We may update this Privacy Policy as the Services, our practices, or legal requirements change. When we make changes, we will update the effective date above and provide additional notice when required by applicable law.
Sentient Digital, Inc. is responsible for this Privacy Policy. For privacy questions or requests, use the Contact section of our website and identify your request as a privacy matter so it can be routed appropriately.
Contact Sentient