Privacy

Last updated October 11, 2026

Your journal is yours. It stays on your device and in your own iCloud. No ads, no tracking, and cloud AI only runs after you say yes.

This policy explains how the Ben journal app (“Ben”, “the App”), provided by Yun Zeng (“we”, “us”), handles your information. Some optional features send limited data to the services described below.

Your journal content

• Entries, photos, videos, voice recordings, drawings, moods and settings are stored on your device.
• If you turn on iCloud sync, they are also stored in your private iCloud database (Apple CloudKit) under your Apple ID. We cannot access your private iCloud data.
• Voice transcription uses Apple’s speech recognition. Depending on your device and iOS version, audio is processed on device or by Apple under Apple’s Privacy Policy.

Smart Prompts and mood suggestions (AI)

• On devices with Apple Intelligence, prompts and mood suggestions are generated on device. Nothing is sent to us.
• On other devices, these features use a cloud model, but only after you agree in the App. You can turn them off in Settings at any time.
• What is sent: the text of the entry you are writing and a few recent entries (a few thousand characters at most), plus short text labels describing your photos. The photos themselves are not sent.
• Where it goes:
  • Our relay at ai.feelwithben.com (Alibaba Cloud Function Compute, Hong Kong).
  • Our proxy (Cloudflare Workers).
  • Then a model provider: DeepSeek (Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., servers in mainland China) for App Store regions outside mainland China, or Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (Bailian) for mainland China.
• Retention: our relay and proxy pass the text through and keep no copy of it. Our logs record only technical details such as error codes, never entry text. The model providers process requests under their own terms and privacy policies.
• AI output is generated automatically and may be inaccurate.

Purchases and abuse prevention

• Payments, taxes and refunds are handled by Apple. We never receive your payment card details. Manage or cancel subscriptions in iOS Settings › [your name] › Subscriptions.
• When the App uses the cloud AI features, it sends:
  • your Apple-signed purchase record (including the original transaction ID);
  • your App Store country or region;
  • an Apple App Attest key that proves the request comes from a genuine copy of Ben.
• We use this to check your subscription with Apple and to limit usage. We store a daily request count per subscription (deleted after about two days), a free-trial request count per device, and the list of device keys linked to a subscription (at most five). These are kept in Cloudflare’s storage.

Optional permissions

• Apple Health: if you allow it, Ben reads workouts, routes, activity, step counts and State of Mind to show them in your journal, and can save the moods you log to Health. Health data stays on your device and in your iCloud. It is never sent to us or used for advertising.
• Location: used to show weather (Apple WeatherKit) and the places of your entries. Stored with the related entry on device and in your iCloud.
• Photos, Camera, Microphone: used only to add the media you choose to your entries.
• Apple Music: if you add a song, Ben searches Apple Music through Apple’s MusicKit.
• Face ID / passcode: uses iOS authentication. We never receive biometric data.

You can change any of these permissions in iOS Settings.

What we don’t do

• No advertising, ad identifiers or cross-app tracking.
• No third-party analytics or crash-reporting SDKs. If you share crash reports with developers in iOS Settings, Apple provides them to us anonymously.
• No selling or sharing of personal data.

International transfers

If you use the cloud AI features, your text passes through Hong Kong and Cloudflare’s global network, and is processed by DeepSeek or Alibaba Cloud in mainland China. Apple’s services may process data in the United States or elsewhere under Apple’s safeguards.

Children

Ben is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country). In the EU/UK, users under 16 need parental consent.

Security

Ben uses iOS security features such as data protection, the Keychain and App Attest. Network traffic is encrypted with HTTPS. No method is 100% secure.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA/CPRA or China’s Personal Information Protection Law), you may have the right to:

• access, correct or delete your data;
• receive a copy of it;
• restrict or object to processing;
• withdraw consent.

Most of your data is in your own hands: delete entries in the App, remove Ben’s data in iOS Settings › [your name] › iCloud, or uninstall the App. For anything else, email us.

Changes

We may update this policy. We’ll change the effective date above and tell you in the App about material changes.

Contact

Yun Zeng · feel.with.ben@gmail.com