Philoi is a social accountability app for students. You set goals, run focused sessions, and share your progress with a small group of friends (a “campfire”). This policy explains exactly what data that involves, who can see it, and how to get rid of it.
It is written to be read, not to be survived. If anything here is unclear, email nb@philoi.app and we will answer.
1. Who we are
Philoi (“Philoi”, “we”, “us”) provides the Philoi mobile app and this website. For the purposes of the UK GDPR and EU GDPR, Philoi is the data controller for the personal data described below.
Contact for all privacy matters, including data protection requests: nb@philoi.app.
2. What we collect
Account information
- Email address — used to create and secure your account, to sign you in, and to send essential service messages.
- Display name and handle — chosen by you, shown to other members of your campfires.
- Profile details you choose to add, such as an avatar or your university. Your university is optional and is used only to place you on that university's leaderboard.
Activity within the app
- Goals and sessions — the goals you create, the “lock in” sessions you start, their duration, and whether you completed them.
- Campfire membership — which groups you belong to, who invited you, and your check-ins.
- Messages and reactions you send inside a campfire chat.
- Progress data — XP, ranks, streaks, and challenge results derived from the above.
- Reports and moderation records if you report content or another user.
Technical and diagnostic data
- Device and app information — device model, operating system version, app version, and language. Used to fix crashes and support the right devices.
- Push notification token, if you allow notifications, so we can deliver reminders and campfire activity alerts. You can turn notifications off at any time in your device settings.
- Basic error and usage logs — for example that a screen failed to load. We do not use advertising identifiers and we do not run third-party ad trackers.
Optional connected sources
If — and only if — you choose to connect a fitness source such as Apple Health, Garmin or Strava, we receive activity metrics from it. This is covered in detail in the next section.
3. Fitness & health integrations
The short version: connecting a fitness source is entirely optional, read-only, and scoped to a single metric for a single challenge. Your health data is displayed only to you. Nothing is sold, and disconnecting deletes what we pulled.
Philoi lets you run friendly challenges — most steps this week, most workouts this month, furthest distance. So that nobody has to take anyone's word for it, a fitness challenge can verify itself from your own device data. The rules we hold ourselves to:
- Opt-in, per source. No fitness source is connected by default. You explicitly connect Apple Health, Garmin or Strava, and you grant permission through that provider's own authorisation screen.
- Read-only. We only ever read. Philoi never writes, edits or deletes anything in your Apple Health, Garmin or Strava account.
- Only the metric the challenge needs. If you join a step-count challenge, we request step counts — not your heart rate, sleep, weight, body composition, blood oxygen, menstrual data, GPS routes, or anything else. We request the narrowest permission scope the challenge requires.
- Only for the window the challenge covers. We request that metric for the days the challenge runs, not your entire history.
- Disconnect any time. You can disconnect a source from within Philoi (Settings → Connected apps), and you can also revoke access from the provider's own settings — for example in Apple Health, in your Garmin Connect account, or in Strava's connected-apps page. When you disconnect, we immediately stop requesting data and delete the metric values we pulled from that source, other than the final score of any challenge that has already finished.
- Never used for advertising, profiling or resale. Data received from a fitness provider is used solely to show you your own progress and to score challenges you chose to enter.
Data received from a fitness provider is stored in the same protected database as the rest of your account data, is accessible only to you and to the small number of Philoi personnel who need it to operate the service, and is never disclosed to third parties except the infrastructure providers listed in section 6.
4. Who can see what
This is the part people actually care about, so it is worth being precise.
- Your health data is shown only to you. The values we read from a connected fitness source — your daily step counts, your workouts, your distances — appear in your own app, on your own screens. Other users never see your underlying health data.
- Challenge standings are shared only with the people in that challenge. If you join a step challenge with four friends, those four friends see your total for that challenge and your position on its leaderboard. That is the single number the challenge is about, and joining is what shares it. Nothing else from the connected source is shared — not your route maps, not your heart rate, not your history before or after the challenge window.
- Your campfire sees your app activity — your sessions, streaks, XP, check-ins and messages — because that is the purpose of a campfire.
- University leaderboards show your handle and score only, and only if you have set a university.
- Nothing is public by default. Philoi has no public profiles and no open feed. Campfires are invite-only.
5. How we use your data
We use the data above to:
- create and secure your account and sign you in;
- run the core product — sessions, campfires, streaks, XP, ranks, challenges and leaderboards;
- send notifications you have asked for, such as reminders and campfire activity;
- score challenges you have entered, including from a connected fitness source;
- keep Philoi safe — investigating reports, preventing abuse and enforcing our terms;
- diagnose crashes and improve the app;
- meet our legal obligations.
Where the UK/EU GDPR applies, our legal bases are: performance of a contract (running the service you signed up for), consent (fitness integrations, push notifications, and any marketing email — each of which you can withdraw at any time), legitimate interests (security, abuse prevention, and basic product improvement), and legal obligation where applicable.
6. Sharing & service providers
We share personal data only with the infrastructure providers that let Philoi run, and only to the extent needed:
- Supabase — database, authentication and file storage.
- Expo / Apple Push Notification service / Firebase Cloud Messaging — delivery of push notifications you have opted into.
- App Store and Google Play — app distribution, and any purchases, handled under their own policies.
- Our email provider — sign-in links and essential service messages.
These providers act as processors on our instructions and are bound by contract to protect your data. We may also disclose data if we are legally required to, or where necessary to protect the rights or safety of our users. If Philoi is ever acquired or merged, your data may transfer as part of that transaction, and we will notify you before it becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
7. We do not sell your data
We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data. We do not share it with data brokers, advertisers or ad networks. We do not use your data — and specifically not any health or fitness data — to build advertising profiles or to target ads, on Philoi or anywhere else.
8. Retention & deletion
- We keep your account data for as long as your account exists.
- Metric values pulled from a connected fitness source are deleted when you disconnect that source, other than the final score of an already-completed challenge.
- You can delete your account from inside the app (Settings → Delete account), or by emailing nb@philoi.app from your account address.
- When you delete your account, your profile, goals, sessions, health metrics, messages and progress are deleted from our production systems within 30 days, and from encrypted backups within 90 days. Anonymised, non-identifying aggregates (for example “sessions started this week”) may remain.
- We may retain a minimal record of a moderation action or a legal request where we are required to.
9. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have some or all of the following rights over your personal data: access a copy of it, correct it, delete it, export it in a portable format, object to or restrict certain processing, and withdraw consent at any time — including by disconnecting a fitness source or turning off notifications.
To exercise any of these, email nb@philoi.app from the address on your account. We will respond within 30 days. Exercising your rights costs nothing and we will never restrict your use of Philoi for doing so. If you are in the UK or EEA and you believe we have mishandled your data, you also have the right to complain to your local supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
10. Security
Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. Access to production data is restricted to the people who need it, protected by row-level security rules in the database so that one user cannot read another user's data. We keep dependencies patched and review access regularly. No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach ever affects your personal data we will notify you and the relevant regulator as required by law.
11. Children
Philoi is intended for university and college students and is not directed at children. You must be at least 13 years old to use Philoi (or 16 where your country's law sets a higher age for consent to online services). We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone below that age. If you believe a child has given us their data, email nb@philoi.app and we will delete the account.
12. International transfers
Philoi is operated from the United Kingdom and our infrastructure providers may process data in the United States and the European Union. Where data leaves the UK or EEA, it is transferred under an approved safeguard — typically the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses together with the UK Addendum — so that your data keeps an equivalent level of protection.
13. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we handle your data — particularly anything to do with health or fitness data — we will notify you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and where the law requires it we will ask for your consent again.
14. Contact us
Questions, requests, or complaints about privacy: nb@philoi.app. A real person reads that inbox.