Privacy Policy

VENT is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your information when you use our mobile application ("the App"). By using VENT, you agree to the practices described in this policy.

1.1 Information You Provide

• Account Information: An assigned display handle (for example venter_48291) generated at onboarding—not chosen by you—and profile or activity data tied to your device identifier.
• Vent Content: Text vents (up to 1,200 characters) and voice/audio vents you record and post, including any category you assign them to.
• Comments: Text and voice comments you make on vents.
• Reactions: "Me too" reactions and likes you give to vents and comments.
• Follows: Which accounts you follow, tied to your device identifier. Follower and following counts, and lists of the display handles involved, may be shown on profiles.
• Feedback: If you send feedback from the app, we store the category you pick, what you write, and your app version, so we can read and act on it.
• Reports: When you report content or users, we collect the report reason, any additional details you provide, and the associated content. For safety and legal compliance (including reporting to NCMEC and law enforcement when required), we also record your device identifier, device model, operating system version, and app version with each report. The IP address you report from is kept only in our 30-day safety log (see Section 1.3), not with the report itself.
• Subscription Information: If you subscribe to Vent Plus, Apple processes your payment. We receive subscription status and entitlement information from Apple but do not receive or store your payment card details.

1.2 Information Stored Locally on Your Device

The following information is stored only on your device and is never transmitted to our servers:

• App Lock passcode: If you set the optional passcode lock, a salted hash of your passcode is stored in the device Keychain. If you turn on Face ID or Touch ID for it, Apple’s system checks your face or fingerprint on the device and tells VENT only whether it matched; VENT never receives or stores biometric data.
• User Preferences: Theme, notification settings, content filter preferences, and other app preferences.
• Vent Drafts: Unsent voice vent drafts, including recorded audio.

1.3 Automatically Collected Information

• Device Identifier: A randomly generated UUID created on your device. We store it on our servers (with anonymous login, not your Apple ID, email, or phone) so we can run the app, enforce blocks, and respond to abuse. Other users see your assigned handle (for example @venter_48291), not this raw ID.
• IP address when you post (kept 30 days): When you post a vent, comment, or report, we record the IP address it was sent from, together with your device identifier and the time. This safety log is used only to protect people and to respond to valid legal requests and child-safety reports. It is never used for analytics or advertising, cannot be seen by other users, and is automatically deleted after 30 days. If an account is banned, or a post is part of a serious safety case or a legal preservation request, the related records are kept for up to 1 year. Reactions are not logged.
• App Version: Used to check compatibility and deliver force-update prompts when necessary.
• Last active time: While the app is open, it updates the time your account was last active. This is not shown to other users.
• Usage Analytics: We record certain in-app events (such as app opens, vents created, reactions added, and comments posted) associated with your device identifier. You can turn off this analytics pipeline in Settings → Analytics (crash reporting may still run separately to keep the app stable).
• Crash & error reporting (Sentry): We use Sentry to collect crash reports and diagnostic context (such as device model, OS version, and stack traces) to find and fix bugs. This is not controlled by the Analytics toggle. See sentry.io/privacy.

1.4 Information We DO NOT Collect

• Your real name or email address
• Your precise location or GPS data (we check your general region to enforce where VENT is available, without storing it—see Section 11)
• Your contacts or address book
• Your photos, camera roll, or files (audio is recorded in-app only for voice vents)
• Any biometric data
• Advertising identifiers (IDFA)

Purpose	Data Used
Display your vents, comments, and profile to the community	Content, assigned handle, device ID
Enable social features (reactions, comments)	Device ID, content, interactions
Enforce blocking and ban decisions	Device ID, block/ban records
Moderate content and review reports	Content, reports, device ID
Detect harmful content (self-harm keywords, spam, profanity)	Vent and comment text
Track engagement metrics and award badges	Activity metrics (vents, comments, reactions, streaks)
Manage subscriptions and enforce free-tier limits	Subscription status, daily vent count
Deliver feature flags and A/B experiments	Device ID, experiment assignment
Deliver in-app notifications for social activity	Device ID, notification preferences, activity data
Power home-screen and Lock Screen widgets	Theme preference, activity totals (such as your vent count and score), story-arc status, and widget pictures, stored on-device via App Groups
Improve and personalize the app experience	Pseudonymous analytics events, stored with our database provider (only when analytics is on)
Diagnose crashes and improve stability	Crash reports and diagnostic data (Sentry)
Provide customer support	Account and content data as needed

When you create a voice vent or voice comment, your audio recording is uploaded and stored in a secure cloud storage bucket. Voice vents are played back to other users as part of the public feed, including a dedicated voice feed. Unfinished voice recordings are saved as drafts on your device and are never uploaded until you choose to post them. Audio files are subject to the same moderation, retention, and deletion policies as text content.

To produce a transcript and screen the recording for harmful content, your audio is sent to OpenAI, which processes it on our behalf as a service provider under its API terms. See Section 15 for the full list of third-party services.

Assume your voice vent will be readable as text. Voice vents are transcribed as part of safety screening, and where a transcript exists, anyone listening can open a “Transcript” option and read what you said. This means a spoken vent can be read, quoted and screenshotted the same way a typed one can. It also means voice vents are not lost on people who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who have no headphones. Not every vent ends up with a usable transcript, but you should not count on that. If you would rather your words did not exist as text, post a text vent instead, or do not post it.

Transcripts are generated automatically by machine and are often imperfect, particularly with strong emotion, accents, or background noise. A transcript is not a reliable record of what you actually said.

Where you speak a language other than English, we may store two versions: your words in the language you spoke them, and an English translation. We keep your own words wherever we can, so that what you said is not replaced by a machine’s version of it. Sometimes only one version is available, and the transcript shown is usually English but not always. Whatever is stored is deleted along with the vent.

To maintain a safe community, we use automated tools to:

• Detect self-harm and crisis-related keywords
• Filter profanity (when enabled)
• Identify spam and repetitive content
• Validate content length and formatting

Some of these checks run entirely on your device. Others require sending content to a service provider: voice recordings are sent to OpenAI for transcription and automated moderation screening, as described in Section 3.

Reports submitted by users are reviewed and may result in content removal, account suspension, or permanent bans. Moderation data (reports, actions taken) is retained for safety and legal compliance.

Vents written in a language other than your own may show a “See translation” option. Nothing is translated unless you tap it.

Where your device supports it, translation happens entirely on your device using Apple’s translation framework, and the vent text is not sent anywhere for this purpose.

For languages your device cannot translate, the vent text is sent to OpenAI to be translated. Only the vent text is sent — not your username, device identifier, or any other information about you or the author. Translations are stored so the same vent does not need to be translated again, and are deleted when the vent is deleted or removed by moderation.

Vents are public content that you chose to post. Translation does not make a private vent visible to anyone who could not already read it.

We use HTTPS/TLS for data in transit, store data in SOC 2 compliant infrastructure, and restrict access to authorized systems and personnel only.

We DO NOT sell your personal information. We do not share your vents or profile with advertisers, data brokers, or parties that would use your content to target ads on other apps or sites.

We DO NOT use your posts to create credit, employment, insurance, or similar consumer-risk profiles.

We may share information only in these limited cases:

• Public Content: Vents, comments, and profile information you post are visible to other VENT users. If you use the sharing feature, your vent content may be shared outside the app.
• Service Providers: With Supabase (our database and storage provider) to operate the app infrastructure, and with OpenAI to transcribe voice vents, screen content for safety, and translate vents into your language. See Section 15 for the full list.
• Apple: Subscription and purchase data is processed by Apple through StoreKit. We do not share your VENT content with Apple.
• Child Safety: If we become aware of content that appears to constitute child sexual abuse material or that suggests a child is in immediate danger, we will report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), law enforcement, and/or child protection authorities as required or permitted by law. We may disclose relevant user and content information in connection with such reports.
• Legal Requirements: If required by law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request.
• Safety: To protect the rights, safety, or property of VENT, our users, or the public.
• Business Transfer: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your data may be transferred. You will be notified of any such change.

You have the right to:

• Access: Request a copy of the data we hold about you
• Delete: Request deletion of your account and associated data
• Correct: Update or correct your profile information at any time
• Export: Request your data in a portable format
• Opt Out of Analytics: Disable analytics tracking in the app's Settings
• Block Users: Block any user to prevent them from seeing your content and to hide theirs from you
• Delete Content: Delete your own vents and comments at any time

To exercise data access, deletion, or export rights, contact us at support@vent.so.

• Active accounts: Data is retained while your account remains active
• Deleted accounts: When you delete your account, your content is removed from VENT and is no longer visible to other users. We keep a copy on our servers for about 30 days (so mistakes and abuse reports can still be handled), then permanently erase it. Backup copies normally follow within about 7 days after that. A few records can last longer: reports and moderation records (kept as long as needed for safety and legal compliance); if the account was banned, a minimal ban record (the app's random device identifier and the date of the ban, nothing else), kept until the ban is lifted, so the ban still applies to a new account on the same phone; and a placeholder showing that a comment by a deleted account once existed in someone else's thread (its words, audio and author are erased). We may also keep information where the law requires it (for example child-safety or abuse investigations). Contact support@vent.so with deletion requests.
• Deleted or expired vents and comments: Disappear from the app for everyone right away. We keep a server copy for about 30 days, then permanently erase it, including any voice recording. (A vent removed by our moderators can be restored within those 30 days if it was removed by mistake.) Backup copies normally follow within about 7 days after that.
• Reported/moderated content: Reports and moderation records are kept as long as needed for safety and legal compliance
• Safety IP log: The IP address used to post is deleted automatically after 30 days, including after you delete your account. Records tied to a ban, a serious safety case, or a legal preservation request are kept for up to 1 year.
• Anonymized analytics: Aggregated, non-identifiable data may be retained for up to 2 years
• Audio files: Deleted alongside the vent or comment they belong to, on the same schedule as above
• Transcripts: Stored with the voice vent they belong to, in the spoken language and/or English, and deleted alongside it
• Live Activity tokens: Deleted after the timed vent’s set time has ended, and when you delete your account
• Backups: To recover from technical errors, we keep a rolling backup of our database covering the last 7 days, and a private backup copy of voice recordings, which cannot be reached from the app or by other users. Backups are used only to recover from errors. When a recording is deleted or erased, its backup copy is normally deleted within about 7 days.
• Local data (drafts, preferences): Stored on your device only; deleted when you uninstall the app or clear app data

VENT is for adults only (18+). You must be 18 or older to use VENT. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 18. If we learn that we have collected information from a person under 18, we will delete that information and terminate the associated account immediately.

If you believe a user is under 18, please report it to support@vent.so.

If you access VENT from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States where our service infrastructure is located. By using VENT, you consent to this transfer. We take steps to ensure your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy regardless of where it is processed.

Where VENT is available: VENT is not offered in certain countries and regions. To enforce this, when you open the app our servers compare your device’s IP address against a list of network ranges for those regions. This check runs inside our own database: the check itself does not store your IP address, and it is not sent to any third party. (Separately, the IP used to post is kept for 30 days in our safety log; see Section 1.3.) We also check the country of your App Store account, which your device provides without any location permission. IP geolocation data by DB-IP.

VENT uses server-driven feature flags to enable, disable, or modify app features remotely. We may also run A/B experiments where users are randomly assigned to different feature variations. Your experiment assignment is stored locally on your device and associated with your device identifier. Experiment data is used solely to improve the app experience and is not shared with third parties.

VENT may deliver alerts using local notifications and, when you enable them, remote push notifications through Apple’s Push Notification service (APNs). The app may also check our server for activity. A device push token may be stored on our servers when you opt into remote notifications.

Timed vents and Live Activities: When you post a timed vent, it can show as a Live Activity on your Lock Screen. So that it can end on time even if the app is closed, the app sends that Live Activity’s push token to our servers, stored with the vent and your device identifier. When the vent’s time is up, our server uses the token to end it through Apple’s Push Notification service, and the token is then deleted (see Data Retention).

You can configure notification preferences in the app's Settings, including:

• Master on/off switch for all notifications
• Social activity alerts (likes, comments)
• Daily vent prompts
• Weekly insights
• Streak and check-in reminders
• Milestone achievements

You can also manage notification permissions through your device's system settings.

VENT offers optional home-screen widgets and supports deep links (URLs that open specific content within the app). Widget data is shared between the main app and the widget extension using on-device App Groups — this data never leaves your device. Widget data includes your selected theme, activity totals (such as your vent count and score), the status of a story arc you are writing (its title, a short status line, part count and dates), and, when that feature is on, pictures of your “world” drawn by the app on your device. No personally identifying information is stored in the widget container.

VENT uses the following third-party services:

Service	Purpose	Privacy Policy
Supabase	Database, cloud storage, real-time features	supabase.com/privacy
Apple (StoreKit, APNs)	In-app subscriptions and payment processing; push notifications and Live Activity updates	apple.com/legal/privacy
Sentry	Crash reporting and error diagnostics	sentry.io/privacy
OpenAI	Transcription of voice vents, automated content moderation screening, and translation of vents written in languages your device cannot translate	openai.com/policies/privacy-policy

We do not use advertising networks or cross-app tracking for ads (for example, we do not use the advertising identifier IDFA for advertising). Sentry is used for reliability. You can disable non-crash usage analytics in Settings → Analytics.

We may modify this Privacy Policy at any time in our sole discretion. When we do, we will post the updated policy at vent.so/privacy and update the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page. That posting is your notice of the change unless applicable law requires a different form or timing of notice.

We may provide additional notice at our discretion for changes we consider material. Where privacy laws require advance notice for certain changes, we will comply with those requirements.

Changes take effect when posted unless we state a later effective date. Your continued use of VENT after the revised policy is posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy. If you do not agree, stop using VENT and delete your account through Settings.

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):

• The right to know what personal information we collect and how it is used
• The right to request deletion of your personal information
• The right to opt out of the sale of personal information — we do not sell your data
• The right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights

To exercise these rights, contact support@vent.so.