Comprehensive Privacy Policy

Effective Date: March 2, 2026

1. Introduction & Scope

Yokaizen LLC ("we," "our," or "us"), headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it through our compliance with this Comprehensive Privacy Policy.

This policy explicitly describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you download, install, register with, access, or use the Yokaizen mobile application (the "App") and our related website services. This document is drafted to comply with global privacy regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as amended by the CPRA, and the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) in Japan.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Personal Information You Provide

We collect information by which you may be personally identified ("Personal Information") directly from you when you use the App:

  • Account Data: Email address, secure password hashes, and user ID.
  • Profile Data: Display name, chosen avatar, age range, gender identity, and lifestyle preferences necessary to contextualize your AI companion.
  • User-Generated Content: Chat logs, audio messages, journal entries, and any open-text inputs submitted to the AI Yokai guides.
  • Financial Data: Transaction history and subscription status (Note: All actual payment processing is securely handled by Stripe/Apple/Google; we do not store full credit card numbers).

2.2 Health & Fitness Data (Special Category Data)

With your explicit, opt-in consent, we collect specific wellness metrics either directly via the optional Yokaizen Ring hardware or via integrations with Apple HealthKit / Google Fit API:

  • Heart Rate (BPM) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV).
  • Sleep duration and sleep staging metrics.
  • Daily step count and estimated caloric burn.
  • Strict Limitation: We explicitly guarantee that your Health and Fitness data is never used for advertising, marketing, or sold to data brokers. It is processed solely on your device and our secure servers to generate personalized wellness quests and AI empathy responses.

2.3 Automatic Data Collection Technologies

As you navigate through and interact with our App, we use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns:

  • Device Information: Hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers (UDID), and mobile network information.
  • Usage Details: Details of your access to and use of the App, including traffic data, logs, session duration, features engaged, and other communication data.
  • Location Data: We collect generalized location data (e.g., city/state level) based on your IP address strictly for localization and timezone synchronizations. We do not request or track precise GPS coordinates.

3. How We Process & Use Your Information

We strictly process your Personal Information on the following lawful bases: Consent, Contractual Necessity, and our Legitimate Interests. We use the data to:

  • Service DeliveryTo present our App and its contents to you, authenticate your account, and provide the core gamified wellness experience.
  • AI PersonalizationTo tailor the conversational responses from the Yokaizen AI models based on your emotional logs and health metrics.
  • Platform ImprovementTo analyze App performance, debug crashes, and optimize the rendering of Unity and React components.
  • Customer SupportTo notify you about changes to our App, process subscription renewals, and answer technical support queries.

4. Third-Party Sharing & Disclosure

NO SALE OF PERSONAL DATA

Under no circumstances do we sell, rent, or trade your Personal Information, User Content, or Health Data to third-party data brokers, advertising networks, or marketing agencies.

We disclose aggregated, anonymized information without restriction. We only share Personal Information as strictly necessary with the following verified sub-processors:

Third-Party AI Processing Disclosure

Yokaizen uses information you choose to provide, including messages and conversation context; voice audio and transcripts when voice chat is used; photos or camera frames when vision features are used; mood, quest, and companion history used for personalization; and summaries derived from connected health signals when that access is enabled.

Only after you explicitly grant AI-processing permission may the data needed for a selected feature be disclosed to these third-party providers:

  • Google (Gemini and Google Cloud AI): AI conversations, insights, vision, transcription, image generation, and speech generation.
  • DeepSeek: character conversations and longitudinal personalized insights.
  • Anthropic (Claude): personalized quest narratives and reflections.
  • OpenAI: fallback image generation for user-created manga.
  • ElevenLabs: companion speech generated from text.

Each provider receives only the categories needed for the feature you choose to use. Yokaizen does not sell this information.

Permission for third-party AI processing is separate from permissions for the microphone, camera, connected health, analytics, notifications, and tracking. You may continue using non-AI features if you decline. You can grant or withdraw this permission at any time in Privacy Settings. After withdrawal, new third-party AI transmissions and personalized background AI processing are blocked.

For access, deletion, or privacy questions about this disclosure, contact [email protected].

Infrastructure
Google Firebase / GCP: Used for secure auth, NoSQL database hosting (Firestore), and serverless backend functions. All data is encrypted at rest.
AI Providers
Google, DeepSeek, Anthropic, OpenAI, ElevenLabs: See the Third-Party AI Processing Disclosure above for the complete list of providers, data categories, and permission requirements.
Payments
Stripe / RevenueCat: Used strictly to validate and manage active subscriptions and securely process the purchase of physical hardware.
Legal
We may disclose information to comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including responding to any government or regulatory request.

5. Data Security & Retention

Security Measures: We have implemented rigorous technical and organizational measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers behind firewalls. All data in transit is encrypted using TLS 1.3, and data at rest is encrypted using AES-256 standard.

Retention Policy: We retain your Personal Information for as long as your account is active, or as needed to provide you the App. Once you request account deletion, or if an account remains entirely inactive for a period of 24 months, we subject your data to a secure deletion protocol. Routine server backups are purged on a rolling 30-day cycle.

6. Your Global Privacy Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction (e.g., GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, APPI in Japan), you are guaranteed the following absolute rights regarding your data:

  • Right to Access (DSAR)
  • Right to Rectification
  • Right to Erasure (Be Forgotten)
  • Right to Restrict Processing
  • Right to Data Portability
  • Right to Withdraw Consent at any time

7. Account & Data Deletion Procedure

We guarantee absolute transparency and ease when it comes to leaving our ecosystem. You may submit a request to completely delete your account, permanently erasing your identity, progression, and all biometric data.

How to Request Immediate Deletion

Option A: Guaranteed In-App Automated Deletion

  1. Open the Yokaizen mobile application and log in.
  2. Navigate to the Nexus (Dashboard) and tap the Settings (Gear) icon.
  3. Scroll to the Account Management section.
  4. Tap "Delete Account & Wipe Data".
  5. Verify your decision via the final confirmation prompt. Data is wiped instantly from the active database.

Option B: Web / Email Request (No App Installation Required)

If you have uninstalled the app or lost access to your device, you may execute your deletion right manually:

  1. Draft an email from the exact email address associated with your Yokaizen account.
  2. Set the subject line simply to: ACCOUNT DELETION DSAR
  3. Send the email directly to our Data Protection Team at [email protected]
  4. We will process the complete structural deletion of your entity within 5-7 business days, notifying you upon completion.

8. Children Under the Age of 13

Our App is strictly not intended for children under 13 (or under 16 in certain EU jurisdictions) without parental consent. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information immediately.

9. Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this page with a notice that the privacy policy has been updated on the App home screen. If we make material changes to how we treat our users' personal information, we will notify you by email to the primary email address specified in your account and/or through an in-App alert.

10. Information & Contact

To ask questions, exercise your privacy rights, or formally comment about this privacy policy and our privacy practices, contact our Data Protection Officer at: