Privacy Policy

1. Definitions

“Walt”, “we”, “us”, “our” means the operator of the Walt service, established in and operated from Ontario, Canada, which is the party accountable for Personal Information under this Policy.

“Personal Information” means information about an identifiable individual, as further described in Section 3.

“Family Content” means the memories a family chooses to share — voice recordings, videos, photographs, and written answers — together with what Walt derives from them (transcripts, translations, the Family Graph, and the weekly stories).

“Family Graph” means the structured record of the people, places, relationships, and traditions referred to within a family's Family Content, visible only within that family's private space.

“Profile by Mention” means a record of an individual who is referred to within a family's Family Content but who does not hold an account (for example, a grandparent about whom stories are told, or a child). A Profile by Mention exists only within its family's private space and is visible only to that family.

“Member” means an individual who holds an account within a family; “Family Historian” means the Member who administers a family's membership.

“Sub-Processor” means a third party engaged by Walt that Processes Personal Information on Walt's behalf and under Walt's instructions, as listed on the Sub-processors page.

“Process” / “Processing” means any operation performed on Personal Information.

2. Accountability and contact

Walt is accountable for the Personal Information under its control, including Personal Information transferred to a Sub-Processor for Processing.

Walt's Privacy Officer may be contacted at privacy@walt.family. That address is monitored by a person.

3. Personal Information we collect

Account and identity information: name; email address and/or phone number; date of birth; city; preferred language; timezone; and an optional profile photograph.

Family Content: the memories a family chooses to share (voice recordings, videos, photographs, written answers), and what Walt derives from them (transcripts, translations, the Family Graph, and the weekly stories).

Family structure information: the Members of a family and how they are related, including Profiles by Mention for individuals who never create an account.

Payment information: collected and Processed by our payment Sub-Processor (Stripe); card numbers never reach Walt's systems.

Technical information: device type, application events (such as opened and responded), and redacted error logs. Walt does not use advertising trackers.

4. Purposes for which we Process Personal Information

To operate the service for a family: deliver weekly questions; transcribe and interpret answers; generate stories; answer questions through “Ask Walt”; and notify Members in their own language and timezone.

To keep the service secure and operational: authentication, abuse prevention, and debugging using redacted logs.

To administer memberships and billing.

Limitations. Walt does not use Personal Information for advertising, does not sell Personal Information, and does not use Family Content to train artificial-intelligence models.

5. Consent

An adult consents on their own behalf when they accept an invitation to a family.

For a Member under 16 years of age, a parent or guardian within the family provides and manages consent on that Member's behalf.

Because Members appear in one another's memories, sharing Family Content into a family's space makes it visible to that family; the Family Historian administers membership.

A Member may withdraw consent at any time by deleting specific content, leaving the family, or requesting deletion of their Personal Information under Section 8.

6. Artificial-intelligence Processing

Walt uses AI services (currently OpenAI) to transcribe recordings in their original language, identify the people and subjects a memory concerns, draft the weekly story, and suggest — from context, and never by facial recognition or any biometric identifier — who appears in a photograph.

What is transmitted to the AI Sub-Processor: the transcript or recording being Processed, together with the minimum family context needed to interpret it (first names, relationships, cities). The AI Sub-Processor does not use these inputs to train its models and retains them only briefly for abuse monitoring.

Walt does not use, and does not permit any Sub-Processor to use, facial recognition or other biometric identification.

7. Location of Processing and Sub-Processors

A family's database records, voice recordings, and photographs are stored in Canada (Supabase, Canada Central region).

Videos are Processed and delivered by Cloudflare's global network; this global Processing is disclosed.

Certain Sub-Processors Process Personal Information in the United States, as identified on the Sub-processors page.

The complete and current list of Sub-Processors — the categories of Personal Information each Processes, its Processing location, and the applicable cross-border transfer mechanism — is published at walt.family/site/subprocessors. Walt will notify member families before adding or replacing any Sub-Processor that Processes Family Content, and a family that objects may leave with a full export.

When Personal Information crosses a border (for example, a memory recorded in India and read in Canada), it is protected in transit and at rest and is governed by a Data Processing Agreement with the relevant Sub-Processor.

8. Retention and deletion

A family's archive is retained for as long as the family maintains its membership; the archive is the purpose of the service.

On cancellation, Walt provides an export and deletes the family's Personal Information from live systems within 30 days; backup copies age out within a further 35 days.

An individual Member may delete their own contributions at any time; Personal Information derived from those contributions (transcripts, Family Graph entries, story references) is deleted or regenerated without them.

9. Your rights

Subject to applicable law, an individual may access the Personal Information Walt holds about them, correct it, delete it, obtain a portable copy (export), and withdraw consent — from within the application or by writing to privacy@walt.family. Walt responds within 30 days.

An individual who is not satisfied with Walt's response may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) or, in Québec, to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca). Individuals in other jurisdictions may contact their local supervisory authority; Walt will cooperate regardless of where a complaint is filed.

10. Security

Each family's data is isolated by row-level security keyed to the family.

Media is stored in private buckets accessed only through short-lived signed links.

Photographs are stripped of location metadata (EXIF/GPS) on the Member's device before upload.

Transcripts and names are redacted from operational logs.

Access to production systems is limited to the personnel who operate Walt.

11. Children

A Member under 16 years of age joins only by the invitation and consent of a parent or guardian within the family.

Members under 16 do not sign in with federated (social) accounts and are excluded from response nudges and streaks.

Walt applies no facial recognition to any individual, including children.

A child, or their parent or guardian, may have the child's contributions deleted at any time.

12. Phone-number Processing

Where a Member chooses to sign in with a phone number, Walt Processes that phone number for the sole purpose of delivering and verifying a one-time passcode, using its authentication Sub-Processor (currently Twilio). The phone number is not used for marketing.

13. Changes to this Policy

If this Policy changes in a way that materially affects Members, every adult Member is notified before the change takes effect, together with a plain-language summary of what changed and why.