Privacy policy

Who we are

Stool Mate is an iPhone app and this website, made and operated by AutoSolve Labs ("AutoSolve Labs", "we", "us"). For data protection law, AutoSolve Labs is the controller of the personal data described here, except where we say a provider acts on its own behalf. We are based in Georgia, USA; see Contact for how to reach us.

Questions about privacy go to faraz@autosolvelabs.com. This policy applies to everyone who uses Stool Mate, wherever they live; sections near the end add the details specific laws require.

Stool Mate is a wellness tracker, not a medical device. It doesn't diagnose anything, and its results are estimates for personal tracking.

What we handle and why

Most of what you put into Stool Mate never reaches us. This table shows where each kind of data lives.

Photos and AI processing

When you log with the camera (or pick a photo), this is exactly what happens:

1. The photo is downscaled and compressed in your iPhone's memory. It is never written to your phone's storage and never saved to your camera roll.
2. It's sent once over an encrypted (TLS) connection to our analysis service, which runs on Cloudflare.
3. Our analysis service forwards it to our AI service provider, accessed through OpenRouter with zero-data-retention routing. That routing only allows upstream providers that don't retain prompts or images and don't use them for training. The provider looks at the image and returns a Bristol type (1–7) and simple visual attributes: colour, consistency, size and shape.
4. The result comes back to your phone. The image exists only in memory for the few seconds the request takes, and is then discarded. It isn't written to any database, file, cache or log, on our side or the provider's.
5. Only the result is saved, in your log, on your phone and in your private iCloud. You can edit it; your edits replace the original reading and we keep no record of what was originally returned.

We never log the contents of requests (images, results or tokens). Photos are never used to train any AI model, by us or anyone else, and are never shown to friends or put on share cards.

Your consent. Because a photo of this kind can count as health-related data, we ask for your permission once, during setup, before any photo is sent to our AI service provider. You can log without photos at any time: quick log lets you tap the closest shape, and missed days are always filled in by hand. If you'd rather stop using photo analysis, simply don't use the camera. Turning it off doesn't affect anything else in the app. If a photo can't be analysed (for example you're offline), it's discarded and the app asks you to pick the closest shape instead. Photos are never queued or retried later.

We may change which upstream AI provider OpenRouter routes to, but only to providers that meet the same zero-retention, no-training rules. If that ever stops being true, we'll update this policy and ask for your consent again first.

Your log and iCloud

Everything you log (entries, approximate or exact times, types, attributes, notes, "Didn't go" days, experiments and your settings) is stored on your iPhone. If iCloud sync is on, it's also stored in the private database of your own iCloud account (Apple CloudKit), so it can sync between your devices and survive a new phone.

Your private iCloud data is controlled by your Apple Account. We have no access to it. You can turn iCloud sync off in Stool Mate's Settings, and manage or delete iCloud data in your iPhone's Settings › [your name] › iCloud. Apple's handling of iCloud data is covered by Apple's privacy policy.

You can lock the app with Face ID in Settings. Exports you create (PDF, CSV or JSON) are made on your phone and only go wherever you choose to send them.

Apple Health

If you connect Apple Health, Stool Mate asks for read-only access to the categories you approve, such as sleep, steps, active energy, water, dietary fibre, caffeine, resting heart rate and heart rate variability. Stool Mate never writes to Apple Health.

• Health data is read on your iPhone and kept in memory only while you use the app, to show your Health readings and find patterns on your phone.
• It is never sent to us, never sent to our AI service provider and never stored in iCloud or in Stool Mate's own storage.
• It is never used for advertising or marketing, never sold, never shared with friends and never used in the friends feature, leaderboards or challenges.

You can change or remove access at any time in the Health app › Sharing › Apps › Stool Mate, or in iPhone Settings › Privacy & Security › Health.

Your account

You can look around Stool Mate in demo mode without an account. To save your own log and use the friends feature, you sign in with Sign in with Apple. From Apple we receive a stable identifier unique to Stool Mate and, the first time only, the first name you choose to share. We use that name as your display name, which you can change. We don't store your email address or any password. When you sign in, Apple also gives us a sign-in token that we keep only so that we can revoke Stool Mate's access with Apple when you delete your account.

Your account record holds that Apple identifier, your display name, an avatar colour (avatars are initials, never photos), your sharing choices and when you joined. Your app stays signed in with a random session token; our server stores only a one-way hash of it, and it expires after 180 days.

Friends and challenges

The friends feature is optional. When you use it, our server only ever receives derived numbers that you have opted in to share, one switch per metric:

• your weekly gut score (a 0–100 habit score from logging days, rhythm regularity and sweet-spot share; a bit of fun, not a health measure),
• streaks (current and best) and related consistency and on-time logging rates,
• badge IDs, and
• weekly challenge day counts (for example "5 of 6 days").

All of these are off by default. Turning a metric off deletes it from our server. "Take a break" hides you from every friend view. Your raw log, times, Bristol types, colours, symptoms, notes, photos and Apple Health data never reach our server.

We also store your friend connections, invite codes (valid for 7 days), preset nudges and emoji reactions (there's no free-text messaging), the activity feed (milestones and badges, deleted after 14 days), blocks and reports. Removing, blocking or reporting someone is silent: they aren't told.

We don't upload your contacts. "From your contacts" opens Apple's contact picker so you can send an invite link yourself; the contact never leaves your phone.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, we store your device's push token so we can send nudges from friends and reminders through Apple Push Notification service. Notifications are written discreetly (for example "Sam sent you a 🔥") and never describe your log. You can switch them off any time in iPhone Settings › Notifications › Stool Mate.

Share cards and exports

Share cards are drawn on your phone and contain only the stats you pick. They never include photos, Bristol types per entry, colours, symptoms, notes or friends' names, and your first name is off by default. We don't receive your cards. Once you share one, the app or service you share it with handles it under its own terms.

What we never do

• We don't show ads and don't include advertising or third-party analytics SDKs.
• We don't sell, rent or trade your personal data, and we don't "share" it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
• We don't track you across other apps or websites. This website uses no cookies or trackers of its own and no third-party scripts.
• We don't use your photos, log or Health data to train AI models, and we don't let anyone else do so.
• We don't use Health data for marketing, advertising or any purpose other than showing you your own patterns.

Service providers

We use a small number of providers who process data on our behalf, under contract, only to run Stool Mate:

We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the safety of our users, and only to the extent necessary. If Stool Mate is ever sold or merged, this policy will continue to apply to your data, and we'll tell you before anything changes.

How long we keep things

Deleting your data

In the app, go to Settings › Delete everything. This:

• deletes your log from this iPhone and from your private iCloud,
• permanently deletes your account on our server, including friends, shared numbers, challenge history, invites, nudges, reactions, feed events, blocks, push tokens, sessions and reports filed by or about you, and
• revokes Stool Mate's Sign in with Apple access.

You can also stop using Sign in with Apple for Stool Mate in iPhone Settings › [your name] › Sign-In & Security › Sign in with Apple, or email faraz@autosolvelabs.com and we'll delete your account for you. Deleting the app alone doesn't delete your iCloud data or server account. Step-by-step instructions.

Security

All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted with TLS. Photos are never written to disk. Session tokens are stored only as hashes. Access to production systems is limited and we keep request bodies out of our logs. No system is perfectly secure, but we design Stool Mate so that the most sensitive data (photos, your log and Health data) never sits on our servers at all. If a breach ever affects your personal data, we'll notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Children

Stool Mate is not for children: you must be at least 13 years old to use it, and we don't knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. In the EEA and UK, you must be old enough to consent to data processing yourself in your country (between 13 and 16), or have a parent's permission. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact faraz@autosolvelabs.com and we'll delete it.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to access, correct, export or delete the personal data we hold about you, and you can withdraw consent at any time. Most of this you can do yourself in the app: edit your display name, switch sharing off, take a break or delete everything. For anything else, email faraz@autosolvelabs.com. We'll respond within one month (GDPR) or 45 days (US state laws), and may need to confirm it's really you.

EEA, UK and Switzerland

Under the GDPR and UK GDPR you have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection, and the right not to be subject to solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects (we make none). Our legal bases are:

• Explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and Art. 9(2)(a)) for photo analysis and for any other processing of data concerning health, which is a special category of personal data under Art. 9, including the numbers you choose to share with friends. You can withdraw consent at any time; this doesn't affect processing that already happened.
• Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) to provide your account and the features you use.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) to keep the service secure, prevent abuse and handle reports.
• Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) where the law requires us to keep or disclose something.

You can complain to your local data protection authority, though we'd love the chance to fix things first.

United States

Residents of California (CCPA/CPRA), Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana and other states with privacy laws have rights to know, access, correct, delete and port their personal data, and to opt out of sale, targeted advertising and profiling. We don't sell or share personal data for targeted advertising and we don't profile you for decisions with legal effects, so there's nothing to opt out of, but you can still contact us. We use sensitive personal information (such as health-related data) only to provide the service you asked for. If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our decision; if you're unhappy with the appeal, you can contact your state attorney general. You may use an authorised agent. We won't discriminate against you for exercising your rights.

Consumer health data privacy policy (Washington, Nevada and similar laws)

This section is our consumer health data privacy policy under the Washington My Health My Data Act, Nevada SB 370, Connecticut's consumer health data provisions and similar laws. It applies to "consumer health data" about people in those states.

• What we collect: the photo you choose to analyse (processed transiently, never stored); the results and log entries you create (stored on your device and your private iCloud, not by us); and the derived numbers you opt in to share with friends (weekly gut score, streaks, badges, challenge day counts). Apple Health data is read on your device only and is not collected by us.
• Sources: you, directly, through the app.
• Why: to give you a result for a photo, to show your own trends on your device, and to run the friends features you turn on.
• Who we share it with: only the processors listed in Service providers (Cloudflare, OpenRouter and our upstream AI provider for photo analysis), and the friends you choose, who see only the numbers you switched on. We don't share consumer health data with any other third party and we never sell it.
• Consent: we collect and share consumer health data only with your consent, which you give in the app and can withdraw at any time.
• Your rights: you can confirm whether we collect your consumer health data, access it, get a list of the third parties and processors we've shared it with, withdraw consent and have it deleted. Use the app (Settings › Delete everything, or switch sharing off) or email faraz@autosolvelabs.com. You can appeal a decision by replying to it; if we deny the appeal you can contact the Washington State Attorney General.

We don't use geofencing around health care facilities.

International transfers

Our providers may process data in the United States and other countries, including on Cloudflare's global network. Where personal data from the EEA, UK or Switzerland is transferred, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK addendum) or another valid transfer mechanism.

Changes to this policy

If we make a material change, especially to how photos are processed or what friends can see, we'll tell you in the app before it takes effect and ask for consent again where the law requires. The date at the top always shows when this policy last changed.

Contact

Privacy questions, requests and complaints, and everything else: faraz@autosolvelabs.com. You can also visit the support page.