Effective Date: October 23, 2026

Mark Derian LLC (“Mark Derian LLC,” “Animus,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) understands that your privacy is important. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, store, and protect information when you visit joinanimus.com, use Animus AI at ai.joinanimus.com, purchase or use our products or services, communicate with us, or otherwise interact with websites or services operated by Mark Derian LLC.

“You” and “your” mean the individual accessing or using our websites or services.

This Privacy Policy should be read together with our Terms of Use and, where applicable, our separate Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, available at:

https://joinanimus.com/health-data-privacy

Because Animus AI allows users to reflect on psychological and emotional experiences, some information entered into the service may be sensitive or may constitute consumer health data under applicable law.

## 1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We may collect information directly from you, automatically through your use of our websites and services, and from service providers that help us operate our business.

### Information You Provide to Us

Depending on how you interact with us, you may provide information such as:

- Your name

- Email address

- Telephone number

- Mailing or billing information

- Account information

- Communications you send to us

- Information submitted through forms

- Information provided when scheduling, purchasing, registering for, or using a product or service

- Information you choose to provide in connection with Animus AI

You are not required to provide information that you do not want us to process, although some information may be necessary to provide particular services.

## 2. ANIMUS AI ACCOUNT INFORMATION

If you create an Animus AI account, we collect and process information necessary to create and maintain the account, including your email address, account identifier, authentication information, subscription status, and related account information.

Passwords and authentication are handled through our authentication provider. We do not store your password in readable form.

We may also process information concerning authentication activity, account confirmation, password recovery, login sessions, and account security.

## 3. INFORMATION YOU ENTER INTO ANIMUS AI

Animus AI is designed to help users reflect on and put words to emotional and psychological experiences.

Information you voluntarily enter into Animus AI may include descriptions of:

- Events and circumstances

- Feelings and emotional states

- Thoughts and interpretations

- Relationships and interpersonal conflicts

- Psychological concerns

- Personal experiences

- Meanings you associate with experiences

- Your relationship to or responsibility for a feeling

- Expressions or statements you develop through the process

- Other information you choose to provide

We refer to information you submit to the AI tool, together with related structured steps and saved summaries, as “AI Tool Content.”

AI Tool Content may contain sensitive information. Depending on what you choose to discuss, it may reveal information concerning your emotional or mental state, relationships, health, sexuality, religious or philosophical beliefs, family circumstances, or other private matters.

Animus AI may also store structured information created during your use of the tool, such as the stage of a reflection, completed steps, saved summaries, and edits you make to those summaries.

## 4. HOW ANIMUS AI USES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Animus AI uses OpenAI technology to generate responses.

Relevant portions of the information you submit may therefore be transmitted to OpenAI through its API so that the AI can generate a response.

We do not use AI Tool Content to train a separate Animus AI model.

We do not intentionally opt users' AI Tool Content into third-party model training programs.

Artificial intelligence is probabilistic. AI-generated responses may be inaccurate, incomplete, or inappropriate to your individual circumstances.

Additional limitations concerning the nature and appropriate use of Animus AI are described in our Terms of Use.

## 5. SUBSCRIPTION AND PAYMENT INFORMATION

Animus AI uses Stripe to process subscription payments and manage billing.

When you enter payment-card information through Stripe Checkout or Stripe's billing portal, payment credentials are provided directly to Stripe. Mark Derian LLC does not store your complete credit-card number or card security code.

We receive information necessary to administer your subscription, which may include:

- Stripe customer identifiers

- Stripe subscription identifiers

- Subscription status

- Trial status

- Trial expiration date

- Billing-period information

- Cancellation status and cancellation date

Stripe may independently retain transaction and payment information as required or permitted by its legal, financial, fraud-prevention, and regulatory obligations.

## 6. FREE-TRIAL ELIGIBILITY

Animus AI may limit users to one free trial.

To enforce that limitation, we may retain a pseudonymous cryptographic identifier derived from an email address after an Animus AI account is deleted.

This identifier is used for the limited purpose of determining whether the same email address has previously received an Animus AI free trial and for related fraud or abuse prevention.

The free-trial record is not used for advertising and does not contain the contents of your Animus AI conversations or saved reflections.

Because an identifier derived from an email address may still be considered personal or pseudonymous information under applicable law, we do not treat it as necessarily anonymous.

## 7. INFORMATION COLLECTED AUTOMATICALLY

When you visit our websites or use our services, we and the companies that help us operate them may automatically process technical information such as:

- IP address

- Browser type

- Device type

- Operating system

- Referring or exit pages

- Dates and times of requests

- Authentication activity

- Pages or features used

- Error and diagnostic information

- Other ordinary technical information necessary to operate, secure, or understand use of the service

We may use this information to operate our websites, maintain security, diagnose technical problems, understand how our services are used, and improve their reliability and usability.

## 8. COOKIES, LOCAL STORAGE, AND SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES

Our websites and service providers may use cookies, browser storage, and similar technologies.

These technologies may be used to:

- Maintain login sessions

- Remember account or site preferences

- Operate website functionality

- Maintain security

- Understand website usage

- Diagnose technical problems

For example, Animus AI uses browser storage as part of maintaining authentication sessions.

Your browser may allow you to block or delete cookies and stored information. Disabling certain technologies may prevent parts of our websites or services from functioning correctly.

Third-party services used on our websites may also use their own cookies or similar technologies in accordance with their own privacy policies.

## 9. HOW WE USE PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may use information we collect to:

- Provide our websites, products, and services

- Create and maintain accounts

- Authenticate users

- Generate Animus AI responses

- Maintain active and completed AI reflections

- Save and display summaries

- Allow users to review and edit saved information

- Process purchases and administer subscriptions

- Provide and enforce free trials

- Process cancellations

- Send account-confirmation and password-recovery emails

- Respond to questions and support requests

- Communicate with you concerning products or services you requested

- Maintain records

- Prevent fraud, abuse, and unauthorized access

- Protect the security and integrity of our services

- Troubleshoot technical problems

- Improve our services and content

- Enforce our agreements

- Protect our rights and the rights or safety of others

- Comply with applicable law and valid legal process

We do not use AI Tool Content for behavioral or targeted advertising.

We do not sell AI Tool Content.

## 10. CONSUMER HEALTH AND SENSITIVE INFORMATION

Because Animus AI is designed for reflection on emotional and psychological experiences, AI Tool Content may constitute sensitive personal information or consumer health data under applicable law.

We process this information primarily to provide the service requested by the user, including generating AI responses, maintaining a user's reflection, saving summaries, preserving user-requested history, and securing the service.

We do not sell AI Tool Content or use it for targeted advertising.

Additional disclosures and rights concerning consumer health information are contained in our separate:

Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy‍ ‍

https://joinanimus.com/health-data-privacy

## 11. SERVICE PROVIDERS

We use third-party companies to provide infrastructure and services necessary to operate our websites and Animus AI.

These currently include:

### OpenAI

OpenAI provides artificial-intelligence technology used to generate Animus AI responses. Relevant portions of AI Tool Content are transmitted to OpenAI when necessary to generate those responses.

### Supabase

Supabase provides database and authentication infrastructure used by Animus AI. Information stored through this infrastructure may include account information, AI Tool Content, saved summaries, subscription-state information, and related application data.

### Render

Render hosts the server-side Animus AI application and processes information transmitted through that infrastructure as necessary to operate the service.

### Stripe

Stripe provides payment processing, subscription management, checkout, and customer billing services.

### Resend

Resend provides email-delivery infrastructure used for authentication-related communications, including account-confirmation and password-recovery emails.

### Squarespace

Squarespace hosts portions of our public-facing website and may process ordinary technical or website information associated with visits to those pages.

We may change, replace, or add service providers as our services evolve.

Service providers may process information on our behalf subject to their agreements with us, their own legal obligations, and applicable privacy law.

## 12. HOW WE SHARE PERSONAL INFORMATION

We do not sell AI Tool Content.

We may disclose personal information to service providers when reasonably necessary for them to provide services on our behalf.

We may also disclose information when reasonably necessary to:

- Comply with applicable law

- Respond to valid subpoenas, court orders, warrants, or other legal process

- Investigate fraud, security incidents, or misuse

- Enforce our agreements

- Protect the rights, safety, security, or property of Mark Derian LLC, our users, or others

- Establish, exercise, or defend legal claims

If Mark Derian LLC or substantially all of the relevant business or assets are acquired, merged, reorganized, financed, or sold, information may be transferred as part of that transaction subject to applicable law.

## 13. COMMUNICATIONS

We may communicate with you by email or other contact information you provide concerning:

- Account creation

- Account confirmation

- Password recovery

- Purchases and subscriptions

- Customer support

- Changes to our services

- Products, services, or content in which you have expressed interest

- Other communications permitted by applicable law

Where applicable, you may unsubscribe from promotional communications using the instructions contained in those communications.

Transactional or account-related communications may still be necessary while you maintain an account or subscription.

Electronic communications are not guaranteed to be immune from unauthorized interception.

## 14. DATA RETENTION

We retain information for different periods depending on why it is needed.

While an Animus AI account remains active, we generally retain saved AI Tool Content and summaries so that the user can return to and review them.

Completed reflection history does not automatically expire solely because time has passed.

We may retain account, transaction, security, technical, and business records for periods reasonably necessary to:

- Provide the service

- Maintain security

- Prevent fraud or abuse

- Resolve disputes

- Maintain backup integrity

- Enforce agreements

- Comply with legal, tax, accounting, or regulatory obligations

Third-party service providers may have separate retention obligations or practices.

## 15. ACCOUNT AND DATA DELETION

Animus AI provides an account-deletion feature through the Account page.

When you permanently delete your Animus AI account, the service is designed to delete your active Animus authentication account and stored application data associated with the account, including saved reflections, messages, and summaries.

If an active Animus AI subscription exists, the system is designed to cancel that subscription as part of the deletion process.

Deletion from our active application database does not necessarily mean that every copy of information disappears instantaneously from backups, security logs, fraud-prevention records, legal records, or third-party systems.

Limited information may remain where reasonably necessary or legally permitted for:

- Security

- Fraud and abuse prevention

- Backup integrity

- Legal compliance

- Financial recordkeeping

- Dispute resolution

- Enforcement of our agreements

As described above, a pseudonymous email-derived identifier may remain for the limited purpose of enforcing the one-free-trial-per-email policy.

Payment providers may independently retain payment and transaction information.

For rights specifically concerning consumer health data, see our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

## 16. ACCESS, CORRECTION, AND PRIVACY REQUESTS

Depending on where you live and which privacy laws apply to Mark Derian LLC, you may have rights concerning personal information, which may include rights to:

- Access information concerning you

- Correct inaccurate information

- Delete certain information

- Obtain information about how personal information is used or disclosed

- Withdraw certain consents

- Appeal certain privacy decisions

Animus AI users can review saved reflections and edit saved summaries through their accounts.

Users can also permanently delete their Animus AI accounts through the Account page.

For privacy requests that cannot be completed through your account, contact:

privacy [at] joinanimus [dot] com

We may take reasonable steps to verify the identity or authority of a person making a privacy request.

Additional rights regarding consumer health data are described in our separate Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

## 17. SECURITY

We use administrative, technical, and organizational measures intended to protect personal information from unauthorized access, loss, misuse, alteration, or disclosure.

Measures used in connection with Animus AI include authenticated accounts, database access controls, separation of user data, server-side handling of privileged credentials, and encrypted network connections.

Access to personal information is limited to persons and service providers who require access for legitimate operational purposes.

No internet service, database, or security system can guarantee absolute security. You should not submit information that you are unwilling to have processed electronically in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

## 18. HIPAA AND HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS

Animus AI is not offered as a medical-record system or as a substitute for clinical recordkeeping infrastructure.

Unless Mark Derian LLC expressly agrees otherwise in writing and all appropriate legal agreements and technical configurations are in place, healthcare providers should not use Animus AI to store or transmit protected health information on behalf of patients in circumstances requiring HIPAA compliance.

The fact that Animus AI addresses psychological or emotional subjects does not itself mean that all information submitted to the service is governed by HIPAA.

Other privacy laws concerning consumer health information may nevertheless apply.

## 19. CHILDREN'S PRIVACY

Our general websites are not directed toward children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 through those websites.

Animus AI is intended for adults age 18 and older.

We do not knowingly offer Animus AI accounts to persons under 18.

If you believe that a child or minor has provided personal information contrary to this policy, contact us at:

privacy [at] joinanimus [dot] com

## 20. LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Our websites may contain links to websites operated by other organizations.

Mark Derian LLC is not responsible for the privacy practices, security, or content of websites we do not control.

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of third-party websites before providing information to them.

## 21. INTERNATIONAL PROCESSING

Mark Derian LLC is operated from the United States.

Some service providers we use may process information in the United States or other jurisdictions in which they or their subprocessors operate.

If you access our services from outside the United States, your information may therefore be transferred to and processed in jurisdictions whose privacy laws differ from those in your location.

## 22. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this Privacy Policy when our services, technology, service providers, or legal obligations change.

When we make changes, we will update the Effective Date at the top of this policy.

If a change is material, we may provide additional notice where appropriate or required by law.

Where applicable law requires affirmative consent before a new use of information, an update to this Privacy Policy will not substitute for obtaining that consent.

## 23. CONTACT US

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, our privacy practices, or information concerning you, contact:

Mark Derian LLC‍ ‍

mark [at] joinanimus [dot] com

Website: https://joinanimus.com