Hopewick Privacy Policy

Last updated: 29 October 2026

This policy explains what Hopewick keeps about you, why, where it goes, and how you stay in charge of it. We've tried to keep it plain. If anything is unclear, email hello@hopewick.com.au.

Who we are

• Hopewick is an app for people in recovery. It has a chat helper called Hope.
• Hopewick is run by Bridge&Bite.Co Pty Ltd (ACN 692 080 792) trading as Hopewick (ABN 83 692 080 792). Hopewick is a trading name, not a separate company. In this policy, "we" and "us" means that company.
• Hopewick is a health service under section 6FB of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). It is meant to support your recovery, and it keeps a record of your health for that purpose. The health-information rules in the Act apply to the health information we hold.
• We follow the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

Sensitive information

• A lot of what you tell Hopewick is about your health: your mood, cravings, substance use, lapses, your safety plan, and your Move & Recover results. The law calls health information "sensitive information". We take extra care with it.
• If you tell us about your faith, that is religious belief, which is sensitive information too. See "Your faith answer" below.
• To create an account, you tick a box to agree that we may collect and handle your sensitive health information for the reasons in this policy. We keep the time you agreed, and which version of this policy you agreed to. If you already have an account and have not agreed yet, we ask you the next time you use Hopewick, until you agree or you sign out. After you agree, we do not ask again for this version of the policy.
• You still choose what to write. You do not have to fill in a check-in, a journal or a safety plan. You can delete what you save, or delete your account, at any time.

What we collect

Your account

• Your email. Your name and phone, if you add them.
• Your password, kept only as a scrambled version (a "hash"). We can't read it.
• Your plan: free, trial or Plus, and the dates that go with it.
• How many messages you've sent Hope today, so we can apply the daily limit.

Your chats with Hope

• When you're signed in, your chats are saved to your account so they're there when you come back.

What you save in the app

When you're signed in, these are saved to your account, for each profile:

• Check-ins: your mood, cravings, feelings, triggers, how strong things felt, and any note.
• Journal: your entries, including any deepened reflection and the emotions you noted.
• Safety plan and its version history: your warning signs, things you can do on your own, people and professionals you can contact, places that feel safe, steps to make your surroundings safer, and your reasons to keep going. Each save keeps a copy, and the last 20 copies are kept so you can look back or restore one.
• Relapse prevention and exit plans.
• Recovery tracker: your goals, and the lapses and cravings you log, with any triggers, notes and what helped.
• Learning: which modules you've started or finished, your quiz score, and the reflections you write.
• Coping tools, next steps and weekly plans: which tools you used and whether they helped, the steps you saved and how they went, and your personal goals.
• Move & Recover: the result of the safety check for each type of activity (a green, amber or red outcome), when you did it and when it's due again, and whether you ticked that a doctor said it's okay. We never keep your answers to the safety questions. We also keep a short pause if you tell us you've used recently, your settings, and your session log, including how you felt before and after.
• "About you" preferences: the name you'd like Hope to use, your focus areas, the tone you prefer, and your faith answer.
• Your choices: whether Hope may read your check-ins, whether Hope may read journal entries without asking each time, and whether you said yes to copying your journal and plans from this browser to your account. We keep a record of these choices.

Older versions of the app also saved some check-ins, gratitude notes and weekly SMART goals to your account. Those are still kept with your account.

Your faith answer

• After you sign up, we ask once if you'd like Christian encouragement. You can say yes, no thanks, or decide later. It's completely optional.
• Faith content is off unless you switch it on. We never guess your faith.
• If you switch it on, we use your answer only to show you faith content (like reflections and prayers) and to tell Hope the tradition you chose.
• You can change it or switch it off any time in About you. "Reset to defaults" turns it off. We keep only a note that you've already answered, so we don't keep asking you.
• To remove it completely, delete everything for that profile or delete your account (see "Seeing, fixing or deleting your info").

Payments

• If you pay by card, Stripe handles it. We keep your Stripe customer and subscription numbers and your plan status. We never see or keep your card number.
• Our Android app has been live on Google Play since 22 October 2026. If you buy Hopewick Plus inside the Android app, Google Play handles the payment, not us. Google shares your purchase token with us, and we check it with Google to confirm your subscription. We keep that purchase token, the product you bought, your plan status, when your current period ends and when we last checked. We never see your card or payment details. Manage or cancel a Play subscription in the Google Play Store app, under Payments & subscriptions.

Collected automatically

• When you use the site, our host keeps short server and hosting logs of requests. A log can include the page or address asked for, and the time. These logs help us run and protect the service. They are not added to your account.
• Your IP address is used for a short time, in memory, to stop too many sign-in attempts. It isn't saved to your account.
• We count site visits per page per day, and which campaign link brought people in. These counts have no names, emails, IP addresses or cookies in them. A browser's user-agent string is checked only so automated visits are left out of that count. It isn't saved.
• A cookie keeps you signed in. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.
• Google sign-in: if you use it, Google confirms your email to us. Google doesn't see your chats.

On your device

• The app also keeps a copy of chats, notes Hope remembers about you, profiles, your journal and settings in your own browser. We can't see that copy. Clear it in Settings on each device.

Why we use it

• To let you sign in and keep your account safe.
• To show you what you've saved: your check-ins, journal, plans, tracker and progress.
• To let Hope reply to you, in the way you've asked.
• To take payment for Plus and know which features you can use.
• To answer your emails, requests and complaints.
• We do not sell your information.
• We do not use it for ads.
• No person at Hopewick reads your chats or what you save as a normal part of running the app.

What Hope sends to OpenAI

Hope's replies are written by an AI model from OpenAI. To reply, we send OpenAI:

• Your recent messages in that chat.
• Your first name or preferred name, and the settings you chose for Hope (like tone and focus areas).
• Your clean-time start date, if you track it, and the short notes Hope remembers about you from past chats.
• Your check-ins, only if you turn on "Share my check-ins with Hope". That's today's mood, cravings and gratitude, and your last 7 check-ins (mood, cravings, triggers and the feelings you described, but never your private notes). It's off unless you turn it on.
• A journal entry, only when you ask Hope to help deepen it and say yes.
• Your faith tradition, only if you switched faith content on.

We don't send your email, phone, password, safety plan or payment details to OpenAI. OpenAI's business terms say it doesn't use this data to train its models unless a customer opts in. OpenAI may keep it for up to 30 days to check for misuse, then deletes it, unless the law requires it to keep it longer.

Community posts and OpenAI

When you post or reply on Community, we check your words before they go up. We do this with OpenAI's moderation tool. OpenAI is in the USA.

We send it the text of your post or reply. We don't send your name, email or nickname. The check looks for things like self-harm, threats, hate or sexual content. If something is flagged, a person at Hopewick looks at your post before others can see it.

OpenAI's business terms say it doesn't use this data to train its models, and it doesn't keep the text it checks for us.

Other people on Community can see what you post. Only post what you're happy for them to read. We keep your posts encrypted on our servers. If you delete your account, we delete your posts, replies and reactions.

Who we share it with

We only share what each service needs to do its job:

• OpenAI (USA). Writes Hope's replies. See above.
• Render (hosting). Runs our app server in Singapore and stores your account, payment status, chats and older check-ins there. See "Where your information is kept".
• Neon (database). Stores your saved wellbeing and Move & Recover records in Sydney, Australia, on Amazon Web Services.
• Cloudflare. Delivers the website to your browser on behalf of our host.
• Stripe (payments). Gets your email and payment details if you buy Plus by card.
• Google. Only if you choose "Sign in with Google". Google doesn't see your chats.
• Resend (email). Sends your sign-in links. It gets your email address and the link.
• The law. We may share information if the law says we must, or to lessen a serious threat to someone's life, health or safety.

Sending information overseas

• Some of these services handle your information outside Australia. Under APP 8 we have to tell you where, and we take these steps to protect it.
• Singapore: Render, which stores your account, payment status, chats and the older check-ins from earlier app versions.
• Your saved wellbeing and Move & Recover records stay in Australia, with Neon in Sydney.
• USA: OpenAI (your Hope messages), Stripe, Google and Resend. They may also use other countries.
• Many countries: Cloudflare's network.
• We only send each service what it needs to do its job. We use them under their own terms. For OpenAI, those are the business terms in "What Hope sends to OpenAI": it doesn't use this data to train its models unless a customer opts in, and it may keep it for up to 30 days to check for misuse.
• Your connection to Hopewick is encrypted (HTTPS). Our calls to OpenAI, Stripe, Google and Resend are over HTTPS as well. The server will not call OpenAI unless the address is HTTPS.
• Chats, and the health information listed in "How we protect it", are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they are stored. Neon, which keeps the Sydney records, encrypts its storage, backups and branches at rest, and the connection to Neon uses TLS.
• Your account details (such as your email and password hash) and the older check-ins from earlier app versions are not encrypted with our own key. They are protected by the security of our private server.

Where your information is kept

• Neon in Sydney, Australia: your saved wellbeing records (check-ins, journal, safety plan and its history, relapse and exit plans, recovery tracker, learning, coping tools, next steps, weekly plans, preferences including your faith answer, and your choices) and your Move & Recover records.
• Render in Singapore: your account details (email, name, phone if you add it, a password hash, and your sign-in sessions), your payment status (subscription status and ids), your saved chats with Hope, a daily message count, site visit counts, and the older check-ins and weekly goals from earlier app versions.

How we protect it

• Your connection to Hopewick is encrypted (HTTPS).
• Encryption at rest: the words you write in your check-ins, journal, plans, safety plan and its history, recovery tracker, learning reflections, coping notes, next steps, weekly plans and goals, your preferences (including your faith answer), and your Move & Recover safety results and session details are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they're stored. Your saved chats with Hope (the chat titles and every message) are encrypted the same way. The key is kept separately from the stored data.
• Chats saved before we turned this on are encrypted the next time your chats are saved, for example when you next chat with Hope while signed in.
• Your account details and the older check-ins from earlier app versions aren't encrypted this way. They're protected by the security of our private server.
• Passwords and sign-in links are stored only as scrambled hashes.
• Each account can only reach its own information. Only we can get into the server and database.
• No system is 100% safe. If there's a data breach that's likely to cause serious harm, we'll tell you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

How long we keep it

• Chats: until you delete them, delete your account, or 2 years after the chat was last used.
• Everything else you save: until you delete it or delete your account.
• Your plan never deletes anything. On the free plan, the app shows the last 7 days of your history, but everything older is still kept, and it's always in your export. If Plus ends, you keep all your data.
• Free plan chats: you can open your latest chat. Older chats are still kept until the rules above apply.
• Backups: deleted information can stay in our host's daily disk snapshots, which are kept for up to 7 days, and in our database's restore history, which is kept for no more than 7 days, before it's gone.
• Payment records: Stripe keeps invoices as tax law requires.

Seeing, fixing or deleting your info

• Export: download everything saved for a profile, any time, on any plan, from Your data (in Daily check-in).
• Fix: change your name and phone in My Account, edit what you've saved in the app, and change your preferences in About you.
• Delete one area: in Your data, delete all your check-ins, journal entries, coping history, next steps, weekly plans, personal goals, recovery tracker goals and logs, or learning progress and notes. You can also delete a single chat, entry or log.
• Delete everything for a profile: in Your data. This includes your safety plan and its history, your relapse and exit plans, your preferences and faith answer, and Move & Recover. Your account and plan stay as they are.
• Delete your account: in My Account. This removes your sign-in, chats and everything you've saved on our server. It cancels a Plus plan you pay for on our website (Stripe). It does not cancel a Google Play subscription: if you subscribed in the Android app, cancel it yourself in Google Play > Subscriptions (under Payments & subscriptions). Step by step: How to delete your account.
• Deleting on our server doesn't clear the copy in your browser. Clear it in Settings on each device.
• Want a copy of something not in the export (like your saved chats), or want us to fix or delete something for you? Email hello@hopewick.com.au. We'll check it's you first, reply within 30 days, and it's free.

Age: 18 and over only

• You must be 18 or older to use Hopewick.
• When you create an account you tick a box to say you are 18 or over. We don't check ages. We trust you to tell the truth.
• If you are under 18, please stop using the app. You can delete your account in My Account, or email hello@hopewick.com.au and we'll delete it. We'll check the email is yours first.
• If we learn that someone under 18 has an account, we will delete it.
• If you are under 18 and need support, call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency call 000.

Complaints

1. Email us first at hello@hopewick.com.au. Tell us what went wrong.
2. We aim to acknowledge it within 2 business days and resolve it within 10 business days. Those are targets, not a guarantee.
3. Not happy with our answer, or haven't heard back within 30 days? You can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). The OAIC needs complaints in writing, using the form on its website.
4. Website: oaic.gov.au
5. Enquiries: 1300 363 992

More on complaints is on our Complaints page.

Changes to this policy

• We'll update this page when what we collect or where we keep it changes, and change the date at the top. If it's a big change, we'll tell you in the app first.

Contact

• Email: hello@hopewick.com.au
• Hopewick is run by Bridge&Bite.Co Pty Ltd (ACN 692 080 792) trading as Hopewick (ABN 83 692 080 792).

Need help now? Hope is not a crisis service. Call 000 in an emergency, or Lifeline 13 11 14.