Privacy Policy
Chattr — Privacy Policy
1. Who we are
Chattr is operated by CHATTR LTD, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17199526). CHATTR LTD is the "controller" of your personal data — this means we are responsible for deciding how and why it is used. Our registered office is at 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ.
We are registered with the Information Commission (formerly the ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, under registration number ZC149597.
2. The short version
We try to collect as little as possible. Chattr is anonymous to other users, and we want to keep it that way. The essence:
- We use your phone number and your university email to check that you are a real, eligible student. They are never shown to other users.
- Your posts, comments and votes are shown to others without your name attached.
- We use limited technical and analytics data to run the Service safely and keep it working.
- We do not sell your personal data.
- You can download your data or delete your account from within the app.
The rest of this policy gives the full detail, as the law requires.
3. What personal data we collect
3.1 Information you give us
- Mobile phone number — collected at sign-up and used to send a one-time sign-in code.
- University email address — used to confirm you are an eligible student and to decide your campus. We store whether you have confirmed it and the institution it belongs to.
- Age confirmation — your confirmation that you are 18 or over, and the date you gave it.
- Content you create — your posts, comments, poll answers, votes, bookmarks, and any images you upload.
- Reports and appeals — information you submit when you report content or appeal a decision.
- Messages to us — anything you send to our support or other contact addresses.
- How you heard about Chattr — your answer at sign-up to "How did you hear about Chattr?", and anything you add in the optional box, used to see which channels bring students in.
- Invites — if you join through someone's invite link, the fact that they invited you.
3.2 Information we collect automatically
- Usage and activity data — such as your karma score, when you are active, and how you interact with content, used to run features like leaderboards and to keep the Service safe.
- Technical and log data — such as IP address, device and browser type, and timestamps, generated through our infrastructure providers and used for security, abuse prevention, and diagnosing faults.
- Error and performance data — collected through our monitoring tools to detect and fix problems.
- Product analytics and session replay — we use a privacy-focused analytics tool (PostHog), which processes this data in PostHog's EU region, to understand how the Service is used (pages and features used, taps, time spent, and where people get stuck) and to watch session replays that help us fix usability problems. Replays mask all text input and all text on screen, so nothing you type or read is recorded. We run this analytics without storing cookies on your device; the app keeps one small marker in your browser's session storage to tell a fresh visit from a reload. You can turn analytics and session replay off on a device in Settings → Privacy choices.
- Our own usage record — on our own systems we also keep a short record of what you do in the app, linked to your account: when you open it and how long it stays on your screen, which kind of screen you are on (for example "a post", never which post), and actions such as opening a post, the post box or comments, pressing Post, having a post refused (with the reason, such as the content check), posting, voting in a poll, opening a notification and answering the notifications prompt. It also records how fast pages load and, if the app fails, the kind of error (never its message). Before you sign in, on the sign-up and campus pages, we record the same kind of visit without any account, with the campaign tag of the link you came from. It contains nothing you write or read, and no IP address or device details. We use it to see how people find Chattr, how long they stay, where they stop and whether they try to post, and keep it for 90 days. We sometimes show different versions of a screen to different people to see which works better; the record then notes which version you were shown, and on the campus pages before you sign in a first-party cookie (chattr_ab) holding a random number keeps your version the same between visits. Turning off analytics, or signup statistics, in Settings → Privacy choices stops it on that device, and you are then always shown the standard version. It also notes which app you use (the App Store app, the home-screen app or a browser), the sign-up steps you reach, when you copy or share your invite link, whether a notification was opened, the rough length of a post or search (a size band, never the words) and how far down the feed you scrolled.
- How you arrived — if you open Chattr from a link that carries a campaign tag (for example a QR code, one of our Instagram accounts or an advert), we record the source, medium, campaign, advert and campus named in that link, in a first-party cookie for 30 days and, once you sign up, on your account. We use this only for our own signup statistics. It is not sent to Meta or anyone else, and it is recorded whether or not you accept advertising cookies. You can turn it off, and clear what we recorded, in Settings → Privacy choices.
- Advertising measurement — only if you accept advertising cookies. Meta's cookies record that you came from one of our adverts, and we send Meta the signup steps described in section 6.3. Nothing here is collected if you refuse.
3.3 What you must give us
To have a Chattr account you must give us a mobile phone number, which we use to send your sign-in code, and a UK university email address ending in .ac.uk, which you must confirm through the link we email you within 10 days. We do not accept other email addresses. Without both you cannot have an account: an account whose email is not confirmed within 10 days loses access and, if it has not posted, is deleted. You must also confirm that you are 18 or over, accept our Terms, and answer "How did you hear about Chattr?". Everything else — images, the optional box, campus updates — is up to you, and you can object to us reusing your posts (section 4).
4. How we use your data, and our lawful basis
Under UK data protection law we must have a "lawful basis" for each use of your personal data. This table sets out each purpose, the data it uses and the basis we rely on:
| What we do | Data used | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Creating and running your account, checking your phone number and university email, and placing you in your campus feed | Phone number, university email, campus, age confirmation, account activity | Contract: we need it to provide the Service you signed up for |
| Showing posts, comments, polls and messages, and ranking the Popular and For you sections | Your content, votes and bookmarks | Contract; ranking by your own upvotes and bookmarks relies on our legitimate interests in showing you relevant content |
| Moderation and safety: checking content, handling reports and appeals, preventing abuse and keeping records | Content, reports, account and technical data | Legal obligation under the Online Safety Act 2023, and our legitimate interests in keeping the Service safe; see section 16 for sensitive information |
| Service notifications about activity on your posts, your messages and your account | Push token or browser subscription, notification settings | Contract, with your device's permission; turn each type off in Settings → Notifications |
| Campus updates by email or push (marketing) | Email address or push token, your marketing choices | Consent, given separately for each channel; withdraw in Settings → Notifications → Campus updates or with the unsubscribe link in any email |
| The invite scheme: recording who invited whom, counting invites, approving and delivering rewards | Your invite link, who invited you, whether invites have verified and been active, phone numbers for the duplicate check, reward records | Contract (section 17 of our Terms); the fraud checks rely on our legitimate interests in stopping abuse of the scheme |
| Signup statistics: how you heard about Chattr and which link, advert or campaign brought you | Your answer at sign-up; the source, medium, campaign, advert and campus named in the link | Our legitimate interests in knowing which channels bring students in; object, or turn it off, in Settings → Privacy choices |
| Product analytics and session replay | Actions in the app, device and browser type, masked replays | Our legitimate interests in understanding and improving the Service; turn it off in Settings → Privacy choices |
| Advertising measurement | See section 6.3 | Consent; withdraw in Settings → Advertising cookies |
| Charlie, the campus assistant | Your questions and campus | Our legitimate interests in providing and improving the assistant (section 14) |
| Reposting your posts, anonymously, on our own channels, including paid adverts | The text of the posts | Our legitimate interests in promoting the Service; object in Settings → Privacy choices |
| Security, fault-finding and error monitoring | Technical and log data | Our legitimate interests in keeping the Service secure and working |
| Answering valid legal requests and keeping records the law requires | Whatever the request lawfully covers | Legal obligation |
We check the content you submit — posts, poll options, comments, images and direct messages — using automated systems and human review, to keep illegal and harmful content off the Service. The automated layer runs at the moment you submit: pattern detection against a watchlist of harmful content and personal information, a scoring of the submission and the account that made it (for example, a brand-new account or a sudden burst of posts), and, for images, an automated safety check. Depending on the result, content is refused, published, or held or flagged for a person on our moderation team to review; content that other users report is reviewed by a person too. Section 15 explains these automated decisions and how to ask a person to look again. We rely on our legal obligations under the Online Safety Act 2023 and on our legitimate interests in keeping the Service safe. Chattr is also integrating the Internet Watch Foundation's hash list, and once that membership is active we will use it to detect known child sexual abuse imagery at the point of upload; it is not running yet.
We may reuse posts you make on Chattr, with no name or identifying detail, on Chattr's own marketing and social media channels, including paid adverts (for example on Instagram, TikTok and Meta's advertising services). Our lawful basis is our legitimate interests in promoting the Service. You have the right to object: turn off "Let Chattr share my posts anonymously" in Settings → Privacy choices and we stop using your posts in new material. Where a post is used in a paid advert on Meta's services, Meta Platforms Ireland Limited receives the advert, which carries the words of the post and never your name, contact details or account. This applies to posts made on or after 5 October 2026; posts made before then are reused only if you turned on the optional content licence that applied at the time.
We use your own activity on the Service — the posts you upvote and bookmark — to rank the content we show you, for example to order the "Popular" and "For you" sections. This uses only actions you take within the app; we do not track what you read or how long you look at it. We rely on our legitimate interests in showing you relevant content.
If — and only if — you accept advertising cookies, we measure whether our adverts lead to signups: that you visited, created an account, submitted a university email and confirmed it. Our lawful basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in Settings → Advertising cookies. Withdrawing stops any further sharing; it does not undo measurement already carried out, and it does not affect anything else about your account. We do not use this to profile you, to decide what you see on Chattr, or to target adverts at you individually.
5. Anonymity and identification
Your posts are shown to other users without your name. Internally, however, your account is linked to your verification details. We keep this link so that we can meet our safety and legal duties — for example, to act on illegal content or to respond to a valid request from the police or a court.
We will only identify an account, or disclose the data behind it, where we are legally required or permitted to do so, or where it is necessary to protect someone's safety. We do not reveal who posted what to other users.
6. Who we share your data with
We do not sell your personal data. We share it only in these situations:
6.1 Service providers (processors)
They act on our instructions and are bound by contracts requiring them to protect your data. This is every provider that receives personal data about Chattr users, what each does, and where the data goes:
| Provider | What for | Data they receive | Where | Transfer safeguard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Our database, sign-in and file storage | All account data, content, images and messages | UK (London) for our database; Supabase, Inc. is a US company and its staff may access it from abroad | the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement for any access from outside the UK |
| Vercel | Hosting the app and website and running our servers | Every request to Chattr, including IP address, device and browser type and what the request carries | United States (our servers run in Vercel's Washington, D.C. region) | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Twilio, through Supabase | Sending your sign-in code by text message | Your phone number and the code | United States | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Resend | Sending emails: confirmation links, reminders, gift card codes and any campus updates you opted into | Your email address and the email | EU (Ireland) for sending; Resend, Inc. is a US company | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Upstash | Rate limits, email confirmation links and short-lived caches | Account identifiers, IP addresses used as rate-limit keys, and your email address while a confirmation link is live | The region set in our Upstash account; Upstash, Inc. is a US company | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Sightengine | Automated checking of uploaded images for nudity, violence, gore and hateful symbols | Uploaded images | France (EU) | UK adequacy regulations for the EEA |
| Anthropic | Generating Charlie's answers (section 14) | Your questions to Charlie, your university's name and the campus information Charlie retrieved; never your name, phone number, email address or account identifier | United States | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| PostHog | Product analytics and session replay | Actions in the app, a pseudonymous account identifier, your campus, device and browser type, and session replays with all text masked | EU (PostHog's EU region) | UK adequacy regulations for the EEA |
| Sentry | Error monitoring on our servers | Technical error reports, after we strip cookies, sign-in tokens, email addresses and phone numbers | The region set in our Sentry account; Functional Software, Inc. is a US company | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Apple (Apple Push Notification service) | Delivering notifications to the Chattr iPhone app | A device token and the notification text | United States | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Browser push services (for example Apple, Google and Mozilla) | Delivering notifications to your browser or home-screen app | Your browser's push subscription and the encrypted notification | Wherever your browser's provider runs its push service, often the United States | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| GIPHY | GIF search in the post composer | Your search words and your device's IP address, sent straight from your device when you use the GIF picker; GIPHY's own privacy policy applies | United States | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Reloadly | Issuing gift cards earned through the invite scheme (section 18) | A reward reference number, the card and the amount; never your name or contact details | Outside the UK (Reloadly, Inc. is a US company) | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Giftbit | Issuing gift card links earned through the invite scheme, when we use it | An order reference and the amount; never your name or contact details | Outside the UK (Giftbit is based in Canada) | UK adequacy regulations for Canada, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Telegram | Internal alerts to our team, when switched on | A link to a post; never the post's content or who wrote it | Outside the UK | the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Porkbun | Forwarding emails you send to our @chattr.uk addresses to our company mailbox | Your email address and your message | United States | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, otherwise the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement |
| Meta Platforms Ireland Limited | Advertising measurement, only with your consent (section 6.3), where Meta is a joint controller, not our processor; and running Chattr's own paid adverts, which may carry the words of a post with no name or identifying detail (section 4) | See section 6.3; for an advert, the advert itself | EU and United States | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses |
Some services we use receive no personal data about Chattr users: Buffer, which publishes Chattr's own posts to TikTok; Instagram's publishing tools, for Chattr's own accounts; and Apify, which collects public posts from Instagram accounts about student life — not from Chattr — to help us plan our own content.
6.2 Legal and safety disclosures
We may disclose data where the law requires or permits it: to the police, courts, regulators such as Ofcom or the Information Commission (formerly the ICO), or organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation or the National Crime Agency, in connection with illegal content or a risk to safety.
6.3 Advertising measurement (only with your consent)
Where you have consented to advertising cookies, we share a record of your signup steps with Meta Platforms Ireland Limited so we can measure our advertising. Your email address and phone number are sent only as an irreversible cryptographic code (a SHA-256 hash), never as the address or number itself; we also send identifiers Meta's own cookies set, your IP address and your browser type. For this measurement your posts, comments, votes and reading are never shared. For this measurement Chattr and Meta are joint controllers, which means you can exercise your data rights with either of us and we each remain responsible to you. Apart from the anonymous reuse of posts in our own adverts (section 4), this is the only situation in which we share your data for advertising, and it does not happen at all unless you accept. See the Cookie Policy for the detail.
6.4 Business transfers
If Chattr is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your data may be transferred as part of that, subject to the same protections in this policy.
7. Where your data is stored and processed
Our main database is in the UK (London). Some of our providers process data in the European Economic Area or the United States; the table in section 6.1 says where each one does. Where data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on safeguards approved under UK data protection law: UK adequacy regulations (which cover the EEA, and US organisations certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework), or otherwise the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
8. How we protect and how long we keep your data
8.1 Security
We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data: encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS), access controls and row-level security on our database, restricted administrative access, key rotation, and regular security review.
8.2 Retention
We keep each kind of information for the period below. Where the law requires us to keep something longer — for example material preserved for the police or the National Crime Agency, or under child-safety legislation — we keep it for as long as that requires, and a deletion request cannot override it.
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Sign-in codes sent by text message | Until used or expired: a code stops working a short time after it is sent and cannot be used twice |
| Email confirmation links | Until used, and never more than 10 days after you give us your email |
| Account details (phone number, university email, campus, settings) | While your account exists; erased after the 30-day cooling-off period when you delete your account |
| Accounts whose university email is never confirmed | Access ends 10 days after the email is given, and the account is deleted if it has not posted; an account that never gives an email is deleted after 24 hours |
| Posts, comments, votes and poll answers | While your account exists; a post or comment you delete is hidden at once and permanently deleted 30 days later, and your content is deleted with your account, except as below |
| Content that was removed by a moderator or reported | As moderation evidence, for as long as the related moderation record is kept |
| Direct messages | As explained in section 13.3 |
| Reports, moderation decisions and our record of removals | 12 months after the report is closed; child-safety records under a legal hold for as long as the law requires, including 5 years for references given to the National Crime Agency |
| Server and security logs | Up to 30 days |
| Product analytics and session replays | Up to 12 months for analytics events and up to 30 days for session replays |
| Our own usage record (actions in the app) | 90 days; deleted with your account |
| How you heard about Chattr, and signup statistics | While your account exists, until you turn signup statistics off (which clears them) or delete your account; the statistics cookies in your browser last 30 days |
| Invite records (who invited whom) | While your account exists; erased from your account when you delete it |
| Reward records (what was approved and delivered) | 6 years after the reward, as financial records |
| Invite link activity (copies, shares and opens counted for the link's owner) | 12 months |
| Keyed codes made from IP addresses, used to check invite rewards | 16 days, and only while a referral credit scheme is running |
| Advertising measurement | We keep no copy of what we send to Meta; your advertising choice is kept in a cookie for 6 months, and Meta's own retention applies to what Meta receives |
| Questions to Charlie | While your account exists, and deleted with it; an answer shared with other students may be stored for a limited time |
| Marketing choices | While your account exists, with the time you gave or withdrew each choice; deleted with your account |
| Information that no longer identifies anyone (aggregated or anonymised) | May be kept indefinitely |
9. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- Be informed about how we use your data (this policy);
- Access a copy of your data — you can download your data from within the app;
- Have inaccurate data corrected;
- Have your data erased — you can delete your account from within the app;
- Restrict or object to certain processing, including processing based on our legitimate interests;
- Data portability — to receive your data in a usable format;
- Withdraw consent, where we rely on consent; and
- Ask a person to review a decision made about you automatically (section 15).
To exercise any of these rights, use the tools in the app where available, or contact privacy@chattr.uk. We will respond within one month, which we may extend by up to two further months for complex requests, telling you if we do. There is normally no charge.
10. Complaints about how we use your data
You have the right to complain to us about how we handle your personal data, and we make this straightforward. You can file a complaint in the app at Settings → Data Protection Complaint, which gives you a reference number, email privacy@chattr.uk, or use any other reasonable means — we accept complaints however they reach us, and you do not need to use any special form or particular wording. Tell us what the problem is and what you would like us to do.
We will acknowledge your complaint within 14 days of receiving it and respond in full within 28 days, in plain language, explaining the outcome. This is quicker than the 30-day acknowledgement the Data Protection Act 2018 (as amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025) requires.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Information Commission (formerly the ICO), the UK's data protection regulator — though we would welcome the chance to put things right first. You can contact it by post at: Information Commission, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF; by telephone on 0303 123 1113; or online at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
11. Cookies and similar technologies
We use the cookies and local storage necessary to run the Service — for example, to keep you logged in and secure — first-party cookies that record how you arrived, for our own signup statistics, and, only if you consent, advertising cookies that measure whether our adverts lead to signups. Our product analytics runs without cookies. We ask before any advertising cookie is set, refusing costs you nothing, and you can change your mind at any time in Settings → Advertising cookies; signup statistics and analytics can be turned off in Settings → Privacy choices. Our Cookie Policy lists everything we use and explains how to refuse or withdraw consent.
12. Children
Chattr is for adults aged 18 and over and is not intended for anyone under 18. We rely on you confirming that you are 18 or over when you sign up; we do not check identity documents. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18, and if we learn that we hold data about someone under 18, we will delete it. If you think someone under 18 is using Chattr, report it and we will review the account; you can also tell us at privacy@chattr.uk.
13. Direct messages
Direct Messages are available in the app. This is how they work and how we handle them.
13.1 What direct messages are
A direct message is a private, one-to-one conversation started from a post — you message the author of a post, not a named person. Both sides stay pseudonymous: each conversation uses per-conversation handles, and we never show one participant the other's identity, phone number, email address, or account details. The first message you send arrives as a request: the other person sees it and chooses whether to accept or decline, and if they decline, you cannot message them again. Direct messages are available only between verified students at the same university.
13.2 Direct messages are not end-to-end encrypted
We want to be plain about this, because it is a deliberate choice and not an oversight. Direct messages are encrypted in transit and stored securely, but they are not end-to-end encrypted — they are readable on our systems. That is what allows our safety systems and, where necessary, our moderators to act on them. In practice: message content goes through the same automated pattern detection and scoring that posts do, and can be held for human review in the same way; images sent in a message are handled the same way as images posted publicly; and if a message is reported, a moderator can read the conversation it came from in order to review it. Content that appears to involve the sexual abuse or exploitation of a child is treated as the most serious category we handle, escalated immediately, and preserved for the authorities. Private messaging is where the most serious harms usually happen, and encrypting messages so that nobody — including us — could ever act on a report would make it impossible to meet our safety duties under the Online Safety Act 2023. We limit access to message content to what is needed for these purposes, and administrative access to identifying information is logged.
13.3 How long we keep direct messages
We keep your messages and conversations while your account exists. If you delete your account, your messages are not deleted with it: they remain, attached to a stripped-down account record from which your phone number, email address, and other identifying details have been erased — the same approach we take to your posts (see sections 5 and 8.2). We do this for legal and safety reasons. A message is often the only record of harassment or of a threat to someone, deleting it on demand would destroy the evidence of what was said, and it would also remove the message from the other person's side of a conversation they took part in. Where content is subject to a legal hold — for example, material preserved for the police or the National Crime Agency, or under child-safety legislation — we keep it for as long as that hold requires, and a deletion request cannot override it. If a legal hold prevents us from completing your deletion request, we will tell you.
13.4 Reporting, declining, and blocking
You can report any message from within the conversation. Reported messages go to the same moderation queue, with the same report reasons, escalation routes, and right of appeal as public content. You can decline a request without the sender being able to try again, and you can block the other participant from within a conversation, which ends it and stops any further contact. Blocking someone on Chattr also prevents them from starting a conversation with you.
13.5 We do not use your messages for advertising or profiling
We do not use the content of your direct messages for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to build a profile of you or to target anything at you. Our product analytics record actions, never content — for example, that a message was sent, not what it said. We use message content only to deliver the conversation, to keep people safe, and to meet our legal obligations.
14. Charlie, the campus assistant
Charlie is an in-app assistant you can ask about your university and student life, found at the top of your Messages. This is what happens when you use him.
14.1 What we record
We keep a log of every question you type to Charlie, with the time you asked it, your campus, how the question was handled and whether Charlie declined to answer it. We keep this log while your account exists, to see what students want to know so we can improve the information Charlie holds, and to review refusals and safety signposting. Where Charlie has answered a question for one student, the answer may be stored for a limited time and shown to other students at the same campus who ask the same question. Chattr does not use your questions to train any AI model, and we do not use them for advertising or to profile you. We rely on our legitimate interests in providing and improving the assistant.
14.2 Who generates the answer
To produce an answer, your question — and, for a follow-up, your last few questions in the same thread — is sent, together with the name of your university and any campus information Charlie has retrieved to answer from, to Anthropic, PBC, the provider of the Claude models, which acts as our processor. Your name, phone number, email address and account identifier are never sent, and Charlie holds no memory of you beyond the open thread. Some questions — for example anything about a named person, or anything medical or legal — are declined by a fixed check on our own systems before any of this happens, and are never sent to a model. Every answer Charlie gives passes the same automated content filter a post does.
14.3 Who Charlie answers at the moment
While Charlie is being tested, he may be visible only to Chattr staff accounts, and generated answers are given only to those accounts. Where other accounts can see him, they receive a fixed holding reply rather than a generated answer — and their question is still recorded as described in 14.1, so that we can see what to add before Charlie answers everyone.
14.4 Your rights over the log
Your questions to Charlie are included when you download your data from within the app, and they are deleted when your account is deleted.
15. Automated moderation decisions
Some decisions about what you post are made automatically, at the moment you submit it, without a person involved. This is what is decided and what it means for you:
- Refused — a post, comment, poll or direct message that matches our list of prohibited content (for example threats, hate speech, child sexual abuse signals, or personal information such as phone numbers and addresses) is not published, and you are told straight away.
- Held — other content our systems score as suspect, including a sudden burst of posts from a new account, can be held out of view until a person on our moderation team reviews it.
- Images — an image you upload is checked automatically before it appears, and an image the check identifies as unsafe, or that cannot be checked, is refused or held for review.
- Crisis — a post that suggests someone may be at risk of suicide or self-harm can be held while support details are shown.
These checks run on our own systems and, for images, through Sightengine (section 6.1). No text you write is sent to an AI model to be moderated. Account restrictions follow from decisions a person has made: when our moderation team removes your content it counts as a strike, and a second strike mutes the account for 24 hours, a third for 7 days, and a fourth suspends it. A phone number or email address we have banned cannot be used to sign up again.
You have the right to a human review. If content of yours is removed you can appeal in the app, and a person will review it within 72 hours. For content that was refused outright, or any other automated decision, email support@chattr.uk and a person will look at it again; you can also give us your view and contest the decision. These are the safeguards Articles 22A to 22D of the UK GDPR require.
16. Sensitive information in posts
What people post on an anonymous network can reveal sensitive things about them — for example their health, sexuality, religion, ethnicity or political views. We do not try to work these out about anyone, and we do not use them to profile you, rank your feed or advertise to you. We handle them only as part of the content itself: storing and showing it as you asked, and moderating it.
Where moderating that content means processing special category data, we rely on Article 9(2)(g) of the UK GDPR (reasons of substantial public interest), with the conditions in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 for preventing or detecting unlawful acts (paragraph 10) and protecting the public (paragraph 11), and on Article 9(2)(e) where you have made the information public yourself. We keep an appropriate policy document for this processing, as the law requires.
17. Invites and rewards
Our Terms (section 17) set out the invite scheme. To run it we record whose invite link you used to join, whether each person you invite has confirmed a university email and posted or commented, and the rewards approved and delivered. To stop the scheme being abused we compare phone numbers so that one person cannot count twice, and an admin checks each reward by hand before approving it. We never show the people you invite who you are, or show you who they are: you see a count, your progress and, for each person you invited, only whether they have joined, confirmed their university email or counted, never their name or anything they wrote. Gift cards are issued through Reloadly (or, when we use it, Giftbit), which receive a reward reference number and the amount — never your name or contact details. Where a reward code is emailed, it goes to your confirmed university email through Resend. Our lawful basis is contract, and our legitimate interests in preventing fraud. Section 8.2 says how long each record is kept.
18. Marketing messages
We send campus updates — for example a nudge to join the conversation on your campus — only if you have opted in, separately for email and for push notifications. Email opt-in is an unticked box at sign-up or in Settings → Notifications → Campus updates; push opt-in is in Settings only. We record when and where you opted in and which wording you saw, in a record only our servers can read. You can withdraw at any time in Settings → Notifications → Campus updates, and every marketing email has a one-click unsubscribe link that works without signing in. Service notifications — about replies, votes and messages — are separate and are controlled by the other switches in Settings → Notifications.
19. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. If we make significant changes, we will tell you through the app or by other appropriate means. The "last updated" date shows when it last changed.
Last updated: 7 October 2026
CHATTR LTD, registered in England and Wales, company number 17199526. Registered office: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. support@chattr.uk