Legal
Privacy Policy
Last updated: 21 October 2026
We wrote this in plain language. The short version: Hearth never stores your scan photos (in the app you can choose to keep one on your phone, and Hearth never uploads it), never sells your data, and uses it to run your score and routine. It is run by one person, and the services it is built on are named below.
What we collect
Scan photos
When you run a scan, your photo is sent over an encrypted connection to Anthropic, whose Claude model performs the analysis under Anthropic's commercial terms. Hearth does not keep the photo: our servers hold it in memory only while the analysis runs, and we never write it to disk, a database, a backup or any other storage. What we keep is the result described below, never the image. What happens to the photo on Anthropic's side is governed by Anthropic's policy rather than ours, and we will not promise more than that policy does: Anthropic deletes what it receives within 30 days, may keep it longer where it needs to enforce its usage policy or is legally required to, and does not use it to train its models. We have no agreement with Anthropic to delete it sooner. Photos of product labels, which you can take to read an ingredient list, are handled the same way. A scan photo you choose to keep on your phone in the iPhone app is covered under the next heading.
Photos you keep on your phone
In the iPhone app you can choose to keep a scan photo on your phone as a timeline. That copy is written inside the Hearth app's own storage on that phone and is never uploaded: it does not reach our servers, Anthropic, or any other company, and we cannot see it, produce it or delete it. Because it is stored inside the app, it is included in an iCloud or computer backup of the phone if you make one, under Apple's terms rather than ours. Deleting the app removes it, deleting it in the app's Settings removes it, and it is not synced to your other devices.
Scan results
We store what each analysis returns: the factor readings behind your score (such as hydration, redness and texture), the skin type it identified, the visible concerns it listed, and whether it suggested seeing a dermatologist. We also keep a fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash) of each photo, so scanning the same photo again gives the same result; the photo cannot be rebuilt from it. This is what your score, routine and history are built from. Hearth offered a hair scan until 28 September 2026. If you used it, we still hold those readings, quiz answers and check-ins in the same way, until you delete your account.
Scans taken before you sign up
If you scan without an account, the result (not the photo) is held for 7 days so it can be added to an account you create. If no account claims it in that time, it is deleted.
Account information
Your email address. Sign-in is run by Clerk, which holds your email, your password or the Google or Apple account you sign in with, any name you give it, and what it records to keep sign-in secure, under Clerk's own privacy policy.
Quiz answers
Your answers to the skin quiz — for example how your skin reacts to new products, what you use now, your goals, and anything you choose to tell us such as hormonal changes, stress or a new medication. They decide what goes into your routine.
Check-ins
Each check-in records the ratings you give that day (irritation, breakouts and hydration), how you felt overall, whether you followed your routine, and any note you write. Check-ins decide when your routine moves to its next phase and appear in your history. They are deleted with your account; there is no way to delete a single check-in.
Routines, shelf and allergens
The routine phases written for you; the products you add to your shelf (brand, name, and an ingredient list read from a barcode, a label photo or what you typed); and any allergens you ask us to look out for on labels.
Reminders and devices
Your reminder settings and time zone. If you turn on browser notifications, that browser's push address and its name. A log of which reminders were sent and whether sending succeeded, kept for 90 days.
Consent records
When you agree to the note shown before a scan, we record that you agreed and when.
Purchases
Whether you subscribe, to which plan, and when it renews or ends. Web payments are taken by Stripe, which holds your card details — Hearth never sees them. iPhone purchases are taken by Apple; RevenueCat tells us about them, and we keep a record of each purchase event it sends (its type, the product, the date and your internal account id).
Questions you ask the assistant
If you ask the in-app assistant a question, the text you type is sent over an encrypted connection to Anthropic's Claude model — the same processor that analyzes your scans, under the same contract — and is not used to train any model. Hearth does not store your questions or the answers, and nothing about a conversation is written to our database. It is held on your device for as long as you have it open. Note that continuing a conversation means the earlier turns are sent again with each new question, so our server sees them in order to answer — it just keeps none of them. What Anthropic keeps of what it receives is set by its own policy, described under Scan photos above. Alongside your question we send the rating band of your most recent scan and the names of its weakest factors, plus the routine step you are asking about. We do not send the written notes from your analysis, the image-quality details, or the medical flag; if your most recent scan on either track raised that flag, the assistant declines to discuss it and points you to a dermatologist instead.
Logs, errors and abuse limits
To stop the scan and AI features being abused, requests are counted per network and, for some features, per account, each for up to a day. A network is counted under a code made from its address with a secret key, not as the address itself. The hosting provider keeps standard request logs, such as IP address and the page requested. When something breaks on our servers, an error report is sent to Sentry with technical details and, where there is one, your internal account id.
Usage analytics
On two pages of the website only — the home page and the page where a web scan starts — Hearth uses Vercel Web Analytics. From those pages your browser sends Vercel the page's address, without anything after a ? or #; the site that linked you there; your browser, operating system and kind of device; and three kinds of tap: which scan button was tapped, how far down the home page you have scrolled (a quarter, half, three quarters, or the end), and that a scan was started. No account id, name or email is sent, and none of it is tied to your account. Vercel says it uses no third-party cookies for this, tells visits apart by a code made from the request, which it later discards, and records the country, region and city a visit came from. No other page of the website sends anything, and the iPhone app has no analytics. Hearth uses no advertising SDK or tracking pixel.
How we use your data
Your score and routine
Your scan results, quiz answers, check-ins and shelf are used to produce your score, write your routine, decide when it advances, and fill in your reminders. When a routine phase is written, the results of the scan your routine was started from, your latest quiz answers and the ratings from your recent check-ins are sent to Anthropic, whose model writes it. A later scan gives you a new score; it does not change a routine already under way. Your check-in notes and allergens are not sent.
Product improvements
Improvements come from the data already described above — scan analyses, quiz answers and check-ins tied to your own account — from counts of how many anonymous scans were started and later saved to an account, which hold nothing about any person, and from what the website's home page and scan page send, described under Usage analytics, which is tied to no account. Beyond those two pages, nothing about how you move through the website or the iPhone app is recorded.
Emails and notifications
Reminders about your routine, check-ins, progress and rescans are for Pro accounts. They are on when your account is created, but Hearth is not sending scheduled reminders yet: the one notice sent today is when your routine moves to its next phase. When reminders are sent, they go by email and, if you turned them on in a browser, by push notification. Every reminder email has an unsubscribe link that stops reminder emails without signing in, and email apps that support it show their own one-click Unsubscribe button. You can also turn email, or each reminder, off in Settings on the website. The iPhone app does not have these switches yet. Clerk sends the emails that sign you in, and Stripe may send receipts for web payments.
Who receives your data
The services Hearth runs on
Hearth is one person's app built on other companies' services, and each of these receives some of your data to do its job: Anthropic (analyzes scan and label photos, answers assistant questions, and writes routine phases); Vercel (hosts the website and servers every request passes through, keeps request logs, and receives what two of the website's pages send for Usage analytics); Neon (hosts the database where your account data and the abuse-limit counters are stored); Clerk (runs sign-in, and may use Cloudflare's bot check on the sign-up form); Stripe (takes web payments); Apple and RevenueCat (take and report iPhone purchases — RevenueCat receives your internal account id to match a purchase to your account); Upstash (when it is configured, holds the abuse-limit counters — under an account id or the code for a network, never an address); Sentry (receives error reports); Resend (sends reminder emails, so it receives your email address and the email); your browser's push service (delivers browser notifications you turned on); and Expo (the iPhone app checks Expo's servers for updates). When you scan a barcode, only the barcode number is looked up in Open Beauty Facts, a public product database.
Where Hearth is offered
Hearth is offered in the United States and is run from there, and most of the services above are US companies.
What we never do
We never sell your data
Your skin data, usage patterns, and contact information are never sold, rented, or licensed to third parties — including advertisers, brands, or data brokers.
We never build ad profiles
Hearth has no advertising business. We do not use your data to serve ads, enrich advertising profiles, or target you on other platforms.
We never share with skincare brands
Even brands whose products appear in your routine do not receive data about you. Nothing in your routine is a paid placement and we take no commission — the product links open a retailer search, not a sponsored listing.
How long we keep it
Until you delete your account
Your email, scan results, quiz answers, check-ins, routines, shelf, allergens, reminder settings, push registrations and consent records are kept for as long as you have an account.
Shorter than that
Scans taken before signing up: 7 days, unless claimed by an account. The reminder log: 90 days. Abuse-limit counters: until the window they count closes — an hour or a day, for a network or an account — then deleted within a day. Scan photos and assistant conversations: Hearth keeps none.
Set by someone else
Anthropic keeps what it receives under the policy described under Scan photos. Request logs at Vercel and error reports at Sentry are kept for as long as those services keep them. Stripe, Apple and RevenueCat keep their own payment records.
Your rights
A copy of your data
There is no export button yet. Email support@hearth.skin from the address on your account and ask, and the data held about you is put together by hand and sent to you in a machine-readable file.
Correction
Most of what we hold comes from your own scans, answers and check-ins, and you can replace much of it by scanning again or by checking in again the same day. For anything else, email support@hearth.skin.
Deletion
You can delete your account from Settings, on the website or in the iPhone app. That deletes, in a single transaction, your account and everything tied to it in our database — scan results, quiz answers, check-ins, routines, shelf, allergens, reminder settings and log, push registrations, consent records, and any scan you saved from before signing up — and then deletes your sign-in from Clerk.
What deletion does not remove
Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription bought in the iPhone app — Apple bills it, so cancel it in your Apple ID settings. A subscription bought on the web is canceled at the end of the period you have paid for. We keep the record of each App Store purchase event RevenueCat sent us, because it is a financial record; it holds your internal account id, the product and the dates, and no name, email, photo or skin data. If you bought a founding-member lifetime plan, we keep a minimal record of that purchase — an internal reference and the Stripe charge id — because the 500-place founding cap is counted from these records and deleting an account must not release a place someone paid for. Stripe keeps its customer record (including your email) and payment history, and RevenueCat and Apple keep theirs, under their own rules. And deleting your account cannot reach anything Anthropic still holds from a recent scan or question, or request logs and error reports already sent to Vercel and Sentry. It also cannot reach photos you kept on your phone: we never received them, so there is nothing here to delete. Those are deleted on the phone — in the Hearth app's Settings, or by deleting the app — and the app deletes them itself if a different account signs in on that phone.
Other rights
Depending on where you live, the law may give you other rights over your data, such as objecting to how it is used. Ask at support@hearth.skin.
Security
Encryption
Data travels between your device and Hearth over HTTPS. Stored data sits with the services listed above, on their systems; Hearth adds no encryption of its own on top.
Access controls
Hearth is run by one person, and access to its production systems — the hosting, the database, and the sign-in and payment dashboards — is limited to that sole operator. Inside the app, every request for account data is checked against the account that is signed in, so one account cannot read another's. The keys the service uses to reach those systems are kept in the hosting provider's settings, not in the code.
Incident response
If a breach of your personal information means the law where you live requires you to be told, we will tell you by email to the address on your account, and notify any authority that law also requires.
Age
Hearth is for people aged 18 and over
The Terms require you to be at least 18. Nothing checks this beyond asking you to confirm it before a scan. If we learn that a child under 13 has an account, we delete the account and its data, including the purchase records we would otherwise keep. If you think someone under 18 has used Hearth, email support@hearth.skin.
Contact
Data controller
Sikander Dhillon, an individual based in the United States operates Hearth and is the data controller for all personal data processed by the Hearth platform. "We" in this policy means Sikander Dhillon.
Contact us
For privacy questions, copies of your data, or deletion requests: support@hearth.skin.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes. Hearth does not currently send notices about changes.