Privacy Policy
This policy explains what Nine Town collects, why, who else touches it, and how to get rid of it. Nine Town (“we”, “us”) is operated by HEART BEAT PACK, K.K. (株式会社ハートビートパック), which is the data controller for the personal data described here.
1. What we collect
We collect only what the app needs to work. We do not buy personal data about you from anyone, we do not use advertising identifiers, and we do not currently run any third-party analytics or advertising SDK in the app.
| Data | What it is | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Your email address and a password, or an identifier from Sign in with Apple or Google Sign-In. We never see or store your password in readable form; Sign in with Apple may give us a relay address instead of your real one. | To create your account and sign you in |
| Age declaration | You enter a date of birth once. We store only the year, whether it met the age requirement, and when you declared. The full date is used for the check and then discarded. | To confirm you meet the minimum age for an account |
| Profile | An optional nickname, gender and avatar image. | To show you to other users on characters you publish |
| Your content | The messages you send, the characters you create (persona, scenario, example dialogue, artwork), images generated in your chats, and the memory entries the app keeps about a conversation. | To run the conversation and let you pick it back up later |
| Images you upload | Avatars and character artwork. We strip EXIF metadata — including any GPS location your camera recorded — before the image leaves our control. | To display the image in the app |
| Purchases | Your credit balance, a ledger of credit changes, membership status, and purchase events forwarded by the app stores. We never receive your card number or billing address — Apple and Google handle payment. | To give you what you paid for and support billing questions |
| Activity in the app | Who you follow, what you liked or favourited, users you blocked, reports you filed. | To personalise your feed and enforce our rules |
| Settings | Your app preferences, such as reply length and which extras generate automatically. | To apply your preferences across your devices |
| Technical records | Server logs generated when your app calls our servers, which include your IP address, timestamps and which endpoint was called. | To keep the service running, debug faults, and prevent abuse |
2. How we use it
- To provide the app: sign-in, browsing, conversations, creation and purchases.
- To keep the service safe: age gating, reviewing characters before they go public, acting on reports and blocks, and detecting abuse or fraud.
- To meet legal obligations, including consumer, tax and age-assurance requirements.
- To answer you when you contact support.
We do not use your conversations to advertise to you, and we do not sell or rent your personal data.
If you are in the EEA or UK, our legal bases are performance of a contract (providing the app you signed up for), legitimate interests (security, abuse prevention, and keeping the service working), legal obligation (age assurance and record-keeping), and consent where we ask for it.
3. How your conversations reach an AI model
Nine Town does not run the AI model itself. When you send a message, our server forwards it — along with the character’s details and enough recent conversation for the reply to make sense — to our AI processing provider, which generates the response and streams it back to you. That provider also stores your characters, conversations and generated images on our behalf.
Your account is identified to that provider by a pseudonymous identifier, not by your email address or name.
Please treat AI conversations as recorded, not private. They are stored so you can return to them, they can be reviewed if a report or a safety issue requires it, and they may be accessed by staff for debugging or abuse investigations. Do not share payment details, passwords, government identifiers, or anything else you would not want retained.
4. Who we share it with
We share data with service providers who process it on our instructions, and with nobody else except as described in this section.
- Google Firebase — authentication, database and server hosting.
- Our AI processing provider — generates replies and images, and stores characters, conversations and generated images.
- Cloudflare Images — hosting for avatars and character artwork.
- RevenueCat — validates store receipts so we can credit your purchase.
- Apple and Google — sign-in and payment processing, under their own privacy policies.
We may also disclose data where we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to investigate fraud, protect our rights, or protect someone’s safety. If Nine Town is ever sold or merged, account data may transfer to the acquirer, who would remain bound by this policy until you are told otherwise.
5. What other people can see
Your conversations are never shown to other users. These things are public by design:
- Characters you choose to publish, including their artwork and description.
- The creator name or handle attached to a published character, and your follower count.
- Aggregate counts such as how many people liked or favourited a character.
Anything you type into a character you publish is public. Do not put personal details in one.
6. How long we keep it
- Account and content — for as long as your account exists, then as described in Deleting your account.
- Server logs — a short rolling window for operations and security.
- Purchase and billing records — as long as tax and consumer-protection law requires, which is typically several years and applies even after you delete your account.
- A minimal deletion record — your email address and the deletion timestamps, kept after deletion so a closed account cannot be re-registered to farm signup bonuses.
7. Deleting your account
You can delete your account from inside the app, in Settings. You do not need to email anyone, and you can also start the process at ninetown.ai/delete-account.
When you delete:
- Immediately — your sign-in is disabled and all active sessions are revoked. Neither you nor anyone else can reach your account or its private content again.
- After 30 days — we permanently erase your account record and the data we hold on our own servers: profile, settings, credit balance and ledger, follows, likes, favourites, blocks and billing events.
Two things deliberately survive that erasure. We keep the minimal deletion record described above for fraud prevention, and we keep billing records for as long as the law requires.
One current limitation, stated plainly: the characters, conversations and generated images held by our AI processing provider are not yet covered by that automated erasure. Once your sign-in is disabled, your private content there is unreachable, and any character you published stays public under its original creator name. If you want that content erased too, email [email protected] and we will do it manually. We are extending the automated process to cover it, and will update this policy when it does.
8. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, object to or restrict how we use it, receive a portable copy, and withdraw consent you previously gave.
If you are in the EEA or UK, you have these rights under the GDPR and may complain to your local data protection authority. If you are a California resident, you have the rights to know, delete, correct and to opt out of “sale” or “sharing” under the CCPA/CPRA — we do not sell or share personal data as those terms are defined, so there is nothing to opt out of. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.
Most of this you can do yourself in the app: edit your profile in Settings, and delete your account in Settings. For anything else, email [email protected] and we will respond within the time the applicable law allows.
9. Security
Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit. Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication and are never stored by us in readable form. Our API keys for the AI, image and payment providers stay on our servers and are never shipped inside the app. Access to production data is limited to the people who need it.
No system is perfectly secure. If we discover a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant regulator where the law requires it.
10. International transfers
Our providers operate globally, so your data may be processed in countries other than where you live, including the United States. Where we transfer personal data out of the EEA or UK, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or another lawful transfer mechanism.
11. Children
Nine Town is not directed at children. You must be at least 18 to hold an account, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under that age. The app asks for a date of birth before you can use it and blocks the account if the declared age is lower.
If you believe a minor has an account, email [email protected] and we will close it and delete the data.
12. Changes to this policy
We will update this page when our practices change, and we will change the “Last updated” date above. If a change materially affects your rights, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.
13. Contact us
HEART BEAT PACK, K.K. (株式会社ハートビートパック)
Operator of Nine Town, and the data controller.
Corporate number (法人番号): 5010001255802
Casa Brillante Honkomagome 101, 1-25-27 Honkomagome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0021, Japan
〒113-0021 東京都文京区本駒込1丁目25-27 カーサブリランテ本駒込101号室
Privacy questions and data requests: [email protected]