Brief for iPhone

Privacy Policy

Effective date: November 5, 2026

This explains what the Brief app collects, why, who else handles it, what other readers can see, and how to delete it.

Who we are

Brief is made by Nico Joseph Conte, an individual developer who publishes as Whetstone. In this policy “Whetstone”, “we” and “us” mean Nico Joseph Conte. You can reach us at dev@whetstonedev.net.

What we collect and why

Your account

You can use Brief as a guest, or with an account made with Sign in with Apple. Accounts made earlier with an email address and password still sign in.

• As a guest. When you choose “Continue as a guest”, Brief creates an anonymous account on our servers so the quiz, your streak and the leaderboard work. It has no name and no email.
• Sign in with Apple. Apple shares an identifier for you, your email address (or a private relay address if you choose Hide My Email) and, the first time only, your name. We keep these with your account; Brief doesn’t show your name to anyone. So that we can revoke Sign in with Apple when you delete your account, as Apple requires, our server also stores a token Apple issues for that purpose. Only our server can read it.
• Email and password (accounts made this way earlier). Your email address and your password, which our database provider stores as a hash, not as the password itself.

Your profile

Everything here is optional and only for accounts. You can change or clear it in Profile → Edit profile.

• Name on the board. Shown to other readers beside your score. Names are checked on our server against rules for length, characters, offensive words and impersonation.
• Profile photo. Your phone crops and re-saves the photo before it’s uploaded, which removes its metadata, including where it was taken. Only you can see it.
• Where you’re from and your college. Only you can see them.

What you do in Brief

• The briefs and stories you open and how long you spend reading them.
• Your quiz answers and scores, your streak, and your usage of features with monthly limits.
• Your topics, daily goal and reminder time, your phone’s time zone, and a news region taken from your phone’s language and region setting.
• Your votes in story polls.

We use this to grade the quiz and rank the week, keep your streak and progress across phones, enforce limits, and choose your three briefs. One of the day’s three follows what you actually read, one is the biggest story in your topics, and one is from outside them.

Debate and Deep Dive (Brief Pro)

• Debate. What you type or say in a debate is sent to our server and on to our AI provider, Anthropic, to write the opponent’s reply. We send the conversation (up to its last 24 messages) and the story being debated, not your name, email or account ID. When a debate ends, its transcript, score and your rating are saved to your account, where only you can see them.
• If a message suggests you may be in crisis, Brief doesn’t send it to the AI and shows support resources instead.
• Speaking in a debate. If you tap the microphone, your iPhone’s speech recognition turns your speech into text. Apple may process the audio on its servers, and Apple’s privacy policy applies. Brief doesn’t record or keep the audio; the text is used like typed text.
• Opponent voices. The opponent’s replies, never your words, are sent to ElevenLabs to be read aloud.
• Deep Dive. The story or idea you choose is sent to Anthropic to research. Nothing about you is sent, and a finished dive is stored without any link to who asked for it.

Squads, challenges and reports

These are for accounts only.

• Squads. The squad’s name and the nickname you choose in it.
• Challenges. Who challenged whom, for which day’s quiz.
• Reports and blocks. When you report a reader, we keep the reason you picked, your optional note, who reported whom, and the reader’s name and squad name as they were shown. Blocking someone also sends us a report. A person at Brief reads every report, and the reported reader isn’t told who sent it. Each report sends a short alert to our team’s private Discord channel with the reason and the reported name and squad name, never your note, your email or anyone’s account ID.

Purchases

Brief Pro is bought through the App Store. Apple handles payment, and we never see your card details. RevenueCat, our subscription service, links your purchase to your Brief account ID and tells our server whether your account has Brief Pro.

Crash reports

If the app crashes or hits an error, it sends a report to Sentry: what went wrong, performance timings from some sessions, your device model, iOS and app version, and your Brief account ID. Not your email. Before a report leaves your phone, the app strips links that could expose your photo, and Sentry is set not to store your IP address. Sentry keeps crash and error reports for 30 days.

Usage analytics

To see which features work, the app sends usage events to PostHog: for example, which briefs you open, your quiz results, streak milestones, when you view Brief Pro or buy it, and when the app is opened or closed. Events carry your Brief account ID, device model, iOS and app version, language and time zone. PostHog receives your IP address when the app sends them, and is set to discard it rather than store it. PostHog keeps events for 1 year. We don’t send your email, your name or what you write.

On your phone

Your sign-in is stored encrypted on your phone, with its key in the iPhone Keychain. Your settings, streak and recently loaded briefs are stored in the app so it opens quickly and works offline. Deleting the app removes them.

Permissions Brief asks for

• Notifications: one daily reminder at the time you choose, scheduled on your phone. Brief doesn’t send push notifications from a server. Turn it off in Profile → Settings → Daily reminder.
• Camera and photos: only when you choose to take or pick a profile photo.
• Microphone and speech recognition: only when you speak in a debate.

Brief doesn’t ask for your location or your contacts, and it doesn’t ask to track you.

What other readers can see

• The weekly leaderboard and your league: your name on the board (or “Reader” if you haven’t set one, and always “Reader” for guests), your points, how many quizzes you took, your rank and how it moved, and when you last finished a quiz, to the minute.
• Squads you join: your nickname, points, quiz count and rank, and whether you started the squad. Every member can see the squad’s invite code.
• Challenges: the reader who sends you a challenge, or takes yours, sees your name and score for that quiz, and your answers once you’ve both played.
• Polls: totals only, shown after 10 votes. Nobody sees how you voted.

Other readers never see your email, photo, where you’re from, your college, your debates or your account ID. If you block someone, they’re hidden from you on the leaderboard, in squads and in your challenges. They aren’t told.

Who else handles your data

These companies handle data for us so Brief can work. Each one’s own privacy policy applies to what it receives.

What we don’t do

• No ads, and no advertising code in the app.
• We don’t sell or rent your personal data, and we don’t share it for advertising.
• We don’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites, and Brief doesn’t use Apple’s advertising identifier.
• We don’t collect your location or your contacts.

Keeping and deleting data

We keep your account’s data for as long as you have the account.

Delete your account in the app

Profile → Settings → Delete account, then Continue, type DELETE, and tap Delete forever.

This permanently deletes your account, profile, photo, streak, quiz results, debates, squad memberships, challenges and the rest of your progress from our database. If you used Sign in with Apple, it also revokes Brief’s access to your Apple Account. It can’t be undone.

Deleting your account doesn’t cancel a Brief Pro subscription; see Brief Pro subscriptions.

A few things stay after you delete your account:

• Reports you sent, or that were sent about you, are kept for moderation for 12 months after the account is deleted, with the names as they were shown but no longer linked to any account. Then they’re deleted.
• Copies already held by our providers: Sentry keeps crash reports for 30 days and PostHog keeps usage events for 1 year; RevenueCat keeps purchase records under its own retention period; and team alerts already posted to Discord stay there.
• Our server logs and daily database backups, for up to 7 days. After that, deleted data is gone from them too.

Guests

To delete your guest data yourself, go to Profile → Settings → Delete guest data. It deletes your quiz results, reading history, streak and settings from Brief’s servers and can’t be undone. Otherwise, guest data is deleted from Brief’s servers after 90 days without use. What’s stored only on your phone stays there until you delete the app.

Sign in with Apple

You can also stop using your Apple Account with Brief from your iPhone’s settings. Apple explains how in Manage your apps with Sign in with Apple.

Brief Pro subscriptions

• Brief Pro is an auto-renewing subscription billed by Apple. Prices are the ones the App Store shows you.
• It renews automatically until you cancel it. If you start a free trial, cancel at least 24 hours before it ends or you’ll be charged.
• Cancel or change it in your App Store subscriptions (on iPhone: Settings → your name → Subscriptions), or from Profile → Settings → Manage subscriptions in Brief.
• Deleting your Brief account doesn’t cancel the subscription. Cancel it in the App Store.

Children

Brief is for people 13 and older. It isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from them. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 13, we delete it. If you think a child under 13 is using Brief, write to dev@whetstonedev.net.

Your choices and rights

• Change or clear your name on the board, photo, hometown and college in Profile → Edit profile.
• Turn the daily reminder off in Profile → Settings.
• Unblock readers in Profile → Settings → Blocked readers.
• Write to dev@whetstonedev.net to ask for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, including under the GDPR in the EU, the UK GDPR and the CCPA in California, you have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, and to get a copy in a portable format. To use any of these rights, write to dev@whetstonedev.net. We won’t treat you differently for using them. If you’re in the EU or UK, you can also complain to your local data protection authority.

We don’t sell or share your personal information, as the CCPA defines those terms.

Where data is stored

Brief’s database is hosted by Supabase in the eastern United States (North Virginia). Our other providers may process data in the United States and other countries. PostHog receives data at its US servers.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we’ll post the new version on this page and update the effective date at the top. If a change is material, we’ll also tell you in the app.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: dev@whetstonedev.net. In the app, it’s at the bottom of Profile → Settings, under “Questions or a problem?”.