How the StepZero app handles your data · Effective: October 2026
In short: Most of what you do in StepZero stays on your device. We only send data to a server when you sign in, buy a subscription, message the AI coach, use a community feature, or order a physical reward. We also record an anonymous onboarding statistic that is not linked to your account. We never sell your data, and you can delete everything at any time.
The controller for personal data processed in the StepZero app is Emil Gruber, Anton Wladar Straße 15, 2100 Korneuburg, Austria. Contact: support@usestepzero.com. The full legal notice under § 5 ECG is published here: Impressum.
Your day-to-day activity is stored locally on your device and is not transmitted to us unless a feature below explicitly requires it. This includes:
If you attach a photo as proof of a task, that photo stays on your device and is not uploaded.
The same applies to your video message to yourself: if you record one, the app uses the camera and microphone only for that recording. The video stays on your device and is never uploaded. You can delete it at any time in the settings, and deleting your account deletes it too.
Calendar: the app only uses your calendar if you choose to add your planned missions to it. It then creates its own separate calendar called “StepZero” and writes only those missions into it, optionally with neutral titles. iOS asks you for calendar access the first time. The app only reads its own StepZero entries, never your other appointments, and the entries are not sent to us. If your calendars sync via iCloud, Apple syncs the StepZero calendar to your devices like any other calendar. You can remove all entries again in the app at any time.
Creating an account is optional and is used to keep you signed in and to enable community features. You can sign in with Apple or with an e-mail address and password. With Sign in with Apple we receive an opaque user identifier and, only if you choose to share it, your e-mail address; we never receive your Apple password. If you sign in with e-mail, your e-mail address and your password are stored at our database provider Supabase, the password only as a cryptographic hash.
Legal basis: performance of our contract with you, i.e. providing the account you asked for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
Some features share content with other users. You control whether you use them:
Do not post anything in community areas that you do not want other people to see.
Legal basis: performance of our contract with you, i.e. providing the community features you choose to use (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
When you send a message to Coach Zero, your message is sent to our AI provider Anthropic, PBC (USA), the provider of the Claude AI models, to generate a reply. So the coach can respond to your actual situation rather than generically, we send a snapshot of your current app data along with it. You should assume the following is included:
This is sent only to produce your reply. It is not sold and is not used to build advertising profiles.
Long-term coach memory is stored on our servers. Coach Zero extracts a small number of durable facts from your conversations (for example “is working on quitting alcohol”, “relapses most often on Friday evenings”) and keeps them in our database so it can refer back to them later. You can read every one of them and delete any of them under Settings → What Coach Zero remembers, and deleting your account or withdrawing your consent (section 5a) removes them all.
Please keep this in mind when you write. If you would rather something never leave your device, do not enter it in the coach, the debrief or the journal. Your photo proofs and your journal entries are not uploaded — they stay on your device unless something above says otherwise.
Legal basis: performance of our contract with you, i.e. providing the coach you message (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Because your messages and the snapshot usually contain sensitive information, the coach only works with your explicit consent under Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR (section 5a).
What: information about your habits, addictions, health and wellbeing (e.g. mood and sleep) and faith that you enter yourself (coach, recovery tracker, setup). Why: to produce coach replies, keep your coach memory and run the tracker. Legal basis: only your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR). It is optional and not a condition for using the app. You give it with the checkbox at the end of setup or when you first use the coach or the tracker.
Recipient: for coach replies this information is sent to Anthropic, PBC (USA), based on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. Anthropic does not use it for training.
Withdrawal: at any time under Settings → Help & Legal → “Consent: health, faith, AI”. The AI coach then stops replying, the tracker pauses and your coach memory on our server is deleted. Processing before the withdrawal stays lawful.
Retention: on your phone until you delete the data or the app. On our server, the coach memory and a tracker summary (start date, record, slips) until you withdraw consent, delete them or delete your account.
StepZero Pro is sold as an in-app subscription. Purchases are processed by Apple via In-App Purchase; we never receive your card or payment details. We use RevenueCat to verify and manage subscription status. RevenueCat receives an anonymous app-user identifier and purchase/receipt information so we can unlock Pro features for your account.
Legal basis: performance of the subscription contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
If you enable reminders, we store a push-notification token (via Expo / Apple Push Notification service) together with your device time zone and your chosen app language, so reminders reach you at the right local time and in the language you read. You can turn notifications off at any time in your device settings.
Reminders never contain the content of your journal or debrief, the name you gave your enemy, or another person's name — that information stays inside the app.
Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you give when you turn on reminders in the app and allow notifications in the iOS dialog. Switching notifications off withdraws it.
To understand where people drop off during onboarding, we store an anonymous, randomly generated identifier together with which onboarding step was reached. This identifier is not your account and does not identify you personally. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-app tracking.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in seeing where onboarding is unclear so we can improve it (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
If you redeem a physical reward in the Store, we need a delivery address. When you place the order we store, linked to your account and on our server: your name, an e-mail address, street and house number, postal code, city, country and a phone number, together with the item and variant you chose and its coin price. The phone number is mandatory because the shipping carriers require it.
To actually produce and ship the item, this data is passed on to the fulfilment partner for that product:
These partners produce and ship through their own international networks, so depending on the item and your delivery address your order data can be processed outside the EU/EEA; where that happens, the transfer is based on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
The legal basis is the performance of your order (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). We keep the order record until the item has been delivered, and after that only for as long as commercial and tax law require. Deleting your account deletes your order records on our side; an order that has already been handed to a fulfilment partner is completed and retained by that partner under its own rules. Digital rewards and “treats” need no address — they are unlocked inside the app only.
We use the following providers to run the app. Where data is transferred outside the EU/EEA, it is based on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and/or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework:
Hosting & security: when the app is delivered (Cloudflare) and when it talks to our server (Supabase), your IP address is processed for technical reasons, and our server also uses it to limit the number of requests and protect the service against abuse. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in delivering the app reliably and securely (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
Data on your device stays until you delete it or uninstall the app. You can delete your account and the data we hold at any time from Settings → Danger → Delete Account; this removes your account record and associated server data, including your merch orders. Data that has already been handed to a fulfilment partner in order to ship an item stays with that partner under its own retention and statutory bookkeeping rules and can no longer be recalled by us. You can also request deletion by e-mailing support@usestepzero.com.
Under the GDPR you have the right to access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20), and objection (Art. 21), as well as to withdraw consent (Art. 7(3)); you can withdraw your consent for sensitive information directly in the app (section 5a). To exercise any of these, e-mail support@usestepzero.com.
StepZero is not directed at children. You must be at least 16 years old to use the app; you confirm this at the end of setup. To take out a subscription you must also meet the minimum age required in your country.
You may lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In Austria this is the Austrian Data Protection Authority (Österreichische Datenschutzbehörde), Barichgasse 40–42, 1030 Vienna, www.dsb.gv.at.