Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information Orykl collects when you use www.orykl.com, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have. It applies to visitors, customers and practitioners. Because Orykl sessions involve talking about your life and wellbeing, and because every session is recorded, please read it carefully.

The controller of your personal information is the business that operates Orykl ("Orykl", "we", "us"). You can contact us about privacy at hello@orykl.com.

1. The short version

• We collect what you give us (account details, what you tell the matcher, booking notes, messages), what happens in your sessions (video, audio, transcript, AI summary), payment records from Stripe, and basic analytics about how the site is used.
• We use it to match you with a practitioner, run and record your session, take payment, send you service emails, keep Orykl safe, and improve the service.
• We share it with the practitioner you book, with the providers that run our platform (listed in section 7), and otherwise only when the law requires.
• We do not sell your information and we do not use session recordings for advertising.
• You can access, correct, download or delete your information, object to or restrict some uses, and complain to a regulator. See section 11.

2. Information we collect

From everyone who visits

• Technical and usage data sent by your browser (IP address, device and browser type, pages viewed, referring page), collected through our hosting provider's logs and, where enabled, Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics (section 8).
• A random visitor ID and a test-variant cookie if you land on our home page while signed out, so we can measure which version of the page works better (section 8).

When you use the matcher

• What you tell us about what you are going through and what you are looking for, either in your own words or by choosing from suggested topics (for example grief, anxiety, burnout or spiritual growth), and any resonance traits you select.
• If you are signed in, we save your self-description on your profile so you do not have to repeat it. If you are not signed in, we do not store it on our servers; your browser keeps it locally for 30 minutes so you can pick up where you left off.

When you book or create an account as a customer

• Your name, email address and time zone.
• Your answers to the practitioner's intake questions and any note you leave for them.
• The fact that you accepted our terms and confirmed you are over 18, and when.
• Your notification preferences and whether you have opted in to marketing.
• Messages you exchange with your practitioner through Orykl, reviews you leave, and support or bug reports you send us.
• Gift purchases: the recipient's email address and any message you include.
• If you sign in with Google, Microsoft or another provider offered on the sign-in screen, the name, email address and profile picture that provider shares with us.

Payment information

Card details are entered on Stripe's payment page and go directly to Stripe; we never see or store your full card number. Stripe sends us a record of the payment (amount, date, status, the last four digits and card brand where Stripe provides them, invoice and receipt links) and tells us about refunds, failed payments and disputes.

During and after a session

• Video and audio recording of the whole session, which starts automatically once both participants are in the room.
• A written transcript, produced automatically from the audio with speakers labelled "Practitioner" and "Client".
• An AI-generated summary of the session, which the practitioner may edit (we keep the original).
• Attendance (whether each participant joined, and no-shows), session access codes, and the practitioner's private reflections on the session (ratings and notes about how the session went, which are not shown to you).

From practitioners

• Everything above, plus: date of birth, mobile number (used by the Orykl team to reach you, never published), gender, full address and map location, profile photo and intro video, certifications (title, institution, year and an image of the certificate), bio and profile text, languages, modalities and specialisms.
• Transcripts of your founder interview, practical session and matching interview, which our team enters after the conversations, and the AI-generated "matching profile" and draft bio produced from them.
• If you connect a calendar: your calendar account email, which calendars you selected, and (for Apple) an app-specific password we store encrypted. Access tokens for Google and Microsoft are held by our sign-in provider, Clerk, not in our database. When we check your availability we read event titles and times from your calendar, but only hold them in memory for about a minute and never store them.
• Your availability rules, out-of-office periods and reasons, booking settings, and your choice about whether session videos are shared with customers.

3. Sensitive information

What you tell the matcher, what you say in a session, your booking notes and your messages are likely to reveal information about your health (including mental health), religious, spiritual or philosophical beliefs, and possibly your sex life, sexual orientation or ethnicity. Data protection law calls this special-category data and we may only process it with your explicit consent or on another narrow legal ground.

We rely on your explicit consent, which you give when you choose to enter that information into the matcher, book a session knowing it will be recorded and transcribed, or write it in a note or message. You can withdraw consent at any time by deleting your account (section 12) or asking us to delete specific content; withdrawal does not affect processing that has already happened. We never use sensitive information for advertising.

4. How we use your information, and our legal bases

Under UK and EU data protection law we need a legal basis for each use. Here is what we do and why.

• Matching you with practitioners. Your intake text, chosen topics and traits are sent to an AI model together with the profiles of practitioners who are currently accepting bookings; the model suggests up to three. Basis: your explicit consent for the sensitive content; performing our contract with you for the rest.
• Taking bookings and payments, and issuing invoices and refunds. Basis: performing our contract with you; legal obligations to keep financial records.
• Running your session and giving you the recording, transcript and summary. Basis: performing our contract with you; your explicit consent for the sensitive content in it.
• Letting practitioners prepare for and reflect on sessions, including sharing your name, email, intake answers and messages with them and letting them see session materials. Basis: performing our contract with you.
• Service emails and in-app notifications about your booking confirmations and changes, payments and essential account or security updates. Basis: performing our contract with you. These required emails and in-app service notifications cannot be switched off while you have an account or an upcoming booking. Both customers and practitioners can separately turn off reminder and session-material emails, and opt in to new booking-message emails, in notification settings. These email choices do not remove in-app notices, access to messages or materials, or change session-media sharing times.
• Marketing emails and in-app offers. Only if you have switched them on in your notification settings. Basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time using the unsubscribe link or your settings. For practitioners, platform and marketing updates are switched on by default and can be turned off in your preferences. Basis: our legitimate interest in keeping practitioners informed about the platform they work on.
• Vetting practitioners, generating their matching profile and draft bio, and reviewing practitioners' reflections on sessions to keep the service safe. Basis: performing our contract with the practitioner; our legitimate interests in running a safe, high-quality marketplace.
• Safety, fraud prevention and enforcing our terms, including reviewing session materials when a complaint or safeguarding concern is raised. Basis: our legitimate interests in protecting customers, practitioners and Orykl; legal obligations.
• Support and bug reports. Your name, email, message and any booking reference are stored in our ticketing tool so we can respond. Basis: performing our contract with you; legitimate interests.
• Measuring and improving Orykl through analytics, A/B tests of our home page and matcher, and aggregate statistics. Basis: your consent for analytics cookies (see section 8); otherwise our legitimate interests.
• Complying with the law, for example tax and accounting rules, or a lawful request from a court or regulator. Basis: legal obligation.

Where we rely on legitimate interests we have considered the impact on you and believe it is not outweighed by your rights. You can ask for details of that assessment or object (section 11).

5. Session recordings, transcripts and summaries

• Recording begins automatically when the second participant joins and a "Recording" indicator is displayed throughout. Neither participant can turn it off. We do not record a practitioner waiting alone.
• Recordings are stored in a private storage bucket that is not publicly reachable; every download is through a short-lived signed link issued only to the booking's practitioner, to you when signed in or holding the booking's access code, or to our administrators.
• Transcription runs on our hosting provider's speech-to-text service. The transcript text is then sent to an AI model provider (Anthropic) to generate the summary. The audio itself is not sent to the AI summary provider. See section 6 for what those providers may do.
• Your session materials are available in your account 24 hours after your session ends, or as soon as they are ready if preparation takes longer. They include the audio, transcript and summary, and the video unless the practitioner turns it off. The practitioner can see all materials, edit the summary, and later withdraw your access, but cannot recall anything you have already downloaded.
• Our team can see which materials exist for a booking, their status and the summary text. We only access session materials when needed to support you or keep the service safe, and our team does not routinely watch or read sessions.
• We keep recordings and transcripts until you or your practitioner ask us to delete them. Deleting your account does not remove them automatically, so email us and we will delete them (section 11).

6. Automated processing and AI

We use AI models from Anthropic to (a) suggest practitioner matches from your intake text, (b) summarise session transcripts, (c) produce practitioners' matching profiles and draft bios from their interview transcripts, and (d) classify practitioner profiles. We use Cloudflare Workers AI to turn session audio into text. These providers process the data on our instructions and under contract, and do not use it to train their models.

The matcher's suggestions and the session summary are generated automatically, but no decision with legal or similarly significant effects on you is made solely by automated means: you choose which practitioner to book, and the summary is a record you and the practitioner can read and correct. The matcher also produces a short internal assessment of what you may need (for example emotional state and areas of risk) in order to rank practitioners; we do not store it and it is not shown to practitioners.

7. Who we share your information with

Practitioners and customers

When you book, the practitioner sees your name, email address, intake answers, notes and messages, and the session materials. They see your self-description from the matcher only if you include it in your note. Practitioners are independent and are responsible for how they handle your information once they have it; our terms require them to keep it confidential. Practitioners' public profiles (name, photo, bio, certifications, languages and specialisms) are visible to everyone; their address, phone number, date of birth and interview transcripts are not.

Service providers (processors)

These companies process information for us under contract and may not use it for their own purposes:

• Cloudflare (US): hosts the app, stores media and session recordings, provides the video session service (RealtimeKit) and speech-to-text, and runs our logs.
• Prisma Data Platform: our database.
• Stripe (US / Ireland for EU customers): payments, invoices, refunds and disputes. Stripe is also an independent controller for its own fraud prevention; see Stripe's privacy policy.
• Clerk (US): sign-in, sessions and, for practitioners, calendar access tokens.
• Anthropic (US): AI matching, summaries and profile text.
• Resend (US): sending email.
• Google (US): analytics via Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, address lookup for practitioner locations, and calendar sync for practitioners who connect Google Calendar.
• Microsoft and Apple (US): calendar sync for practitioners who connect Outlook or iCloud calendars.
• Calendly (US): scheduling practitioner vetting interviews.
• Amazon Web Services (US, N. Virginia): legacy storage for some older media files.

Others

• Professional advisers (lawyers, accountants, insurers) where needed.
• Courts, regulators, law enforcement or emergency services where the law requires it or where we reasonably believe someone is at serious risk of harm.
• A buyer or successor if Orykl is sold or merged, under the same commitments as this policy.

8. Cookies, analytics and local storage

• Strictly necessary: sign-in cookies set by Clerk so you stay logged in; a short-lived browser value holding your session access code if you join as a guest; a local record of dismissed notices.
• Functional: if you use the matcher your browser keeps your answers and results locally for 30 minutes ("orykl:match-state") so a refresh does not lose them.
• Testing (only with your consent): if you choose "Allow analytics", two first-party cookies, "orykl_vid" (random visitor ID) and "orykl_exp_home" (which home-page variant you saw), each lasting one year, set only on the home page while signed out. We record exposure and whether you started or completed a match against that visitor ID. They are not linked to your account. If you choose "No thanks", they are not set, and any already set are deleted.
• Analytics (only with your consent): we load Google Tag Manager, which can load Google Analytics. Analytics cookies are off by default. They are set only after you choose "Allow analytics", and only then does Google Analytics receive your IP address, pages viewed and interaction events. Until you choose, or if you choose "No thanks", Google Analytics sets no cookies. We keep your choice for one year in a first-party cookie ("orykl_consent"). We run no advertising and send nothing to Google for ads.

You can change your choice at any time with "Cookie settings" at the bottom of the page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Blocking necessary cookies will stop you signing in.

9. International transfers

Most of our providers are in the United States, so your information will be transferred outside the UK and the European Economic Area. Where we do this we rely on the provider's certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the UK Extension where available, or on standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission and the UK Information Commissioner, together with additional safeguards where needed. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.

10. How long we keep information

• Account and profile data: while your account is open, then deleted or anonymised as described in section 12.
• Booking and payment records: kept for up to 7 years after the booking for tax, accounting and dispute purposes, in anonymised form once your account is deleted.
• Session recordings, audio, transcripts and summaries: kept until you or your practitioner ask us to delete them (see section 5).
• Messages between you and your practitioner: while the booking exists; anonymised when either account is deleted.
• Matcher input: not stored on our servers unless you are signed in, in which case it stays on your profile until you change it or delete your account. Your browser keeps a local copy for 30 minutes.
• In-app notifications: deleted 90 days after you read them; unread ones are deleted when your account is.
• Practitioner interview transcripts and matching profile: while the practitioner is on Orykl; deleted with their profile.
• Practitioner accounts after a deletion request: profile taken down immediately once confirmed, records deleted 30 days later.
• A/B test events, support tickets, logs: kept only as long as we need them to run and improve Orykl, then deleted.
• Records held by Stripe (payments, invoices) are kept by Stripe for as long as financial regulations require, independent of your Orykl account.

11. Your rights

If you are in the UK or the EEA (and in many other places) you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy.
• Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete. You can edit most of your details in your settings.
• Delete your information ("right to be forgotten"), subject to records we must keep by law.
• Restrict or object to processing based on our legitimate interests, including profiling.
• Portability: receive the information you gave us in a machine-readable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis, including for marketing and for sensitive information.
• Complain to a supervisory authority. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). In the EEA it is the authority in the country where you live or work. We would appreciate the chance to resolve your concern first.

To exercise any right, email hello@orykl.com from the address on your account. We may need to verify your identity. We respond within one month, extendable by two months for complex requests, and do not charge unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive. Requests to delete session recordings or transcripts are handled by hand and may also be visible to the practitioner, who may hold their own copy.

12. Deleting your account

Customers can delete their account from their settings. We cannot process the request while you still have paid sessions to come; attend or cancel them first. When we process it we send a confirmation email, remove your login, and anonymise your records: your name, email, time zone, self-description and intake answers are removed from your bookings, your review text and messages are blanked, your notifications are deleted, and any active package is closed. Anonymised booking and payment records are kept as described in section 10. Session recordings, transcripts and summaries are not deleted automatically by this process; ask us if you want them removed. Information held by Stripe is retained under Stripe's rules.

Practitioners can request deletion from their settings. Once we confirm, your profile is removed from the site and your personal details, interview transcripts, certifications, calendar connections and availability are permanently deleted 30 days later. Bookings you delivered are kept with your details removed. Media objects for your past sessions are not deleted by this process.

13. Security

We protect your information with encryption in transit, private storage for session materials with short-lived access links, encrypted storage of calendar credentials, role-based access for our team, and payment handling delegated entirely to Stripe. No system is perfectly secure; if we discover a breach that puts your rights at risk we will tell you and the regulator as the law requires.

14. Children

Orykl is for adults. You must be 18 or over to create an account, book a session or work as a practitioner, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has used Orykl, contact us and we will delete the information.

15. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when our practices or the law change and show the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your information we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions or requests? Email hello@orykl.com.