Privacy policy

Polari · last updated 25 October 2026

Polari is a guided-audio app for gay and bi men's sexual wellness. We built it to keep as little about you as possible: everything personal (your history, settings, name, favourites, ratings, greeting audio) stays on your phone, and our server keeps only what you need to sign in. This page lists exactly what leaves your phone, where it goes, how long it's kept, and how to delete it. It covers the Polari apps (the iPhone app and the web app at app.polari.fit) and this website, polari.fit.

Who we are. Polari is run by Polari ("we"), the data controller. Contact: hello@polari.fit.

The short version. No ads, no tracking across apps or websites, no data brokers, and we never sell or rent your data. Polari is for adults (18+) only. You can delete your account and everything linked to it inside the app (Settings → Account → Delete my account).

What stays on your phone only

These are stored in the app on your device and are never sent to our server:

Your history: which sessions and articles you completed and when, and the plan, weekly count and streak worked out from it.
Your settings: pacing, weekly target, active program, narrator voice, and the audio version you picked for each session.
Your name or nickname (used for on-screen greetings).
Your favourites, your copy of the ratings you gave, guide checklist ticks, ambience and playback-resume settings.
Your personal greeting audio clips (if you turn that feature on), and which notices and announcements you've seen.
Whether usage stats are on, and the random stats ID and "About you" answers described below (sent only while usage stats are on).
Cached app files and audio (including sessions you download in the iPhone app), so the app loads quickly and works offline.

Deleting your account (or deleting the app) wipes this data from the device. When you play a session, the app tells the server which version to send (your pick and narrator voice); the server uses that to choose the audio and doesn't store it.

iCloud sync (iPhone and iPad). In the iPhone app, your name, history, settings, favourites, ratings and "About you" answers sync between your Apple devices through your own iCloud account (Apple), never through Polari's server; we can't see that copy. Without iCloud, a new phone starts with a fresh history and settings. Turn sync off in iOS Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Polari. Deleting your account also removes the copy from your iCloud; deleting only the app leaves it there.

What our server keeps, linked to your account

Data	Why	Kept
Email address and a one-way (Argon2) hash of your password	Your account and sign-in	Until you delete your account
Sign-in session (a cookie; the server stores only a keyed hash of it)	Keeping you signed in	30 days, or until you log out
Sign-up codes and password-reset links: only a keyed hash of each code or link, never the code or link itself. For a sign-up code the email address is kept only as a keyed hash too	Confirming your email address, resetting your password	Deleted once used, or when it expires: 15 minutes for codes, 30 minutes for reset links
Whether your account is an admin (the team that runs Polari)	Admin tools	Until you delete your account
Invites: the invitee's email and who sent the invite	Invite-only sign-up	Deleted when the invite is accepted (the email is then on the account), when it expires unused, or with the sender's account

That's all: email, password hash, admin flag and sign-in sessions. Your history, settings, version picks, favourites, ratings and greeting stay on your phone.

What our server keeps that is not linked to you

Usage stats (off unless you turn on "Help improve Polari — share usage stats", per device): app opens, which items you view and for how long, play / pause / seek / finish / close with playback position and time listened, the voice played, favourite added or removed. They are stored under a random ID your phone makes when you turn stats on, with no link to your account or email: the server never stores who sent them. Used only in aggregate by the small team that makes Polari's content, to understand which sessions work.
"About you" (optional, only while usage stats are on): gender, age range, sexual orientation, country, each can be left as "Prefer not to say". Kept on your phone and sent only with your usage stats, under the same random ID, to understand who Polari serves.
Turning usage stats off in Settings → Privacy deletes everything stored under that ID, right away, and clears your "About you" answers on the phone. Turning it on again starts over with a new ID. Deleting your account does the same for the phone you delete it from; stats sent from your other phones can't be traced to your account, so turn stats off on each phone to delete those.
Session ratings. Stars, optional follow-up answers and an optional comment (up to 500 characters) about a session. They are stored without your account, email or any device identifier: your phone makes a random id per rating, and the server keeps only a one-way hash of it so you can edit or remove that rating later from the same phone. Because ratings can't be traced back to you, they are kept after you delete your account. Please don't put personal details in comments. To remove a rating, clear it in the session before deleting your account.
Announcement counts. When the app shows an in-app announcement and you open or dismiss it, the server adds one to a total for that announcement (seen / opened / dismissed). No account, email or device ID is stored with it; your phone remembers which ones you've seen so they don't show again.

Personal greeting (optional)

If you turn on "Greet me by name", your first name and a one-time encryption key made by your phone are sent to our server, which turns the name into short audio clips. The name and key are held in memory only while the clips are made and are never written to disk or logs. The clips are encrypted with your phone's key, so the server can't play them; they wait on the server until your phone picks them up, at most 48 hours, and are then deleted.

Emails we send

We only email you when you ask for it: the code that confirms your address when you create an account (or a note that you already have one), and the link to reset your password. These emails are worded neutrally and say nothing about what you do in Polari. They carry no tracking: no tracking pixels, and open and click tracking are switched off. We send no newsletters or marketing.

The emails are delivered by Mailjet (Sinch Mailjet SAS, France, EU), our email provider, which processes your email address and the message to deliver it, as our processor.

AI-written reports (no personal data)

Polari has no AI chat, and nothing you type or listen to is sent to an AI service. To write internal reports for the content team, we may send aggregated usage statistics (counts and averages, never individual users' data or rating comments) to OpenRouter, which passes them to an AI model. Those requests ask OpenRouter to use only model providers that don't store or train on the data.

Cookies and tracking

The Polari app uses one strictly necessary cookie (polari_session) to keep you signed in. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, no third-party SDKs, no advertising identifiers, and no tracking across other companies' apps or websites.

This website (polari.fit) sets no cookies at all, has no analytics or trackers, and loads nothing from other companies' servers.

Hosting, logs and security

Our server is hosted by Microsoft Azure in the Germany West Central region (Frankfurt, Germany). Traffic to Polari passes through Cloudflare, our network and security provider: it delivers this website and protects the service from attacks, so it sees network traffic in transit (such as your IP address and the pages or files your device requests). Cloudflare acts as our processor.

Our server does not keep request logs. It keeps short error messages for troubleshooting, without your personal data. To slow down password guessing, failed sign-in attempts are counted in memory for 15 minutes by network address and email, and never stored. Requests for sign-up codes and reset links are counted the same way, in memory for at most an hour, by network address and a keyed hash of the email. Data travels over HTTPS.

Deleted data is overwritten in the database, not just marked as free. The server is backed up daily with encrypted Azure virtual-machine backups, which are kept for 30 days; after you delete something, it can remain in those backups until they expire, at most 30 days later. Backups are only used to restore the service after a failure.

Who we share data with

Microsoft (Azure), our hosting provider, which runs the server and stores its backups, as our processor.
Cloudflare, our network and security provider, which handles traffic in transit, as our processor.
Mailjet (Sinch Mailjet SAS, France, EU), our email provider, which receives your email address and the message when we send you a sign-up code or reset link, as our processor.
OpenRouter (and the AI model provider it routes to), only for aggregated reports with no personal data, as described above.
Authorities, only if the law requires it.

We never sell, rent or share your data for advertising.

Deleting your data

In the app: Settings → Account → Delete my account. This permanently deletes your account and everything linked to it on our server (email, password hash, admin flag, sign-in sessions, pending reset links, invites naming you or sent by you), deletes the usage stats and "About you" answers sent from that phone, and wipes Polari's data from that phone. Anonymous session ratings, and anonymous usage stats from your other phones, remain because they are not linked to you. You can also email hello@polari.fit and we will delete your account for you.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the EU/UK GDPR), you can ask to access, correct, export or delete your data, object to or restrict how we use it, and withdraw consent at any time (usage stats can be switched off in Settings → Privacy, which also deletes them). Write to hello@polari.fit. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

Adults only

Polari is only for people aged 18 or older. Creating an account requires confirming you're 18 or older. If we learn an account belongs to someone younger, we delete it.

Health information

Polari is for wellness and pleasure practice, not medical advice. If something persistently worries you (pain, erection or ejaculation problems), talk to a doctor.

Changes

If we change what we collect, we'll update this page and tell you in the app before the change applies.