1. Who We Are

The Living Journal is a product of The Digital Monastery, operated by Dave in Perth, Western Australia. The Living Journal is an AI-powered spiritual journaling application designed to support your personal relationship with God through guided reflection, prayer, and contemplation.

The Living Journal is not a counselling service, therapy provider, pastoral care service, or crisis intervention tool. It is a journaling tool that uses artificial intelligence to provide reflective responses to your written entries.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), as amended by the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024.

2. What Data We Collect

We are transparent about every category of data we collect. The table below lists all data types, their purpose, and their sensitivity classification under Australian privacy law.

3. Sensitive Information and Religious Beliefs

Under the Australian Privacy Act 1988, religious beliefs are explicitly classified as "sensitive information" (Section 6). This classification applies to the majority of data The Living Journal collects, including your journal entries, prayers, confessions, onboarding answers about your spiritual life, and any AI-generated responses that reflect your beliefs.

What "sensitive information" means for you

• We will only collect this data with your explicit, informed consent, given freely at the time you create your account and begin journaling.
• We will only collect data that is reasonably necessary for the functions of the service (Australian Privacy Principle 3).
• We will never sell, trade, or disclose your sensitive information to any third party.
• We will never use your journal entries, prayers, or reflections to train AI models.
• We will never use your data for advertising or marketing purposes.

Consent

By creating an account and submitting journal entries, you provide explicit consent to the collection and processing of sensitive information (including religious beliefs) as described in this policy. You may withdraw this consent at any time by deleting your account (see Section 9: Your Rights).

4. How We Store Your Data

All of your personal data is stored on infrastructure we physically own and control in Perth, Western Australia. Your data is not stored in any cloud service, third-party data centre, or overseas facility.

Our infrastructure

• Application server (HP Server, Perth, WA) -- runs the application, stores your account details and journal entries in a SQLite database.
• Vector database (Qdrant, same server) -- stores theological reference materials used to generate prompts. Your personal journal entries are not stored in the vector database.
• AI inference server (Apple Mac Studio M4 Max, Perth, WA) -- processes your journal entries to generate AI responses. This device is on our local network and does not transmit data externally.

5. How We Use Your Data

We collect and use your data solely for the following purposes:

1. Providing the journaling service -- storing your entries, displaying your history, tracking your progress through the guided series.
2. Generating AI responses -- your journal entry text is sent to our local AI model (running on our Mac Studio) to produce a reflective "Friend voice" response. This processing happens entirely within our local network.
3. Personalising your experience -- using your name, onboarding answers, and detected patterns to tailor prompts and responses to your spiritual journey.
4. Sentiment analysis -- understanding the emotional tone of your entries to ensure AI responses are appropriately compassionate and relevant.
5. Weekly reflections -- analysing your week of entries to generate a summary that identifies themes and encourages growth.
6. Crisis resource display -- if the system detects content that may indicate distress, it ensures crisis support resources are prominently displayed.
7. Service improvement -- the developer may access aggregated, de-identified usage patterns (e.g., how many entries per week on average) to improve the service. Individual journal content is not read for this purpose except where you have flagged a response for review, or during active debugging of a technical issue with your explicit knowledge.
8. Notifications -- if you opt in, sending daily reminders and milestone celebrations at your chosen time and via your chosen method.

6. AI Processing and Local Inference

The Living Journal uses artificial intelligence to generate reflective responses to your journal entries. Here is exactly how this works:

How AI processing works

1. You write a journal entry in the app.
2. Your entry text is sent from our application server to our AI inference server (Apple Mac Studio M4 Max, located in our premises in Perth, WA).
3. The AI model (an open-source language model running via Ollama) generates a response.
4. The response is sent back to the application server and stored alongside your entry.
5. At no point does your entry text leave our local network.

What we do NOT do

• We do not send your data to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, or any other external AI provider.
• We do not use your journal entries to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI model.
• We do not store your entries in any AI training dataset.
• We do not use cloud-based AI APIs for any purpose.

7. External Services and Third Parties

While your journal data remains on our local infrastructure, The Living Journal does interact with a small number of external services. We disclose all of them here in full transparency.

Services we do NOT use

• No analytics services (no Google Analytics, no Mixpanel, no tracking pixels)
• No advertising networks
• No cloud AI APIs (no OpenAI, no Anthropic, no Google AI)
• No cloud data storage (no AWS, no Azure, no Google Cloud)
• No social media integration or sharing features
• No third-party cookies (except those set by YouTube on the Soaking page)

8. Crisis Content Handling

The Living Journal includes a sensitive content detection system that may flag journal entries containing language associated with crisis situations, including references to self-harm, suicidal ideation, severe distress, or abuse.

What happens when content is flagged

• A flag is stored internally alongside your entry (the flagged_sensitive and sensitive_category fields described in Section 2).
• Crisis support resources (Lifeline, Beyond Blue, Emergency 000) are displayed prominently in the application.
• The AI response is adjusted to be especially gentle and to encourage seeking professional support.

What does NOT happen

• No data is shared with any crisis service or government agency.
• No journal entry content is shared with any external party.
• No automatic contact is made with police, counsellors, or family members.

What DOES happen

• The developer (Dave) receives a private push notification indicating that a user may need support — by name only, with no journal content shared. This is so Dave can personally follow up and check in.
• If you have nominated a support person and consented to their being contacted, they may be notified in a future version of this feature. This is not yet active. You will be informed when it is enabled.

This system is imperfect. It may fail to detect genuine crisis content, or may incorrectly flag content that is not a cause for concern. You should never rely on The Living Journal as a safety mechanism or crisis monitoring tool.

9. Your Rights

Under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Australian Privacy Principles 12 and 13), you have the following rights regarding your personal information:

Right of access

You may request a copy of all personal information we hold about you. Your journal entries and history are already accessible within the application. For a complete data export, contact us at oddydavid@hotmail.com.

Right of correction

If any personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, you may request that we correct it. You can update your name, notification preferences, and timezone directly in the Settings page. For other corrections, contact us.

Right of deletion

You may delete your account and all associated data at any time via the Settings page (the "Delete My Account" option). This will permanently and irreversibly delete:

• Your user account and profile information
• All journal entries, prayers, and reflections
• All AI-generated responses
• All sentiment and pattern data
• All weekly reflections
• All flagged response records
• All session and authentication data
• All notification preferences

This deletion is performed as a cascading database delete and cannot be undone. We do not retain backup copies of deleted accounts.

Right to withdraw consent

You may withdraw your consent to the collection and processing of sensitive information at any time by deleting your account or by contacting us. Withdrawal of consent means we can no longer provide the service, as the core function requires processing your journal entries.

Right to complain

If you believe we have breached the Australian Privacy Principles, you may:

1. Contact us directly at oddydavid@hotmail.com and we will investigate and respond within 30 days.
2. If unsatisfied with our response, lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at www.oaic.gov.au or by calling 1300 363 992.

10. Data Retention

We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active. Specifically:

• Active accounts: All data is retained for as long as you have an active account, enabling you to review your full journal history and track your spiritual journey over time.
• Inactive accounts: If your account has been inactive for 12 months (no logins, no entries), we will attempt to contact you via email. If we receive no response within 30 days, we may delete your account and all associated data.
• Deleted accounts: When you delete your account, all data is permanently removed from our systems immediately. We do not maintain soft-delete or archival copies.
• Authentication tokens: Expired sign-in link and session tokens are automatically cleaned from the database.

11. Data Security

We implement the following security measures to protect your data:

• Network encryption: All access to The Living Journal occurs over Tailscale VPN, which uses WireGuard encryption. Data in transit between your device and our servers is encrypted.
• No public internet exposure: During beta, the application is not accessible on the public internet. Access requires Tailscale VPN membership.
• Authentication: We use sign-in link authentication (no passwords are stored). Session cookies are used for ongoing access.
• Local network isolation: AI processing occurs on a separate device within our local network. Journal data moves only between the application server and the AI inference server, both on the same local network in Perth.
• Database integrity: SQLite WAL (Write-Ahead Logging) mode is enabled for concurrent access safety.

12. Data Breach Notification

In the unlikely event of a data breach that could result in serious harm to you, we will:

1. Notify all affected users via email within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach.
2. Provide a clear description of what data was affected.
3. Describe what steps we are taking to address the breach and prevent recurrence.
4. Provide recommendations for steps you can take to protect yourself.
5. Notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) if required under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

Given the highly sensitive nature of the data we hold (religious beliefs, prayers, personal confessions), we consider any unauthorised access to journal entry data to be a serious breach warranting notification, regardless of the technical threshold.

13. Children

The Living Journal is not intended for use by children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at oddydavid@hotmail.com and we will delete the account and all associated data.

14. International Users

The Living Journal is operated from Perth, Western Australia and all data is stored and processed in Australia.

European Union / United Kingdom users

If you are located in the EU or UK, please be aware that:

• Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), religious beliefs are classified as "special category data" (Article 9) requiring explicit consent for processing.
• Your use of The Living Journal and submission of journal entries constitutes explicit consent to the processing of special category data as described in this policy.
• Your data is processed in Australia. Australia does not currently have an EU adequacy decision, but your data is processed with safeguards as described in this policy.
• You have the right to erasure ("right to be forgotten") -- you can delete your account at any time via the Settings page.
• You have the right to data portability -- contact us to request an export of your data.
• Our lawful basis for processing is explicit consent (GDPR Article 6(1)(a) and Article 9(2)(a)).

15. Australian Small Business Exemption

Under the Privacy Act 1988, organisations with annual turnover of less than $3 million are generally exempt from the Australian Privacy Principles. The Digital Monastery currently falls below this threshold.

However, given that we collect and process sensitive information (religious beliefs), and given the presence of crisis content detection features, we have made a deliberate decision to comply with the Privacy Act as if we were a covered entity. We believe this is the right thing to do when people trust us with their prayers, confessions, and spiritual struggles.

16. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as the service develops. When we make changes:

• The "Last updated" date at the top of this page will be revised.
• For material changes (especially any changes affecting how sensitive information is collected, used, or disclosed), we will notify you via email or an in-app notice.
• If changes involve new categories of data collection or new external service providers, we will seek your renewed consent.

We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

17. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your rights, or have a privacy concern, please contact us:

• Email: oddydavid@hotmail.com
• Response time: We will acknowledge your inquiry within 7 days and provide a substantive response within 30 days.

For complaints about our handling of your personal information, please see the complaint process described in Section 9: Your Rights.