Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how the Beside mobile app and our websites at besideparents.com and start.besideparents.com (together, “Beside”, “we”, “us”) collect, use, share and protect personal data, and the rights you have. Beside is a calm, daily guide for parents raising a child with ADHD. We built it privacy-first, and this policy describes exactly what that means in practice.

Beside offers support and education, not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is not a substitute for care from your doctor or a qualified professional.

The short version

• You can start using Beside and feel it work without creating an account. By default, everything stays on your device. Signing in, with Apple, Google or your email address, is optional and exists to keep your back-up safe.
• We never sell your data, we show no ads, and we use no analytics, tracking or advertising software of any kind.
• We do not use what you tell us about your child to train external AI models.
• To choose warmer, better-fitting help, the app sends a short profile of your child (including the first name or nickname you enter) to a privacy-protected AI service hosted in the European Union. This is explained in full below.
• Cloud back-up and push notifications are off by default and only ever run if you switch them on.
• You can export or permanently erase all of your data at any time, directly from inside the app.

1. Who is responsible for your data

The data controller for Beside is Niels Luka B.V., a company registered in the Netherlands. If you have any question about this policy or about your data, or you want to exercise your rights, you can reach us at:

Email: privacy@besideparents.com
Website: besideparents.com

We have not appointed a statutory Data Protection Officer, but the contact above reaches the person directly responsible for privacy at Beside.

2. The data we process

We keep what we hold about you and your child deliberately light. Depending on how you use Beside, we may process the following categories of personal data.

Information about your child

When you set up the app you can tell us a little about the child you are raising, so Beside can pick help that fits:

• First name or nickname of the child (free text you type; you may enter a nickname if you prefer).
• Age band (for example 7–9). We ask for a range, never an exact date of birth.
• The kind of challenge you find hardest (for example getting started, or emotional outbursts) and which everyday moment is toughest.
• How things are going over time: which suggestions you have tried or set aside, and whether recent moments felt lighter, the same, or heavier.

Some of this can be sensitive because it relates to a child’s wellbeing and possible ADHD. We treat it with corresponding care and only ever use it to help that specific child.

Information about you as a parent

• An account identifier. Beside starts anonymous: you can use the whole app without telling us who you are. If you turn on cloud back-up, we first create an anonymous account so your data can sync between your own devices. You can then secure that account by signing in with Apple, with Google, or with your email address and a one-time code. If you sign in, we store the email address that belongs to your sign-in, so we can recognise you on a new phone. We use it for sign-in and account recovery, not for marketing.
• An optional, coarse sense of how you are doing as a parent (for example “okay” or “up and down”), if you choose to share it.
• Your app settings, such as language, reminder preferences and whether cloud back-up is on.

How you use the app

• Evening check-ins you choose to record: the date, a simple sense of your child’s mood that day, and whether a suggestion helped.
• Coarse usage counters, such as how often the app was opened or a suggestion was tried. We deliberately do not record precise times or detailed behavioural logs.

Your questions to the in-app assistant

If you use the “Ask Beside” assistant, the questions you type are processed so the assistant can answer. These may be free-text messages you write yourself.

Subscription and payment data

If you take out a subscription, the purchase itself is handled by the App Store (Apple) or Google Play, and by our subscription manager RevenueCat. We receive whether your subscription is active and an anonymous subscription identifier. We never see or store your card number or full payment details; those stay with Apple or Google.

Technical and notification data

If you switch on push notifications, we store a device push token (an address that lets us deliver a notification to your device) together with your platform and language. Reminders you set that do not need the internet are scheduled entirely on your device and involve no token and no server.

The email list on our website

On start.besideparents.com you can leave your email address to receive our tips and launch news by email. That address goes to our email provider Klaviyo and is used for those emails alone. Each email carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes you off the list. This list is separate from the app: joining it tells us nothing about your child, and using the app never puts you on it.

3. Why we use your data, and the legal basis

Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) we must have a lawful basis for each use of your data. The table below sets out what we do and why.

What we do	Legal basis (GDPR)
Run the core app on your device and give you general guidance	Performance of our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b))
Send your child’s short profile to our EU AI service to choose better-fitting suggestions, and answer your questions in the assistant	Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), and for wellbeing-related detail your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)), given when you provide the information and use these features
Back up and sync your data across your devices (only if you switch cloud back-up on)	Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)); explicit consent for wellbeing-related detail (Art. 9(2)(a))
Manage your subscription and confirm your access	Performance of our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b))
Send push notifications (only if you switch them on)	Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a))
Keep Beside secure, prevent abuse of promotional codes, and keep a minimal security log of account events (never your child’s details)	Our legitimate interest in a safe, working service (Art. 6(1)(f))
Meet legal obligations, such as tax rules for subscriptions	Compliance with a legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c))

Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time, for example by turning cloud back-up or notifications off, or by choosing not to use the AI features. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it.

4. The AI matcher and the Ask Beside assistant

This is the part of Beside we most want to be clear about.

To choose warmer, more fitting help instead of generic advice, Beside sends a short profile of your child to an AI service that runs on servers inside the European Union (provided by Mistral AI). This short profile includes the details you entered about your child, including the first name or nickname you chose, the age band, the challenge and hardest moment, and a light record of what has been tried and how moments have been going. It does not include your identity, your location, or any payment data.

When you use the “Ask Beside” assistant, we additionally send the recent messages in that conversation (the questions you type) together with a small part of the child profile, so the assistant can answer in context.

Two things we want you to know clearly:

• This AI processing is separate from cloud back-up. The AI matcher works to personalise your suggestions even if you have not turned on cloud back-up. In other words, choosing to keep your data off the cloud does not by itself stop the short profile from being sent to the EU AI service; that sending is part of how the personalised help is generated. We explain this here and inside the app so your consent is informed.
• Your child’s data is never used to train the AI models. Our AI provider processes the profile only to return a suggestion in the moment and operates on a European, non-training basis. We do not sell this data and it is not used to build advertising profiles.

If you would prefer that none of your child’s information leaves your device at all, the safest choice is to not enter identifying detail (for example, use a nickname) and to not use the assistant. Beside still gives grounded guidance from its built-in library on your device.

5. Cloud back-up

Cloud back-up is off by default. If you switch it on, Beside creates an anonymous account and copies a light version of your data (your settings, the child’s profile using the name or nickname you entered, and your check-ins) to our secure database so it survives a lost phone and can sync to your other devices. This database is hosted in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany) by our infrastructure provider Supabase. Access is locked to your own account. If you turn cloud back-up off, we stop copying new data; to remove what is already stored, use the erase option described below.

6. Subscriptions and payments

Beside offers a free trial and paid subscriptions. Payments are processed by Apple (App Store) or Google (Google Play), and subscription status is managed for us by RevenueCat. We receive only whether your subscription is active and an anonymous subscription identifier, which we may use to apply a promotional code you enter. We do not receive or store your payment card details.

7. Push notifications

Push notifications are optional and off until you turn them on. When enabled, we store your device push token so we can deliver gentle reminders, and delivery is handled by the Expo push service together with Apple (APNs) or Google (FCM). Turning notifications off removes the stored token.

8. Who we share data with

We do not sell your data and we do not share it for advertising. We share limited data only with the service providers (“processors”) that make Beside work, and only for that purpose. They act on our instructions and under contract.

Provider	What it does for us	Where
Supabase	Anonymous accounts, cloud back-up database, app back-end	EU (Frankfurt)
Mistral AI	The AI matcher and Ask Beside assistant, on a non-training basis	EU
RevenueCat	Managing subscription status	United States (with EU safeguards)
Apple & Google	App distribution, in-app payments, notification delivery	EU / United States (with EU safeguards)
Expo	Delivering push notifications to your device	United States (with EU safeguards)
Klaviyo	Sending the email tips you signed up for on our website	United States (with EU safeguards)

We may also disclose data if the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of people using Beside.

9. International transfers

We keep your data in the European Union wherever we can: our database and AI processing are EU-hosted. Some providers (such as RevenueCat, Apple, Google and Expo) may process limited data outside the EU, for example in the United States. Where that happens, the transfer is protected by appropriate safeguards recognised under the GDPR, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.

10. How long we keep your data

• On your device: data stays until you delete the app or erase it from within the app.
• Cloud back-up: we keep your backed-up data for as long as your account exists. When you erase your data, your account and its data are permanently deleted.
• AI requests: the short profile and questions are sent only to generate a response in the moment and are not retained by us to build a profile of you.
• Subscription records: where tax or accounting law requires, related transaction records may be kept by us or the app stores for the legally required period (typically up to 7 years in the Netherlands).
• Email list: we keep the address you left on our website until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove it.
• Security log: a minimal log of account events (such as account created or deleted) is kept for security and is removed when your account is deleted.

11. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you and your child.
• Rectify data that is wrong or incomplete.
• Erase your data (“the right to be forgotten”).
• Restrict or object to certain processing.
• Data portability: receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time for anything based on consent.

Beside makes the two most important of these one tap away. In the app’s privacy settings you can:

• Export your data — download everything Beside holds, on your device and, if you use cloud back-up, in the cloud, as a file you can keep or share.
• Erase your data — permanently delete your account and all associated data from our systems, and reset the app on your device.

You can also contact us at privacy@besideparents.com to exercise any of these rights. We will respond within the time limits set by law (normally one month). If you believe we have not handled your data properly, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. In the Netherlands this is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl).

12. Children’s privacy

Beside is a tool for parents and carers, who must be adults (18 or older). It is not directed at or intended for use by children. The information about a child in the app is entered and controlled by the parent, for the parent’s own use in supporting that child. We do not knowingly collect data directly from children. If you believe a child has used Beside to give us data directly, contact us and we will remove it.

13. How we protect your data

We protect your data with encryption in transit, strict access controls that lock cloud data to your own account, and a back-end that enforces those rules at the database level. We collect as little as possible in the first place, which is the strongest protection of all. No system can be guaranteed perfectly secure, but we take security seriously and keep it under review.

14. No selling, no ads, no tracking

We want to be unambiguous: Beside contains no advertising, no third-party analytics, and no tracking or advertising software. We do not sell or rent your personal data to anyone, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles.

15. Apple App Store privacy

Apple asks every app to summarise its data practices as “privacy nutrition labels” on its App Store page. Our labels reflect this policy: the small amount of data linked to you is used only to run the app and personalise your suggestions, never to track you across other companies’ apps or websites. This policy is the full and authoritative description; the App Store labels are a summary.

16. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your data, we will update this page and change the “last updated” date at the top. For significant changes we will make a reasonable effort to let you know, for example in the app. Please check back from time to time.

17. Contact

Questions, requests or concerns are welcome at privacy@besideparents.com. We read every message and want Beside to feel as trustworthy as it is calm.