Privacy Policy

01Who we are

MVIII (the "App") is a fitness application for iPhone and Android operated by its individual developer ("we", "us"). This policy explains what information the App collects, how it is used, and the choices you have. Questions can always be sent to mviii@mviiiwod.com.

The short version: we collect the minimum needed to run the App, we never sell your data, we run no advertising or analytics trackers, the photos you take for scans are analyzed and immediately discarded, and if you measure a run by GPS your route never leaves your phone.

02Information we collect

• Account information. You sign in with Apple or with Google. We receive the name and email address that the service you choose shares with us. With Apple, that may be Apple's private relay address.
• Profile and fitness data you enter. Your goal, sport, training level, available equipment, fasting preference, body weight and body-fat entries, logged workouts, logged foods and water, the rest of a food's nutrition label when the food came with one (for example fiber, sodium and sugars), foods you write down yourself, meals you save, and calorie/macro targets.
• Apple Health (HealthKit) data. With your permission, the App reads weight, body-fat percentage, lean mass, height, age, sex, and active and resting energy to set your calorie and macro targets. It reads steps, heart rate during a session, sleep, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, VO2 max estimates, and workouts recorded by other apps, which the App also shows on the day you did them, and it writes your completed workouts and weight back to Apple Health. Each is asked for separately and you can allow any of them and not others.
• Health Connect data (Android). With your permission, the App reads weight, body-fat percentage, lean body mass, height, active calories burned and basal metabolic rate to set your calorie and macro targets. It reads heart rate during a session, and exercise sessions recorded by other apps, which it shows on the day you did them. It writes your completed workouts, their estimated calories, and weight entries you type back to Health Connect. Each record type is asked for separately. See section 05.
• Camera and photo library images. When you use them: posture, physique, and facial scan photos, meal photos for food logging, barcodes you scan, photos of a nutrition label you point it at, and any photo or video you take with the in-app camera after a session. See section 04 for exactly how each of these is handled.
• Microphone audio. Only when you turn it on. Hands-free logging listens for short spoken commands during a set and is recognized entirely on your device: by Apple's speech framework on iPhone, and by Android's on-device speech recognizer on Android. Nothing is recorded, saved, or sent. If your phone cannot recognize speech on the device, hands-free is unavailable, and the App never falls back to a speech service that would send your voice anywhere. Separately, a video you record with the in-app camera captures its own sound, and that video stays on your phone.
• What you write to Coach 8. The messages you send and the recent turns of that conversation. See section 04.
• Stack, which stays on your phone. If you use Stack, the names you give what you take, the group you file each under, and the dates, times and amounts you log, typed in or brought in from Apple Health. It is stored only on your phone, excluded from your iCloud backup, and never sent to us. It is not collected. See sections 04 and 05 for the one time a summary of it leaves your phone.
• Android beta sign-up (our website). If you join the Android beta at mviiiwod.com/android, we keep the email address you give us. We use it only to invite you to the test. It is added to the Google Play tester list for the App and to the test users that may sign in with Google while the App is in testing. We delete it when the beta ends, or sooner if you ask.
• AI usage counts. We count your daily use of AI features (for example, workout generations and scans) to enforce fair-use limits. These are counters only.

Location. If you choose to measure a run or a walk by GPS, the App reads your location while that session is on screen and while it is running. It is never collected: your route is held in memory on your phone and discarded when the session closes, and it is never transmitted to us or to anyone else. See section 06.

We do not collect your contacts, advertising identifiers, or browsing activity, and the App contains no analytics or advertising SDKs.

03How we use information

• To provide the App: generating your workouts, tracking nutrition and fasting, producing scan findings, and syncing with Apple Health.
• To personalize your targets and programming to your goal, equipment, and measurements.
• To enforce per-user fair-use limits on AI features.
• To respond when you contact us.

We do not use your information for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not share it except as described in section 07.

04Photos, chat, and AI processing

Some features send data to a third-party AI model provider for analysis via our backend:

• Facial scans (iPhone) are irreversibly pixelated on your device, using Apple's on-device Vision framework, before anything is transmitted. The original, unblurred image never leaves your phone.
• Physique, facial, and meal photos are transmitted for analysis and immediately discarded. They are not stored on our servers, not saved to any bucket or database, and not used to train models. Only the derived results (scores, findings, and nutrition estimates) are stored in your account.
• Nutrition labels and barcodes are read on your phone by on-device recognition: Apple's on iPhone, Google's ML Kit on Android. The photo is never transmitted and is discarded once read. Only the numbers you confirm are stored, as a food in your account.
• Posture analysis (iPhone) runs on-device with Apple Vision; only the derived findings (for example, "anterior pelvic tilt") are stored.
• Workout and meal generation sends profile data (goal, sport, equipment, targets) to generate your programming. Photos are never included.
• Coach 8 conversations send your message, a few recent turns for context, and a summary of your own logged training and nutrition, so the answer is about you and not about training in general. If you have allowed it, that summary includes a short digest of your Apple Health record: daily step and active energy averages, hours slept, resting heart rate and heart rate variability against your own recent average, your watch's VO2 max estimate now and some weeks earlier, and the type, date and length of workouts other apps recorded. Never the raw samples, never which app recorded a workout, and never a route. It is used to answer that one message and is not stored on our servers. When you ask Coach 8 about something in your Stack, and only then, the summary also includes a digest of your Stack: the names you gave what you take, when you logged them, and your own logged food, weight and training lined up with those dates. It never includes an amount. The conversation itself is stored on your phone, not on our servers. Coach 8's unprompted lines elsewhere in the App are written into the App and are not generated, so they send nothing at all.
• Spoken replies. If you have the coach's voice on, the one sentence it speaks is sent to a text-to-speech provider and returned as audio. Only that sentence is sent, never the full answer and never your own message.
• Photos and videos from the in-app camera are never transmitted. They are drawn on your phone, held in memory, and go nowhere unless you choose to save or share them, at which point they go where you send them.

05Apple Health and Health Connect data

HealthKit data is used only to provide the App's fitness features. It is never used for advertising or marketing, never sold, and never shared with third parties except as required to provide the service at your direction. You can revoke the App's Health access at any time in iOS Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices.

When you ask Coach 8 something, the digest of your Health record described in section 04 is sent through our backend to the AI model provider so the answer can take your sleep, recovery and other training into account. That is providing the service at your direction. It is not stored, not used to train models, and not used for anything else.

If you choose to bring medications in from Apple Health, Apple asks you which medications to share, one at a time. The App reads the doses you logged as taken for those medications only, and keeps them in your Stack on your phone. It never writes to your medications in Apple Health.

On Android, Health Connect data is used only to provide the App's fitness features, and never for advertising, never sold, and never shared with third parties. The App reads it only while you are using the App, never in the background, and never asks for your full Health Connect history. You can revoke access at any time in the Health Connect app, or in Android Settings under Health Connect. The App's use of information received from Health Connect adheres to the Health Connect Permissions policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Heart rate on both platforms. When the App reads your heart rate during a session, the session's average is stored with that workout in your account, so it can be shown on your summary and in your history. The individual samples are not stored.

On iPhone, with your permission the App also asks Apple Health to tell it when another app records a workout, so that a session you logged elsewhere is reflected in your calorie target without you having to open MVIII. This wakes the App in the background to read your energy total. It reads only, and it writes nothing on that wake.

06Location and your route

A run or a walk can measure its own distance from your phone's location. This is the only thing in the App that uses location, and it is worth being exact about, because it is the permission people are most right to be careful with.

• You turn it on, one session at a time. Nothing asks for location when you open the App, during setup, or on a day you are lifting. The prompt appears only when you tap "Start with GPS" on a run, a walk, or a loaded carry. If you say no, you count laps or type the distance, exactly as before, and nothing else in the App changes.
• Only while you are using the App. On iPhone we ask for "When In Use" and never for "Always". On Android we ask for precise location while the App is in use and never for background location.
• It keeps measuring with the screen off, because a run does not happen with a phone held out in front of you. iOS shows the blue location indicator for the whole time we are reading it. On Android an ongoing notification shows the walk or run for the whole time we are reading it. Reading stops when the session ends.
• Your route never leaves your phone. The coordinates are held in memory for the length of the session and discarded when you close the workout. They are never written to your device's storage, never sent to our servers, and never shared with anyone. The only thing saved to your training log is a single number: the distance in meters, in the same place a lap-counted run has always gone.
• No maps are ever requested. The App draws no map and downloads no map tiles, so your position is not sent to a map provider either.
• The line on your photo carries no coordinates. If you take a picture after a run, your route can be drawn on it as a plain line. It is scaled to fit its own shape before it is drawn, which means the picture shows where you went relative to yourself and nothing about where on earth that was. If you save that picture, the only copy of your route is in your own camera roll.

07Service providers

We share data only with the processors required to run the App:

• A cloud infrastructure provider hosts our backend, authentication, and database.
• An AI model provider processes AI analysis requests as described in section 04, and does not use your data to train models.
• A text-to-speech provider turns the coach's single spoken sentence into audio, as described in section 04. It receives that sentence and nothing else.
• Nutrition-data providers. Food search and barcode lookups are powered by FatSecret and Open Food Facts, which receive your search terms and barcode numbers to return nutrition data. No account or health data is sent to them.
• Apple. Sign in with Apple, HealthKit, and App Store transactions are governed by Apple's own terms and privacy policy.
• Google. Sign in with Google, Health Connect, on-device recognition by ML Kit, location from Google Play services on Android, and Google Play transactions are governed by Google's own terms and privacy policy.

08Storage and security

Your data is stored in a managed database protected by per-user row-level security: each row of your data is readable and writable only by your authenticated account. Data is encrypted in transit using TLS.

09Retention and deletion

We keep your data while your account is active. Scan and meal images are never retained (section 04). Your Stack is on your phone only, so it is deleted from the phone when you delete your account or delete it in Settings, and there is no copy with us to restore. You can permanently delete your account and all associated data at any time in the App: open Settings, then Account, then Delete Account. Deletion takes effect immediately. Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription: manage that in your App Store settings on iPhone or in Google Play on Android. You can also request deletion by emailing mviii@mviiiwod.com from the address associated with your account, and we will complete it within 30 days.

10Children

The App is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

11Your rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information by emailing mviii@mviiiwod.com. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under applicable state privacy laws, which we will honor.

12Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will update the effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the App. Continued use of the App after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13Contact

MVIII · mviii@mviiiwod.com