Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Reorient (getreorient.com), 20-26 Albert Road, Middlesbrough, TS1 1PR, United Kingdom, is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We are a small organisation and haven't appointed a Data Protection Officer; privacy questions come straight to us.

Contact for any privacy question or request: our contact form or email us, with "Privacy" in the subject line.

2. What we collect

To create and run your account

Content you choose to enter

This is yours. It exists to make the app's timeline and guidance accurate to your situation, and it is never read by anyone at Reorient in the ordinary course of running the service (see How it's protected).

• Your situation: when the relationship ended, your sex, its length, who ended it, how it ended, any on/off history, your attachment style, current contact level, how things have felt for you lately, and whether you have support, used to shape your personal timeline and guidance.
• Daily check-ins: a mood rating, an optional written note, and a sleep rating.
• Journal entries: anything you write in the journal, the feelings you tag, and an intensity rating.
• Workbook: your 1/3/6/12-month goals, progress check-ins, and weekly reflections.
• No-contact log: any urges or contact you record, and any unsent message drafts you choose to write.
• Email preferences: which of our emails you'd like to receive.

Automatically, to run the service

• A session cookie that keeps you logged in (see Cookies).
• Standard technical logs at our hosting provider (IP address, timestamp, page requested) kept briefly for security and operating the service. These are not linked to an analytics profile, see below.
• A few preferences stored only in your own browser (not sent to us), see Cookies.

If you contact us

If you use the contact form or email us, we receive your name, email address and message, and use them only to reply. We keep the message for up to 24 months, then delete it. We also keep a brief record that a message was sent from your network, so the form can't be flooded with spam.

Marketing emails (only if you ask for them)

Reorient sends a monthly email of practical advice on getting through a breakup, and nothing else. You only get it if you tick the box to ask for it, at sign-up, in Settings, Notifications, on the contact form, or by asking for the free guide on our website. The box is never ticked for you. We keep a record of when and where you said yes and the wording you agreed to, so we can show you asked. Turn it off any time in Settings, with the unsubscribe link in any of these emails, or by telling us. Saying no never affects your account.

Signing up on the website without an account. If you ask for the free guide on getreorient.com, we keep only your email address, when and on which page you asked, and the wording you agreed to. We first email you a link to confirm it was you. If you don't click it within 7 days, we delete your address. Once you confirm, you get the guide, two short follow-ups over the next week, then the monthly email. The follow-ups stop if you create a Reorient account. We keep your address until you unsubscribe, and then keep only the record that you said no, so we never email you again by mistake.

We don't use tracking pixels or tracked links in these emails, so we don't know whether you open them or what you click. Instead, to avoid emailing people who no longer want these, we count how many monthly emails we've sent since you last showed us you're still interested (by signing up, confirming, using the app as a member, or pressing a button in one of our emails). After six with no sign, we send one short email asking if you still want them. If you don't answer within 30 days, or if emails to your address fail three times in a row, we stop sending. After 12 months like that we delete your address if you don't have an account (keeping only a one-way code that can't be turned back into it), or switch the monthly email off on your account. Pressing "Yes, keep sending" at any time keeps you on the list.

This is separate from the emails the app itself needs to send (account, security and billing emails), and from the daily emails you can switch on or off in Settings.

What we don't collect

• No advertising identifiers or tracking pixels. Analytics cookies only load if you accept them (see Cookies).
• No card or bank details. When you choose a paid plan, you pay through PayPal (and in future possibly Stripe), who handle your payment details directly. We only keep your plan, its status and renewal date, and PayPal’s subscription reference, so we can show and manage your membership. If you ask for a refund, we keep a record of it (date and amount).
• No data sold, rented, or shared with anyone for marketing or advertising purposes.
• No automated profiling used to make decisions about you.

3. Ask (research chat)

The Ask feature answers questions using published research. Depending on what's configured, your question may be sent to a third-party AI provider (currently Google Gemini; Anthropic or Groq may be used instead) to generate a grounded, cited answer. That provider processes your question under its own terms to return a response. Reorient does not control what a third-party AI provider does internally with a request it receives.

Reorient itself does not save your Ask conversation. It exists only in your browser for that session and is gone when you navigate away or log out. Ask only ever answers questions about breakup recovery; it will not help contact, persuade, or track an ex-partner.

4. Why we process it

Account data (name, email, password) is processed because it's necessary to provide the service you've signed up for.

The content you enter about your situation, mood, and journal touches your mental and emotional wellbeing. We treat this carefully, as sensitive data: we only process it because you've chosen to enter it in order to use a tool built for that purpose, and by creating an account and using these features you're giving your clear, informed consent to that. You can withdraw that consent at any time by deleting your account (see Your rights).

Marketing emails are sent only with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time (see Marketing emails).

Email delivery, rate-limiting and basic security logging are processed on the basis of our legitimate interest in running a reliable, abuse-resistant service, balanced against your rights, and never used to profile or market to you.

5. Who we share it with

We use a small number of service providers (processors) to run Reorient. None of them may use your data for their own purposes.

We do not sell data, and we do not share it with data brokers, advertisers, or anyone for marketing purposes.

6. International transfers

Some of our providers (above) process data outside the UK/EEA, principally in the United States. Where that happens, we rely on the provider's own compliance with recognised safeguards (such as the UK's International Data Transfer Addendum or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, where applicable) to make sure your data stays protected to UK standards wherever it's processed.

7. How long we keep it

We keep your account and its content for as long as your account is active. Deleting your account (yourself, from Account → Delete my account, or by emailing us) removes your content immediately, except where we're required to keep limited records for legal or security reasons (for example, fraud-prevention logs). Server logs are kept briefly for operational purposes and then rotated out.

8. How it's protected

• Your content is encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) in our database.
• Your password is never stored, only a salted, one-way hash.
• Every request for your data requires your own signed-in session; one account can never read another's content.
• Reorient's admin tools are deliberately scoped to account-level information only (email, plan, status) and the invite-code system. They cannot read any user's situation, check-ins, journal, workbook, or no-contact log. That boundary is enforced in the code itself, not just by what the admin screen shows.
• Your journal, check-in notes, three lines, and no-contact drafts get a stronger guarantee still, described next.

8a. Fair use of the free week and refunds

Everyone gets one free week, and one full refund on their first payment. To keep that fair without ever blocking anyone, we check three things when you sign up, pay or ask for a refund:

• your email address, with dots and "+" tags removed for Gmail, so that variations of one address count as one;
• a random device marker your browser keeps (tl_dev, see Cookies), which says nothing about you and isn't used for anything else;
• your PayPal payer ID, if you've paid.

We never store these as they are. We keep only a one-way scrambled version (a keyed hash) that can't be turned back into your email, device or PayPal ID, together with the date of a free week or a refund. If one matches, a new account simply starts on Reorient Free, or a refund is worked out for the unused days. If that happens to you by mistake, email our contact form or email us and we'll put it right.

We also turn away temporary "throwaway" inbox addresses at sign-up, using a public list of those services.

We do this in our legitimate interest in preventing misuse of the free week and refunds. UK law treats storing a marker for fraud prevention as strictly necessary, so it doesn't need a cookie consent. These records are kept for 24 months, including after an account is deleted, and used for nothing else.

9. How your private entries are encrypted

Your journal entries, check-in notes, three-lines answers, and no-contact drafts are encrypted in your browser, using a key derived from your password, before they're ever sent to our servers. We store only the encrypted result. This is different from, and stronger than, the encryption-at-rest described above: it means Reorient has no technical way to read this content, not just a policy against doing so.

The rest of what the app stores, your situation profile, mood and sleep ratings, dates, streaks and scores, isn't part of this, because the daily anchor email is composed from some of it on our server; that data stays protected the way everything else is (encrypted at rest, access-controlled, never read by any admin tool).

The recovery code

Because we never hold your password or a usable copy of your encryption key, a forgotten password would normally mean this specific content is lost for good. There's no "reset" that can get it back. To prevent that, a one-time recovery code is generated alongside your key the first time you use these features, shown to you once, and never stored anywhere in a usable form. Either your password or your recovery code can unlock your content; neither on its own is enough for anyone else to.

If you ever reset your password, entering your recovery code on that screen keeps your existing entries readable. If you've lost the code too, you can still reset your password and keep using Reorient. You'll get a new recovery code for anything you write from then on, but entries written before the reset can't be recovered by us or anyone else. We'll tell you plainly in the app if this happens to you, rather than silently losing anything.

10. Your rights

Under UK GDPR (and equivalent EU GDPR rights if you're in the EU/EEA), you can ask us to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct anything inaccurate.
• Delete your account and its content ("right to be forgotten"). You can do this yourself, any time, from Account → Delete my account. It's immediate and can't be undone.
• Restrict or object to certain processing.
• Export your data in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time, for the sensitive content described in Why we process it, deleting your account does this.

For access, correction, export, or anything not covered by the self-service delete button above, email our contact form or email us and we'll action it within 30 days. If you're in the UK and unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

11. Cookies & local storage

Reorient uses no advertising cookies of any kind. These are the cookies it can set:

The first two are strictly necessary, so UK law (PECR) doesn't require consent for them. Analytics cookies are different: they stay off unless you accept them, and you can change your mind any time under Settings, Your data, Cookie choices, or with the Cookie choices link on getreorient.com.

We also store a few small preferences in your browser's own local storage, never sent to us (except the device marker above, which is sent when you sign up, pay or ask for a refund), and cleared if you clear your browser data: whether you've seen the welcome guide, dismissed a helper panel, your last-visit date (used only to say "Welcome" vs "Welcome back"), and your cookie choice.

12. Age

Reorient is intended for adults aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.

13. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, let you know in the app.

14. Contact & complaints

Questions, requests, or concerns about your data: our contact form or email us.

If you're not safe right now, this page can't help with that, please contact Samaritans 116 123 (UK, free, 24/7), 988 (US), or your local emergency number.