What AI Companion Apps Actually Store About You

People tell companion apps things they have not told anyone. That makes the privacy questions less abstract here than in most software categories, and it makes vague answers less acceptable.

What is usually collected

• Message content, kept at least long enough to generate a reply and often much longer.
• Account identifiers, typically an email address, sometimes a phone number.
• Usage telemetry: session length, features touched, conversion events.
• Payment metadata, where a plan exists, held by the payment processor rather than the app.

The five checks

First, find the retention period and see whether it is stated as a number or as a mood. Second, look for whether conversations are used to train models and whether you can opt out without losing the product. Third, find the deletion route and confirm it removes conversations rather than just closing the account. Fourth, check which third parties receive data and in what form. Fifth, look at the age policy, because a service with a weak one tends to be weak elsewhere too.

Questions that get real answers

Support teams answer specific questions far better than general ones. Ask how long a deleted conversation persists in backups. Ask whether human reviewers can read chats and under what circumstances. Ask what happens to your data if the company is acquired. A policy that cannot answer those in plain language is telling you something.

Things worth doing regardless

Use an address you can abandon. Keep legal names, employers and locations out of conversations that do not need them. Assume anything you type could be read by a person at some point, and decide what you are comfortable with on that basis rather than on a promise.