Tether Perinatal LLC ("Tether," "we," "us") provides a perinatal mental-health platform consisting of our website at tetherperinatal.com and the tetherApp suite — Peri (AI companion), Pulse (mood tracking and clinical routing), and Loop-In (support-circle coordination, including SMS). This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.
This policy applies to visitors, account holders, members of a user's support circle, clinicians and partner organizations, and people who subscribe to our SMS messaging program.
1. Quick Summary
- We collect only what we need to operate the service you asked for.
- We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share mobile information, phone numbers, or SMS opt-in / consent data with any third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. All the above categories exclude text-messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.
- Tether is currently not a HIPAA-covered entity. See "HIPAA Status & Roadmap" below.
- You can delete your account, export your data, or opt out of SMS at any time.
2. Information We Collect
Information you give us
- Account & profile: name, email, password (hashed), optional photo, pregnancy / postpartum stage, child name (optional).
- Contact data for support circles: name, relationship, email, and mobile phone number for people you choose to add to Loop-In.
- Health-adjacent content you submit: mood ratings, Pulse logs, EPDS / GAD-7 / PHQ-9 screener answers, free-text journal entries, messages to Peri, voice notes, and Loop-In requests.
- SMS opt-in records: when, where, and how you (or a circle member) consented to receive text messages, the phone number provided, and the program enrolled.
- Newsletter email, partner-waitlist details, and anything else you send us.
Information collected automatically
- Device, browser, IP address, approximate location, pages viewed, and basic analytics events.
- Cookies and similar technologies used to keep you signed in and to measure aggregate product usage.
Information from third parties
- If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your basic profile (name, email, avatar).
- Aggregated, de-identified usage information from our infrastructure and AI providers (see Section 5).
3. How We Use Information
- Operate, secure, and improve tetherApp.
- Power Peri's AI responses, Pulse's clinical-routing logic, and Loop-In's coordination and SMS features.
- Detect crisis language and, when you ask us to, notify the people you have designated in your support circle.
- Send you transactional messages (account, security, scheduled check-ins).
- Send you SMS only for the program you opted into, and only at the cadence disclosed.
- Provide customer support and respond to your requests.
- Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms.
We do not use your private content (Peri chats, Pulse logs, Loop-In requests, voice notes, screener results) to train third-party large language models, and we do not sell your data to advertisers or data brokers.
4. SMS & Mobile Information — Required Disclosures
Tether operates SMS messaging programs through Loop-In and (with your separate consent) Tether account notifications. These programs are subject to U.S. carrier rules (CTIA) and, where applicable, A2P 10DLC requirements.
What we send
- Loop-In Support Requests: when an account holder asks us to, we text members of their designated support circle on their behalf (for example, "Sarah could use a meal tonight — tap to reply").
- Crisis loop-in: if you choose to enable it, we may text a pre-selected support contact when our system or you flag an acute moment.
- Account & reminder texts: optional check-in nudges, screener reminders, and security codes.
Crisis-language scanning
Peri, Pulse, and Loop-In each run automated scanners on text you enter (chat messages, Pulse notes, Loop-In status headlines and bodies) to look for language suggesting self-harm, harm to a baby or child, severe intrusive thoughts, and postpartum psychosis. Scan results stay in your account: they trigger an in-app safety assessment and, if you choose to act on it, a text to a contact you select. We do not sell, share, or otherwise disclose scan results to third parties, and we do not use them to train external AI models. tetherApp is not a medical device and bears no responsibility or liability for any health decisions or outcomes — full language lives in our Terms & Conditions.
Consent
- Account holders explicitly opt in to SMS during onboarding or when configuring Loop-In.
- Support-circle members are added by the account holder. Before any non-essential messages are sent, recipients receive an initial confirmation text and can reply STOP to opt out at any time.
- Consent is per-program. Opting into Loop-In does not opt you into marketing, and consenting to our Terms does not by itself enroll you in SMS.
Frequency, cost, help, and opt-out
- Message frequency varies based on circle activity and the programs you enable.
- Message and data rates may apply.
- Reply HELP for help, or email support@tetherperinatal.com.
- Reply STOP to any message to unsubscribe. We will send one confirmation text and no further messages from that program.
- Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
Mobile information sharing
No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Information sharing to subcontractors in support services, such as customer service or messaging delivery (e.g., our SMS provider), is permitted. All other categories exclude text-messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.
5. How We Share Information
We share personal information only with the categories of recipients below, and only for the purposes described.
- Service providers (sub-processors) that run our infrastructure: Supabase (database, auth, storage), Cloudflare (hosting/CDN), our AI gateway and model providers (used to power Peri responses on a per-request basis), Twilio (SMS delivery for Loop-In), and our email provider for transactional mail.
- People you direct us to message: support-circle members you add to Loop-In, and clinicians or partners you explicitly choose to share with.
- Legal & safety: to comply with the law, respond to lawful requests, or protect the safety of you or others (including in response to imminent risk).
- Business transfers: in connection with a merger, acquisition, or asset sale, subject to this Policy.
We do not sell personal information and do not engage in cross-context behavioral advertising.
6. HIPAA Status & Roadmap
Tether is not currently a HIPAA-covered entity, and tetherApp is not a substitute for medical care or a covered health-care provider. Until we publish a Notice of Privacy Practices and execute Business Associate Agreements with our sub-processors, you should treat the content you share with Tether the way you would treat content shared with any consumer wellness app — sensitive, but not legally protected health information.
Our roadmap to HIPAA alignment includes:
- Executing Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with each sub-processor that touches protected health information (database, hosting, AI gateway, SMS, email).
- Operating only on infrastructure regions and configurations that support BAA-grade controls.
- Implementing a HIPAA Security Rule program: encryption at rest and in transit, access controls, audit logging, breach-notification procedures, workforce training, and a designated Privacy & Security Officer.
- Publishing a Notice of Privacy Practices and updating this Policy with the effective date HIPAA obligations begin to apply.
- For our B2B / partner offering, executing BAAs with covered-entity customers (clinics, practices, health plans) before any PHI flows through Tether.
Independent of HIPAA, we already apply commercially reasonable safeguards: TLS in transit, encryption at rest at the database and storage layer, least-privilege access, row-level security on user data, server-side crisis-keyword handling, and isolation of secret credentials.
7. Your Choices & Rights
- Access & export: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Correction: update inaccurate information from your account settings or by writing to us.
- Deletion: delete your account at any time. We will delete or de-identify your data within 30 days, subject to legal retention requirements.
- SMS opt-out: reply STOP to any message, or remove the number from your circle in Loop-In.
- Marketing email opt-out: use the unsubscribe link in any newsletter.
- State-specific rights (California, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Utah, and similar): you may have additional rights, including the right to opt out of certain processing. Email us to exercise these rights.
8. Data Retention
We retain personal information for as long as your account is active and for a limited period afterward to satisfy legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Crisis-event logs may be retained longer in de-identified form for safety auditing.
9. Security
No system is perfectly secure. We work hard to protect your information and ask that you help us by using a strong, unique password, enabling any available multi-factor protection, and notifying us immediately if you believe your account has been compromised.
10. Children
tetherApp is intended for adults (18+). We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.
11. International Users
Tether operates from the United States. If you use the service from outside the U.S., you consent to the transfer and processing of your information in the U.S., where data protection laws may differ from those in your country.
12. Changes to This Policy
We will update this Policy as Tether evolves — particularly as we cross HIPAA, SOC 2, and additional regulatory milestones. Material changes will be announced in-app or by email.
13. Contact Us
Tether Perinatal LLC · Seattle, WA
Email: privacy@tetherperinatal.com
SMS support: support@tetherperinatal.com
See also our Terms & Conditions, which include the specific SMS program disclosures required by U.S. carriers.