Vela pilot: privacy notice

Version privacy-notice.v3 · last updated 6 October 2026 · This invitation-only research trial operates entirely in English. Everyone taking part must be comfortable using English.

In short

• Vela carries one question a day from a family to someone they love, and brings that person's answer back to the family.
• We keep as little as we can. Voice notes, photos and the words of answers are deleted after 30 days. Book export is outside this trial. Stories are kept only when that feature is enabled and you choose to keep them.
• When an answer mentions something like a fall or pain, Vela sends the organiser a separate note with the person's own words only if the person the light is for has agreed to that separately; otherwise the note carries none of their words. Their answers still reach the family group, organiser included, as they sent them.
• Vela never contacts anyone on its own. Every message to a neighbour or friend is sent by a person in the family.
• Vela is not a medical or emergency service.
• Anyone can say stop at any time, and anyone can ask to see, correct or delete what we hold about them.

Who runs Vela

Vela is a small pilot run by Timur Aiusheev (in this notice, "the founder"), a private individual in Taipei, Taiwan. There is no company yet. Timur Aiusheev decides how your information is used and is responsible for it. If a company takes the service over, we will tell you before anything changes.

Contact: t.aiusheev@gmail.com

Who this notice is for

• The family member who sets Vela up (the organiser) and everyone in the family's Vela group. Vela's first message in that group links this notice, with a button, "I've read it", for each adult to tap. The organiser also sends this notice to each adult before adding them to the group.
• The person the family keeps a light on for. Every message uses their name; in this notice we say "the person the light is for".
• Nearby contacts: up to two people living near that person, whom an organiser may ask to look in.
• Children who send a question through a parent's phone. We keep only the child's first name, next to the question.

What we collect

From everyone in the family's Vela group

• The name and username your messaging app shows us, your language and your time zone.
• What you send to Vela: questions (we call them asks), photos, voice notes, and replies and reactions to answers.
• Whether you tapped "I've read it" under Vela's first message in the group.

About the person the light is for

• The name the family uses, how to greet them each morning (for example "Mrs Chen"), language, country, time zone and usual wake-up time. The organiser gives us these, and we confirm them with the person on the onboarding call.
• Their answers: button taps, voice notes, text, photos and stickers, and when each answer came.
• What our software works out from an answer: a written English transcript of a voice note, a one-line summary, mentions of people, places, plans or dates, mentions of health only with the separate yes described under "Health words", and whether the answer mentions something the organiser should hear, such as a fall or pain.
• When the morning messages went out, days away, and days without an answer.

Optional calling number in the iPhone app: With the person’s permission, an organiser may save their calling number on that device to open its dialler from a quiet notice. Vela does not upload that number. It is removed when cleared, when the organiser signs out or switches accounts, and when this app’s private storage is removed. The organiser can contact the founder to request help with deletion. Temporary audio and photo downloads in the app are scoped to its signed-in account and removed on account changes. Audio playback files are removed on completion or cancellation, with a startup sweep for interrupted sessions.

About nearby contacts: the name and how they know the person, which the organiser gives; once the contact has said yes, also their phone number and the messaging app they use; and whether they agreed.

Before setup, about the person the light is for and each family member in the Vela group: the country where they live (for the United States, the state) and whether they are a Russian citizen. The organiser gives these to the founder, who uses them only to decide whether the family can join the pilot now (see purpose 8), and keeps them in the founder's pilot notes as codes and yes or no answers under the family code, never with names.

Only with a separate yes, on the founder's calls: answers to a few short questions, such as how connected someone feels (at weeks 0, 4 and 12), how the organiser would feel if Vela stopped (at days 14 and 30), and whether the organiser would pay for Vela Light, a paid plan Vela plans to offer later (at day 30). Skipping them changes nothing.

Records we create: when and how each person agreed or said no, to which version of which text, and, for a button tap, a fingerprint of that text; delivery records; a log of each AI call (which call, when, whether it worked, its cost); a log of every time the founder opens or changes a family's records; usage events without any message content, such as "an answer arrived at 08:12, by button".

What we do not collect

No location. No access to a phone's contacts, camera or microphone beyond the voice notes people choose to send. Vela does not ask for medical records; words about health that someone chooses to say in an answer are handled as described under "Health words". Nothing from anyone's device other than what they send to Vela. No advertising identifiers. No payment information: the pilot is free.

In the family's Vela group, Vela keeps only the messages meant for it: replies to its evening message, /ask and /later messages, replies to the posts of answers, reactions to those posts, and taps on "I've read it". It also notices when someone leaves the group, which Telegram tells every bot in a group. When Vela is an administrator of the group (which lets reactions count), Telegram delivers every message in the group to Vela; every message not meant for Vela is discarded as it arrives, without being stored or logged.

Why we use it

1. To carry the exchange: deliver each ask at the person's morning hour in their language, then bring the answer and the family's replies back.
2. To keep the light: tell the family when the person has answered. When a day stays quiet, send the organiser the facts (when the morning message went out, when the person usually answers) and the names and numbers of the nearby contacts who have agreed, so the organiser can decide what to do.
3. To work across languages and voices: turn voice into text, translate, and suggest short answers the person can tap.
4. To pass on words that matter: if an answer mentions something like a fall, pain, a stranger at the door or a request for money, the organisers hear about it that day: with the person's own words if the person the light is for has agreed to that (see "Health words"), and otherwise in a short note, with none of their words, saying that something they said may be worth a call. Vela does not diagnose, and it does not send these words to anyone else.
5. To send the organiser a short weekly read on Sunday.
6. To run the service safely: send every message once and on time, fix failures, prove that deleted information was deleted, and show what each person agreed to.
7. To learn whether the pilot works: answer rates, answer times and how often days stay quiet, counted without names. Results are shared only as totals.
8. To decide who can join the pilot: the planned cohort is the founder’s family in Vietnam for seven days, then 3–5 friends’ families in Taiwan for 30 days. This describes the proposed cohort, not legal clearance. The founder checks each participant’s residence and any relevant citizenship restrictions before approving participation. The Vietnam family waits until the review of its actual participants, consent and processing flows is complete. Existing restrictions remain in force until that review is recorded.

We do not sell information, show advertising, or use anyone's words or voice to train AI models. We do not use a real answer or voice note to test or improve Vela's AI unless the person who said it agrees separately, for that one item.

What we rely on in Taiwan (Personal Data Protection Act):

• Organisers: the pilot arrangement they agreed to, and their consent (Article 19(1)(2) and (5)).
• The person the light is for: their consent (Article 19(1)(5)), and, for words about their health, their separate written consent (Article 6(1)(6)).
• Other family members in the group: their consent (Article 19(1)(5)).
• Nearby contacts: their consent, once they say yes (Article 19(1)(5)). Before they answer, Vela holds only the name and relation the organiser gave, and shows them in no message.

Health words

Words about health, such as a fall, pain, not eating, a visit to the doctor or what a doctor said, need care. Under Taiwan's law some of them may count as medical information, which may be used only with the person's own written consent (Personal Data Protection Act, Article 6(1)(6)). So Vela asks the person the light is for about them separately.

• When Vela asks. Right after the person taps "Yes, that's fine" to the light, Vela sends one more question, with its own buttons: may Vela pass their words about their health, for example a fall or pain, on to the organiser, so the organiser can call? Vela asks once and never asks again by itself.
• The tap is written consent. Tapping a button is the person's own agreement in writing, and only the person may tap it. Vela keeps which version of the question they answered, when, and a fingerprint of its text. Anyone who would rather answer on paper can tell the founder.
• If they say yes. The organisers see the person's own words that day when an answer suggests something like a fall or pain. Health mentions are kept with the answer for 30 days, like its other words, and are never copied into the weekly read's list of things mentioned more than once. The one-line summary of an answer, kept while the family uses Vela, may say they mentioned their health, never with the name of an illness, a test result or a medicine.
• If they say no. Vela works the same way. It keeps no health mentions and leaves health out of the one-line summary. Vela still notices words that may matter, because that is how the family knows when to call, but the organisers then get only a short note, with none of the person's words, saying that something they said may be worth a call. The person's own message still reaches the family group as they sent it, and its words are deleted after 30 days.
• For everyone. Whatever the answer, Vela's summaries and notes never keep the name of an illness, a test result or a medicine.
• Who handles them. OpenAI and Deepgram, in the United States, turn voice into text and notice these words for Vela, and the database is in Singapore (see "Who sees it").
• Changing your mind. Saying "stop" withdraws a yes to health words as well as pausing the light, and saying "start" does not bring that yes back. To agree again, or to withdraw only this consent, tell the founder or your organiser.

Who sees it

• The family in the Vela group sees the asks, the answers with their English transcripts, and the replies.
• The person the light is for hears or reads the family's replies the next morning, and can ask "what does the family see" at any time.
• Organisers also receive notices on quiet days, the words or notes passed on under purpose 4, the weekly read, and the details of the nearby contacts who have agreed.
• A nearby contact sees only a message an organiser chooses to send them on a quiet day. They never see answers.
• The founder reads the family's exchanges during the pilot, to make sure Vela works as it should and to write and send the weekly read, and records whether each nearby contact agreed. Every time the founder opens or changes a family's records, on Vela's admin page or directly in the database, it is logged, and you can ask to see that log. When something needs the founder's attention, such as a note under purpose 4 or a weekly read ready to check, Vela tells the founder in a private Telegram chat with a link to the admin page; that chat never contains what anyone in the family wrote. Vela's software is built with the help of an AI coding assistant, which works with test data and never with your family's messages.
• Service providers process information for us, only to provide Vela:

Telegram is the messaging app used in this trial under its own terms. LINE and multilingual translation are outside this trial. Messages in those chats stay in the app until you delete them there; deleting your information in Vela does not remove them from your chat history.

We will tell organisers at least 14 days before a new provider starts receiving family messages.

Where it is stored

Our database is in Singapore. We ask Cloudflare to store voice notes and photos in its Asia-Pacific region; Cloudflare treats this as a preference, not a guarantee. Vela's software runs on Cloudflare's worldwide network, so a message may be processed for a moment in the Cloudflare data centre nearest to the person who sent it. The AI and voice-to-text providers work in the United States. The founder's pilot notes are kept in Google Drive, on Google's servers in the United States and other countries. Your information is therefore used in Singapore, the United States and other countries where these providers operate, not only where you live.

How long we keep it

When we delete something, we keep a short record of what kind of record it was, its reference number and when it was deleted, with a fingerprint (a hash) of the kind and the number, never of what it said. We keep records of consent and of deletions for 5 years because Taiwan's law makes us prove what people agreed to, and a claim for damages can be made for up to 5 years after the damage (Personal Data Protection Act, Articles 7 and 30).

Your rights

At any time, free of charge, you can:

• See what Vela holds about you, and get a copy.
• Correct it or add what is missing.
• Stop. The person the light is for can simply say "stop" in the chat. Morning messages and the light pause at once, and the organiser is told: "[Name] asked to pause. Nothing is wrong with the app." Saying "start" brings it back. Saying "stop" also withdraws a yes to health words, which "start" does not bring back. Anyone else can tell the founder, or their organiser, who passes it on; the founder then removes them from Vela. A family member can also simply leave the family's Vela group: Vela notices, stops including them in the turns, and deletes their information 30 days later. An organiser who leaves the group stays an organiser until they tell the founder.
• Delete. Ask the founder, and we delete your information. What remains is listed under "How long we keep it" (for example, usage events without content).
• Withdraw consent, including the consent to health words on its own. This does not affect what was done before.

The person the light is for can also ask "what does the family see" in the chat, and receives the one-line summaries of their last seven answered days and the lines about their week from the most recent weekly read sent to the organisers. For anything else the family has seen, ask the founder.

How: write to t.aiusheev@gmail.com, or tell your organiser, who passes it on to the founder. We may ask one simple question to make sure the request comes from you. Stopping takes effect immediately. We aim to complete every other request within 7 days, and always within the time Taiwan's law allows: 15 days for access or a copy, 30 days for a correction, a stop or a deletion (each extendable once, with a written reason). These rights cannot be waived or limited by agreement.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your information, please tell the founder. You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

If you do not give us this information

Every part of Vela is a choice.

• If the person the light is for says no to the light, Vela starts nothing. It confirms the no once, tells the organisers, and at once deletes what the organiser gave about the person at setup (their name, greeting, time zone, wake-up time, messaging account and nearby contacts), keeping only the record that they said no. Vela then no longer recognises them: if they write to Vela later, it answers as it would anyone new. The family stays in touch as before, and can invite them again later through the founder. If the person never answers the invitation, the same information is deleted 30 days after the invitation link expired.
• If the person the light is for says no to health words, Vela works the same way, as described under "Health words".
• Without a messaging account and a morning time, Vela cannot deliver a morning message.
• Voice is never required: every ask can be answered with one tap.
• Tapping "I've read it" in the family group is optional; asks and replies work without it.
• Nearby contacts are optional. Without them, a notice on a quiet day names no one to call except the organiser.
• The research questions are optional.
• An organiser who does not give a name and a way to be reached cannot join the pilot.
• Without where each person lives and whether anyone is a Russian citizen, the founder cannot tell whether the family can join, so the family waits.

Not a medical or emergency service

Vela cannot tell whether anyone is in danger and cannot send help. Messages can be late or fail. If someone may need help now, call them, and call emergency services (119 in Taiwan, 911 in the United States, 112 in Europe). A quiet day in Vela is information, not an alarm, and words or notes passed on to the organiser are not a diagnosis.

Changes to this notice

This notice may change during the pilot; the date at the top says when it was last updated. If we change what we collect, why we use it, who receives it or how long we keep it, we will tell everyone in the pilot before the change applies, and ask again where consent is needed. Every version has a number and a date.

The compatibility address /privacy/zh-TW serves this English notice during the English-only trial. A revised, reviewed Chinese notice is deferred.