Privacy notice | Circle Forward Enneagram coaching

The short version

We use what you tell us, your iEQ9 report and what you write and say in the app to coach you. We don't sell it or use it for advertising.
Your conversations with the AI coach, your check-ins and your Journey are yours. Your practitioner doesn't see them.
Your practitioner sees your report, your answers to “Does this fit?”, your About me notes, anything you send them, and only the weekly summary items you switch on. Everything else your coach remembers from your conversations, including what it kept while getting to know you, reaches them only while you share it. If something you write suggests you may be at risk, they are told that it happened and when, never what you wrote.
AI and other services, mostly outside South Africa, process your information for us under agreements that protect it. None of them may use it to train their AI.
You can see, download, correct or delete your information, and complain to the Information Regulator.

Who we are

Evoculture (Pty) Ltd, trading as Circle Forward (registration number 2021/935413/07), is responsible for your personal information. POPIA calls this the “responsible party”.

Address: Suite 114, The Rockefeller Hotel, 12 Christiaan Barnard Street, Foreshore, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001
Email: hello@circleforward.co.za
Phone: +27 21 111 0576
Website: www.circleforwardcoach.com

Our Information Officer makes sure we keep to POPIA. Write to them about anything in this notice, or to use any of your rights below.

Information Officer: Dillon Jearey
Email: dillon@circleforward.co.za
Phone: +27 21 111 0576

What we collect

When you ask for access

Your name and email address, so the practice can contact you about coaching.

Your account

Your email address, your name and your password. Your password is kept by our sign-in service in a form no one can read back. We also note the day you last opened the app, and the voice you choose for your coach, if you choose one.

Your iEQ9 report

Integrative Enneagram Solutions produces your iEQ9 report from the questionnaire you completed, and your practitioner uploads it. We keep the file, its text, and the readings drawn from it: your type, subtype, centres, wing and lines, and your levels of integration, strain and happiness. Your practitioner may also upload the iEQ9 Coaching Companion, which is written for them, and their own notes about your coaching.

What you write and say

Your conversations with the AI coach, typed or spoken (spoken words are kept as text, never as recordings). Also your About me notes, goals, Journey, check-ins (including your mood and energy), commitments and reviews, your answers to “Does this fit?”, and anything you send your practitioner.

What the app writes for you

Your daily focus, your Journey weeks and chapter reviews, and conversation titles. Your coach also keeps, without asking, the facts it is sure of from your conversations and a short note on each conversation, and while it gets to know you it keeps the lines it is sure of. On Profile you can change or delete your About me notes and any fact your coach keeps, and read or delete the notes on your recent conversations. All of them are in Your data. Messages from a moment of crisis, and messages the safety check blocks, are never used for what your coach keeps.

Your choices and your account's records

What you have agreed to, your reminder and sharing choices, how much of your AI allowance you have used, payments the practice has recorded for you, and the safety check's label on each message.

Payments

You pay on Paystack's own page. Payments are once-off: nothing is charged again unless you choose to pay.

Other people

Coaching often involves the people in your life. When you write about a partner, a child or a colleague, we keep what you wrote as part of your coaching. Share only what you need to.

Sensitive information

POPIA gives extra protection to “special personal information”, such as your health (including your mental health), your religious or philosophical beliefs and your sex life. Coaching can touch on all of these. Your report describes stress and strain, your check-ins record your mood and energy, and you may write about your health, your relationships or your faith.

We use this information only to coach you and to keep you safe, and only with your consent, which you give when you agree to this notice and to AI processing. You choose what you share, and you can ask us to delete it at any time.

Why we use it

To give you your coaching: your account, the AI coach, your Journey and daily focus, and your sessions with your practitioner. We do this because you asked us to and agreed to it.
To keep you safe: a safety check reads each message and check-in, and when something suggests you may be at risk, you are given support lines straight away and your practitioner is told that it happened.
To send the emails you need or ask for: your invitation, password links, and reminders or a daily nudge if you switch them on. We send occasional updates from the practice only if you agreed to them, and you can switch them off in Account.
To run your package: your access period, your monthly AI allowance and your payments, including the records tax law requires us to keep.
To keep the app working and secure: technical logs, and a record of important actions such as who uploaded a report or asked for a deletion. These never hold what you wrote.

The AI coach

The coach's replies are written by Anthropic's Claude models. For each reply the model receives the instructions written for your coaching, your report and its readings, your practitioner's Coaching Companion as background (it guides the coach and isn't shown to you), your About me notes, what your coach remembers, the latest three notes on your conversations, your goals and Journey, and the recent conversation. It isn't given your email address. Your check-ins go to the same models to write your Journey weeks and reviews. Once a conversation has been quiet for three hours, the same models read it again, with your About me notes, what your coach already remembers and the latest notes on your conversations, to keep the facts they are sure of and write a short note on it. While your coach gets to know you, they also read each exchange as you talk and keep what they are sure of.

If you use voice, what you say goes to OpenAI: a live conversation, with the last few messages so it can follow along, a recorded voice message to be turned into text, and any reply you ask to hear. We keep no recordings; what you said stays in your conversation as text. OpenAI keeps audio for up to 30 days only to check for misuse. You are asked before you first use voice, and you can switch it off in your consents.

None of these services may use your information to train their AI. Anthropic deletes what it receives within 30 days, unless something breaks its usage policy, which it may keep for up to two years.

The AI can be wrong, and it makes no decision about you with legal or similar effect. It decides a few things on its own: if the safety check finds signs of crisis, you get support lines instead of an AI reply; a message the check finds harmful gets no reply; and the coach pauses when your allowance for the month is used. If you disagree with any of these, ask your practitioner, a person, to look at it.

Who can see what

You

Everything the app holds about you, in the app and in Your data.

Your practitioner

Your name and email address, your report and all its readings, the Coaching Companion and their own notes, your answers to “Does this fit?”, your About me notes, and anything you send them. Everything else your coach remembers from your conversations, including what it kept while getting to know you, its facts and its notes, they see only while you share it in Sharing.

Only if you switch them on, item by item, in Sharing: a Monday summary of your twelve weeks, your experiment, your check-in scores and the areas you talked about, a note when you have been quiet for a while, and what your coach remembers. Each starts off.

Always: when the safety check notices you may be at risk, your practitioner is told the date and whether it came from a conversation or a check-in, never what you wrote. You can see these too, in Sharing.

Never: your conversations with the AI coach, your check-ins, your Journey or your daily focus.

The practice's administrators

The people who run the practice and the app can see names and email addresses, access requests and invitations, your package, allowance and payments, which AI models were used and how much, a record of important actions, and whether the safety check marked a message as sensitive (never the message). They see your report files only if the practice asks one of them to handle reports for you. They never see your conversations, check-ins or Journey, your About me notes, what your coach remembers, or what you send your practitioner.

The person who builds and maintains the app for the practice can reach stored information to keep the app running and to fix problems, and does so only when that is needed.

Anyone else

Only the service providers below, for the work they do for us, or someone the law requires us to tell, or where it is needed to protect someone's life.

Service providers

These services process your information on our behalf, for the purposes below only, under agreements that require them to keep it secure and confidential.

Supabase (London, United Kingdom). Keeps the app's database, sign-in and stored files, including your report.
Vercel (London, United Kingdom). Runs the app and keeps short-lived technical logs. Its Speed Insights measure how fast pages load, without cookies or details about you.
Anthropic (United States). Writes the AI coach's replies, runs the safety check on each message, reads your report into the app, writes your daily focus and Journey weeks, and reads your conversations to keep what your coach remembers and a short note on each one.
OpenAI (United States). Handles voice, if you use it: live conversations with the coach, turning a recorded voice message into text, and reading replies aloud.
Resend (United States). Sends the app's emails: your invitation, password links and any reminders you switch on.
Paystack (South Africa). Takes payments for your package and top-ups. Paystack Payments South Africa (a Stripe company) receives your email address and the amount, and handles your card or bank details itself. We never see them.
Cal.com (United States). Books your sessions. When you open Booking, your name and email address are passed to it so its form is already filled in.

Outside South Africa

Your information is stored in the United Kingdom, and the AI, voice, email and booking services work from the United States. The United Kingdom's data protection law is similar to POPIA, and each provider in the United States is bound by an agreement that protects your information in the same way. By agreeing to this notice, you agree to your information being sent to these countries for the purposes above.

How long we keep it

While you have access, we keep your information so you can use the app.
When your access ends, you can still sign in for 30 days to read and download what you want to keep. After that we delete your account and its information.
Sooner, if you ask. In Account, choose “Ask for my data to be deleted” and we delete it within 30 days.
What we keep after deleting: payment records, for five years as tax law requires, and records of usage and of important actions, with nothing in them that identifies you.
If you asked for access and weren't invited, we delete your request after 12 months, or sooner if you ask or the practice no longer needs it.
Backups: deleted information can stay in our encrypted backups for a short time until they are overwritten.

Keeping it safe

Your information is encrypted when it travels and where it is stored. Access rules in the database let each person see only what this notice says they may. Report files are stored privately and opened only through links that expire within minutes. Password links expire after an hour and invitations after 72 hours.

If your information is ever accessed by someone who shouldn't have it, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as soon as we reasonably can, as POPIA requires.

Your rights

See your information: open Your data in Account to read, print or download it. For anything not there, ask the Information Officer.
Correct it: edit your About me notes and any fact your coach keeps on Profile, answer “Does this fit?” on your report, or ask your practitioner or the Information Officer.
Delete it: delete your About me notes, any fact your coach keeps, or the notes on your recent conversations on Profile, or in Account choose “Ask for my data to be deleted”.
Change your mind: switch occasional updates, voice and each sharing item off or on yourself. The consents needed to use the app can be withdrawn by contacting the practice, though you won't be able to use the app without them. Withdrawing doesn't undo what was done before.
Object: tell the Information Officer if you object to any use of your information.
Complain: talk to the Information Officer first if you can. You can also complain to the Information Regulator: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za, enquiries@inforegulator.org.za or 010 023 5200; Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191; inforegulator.org.za.

Cookies, your browser and emails

The app uses cookies only to keep you signed in. There are no advertising or tracking cookies. Your browser also remembers your theme, the line you made your own with “Make this mine”, and which animations you have already seen. These stay on your device. The voice you choose for your coach is saved with your account, so it is the same wherever you sign in.

Booking loads Cal.com's booking form, which follows Cal.com's own privacy policy. Our emails may load fonts from Google and our logo from our site when your email app shows images. Reminder emails include your commitments or your main goal, so anyone who can read your email can see them. You can switch reminders off in Account.

If you switch on notifications, your browser's own push service (Apple, Google, Microsoft or Mozilla, depending on your device and browser) carries each one to that device. It is encrypted so the service cannot read it, and it says only that a reminder is ready, never what you wrote. You can switch notifications off in Account or in your device's settings.

Age

The app is for people aged 18 or older. We don't knowingly coach anyone younger.

Changes to this notice

If we change how we use your information, we will update this notice and tell you in the app or by email before the change applies. The version and date are at the top. Read it with our terms of use.

Back