Privacy policy
The short version
- Taper is an AI running coach. To coach you it reads your runs, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate and sleep from your watch. That is health data, and we only use it with your explicit consent.
- An AI writes your coaching. We send the figures it needs to Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI models, in the US. Anthropic does not train its models on this data.
- We never sell your data, never show you adverts, and never use your data for advertising. The app has no third-party analytics or tracking.
- Your data is stored in London. You can see it, download it, correct it or delete your account in the app at any time.
- We are one person, Rob Freshwater, in the UK. Write to hello@taperrun.com with any question or complaint.
1. Who we are
Taper is run by Rob Freshwater, a sole trader in the United Kingdom, trading as Taper. In this policy "we", "us" and "our" mean Rob Freshwater.
We are the "controller" of your personal data under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018). That means we decide how and why it is used, and we are responsible for it.
- Email: hello@taperrun.com
This policy covers the Taper iOS app, including its test version on TestFlight. Our website, taperrun.com, is covered in section 16.
2. What we collect
What you give us
- Your account: your name, email address and password. We store the password only in a scrambled form (a hash) that cannot be turned back into the password.
- A profile photo, if you choose to add one.
- About you: your date of birth, your sex (you can choose "Rather not say"), whether you have hills to train on, your preferred units and your time zone.
- Your health background: anything you tell us about health conditions, "anything the watch didn't see", and how often you get injured.
- Your running: your goal, your races, the days you can run, your other training, and a recent race time if you give one.
- Injuries and illness: what you report, such as where it hurts, how it feels, how bad it is, when it started, any diagnosis and any exercises a clinician gave you.
- What you tell the coach: your chat messages, your answers to its questions, how hard each run felt (your effort rating) and your reasons for declining a change.
- A leaving note, if you choose to write one when you delete your account.
What comes from your watch
You connect a Garmin, an Apple Watch or both. We receive your watch data directly from your watch's maker (for a Garmin, through Garmin Connect) or through a connection service that links fitness devices to apps, such as Terra (see section 6).
- Runs and workouts: second-by-second pace, heart rate, altitude, cadence and GPS position; laps; the device and heart rate sensor used. We use GPS positions only to check data quality. We never show them as a map and never give them to the AI.
- Overnight and daily data: HRV, resting heart rate, sleep, and skin temperature where your watch records it.
- Other activities such as cycling or gym sessions, as summaries, and your lifetime summaries.
- Your history: when you connect, up to 12 months of past data, and summaries of older workouts.
- Your watch's own lactate threshold figure, if it has one, used only to check our own estimates.
- Connection details: an ID that Garmin or the connection service gives you, the kind of watch, and which watch you wear at night and which gets your workouts.
Apple Watch and Apple Health. For an Apple Watch, our app reads the data above from Apple Health on your iPhone, after you allow it in iOS, either with its own code or with a connection service's software inside the app. It then sends the data to us, directly or through that service. We only read from Apple Health. We never write to it and never delete anything in it. We do not store Apple Health data in iCloud.
Workouts sent to your watch. We send your planned workouts to Garmin Connect, directly or through the connection service, and to Apple's Workout app on your iPhone.
What the app records automatically
- How you use the app: which screens you open, which onboarding steps you reach and finish, the taps that start an action (such as accepting a change), and when the app opens and closes. These events never contain what you type, any health figure or your location.
- Notifications: a token from Apple that lets us send notifications to your phone, and which notifications you have switched on.
- What we create for you: your plan, sessions, morning messages, assessments, race plans, and the coach's notes about you (see section 5).
We do not use the advertising identifier on your phone, and the app contains no advertising, analytics or tracking software from other companies.
If you share crash reports with Apple, or test the app through TestFlight, Apple handles that data under its own privacy policy.
3. Health data and your consent
Most of what the coach works from is health data: heart rate, HRV, sleep, skin temperature, your health conditions and your injuries. The law treats health data as "special category" data that needs extra protection.
We only collect and use your health data with your explicit consent. The app asks for it on its own screen during setup, before you connect a watch. That screen says what we read, why, and who receives it. We keep a record of when you agreed and which wording you saw.
Withdrawing consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time:
- Disconnecting a watch in the app stops any new data from it straight away.
- To withdraw consent completely, delete your account in the app, or email us and we will do it for you. The coaching cannot work without health data, so withdrawing consent completely means closing your account. We then delete your data as described in section 8.
Withdrawing consent does not make what we did before it unlawful.
Not a medical service. We use health data to coach your running and for nothing else. Taper does not diagnose, treat or monitor any medical condition.
4. What we use it for, and why we are allowed to
The law requires a reason (a "lawful basis") for each use of personal data, and a further condition for health data.
| What we do | Data used | Our lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Run your account, sign you in, send password reset emails | Name, email, password hash | Needed to provide the service you signed up for (contract) |
| Build and adjust your training plan, write your morning messages and run assessments, answer you in the chat, send workouts to your watch | Everything in section 2 except usage events, sex and the leaving note | Contract, and for health data, your explicit consent |
| Keep track of injuries and illness and adjust the plan around them | Injury and illness records, your reports, watch data | Contract, and your explicit consent |
| Send you the three notifications (morning message, run assessment, coach reply) | Push token, notification settings | Contract. You can switch each one off. |
| Check and improve the quality of the coaching: we review the coach's records, and re-run some of them through other AI models to compare results | Coach records, which include health figures | Our legitimate interest in a coach that works well and safely, and for health data, your explicit consent |
| Understand how people use the app, such as where people get stuck in setup | Usage events | Our legitimate interest in improving the app. You can object (see section 9). |
| Analyse results by sex, in aggregate, to improve our training models | Sex, if you give it | Your consent. You can choose "Rather not say". |
| Learn why people leave | Leaving note | Your consent. It is optional. |
| Keep the service secure, fix faults, and meet legal duties such as tax records and responding to regulators | What each task needs | Legitimate interests and legal obligation |
We do not send marketing emails from the app. If you join our mailing list on the website, we ask for your consent there, and you can unsubscribe from any email.
5. How the AI coach uses your data
Your coaching is written by an AI: Claude, made by Anthropic. Our own software first works out the numbers, such as your training load, your heart rate zones and how your overnight data compares with your normal range. It then gives the AI what it needs for that moment, and the AI writes the message or proposes a change.
- What the AI receives: computed figures (not the raw second-by-second data), your age, units, time zone and hill access, your plan, your goal and races, your health background, injury records, chat messages and effort ratings.
- What it never receives: your sex, email address, password, profile photo or GPS positions.
- Race lookup: when you type a race name, the AI searches the web to find the race's date and course. Only the race name goes into the search.
- The coach's notes: the coach keeps short notes about you so it does not forget or contradict what you've told it, for example that an injury tends to come back. When you report an injury, it also keeps a private working note of what the injury might be, used only to choose sensible precautions. It never presents this as a diagnosis. These notes are part of your data, and you can ask for a copy.
- Records of each coaching step: we store what was sent to the AI and what came back, so we can check and correct any message the coach got wrong.
You make the decisions. The coach proposes changes to your plan, and nothing changes until you accept. We do not make any decision about you based solely on automated processing that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you.
AI can be wrong. See our Terms of use for what that means for your training.
6. Who we share it with
We share data only with the companies that run parts of the service for us (our "processors"). Each has a contract with us that limits what it can do with the data. None of them may use it for their own advertising.
| Company | What it does for us | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic PBC (US) | Provides the AI that writes your coaching | The fields in section 5. Anthropic does not train its models on this data. |
| A watch connection service, if we use one, such as Terra (Terra Enabling Developers, Inc., US, processing mainly in the UK and the Netherlands) | Connects your watch, relays your data to us and your workouts to the watch | Your watch data and connection details. When you connect, it may also show you its own end-user privacy policy. |
| DigitalOcean (US company, servers in London) | Hosts our servers, database, backups and profile photos | Everything we store |
| Postmark (ActiveCampaign, US) | Sends password reset emails | Your email address and the email |
| Apple | Distributes the app, handles purchases and subscriptions, delivers notifications | Your push token and each notification's fixed line of text, which never contains health data. Apple holds your purchase details under its own policy; we do not receive your payment details. |
Garmin, if you connect one, holds your data under its own privacy policy.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, for example to a court or regulator, or to protect someone's safety. If the business is ever sold or transferred, your data would pass to the new owner under this policy, and we would tell you first.
We never sell your personal data, and never share it for advertising.
7. Data sent outside the UK
Our servers and database are in London. Some of our processors are in the United States or may handle data there:
- Anthropic processes AI requests in the US. The transfer is protected by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, which is part of Anthropic's data processing terms.
- A watch connection service such as Terra may process data in the UK, the Netherlands or the US. Transfers to the US are protected the same way.
- DigitalOcean stores our data in London. As a US company it is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
- Postmark processes email in the US. Its owner, ActiveCampaign, is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
We have assessed each transfer, and you can ask us for more detail.
8. How long we keep it
We keep your data while your account exists, because the coach needs your history: your baselines, past runs and injuries all shape the plan. The exceptions:
- Usage events are deleted after 13 months.
- A watch you disconnect: its connection details are removed, and any connection service we use deletes the data it holds for that connection.
- A profile photo you remove is deleted.
- The leaving note is stored separately with no link to your account, and kept for 24 months.
When you delete your account, we delete everything we hold about you straight away, and remove the workouts we scheduled on your watch. Then:
- Our database backups roll over within 7 days, so a copy can survive that long in a backup we use only for disaster recovery.
- Anthropic deletes AI requests and responses within 30 days. If its safety systems flag a request, Anthropic may keep it for up to 2 years.
- Any watch connection service we use deletes the data it holds for you when we disconnect you, and in any case within 90 days.
- We keep records we must keep by law, such as tax records, for as long as the law requires. These do not include health data.
Nothing is deleted from Apple Health or your Garmin account. That data is yours, held under their terms.
Accounts nobody uses. If you don't use the app for 3 years, we will email you, and delete your account if you don't reply within 30 days.
9. Your rights
You have the right to:
- Get a copy of your personal data, including the coach's notes about you.
- Correct anything that is wrong. You can change most details in the app.
- Delete your data. Delete your account in the app (Account › Delete account), or email us.
- Take your data elsewhere in a machine-readable format.
- Withdraw consent at any time (see section 3).
- Object to uses based on our legitimate interests, such as the usage events.
- Restrict how we use your data while a concern is looked into.
To use any of these rights, email hello@taperrun.com from the address on your account. We will reply within one month. It is free.
10. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first at hello@taperrun.com. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, and tell you what we found and what we have done.
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator, at any time: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or 0303 123 1113.
11. Keeping your data safe
- All data travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS).
- Data is stored encrypted on our hosting provider's servers in London.
- Passwords are stored only as a strong one-way hash.
- Profile photos are in private storage and open only through short-lived links.
- Sign-in tokens on your phone are kept in the iOS keychain.
- Only Rob can access the data, and only to run and fix the service.
If a data breach puts your rights at high risk, we will tell you directly, and we will report breaches to the ICO as the law requires. If you live in the US and a breach affects your health data, we will tell you by email within 60 days, as the US Federal Trade Commission's Health Breach Notification Rule and state laws require.
12. If you live in the US
Consumer health data. Washington, Nevada, Connecticut and some other US states have laws about "consumer health data". Our Consumer health data privacy policy explains what we collect, why, and how to use your rights under those laws. In short:
- We collect consumer health data only to provide the coaching you asked for, and with your consent.
- We do not share it with third parties. Only the processors in section 6 receive it, to run the service for us.
- We never sell it, and never use location to target anyone near a health care facility.
No sale, no targeted advertising. We do not sell personal data, share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, or use it for targeted advertising or profiling, as those terms are used in US state privacy laws.
Do Not Track. We do not track you across other companies' apps or websites, and we do not let other companies collect data about you through the app. Browser "Do Not Track" signals therefore change nothing about how we treat you.
California. You can review and ask us to correct the information you have given us by emailing hello@taperrun.com. We tell you about changes to this policy as section 14 describes.
13. Age limit
Taper is for adults aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you think someone under 18 has an account, tell us and we will delete it.
14. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If a change affects how we use your health data, we will tell you in the app first, and ask for your consent again where the law requires it.
15. Contact
Rob Freshwater, trading as Taper
hello@taperrun.com
16. Our website
This section covers our website, taperrun.com.
- The website sets no cookies and has no analytics, adverts, tracking or forms.
- Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., US) hosts it. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes your IP address and browser details when you visit, to deliver the pages and protect the site from attacks. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in running a secure website. Cloudflare is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
- If you email us, we use your email address and message only to reply, and keep them only as long as we need to deal with what you asked.
If we add a waitlist or analytics to the website, we will update this section before they go live.