your data, plainly explained.

Last updated 6 August 2026. Draft — for legal review before this is treated as binding.

Want your data destroyed? Jump straight to the erasure form. →

1. Who we are

Street Cat is a language-learning service that lets you practice a foreign language by chatting with a language model "street cat" over WhatsApp or Telegram, in text and voice notes — with an optional free web account to manage your cats and billing.

The data controller is:

Street Cat
Lisbon, Portugal
Email: contact@streetcat.app
NIF 337075590

We are based in the European Union and comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

2. You are talking to an AI

Street Cat is an artificial-intelligence chatbot, not a human. The voices you hear in voice notes are AI-generated (synthetic) voices. We tell you this here and during onboarding in accordance with EU AI transparency rules.

3. What data we collect

Data you give us directly:

Your phone number or Telegram chat ID — this is your chat identifier. We receive it automatically from WhatsApp or Telegram when you message us.
Your WhatsApp or Telegram profile name — as shared by the platform you use.
Messages you send — text messages and voice notes you send to Street Cat.
Onboarding quiz answers — your target language, skill goals, interests, register preference, country/accent preference, learning goal, and content preferences.
Web account details (optional) — if you create a free account on our website: your email address, a hashed password (we never store your plaintext password), display name, and native language.
Support requests — anything you send us when asking for help.

Data we generate about you:

Transcripts of your voice notes — we convert your voice notes to text so the AI can understand and respond to them.
Conversation history — we store your chat history so the cat remembers your conversations and your learning progress.
Usage and billing data — your plan, remaining fish/message credits, message counts, and trial status.

Payment data: Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card details. We receive from Stripe only a confirmation of payment, the amount, and a reference linking the payment to your chat or web account.

What we do NOT collect: we do not access your WhatsApp/Telegram contacts, your other chats, your location, or your device data. We do not use your voice to identify you biometrically.

4. Why we process your data (legal bases)

Purpose	Data used	Legal basis (GDPR Art. 6)
Providing the service	Chat identifier, messages, transcripts, history, quiz profile	Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Personalising content to your goals and interests	Quiz answers, conversation history	Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Web account management (optional)	Email, hashed password, display name, native language	Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Billing, credits, and payment reconciliation	Chat/account identifier, usage data, Stripe confirmations	Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Daily check-in message	Chat identifier	Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); opt out any time
Service safety, abuse prevention, debugging	Messages, usage data	Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f))
Tax, accounting, consumer-protection law	Billing records	Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c))
Optional preferences	Your explicit choice in the quiz	Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), withdrawable any time

We do not use your conversations to train language models, and we do not sell your data or use it for third-party advertising.

5. Who we share data with (processors)

Meta Platforms (WhatsApp Business Platform) — message delivery for WhatsApp users.
Telegram — message delivery for Telegram users.
Google (Gemini API) — generates the cat's replies and transcribes your voice notes to text.
Google (Text-to-Speech) — converts the cat's text replies into voice notes.
Hatchbox — hosts our server and database.
Stripe — payment processing (independent controller for payment data).

Some providers are located in the United States. Where data is transferred outside the EEA, we rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and/or Standard Contractual Clauses, plus additional safeguards where appropriate. We do not share your data with anyone else, except if required by law or to protect our legal rights.

6. How long we keep your data

Conversation history and voice transcripts: deleted 12 months after your last activity, or immediately on request.
Voice note audio files: deleted after transcription, within 7 days.
Quiz profile and account data: deleted 12 months after your last activity.
Billing records: kept for 10 years as required by Portuguese tax law.

You can ask us to delete your data sooner at any time — including instantly, by messaging the cat directly. See delete your data below.

7. Age requirement

Street Cat is not intended for children under 16. WhatsApp and Telegram themselves require users in the EU to be at least 16 (or the age set in their country). If we learn we have collected data from a child under this age, we will delete it. If you believe a child is using Street Cat, contact us at contact@streetcat.app.

8. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

Access the personal data we hold about you;
Rectify inaccurate data;
Erase your data — message the word DELETE to the cat (WhatsApp or Telegram) for instant erasure, or use the erasure form below;
Restrict or object to processing based on legitimate interests;
Data portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format;
Withdraw consent at any time, where processing is based on consent;
Complain to a supervisory authority — in Portugal this is the CNPD, www.cnpd.pt.

To exercise any right, email contact@streetcat.app or message the cat. We respond within one month.

9. Delete your data

The fastest way is to message the cat. Send the word DELETE to your cat on WhatsApp or Telegram. It will ask you to confirm, and the moment you do, your profile and your entire conversation history are erased — no waiting, no email thread.

If you can't reach that chat any more — you changed number, deleted the app, or only ever had a web account — fill in the form below and we'll do it for you. Because anyone could type a stranger's phone number into a public form, we don't erase straight from this form: we verify the request belongs to you first, then delete. We confirm when it's done, within one month at the latest.

Request erasure of your data

Where do you use Street Cat? (optional, helps us find you)

WhatsApp Telegram Web account

Phone number you chat from

Email on your web account Anything else we should know? (optional)

Give us at least one of the two — the phone number or the email. We only use what you enter here to find and delete your data.

What gets destroyed: your profile and quiz answers, every message you and the cat exchanged, your voice-note transcripts, your daily check-in record, and your web account and its link to your cats.

What we must keep: billing and payment records, which Portuguese tax law requires us to retain for 10 years. These are invoicing records only — they contain no conversation content. Deleting your data also ends your access to any remaining credits, and cancels an active subscription; we can't restore any of it afterwards.

10. Security

Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. Access to production data is limited to the founder. WhatsApp and Telegram messages are encrypted between your device and the respective platform; once delivered to us, they are protected by the measures above.

11. Automated decision-making

The cat's replies are generated automatically by AI, but we make no automated decisions about you that produce legal or similarly significant effects. Billing actions follow simple, transparent rules based on your plan.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service evolves. We will notify you of material changes via WhatsApp or Telegram before they take effect. The "last updated" date at the top always reflects the current version.

13. Contact

Questions? Email contact@streetcat.app.