Privacy Policy

Ascend: Recovery Companion · Last updated 29 August 2026

Ascend helps people recover from compulsive pornography use. That makes almost everything the app holds sensitive, and the app is built accordingly: there is no advertising, no analytics, no tracking, and no sale or sharing of your data with data brokers.

Who we are

The data controller for everything described here is VAN DUNG LE, an individual trading as Ascend, of Flat 149 Marner Point, 1 Jefferson Plaza, London E3 3QE, United Kingdom. You can reach us at support@ascendrecovery.app.

Ascend is made by one person, not a company, so there is no data protection officer — that address reaches the person responsible for your data.

You do not need an account

Ascend creates an anonymous account on first launch. It has no name, no email address and no phone number — just a random identifier that your data is stored against. We cannot identify you from it.

You may optionally link an email address so your progress survives a lost phone. If you do, we store that address and use it only to let you sign back in. Nothing else.

What we store

• Your recovery record — streak and start date, slips you log, urge triggers, Panic sessions, evening check-ins, reflections and letters you write, and your recovery plan.
• Your answers to onboarding and profile questions.
• Your progress — experience, level, badges you have earned, and which course lessons you have finished.
• Your community activity, if you use it — see below.
• Your age confirmation — the yes/no result of the 18+ question asked on first launch, and when you answered it. We do not keep the year you entered.
• Your time zone, so the day rolls over and reminders land at the right local time.
• Subscription status — whether Premium is active. Payments are handled by Apple; we never see your card details.
• Your email address, only if you chose to link one.

Ember, the AI companion

Premium includes an AI companion called Ember. Your conversation is stored on your device, not on our servers — we keep only a count of how many messages you have sent today, so we can apply a fair-use limit of 50 a day.

When you send a message, it goes through our server to Anthropic, which runs the model that replies. It does not travel alone: so that the reply is about you rather than generic, we send context from your account with it — your current streak and recovery status, your recovery insights, your onboarding and profile answers, your recovery plan, and the recent messages in that conversation. We do not store the message or the reply on our server.

Ember is not a therapist, a doctor or a crisis service.

Community

Ascend has a community feed. It has no profiles, no handles and no way to follow anyone — posts are anonymous, and nothing links one post to another or to you.

If you choose to share a moment (finishing a Panic session, reaching a milestone, levelling up), we store the post and the event behind it, any short line of text you choose to add, the reactions and comments you leave, and any report you make. Posts and the text on them are visible to other people using Ascend, and are deleted automatically after 48 hours.

Anything you write here is genuinely public within the app, so please do not put anything in it you would not want another user to read.

Reminders

If you turn on the evening check-in reminder, it is scheduled by your own device — the reminder and its text never leave your phone, and we are not told whether it was shown or opened. You can turn it off in Ascend, or in your device's notification settings.

Site blocking

If you turn on site blocking, Ascend installs a DNS configuration profile that routes your device's DNS lookups through NextDNS, which is what performs the filtering.

Be aware of what this means: while site blocking is on, NextDNS receives the DNS queries your device makes — not only for adult sites, but for every domain your device looks up, including in other apps. Turning site blocking off in Ascend removes the profile and stops this.

Who else processes your data

• Supabase — database and authentication hosting.
• RevenueCat — subscription status.
• Anthropic — Companion replies (see above).
• NextDNS — DNS filtering, only while site blocking is on.
• Sentry — crash reports (see below).
• Apple — payments and app distribution.

We do not use advertising or analytics services, and we do not track you across other apps or websites.

When the app crashes

If Ascend crashes, a report is sent to Sentry so we can fix it. That report contains the technical details of the failure — where in the code it happened, your device model, your iOS version and the app version.

It does not contain anything you wrote or did. We deliberately do not attach your account identifier, so a crash report cannot be traced back to you or to your recovery record. The app also switches off the parts of the crash reporter that would otherwise record a trail of your activity: no screenshots, no screen recording, no log of which screens you visited or what you tapped, and no record of the requests the app made.

Deleting everything

Open Settings → Delete my data in the app. This permanently deletes your account and every row associated with it. It is immediate and cannot be undone — there is no recovery period and no backup we can restore from.

Deleting your Ascend account does not cancel an active subscription; cancel that in your Apple account settings.

How long we keep things

Until you delete them. There is no automatic expiry, because a recovery history is only useful over time.

How we protect it

Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Every table in our database is protected by row-level security, so a request can only ever read the rows belonging to the account that made it — there is no query, from the app or from anywhere else, that returns another person's recovery history.

Where your data is processed

The providers listed above operate in the United States, so your data may be processed outside the UK and the EEA. Where that happens we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement and the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

Your rights

We process this data to provide the app to you under our agreement with you, and — for the sensitive parts, which is most of it — on the basis of your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by deleting your data.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or erase your data, and to object to or restrict its processing. Deletion is available directly in the app; for anything else, email us at support@ascendrecovery.app.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority. Ours is the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF — ico.org.uk, helpline 0303 123 1113. If you are in the EEA, you may also complain to your own local authority.

Age

Ascend is for adults only. The app asks for your year of birth on first launch and will not let you continue if you are under 18; it keeps only the yes/no answer, not the year. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18 — if you believe we have, email us and we will delete it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we will update the date at the top and note the change in the app.