The Willing
Privacy
Effective September 29, 2026
The Willing is a free, community-only recovery app. Recovery is nobody's business but yours, so the short version is this: we collect as little as we can, we never ask what you're recovering from or where you get treatment, and nothing you write is sold, mined, or shown to advertisers.
What we store
- Your display name — your first name and last initial only. The app will not store or show a full surname; if you type one, it is shortened before it is saved.
- Your email and password, to sign you in. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and are never visible to us.
- Your sobriety date, if you choose to set one. This is private to you.
- What you post — posts, comments, milestone celebrations, gratitude entries, and events you create or RSVP to.
- A profile photo, only if you add one. It is off by default and you are never asked for it.
- Saved meetings, so your schedule persists. Records of meetings you previously hid are retained privately, but no longer affect which meetings you see.
- Your fellowship preference, if you set one. It is private, and only used to order the Read shelf and pick a starting filter on Meetings.
What we never collect
- No protected health information. The Willing is a consumer wellness and community app, not a healthcare provider. We do not ask for a diagnosis, a treatment history, or a treatment centre, and there is nowhere in the app to enter one.
- No attendance tracking. Saving a meeting is a bookmark. Nobody is told whether you went, and no attendance record exists.
- No location history. If you allow location access, your coordinates are used in that session to sort meetings by distance and are then discarded. They are never written to our database, never attached to your posts, and never shared. Distances are always measured to the meeting. You can decline and use the default city instead.
- No advertising, no trackers, no data sales.
Who can see what
The Willing is one community. There are no tiers, no staff accounts, and no treatment-centre view.
- Public to signed-in members: your display name, your posts and comments, your milestone celebrations, events you host, and your profile photo or initials avatar.
- Private to you: your sobriety date, your fellowship preference, your gratitude entries, your saved meetings, and records of meetings you previously hid. These are enforced by database rules, not by what the app chooses to show.
- Your email address is never shown to other members.
Photos are public by URL
Profile photos and photos attached to posts are stored in public storage buckets, which means anyone holding the direct link can open the image without signing in. This is how the images load quickly, and it is worth knowing before you post one: treat an uploaded photo as public. Deleting a post removes its image.
Get Support is a direct handoff
The crisis numbers are ordinary phone and text message links. Tapping one hands off to your phone's dialler or messaging app. We do not place the call, route it, intercept it, or log that you tapped it. The Willing never knows you used it.
Reports go to a private queue
When you report a post, a comment, a profile photo, or a safety concern at a meeting, the report is written to a moderation queue that only The Willing's safety team can read. The person you reported is never told who reported them, and a report leaves no public mark on the meeting or the post.
How long we keep things
- Your posts, comments and entries stay until you delete them or delete your account.
- Deleting a post removes it and its comments, reactions and image.
- A comment with replies is blanked to "[deleted]" rather than removed outright, so the replies beneath it still make sense. Your name comes off it.
- Moderation reports are kept while they are being acted on, and retained after that only as long as needed to handle repeat problems.
Deleting everything
To delete your account, open Settings → Delete account and type DELETE to confirm. Deletion is permanent. It removes your profile, posts and comments, gratitude, saved and previously hidden meetings, reading and milestone state, reactions, signatures, RSVPs, hosted events, profile photo and uploaded post images. Replies beneath removed comments are also removed.
Moderation reports may be retained without the reporter's account identity. Hosted events are removed, not transferred to another person. Files are removed before the final account deletion; if deletion fails, some photos may already be gone. Your account remains available to retry, and uploads are paused until deletion finishes. The app signs you out and clears its local account state after success.
For help, email admin@thewilling.app. Copies already downloaded by others and cached or backup copies may persist until their normal expiry.
You can already delete individual posts, comments, gratitude entries and events yourself, at any time, without asking anyone.
Children
The Willing is not intended for people under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect or who can see it, we will update the effective date above and say what changed.
Contact
Questions about privacy, a request to delete your account, or anything else about how your information is handled: admin@thewilling.app.
If you are in crisis, please do not wait on email — Get Support inside the app lists free crisis lines that answer around the clock, or contact your local emergency number.