Privacy Policy

Effective October 27, 2026

Aro is an AI companion for Minecraft: Java Edition, made up of this website, the Aro Desktop app for Windows and our cloud service. It is operated by RedQuest Inc., a Delaware corporation ("we", "us"). This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with and the choices you have. Contact us at ceo@redquest.ai.

Who can use Aro

Aro is for people aged 16 or older. If you are 16 or 17, you need your parent or guardian's permission to use it (see our Terms). We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. If you believe someone under 16 has given us information, contact us and we will delete it. If you tell us you are 16 or 17, we use that only to apply the extra protections described on our Safety page, such as break reminders and stricter content limits.

Information we collect

• Account. Your email address. If you sign up with email, we store your password only as a salted one-way hash, never the password itself. If you sign in with Google or Discord, we receive your account ID with that provider and your verified email address; we store the provider ID only as a one-way hash, together with which provider it belongs to. If you connect Google or Discord to your account from the account page, we do not store that provider's email address. We never receive your Google or Discord passwords.
• Desktop app. When the app registers, we derive a pseudonymous device ID from a random installation identifier and store it with the app version and your age group (16 to 17, or 18 and older). We do not store the raw installation identifier. Your app preferences (appearance, LAN discovery, the name you want your companion to call you) and confirmations (your age group, world backup) are saved with your account. If you give a name, your companion receives it with your conversations and gameplay so it can call you by it.
• Conversations. Messages you write to your companion in the app, photos you attach and the companion's replies. The app converts photos to small JPEG images before sending them, which removes their original file details such as location tags.
• Gameplay. While your companion is in your world, it receives game information it needs to play, such as in-game chat messages (including the names and messages of other players in that world), world coordinates, the items it holds, things near it and gameplay events such as the blocks it breaks or places.
• Session traces. For each play session we keep a technical record of how your companion decided and acted: the prompts sent to the AI model and its responses, the game information each decision used, world coordinates, its actions and their results, and gameplay events. We use these records to diagnose problems and to improve Aro (see Improving Aro).
• Usage data. To improve Aro, we record how play and the app go, without what anyone writes or where you are: when play starts and ends and why, how long joining and replies take, which actions your companion takes and whether they work (with an error code), what kind of request you make in the game (for example "come here" or "follow me") and whether your companion did it, whether you answered a line your companion started, app events such as setup steps, errors and crashes, the ratings you give, and the AI usage and cost of each reply. If you turned this off in an earlier version of the app, it stays off; ratings you choose to send are still kept.
• Companion memory. Your companion keeps memories built from your conversations and play so it can remember you between sessions.
• Plan and usage. Your plan status and how much play time you have used. If you subscribe, Stripe handles the payment; we store only Stripe's customer and subscription IDs and never see your card number.
• Technical data. We use your IP address briefly to prevent abuse and limit repeated requests. We keep only short-lived or keyed one-way hashes of it, never the address itself. When you open your account page or the app checks your account, we also look up which country the address is in and keep only that country with your account, to understand where Aro is used. The lookup runs on our own server with a country database, so your address is not sent anywhere for it. We do not keep web access logs. Our service logs contain counters and pseudonymous device IDs, not your messages.
• Website visits. On this website, Google Analytics records how the website is used: the pages you visit, the page that brought you here, your browser, device and screen type, and your approximate location, which Google estimates from your IP address without storing the address. It tells visits apart with a random identifier kept in a cookie. It does not receive your email address, your conversations or what you type on the website. The Desktop app and your game do not use it.

How we use information

We use this information to run your companion, let it remember you, manage your account, free play time and plan, enforce usage and spending limits, keep the service secure and respond to you. We use usage data to find what goes wrong and what players enjoy, so we can improve the companion and the app. We use website analytics to learn how people find and use the website, so we can improve it. We do not sell your personal information, share it for targeted advertising or use advertising trackers. This applies to every user, including users under 18.

Improving Aro

We may use your conversations and gameplay, including session traces, to improve Aro and train our AI models, and people on our team may read them for this. You can turn this off at any time with "Improve Aro for everyone" in the app's Settings. After you turn it off, new conversations and gameplay are not used this way. If you delete your account, we keep a copy of what you shared this way, with your account, email and names removed, and may keep using it to improve Aro.

Safety checks

To keep users safe, automated checks look at the messages you send to your companion, in the app and in Minecraft chat, and at its replies, for signs of suicide, self-harm or sexual content. When a message suggests you may be at risk, your companion responds with crisis resources instead of its usual reply. We count how many times we show a crisis referral and report only that yearly total to California's Office of Suicide Prevention, as the law requires, without any information about who received it. Our team does not read your conversations to run these checks.

Service providers we share information with

• OpenAI generates your companion's replies and gameplay decisions, and runs the automated safety checks. It receives the prompts with the conversation text, attached photos and game information needed for each request, together with a pseudonymous identifier, and processes them under its API data policies. OpenAI keeps its own logs of these requests for up to 30 days.
• Amazon Web Services hosts our servers in the United States.
• Resend delivers account emails and receives your email address and the one-time code in them.
• Stripe processes subscription payments and receives your email address and payment details.
• Google and Discord handle sign-in if you choose them.
• Schemat.io lists the builds in the Desktop app's Builds tab. When you open the tab, search or give a build to your companion, the app loads the list, previews and build files directly from Schemat.io, so Schemat.io receives your IP address and what you search for. We send it nothing about your account. Schemat.io explains its use of this information in its own privacy policy.
• Google Analytics (Google) measures how the website is used and receives the website visit information described above. We do not use its advertising features. Google explains its use of this information in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect the rights and safety of users or others, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, in which case this policy continues to apply.

Where information is stored

We store information on servers in the United States.

How long we keep information

We keep your account, conversations, photos, companion memory, a summary of your gameplay and app preferences until you delete your account. Session traces are kept until you delete your account, or deleted sooner if their storage fills up, and are not kept in backups. Usage data is kept for up to 2 years. Sign-in sessions last 7 days and emailed codes expire after 10 minutes. Google Analytics keeps website visit data for up to 14 months.

When you delete your account, we stop your companion and delete your account record, conversations, photos, companion memory, gameplay summary, preferences, session traces and usage data. We keep the copy described in Improving Aro, and what we need to run the service safely: an internal marker that the account was deleted (so late payment notices cannot recreate it), pseudonymous device records and counters used for usage limits, and overall cost totals. Stripe keeps its own payment records as payment rules require.

Your choices and rights

You can see your plan and usage on your account page and delete your account there at any time. You can turn usage data off in the app's Settings, and turn off "Improve Aro for everyone" there too. To ask for a copy of your information, a correction or deletion, email us. Depending on where you live, including California, you may have rights to know, access, correct and delete your personal information, and not to be treated differently for using them. We will not discriminate against you for exercising them, and we may need to confirm your identity before acting on a request. If you are the parent or legal guardian of a user under 18, you can contact us to ask about, correct or delete your child's information.

Cookies

The website uses two strictly necessary cookies: one keeps you signed in for up to 7 days, and one links a sign-in to the browser that started it for up to 10 minutes. While you connect the Desktop app, your browser's storage also keeps that one connection request for up to 10 minutes, and while you enter an emailed code, the tab remembers which step you are on (never the code or your email address).

The website also uses two Google Analytics cookies, which last up to 2 years: one tells visits from the same browser apart, and one keeps track of the current visit. Where the law requires consent for analytics cookies, such as in the EU and the UK, we do not set them. We do not use advertising cookies. You can block these cookies in your browser settings or with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Security

We use HTTPS, restrict access to our servers, store sign-in tokens only as hashes and keep conversations and photos in private storage. No system is perfectly secure, so please contact us if you suspect a problem.

Changes

We will post changes to this policy here with a new effective date and, for significant changes, let you know through the service or by email.

Contact

RedQuest Inc.
28 Geary St., Suite 650 PMB 5474, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA
ceo@redquest.ai