When you create an account or use The Emotional Support App™ (the app), you are agreeing to these terms. They are an agreement between you and DuBois Consulting Pty Ltd, a company in Queensland, Australia (we, us, our).
If you do not agree with them, please do not use the app. If you have already made an account, you can close it at any time and we will delete your information.
If you are under 18, please read these terms with a parent or carer if you can. We have tried hard to write them so that you can understand them on your own.
The app is a place to say how you are feeling and get a considered response back. It uses artificial intelligence to respond to what you write, and it can explain in plain language what happens in your body and your nervous system when a feeling is strong.
The app is not therapy, counselling, medical care, or an emergency service. It does not diagnose anything, it does not treat anything, and it is not a substitute for a doctor, a psychologist, a counsellor, or any other qualified professional. It has no ability to tell whether you are safe.
We do not promise that the app is suitable for every person or every situation, and we do not promise it is available in every country.
Call your emergency number. That is 000 in Australia, 111 in New Zealand, and 911 in the United States and Canada. If you can get somewhere safe first, do that, then call. The app cannot help you in an emergency and it will never try to.
If you are struggling, or thinking about hurting yourself, please talk to a real person. These services are free, they are open all the time unless noted, and the people who answer have heard it all before.
The app watches for words that suggest someone may be in danger, and when it sees them it stops the normal conversation and shows these services instead. That safety check is deliberately cautious, so it will sometimes appear when you did not need it. We would rather that than the other way round. It is not a substitute for a person, it is a signpost to one.
The app works out which country you are in and shows you the right services, and you can change the country yourself on that screen at any time. If you are somewhere we do not cover, findahelpline.com lists services for almost every country.
You need to be 13 or over to have your own account. When you sign up we ask for your date of birth. We use it to work out how the app should speak to you and what it should show you, and to make sure nobody under 13 ends up somewhere they should not be. You do not choose your own age group, which means nobody can choose their way into things meant for adults.
| Age group | What you get | What we do |
|---|---|---|
| 13 to 15 | Everything except the paid programmes | We let a parent or carer know you have an account |
| 16 to 17 | Everything except the paid programmes | Nothing extra |
| 18 to 64 | Everything, including the paid programmes | Nothing extra |
| 65 and over | Everything, with larger text and more room by default | Nothing extra |
Nobody under 18 can buy anything in the app. This is on purpose.
The app is not open to children under 13 yet. We are building a version with proper parental consent and the protections that go with it, and we will not open it until that is finished and reviewed. A parent or carer can register their interest at theemotionalsupportapp.com.
If we find out that an account belongs to someone under 13, we will close it and delete the information on it.
If your child is 13 to 15, they are asked to send you a short note telling you the account exists. They enter your email address, they read exactly what it says before it goes, and they press send. We show it to them first on purpose. A message about someone that goes behind their back is the thing that stops a young person being honest, and an app they are not honest in cannot help them.
We do not show you what your child writes in the app. A young person needs somewhere they can be honest, and an app that reports back is an app they will not use honestly. What we will always tell you is that the account exists, and we will always give you a way to have it closed and the information deleted.
You can ask us to close your child’s account at any time by emailing us, and we will do it. If your child has told us something that makes us believe they are at serious risk of harm, we may contact you or an appropriate authority. We would rather explain that decision afterwards than not make it.
Please keep your password to yourself, and tell us if you think someone else has got into your account. Give us information that is true, and keep it up to date.
Your account is yours alone. Please do not share it, sell it, or give it to anybody else.
We collect only what the app needs to work: your email address, your password in encrypted form, your date of birth, what you write in your check-ins and conversations, and basic information about how you use the app.
We never ask for your birth time or your birth place. Your date of birth is asked for once, so the app can talk to you in a way that suits your stage of life and so that nobody under 13 ends up somewhere they should not be. Nothing else about your birth is collected, and there is no screen in the app that asks for it.
Taking your record to The Mirror™. The Mirror™ is a separate app of ours, with its own account, its own subscription and its own database. The two do not talk to each other. If you decide you want to go on to it, this app can prepare a summary of what you have logged here and you carry it across yourself, in a link or on your clipboard. You are shown exactly what it contains first, and you choose whether your own writing goes with it or only the patterns and numbers. Nothing is sent anywhere by us, nothing moves unless you move it, and your record stays here exactly as it was.
What we will never do:
Your information is stored securely with Supabase, our database provider, on servers located in Singapore. We use encryption in transit and at rest. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise, but we take it seriously and we will tell you promptly if something goes wrong.
Our database is hosted in Singapore, not in Australia. We are an Australian company and Australian privacy law follows your information overseas: under Australian Privacy Principle 8 we remain accountable for how it is handled there, exactly as if it had never left. Our provider is contractually bound to protect it to the same standard.
We are telling you this plainly because you are entitled to know where your information physically sits, and because a privacy policy that says the comfortable thing rather than the true thing is worth nothing.
We keep what you write for as long as your account is open. When you close your account, or ask us to delete your information, we delete it within 30 days, apart from anything we are legally required to keep.
You can ask us at any time to show you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. Email hello@emotionalsupport.app and we will act on it. This is your right under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and we are glad to honour it.
Under Australian privacy law a child is anyone under 18, and we treat information about our under-18 users with that in mind. For every account belonging to someone under 18:
We are following the development of the Children’s Online Privacy Code being made by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, and we will update this policy and the app to meet it.
The app is available in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, and the crisis screen shows real services for each. You can use it from anywhere else, and it will point you to findahelpline.com instead of guessing at numbers we have not checked.
Your information is held on servers in Singapore, wherever in the world you are. If you are in the United States, in the European Union or in the United Kingdom, you may have additional rights over your information under your own law, and nothing here takes them away. Email us and we will honour them.
The responses in the app are written by artificial intelligence, not by a person. That means they can occasionally be wrong, awkward, or miss the point. We have written careful instructions for how the AI must speak and what it must never do, but no instruction is perfect.
The AI is instructed never to describe any method of self-harm, suicide or disordered eating, never to diagnose you with anything, and never to give medical, legal or financial advice. If it ever does any of these things, please tell us so we can fix it.
Please use your own judgement about anything the app suggests. Nothing it says is a professional opinion, and nothing it says is a decision you have to take.
The parts of the app that matter most are free and always will be. That means checking in on how you feel, getting a response back, your history, and everything in section 3. We are not going to put a paywall between a person and support.
Beyond that there is one membership, at one price, and only adults can buy it:
We are an Australian company, but we bill in US dollars so that the price is the same wherever you are. Every figure on this page and in the app is USD and is written US$ so there is no confusion.
If your card is not a US card, your bank converts the amount at their rate and may add a foreign transaction fee, usually around 3 per cent. That fee is your bank’s, not ours, and we never see it. At the time of writing, US$19 is roughly A$29 and US$99 is roughly A$150, though the rate moves.
Prices are shown before you pay and can change over time. If they change, the price you are already paying stays as it is until your next renewal.
Nobody under 18 pays for anything here, and they never will. Adults who pay are what makes that possible.
Say so in the app and you have a free month. There is no form, no proof and no review, and nobody will ask you about it afterwards.
We tell you a week before it ends, and again when it does. After that the app goes back to its free form, which is yours for good: checking in, getting a response, your own record, and the crisis help. What ends is Talk It Through™ and the Feelings Series™, which are part of the membership.
You can ask for another free month whenever you need one. Hard months come round more than once, and we are not going to make you explain yourself.
Sponsoring. US$99 is twelve months. Given through the app it becomes twelve free months for twelve different people, a month each. Given through somebody’s own link it becomes a full year for that one person. Either way it buys you nothing, and nobody is ever told who paid.
If you have taken a free month, the app can give you a link to hand to someone who might want to cover the year. It says nothing about you except that you are here, and you never have to use it.
Payments are handled by an external payment provider. We never see or store your card number. You may have to pay tax or duties in your own country.
Our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these terms limits those rights, and if anything here appeared to, that part would simply not apply.
If something is wrong with what you bought, you are entitled to a repair, replacement or refund under the Australian Consumer Law, and to compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss. Email us and we will sort it out.
If you simply changed your mind about a digital programme you have already started, we do not usually give a refund, because the content is delivered to you straight away. Ask us anyway. We would rather hear from you than have you feel stuck with something.
If someone under 18 has been charged for anything, tell us and we will refund it in full. We will not ask you to justify it.
Subscriptions run until you cancel them, and you can cancel at any time in the app or by emailing us. Cancelling stops the next payment and keeps your access until the end of the period you have already paid for.
We take real care in building this app, and we are responsible for building it honestly and running it properly.
The app is provided as it is. Beyond the guarantees that the law gives you and that we cannot exclude, we do not promise that the app will always be available, always be accurate, or always suit your situation. Where the law allows us to limit our liability, our total liability to you is limited to re-supplying the service or refunding what you paid us in the 12 months before the problem, whichever we choose.
You are responsible for what you decide to do. The app can help you think, but the choices are yours.
Nothing in this section is us trying to walk away from the safety obligations in sections 3, 8 and 15. Those are commitments, and we intend to be held to them.
The words, design, structure, methods and name of the app belong to DuBois Consulting Pty Ltd. This includes The Emotional Support App™, Talk It Through™, About Me™, Small Steps™, How You Work™, The Feelings Series™ and Feeling Map™.
You may use the app for yourself. Please do not copy it, resell it, take it apart, or use its content to build something similar. You are extremely welcome to tell other people about it.
What you write stays yours. You give us permission to store it and to send it to our AI provider so the app can respond to you, and nothing more.
An earlier version of these terms, written for a different product, asked users to keep the app’s methods confidential indefinitely. That has no place in an app for young people and it is gone. You are free to talk about this app with anyone you like, including how it works and whether it helped.
Please do not use the app to break the law, to harm or harass anybody, to pretend to be someone else, to get around payment, to scrape or copy its content automatically, or to try to make the AI produce harmful material.
Please do not share other people’s private information in the app. Writing about someone in your life is completely fine and is rather the point. Posting their address, phone number or medical details is not.
If you break these rules we may suspend or close your account.
We take the safety of young people using this app seriously, and we hold ourselves to the following:
If you are worried about a young person’s safety in connection with this app, email hello@emotionalsupport.app with SAFETY in the subject line and we will respond quickly.
If something in the app has upset you, or you think we have handled your information badly, email hello@emotionalsupport.app. We will acknowledge it within 5 business days and give you a proper answer within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with our answer on a privacy matter, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au. You do not need our permission to do that.
You can close your account at any time, from the menu in the app or by emailing us. We will delete your information within 30 days.
We may suspend or close an account if these terms are broken, if there is fraud, or if we have to for safety or legal reasons. If we close your account and you have paid for something you have not received, we will refund the unused part.
We may update these terms. When we do, we will change the date at the top and, if the change matters, email everyone who has an account.
If you do not agree with a change, you can close your account. Carrying on using the app after a change means you accept it.
These terms are governed by the law of Queensland, Australia, and the courts of Queensland have jurisdiction. If you live somewhere else, you may also have rights under your own local law, and this does not take them away.
Before starting any legal proceedings, please email us and give us 30 days to try to sort it out properly.
If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, that part is treated as narrowed to whatever is enforceable, or removed, and the rest still applies.