redmilk.ai · Understory

Privacy Policy

Effective September 26, 2026 · applies to the iOS app “Understory — Learn Anything”

Understory is built and operated by Danylo Timofeyev (redmilk.ai). This page explains, plainly, what the app collects, why, and what control you have over it. The short version: we collect what the app needs to work, we don’t run ads, we don’t sell data, and we don’t track you across other apps or websites.

What we collect

• Account information. When you sign in with Google or Apple we receive your name, email address, and a unique user ID. When you sign in with email and password we receive your email address and a unique user ID; your password is handled by Firebase Authentication and is never visible to us. This is how your knowledge tree follows you between devices.
• Content you create. The topics you explore, your quiz answers and scores, your knowledge tree, likes and votes, and any reports or feedback you send.
• Your profile, and who can see it. Your profile record holds the nickname you pick at sign-in, the name that came from your Google or Apple account, and your learning stats (score, topics opened and answered). Any signed-in user of the app can read that record: social features such as the leaderboard and live duels show your nickname, and a duel shows the name from your Google or Apple account instead if you left the nickname blank. Your email address is not part of that record. Pick a nickname you’re comfortable showing publicly.
• Photos you identify. Explore’s “Identify a photo” button lets you take a picture or choose one from your library so the app can name what is in it. Nothing is sent until you do that; then a reduced-size JPEG copy of that one picture is relayed through our server to the AI provider (OpenAI or Anthropic) as part of the request. We do not store the picture: our server forwards it and keeps only the request metadata below (never the image or its contents), and the app does not upload it anywhere else. The AI provider handles it under its own policy. Nothing beyond the picture you pick is read from your photo library.
• Diagnostics. Service logs on our own server — request metadata such as model used, latency, and token counts, tied to your user ID — used for abuse prevention, quotas, and cost control. Apple’s own crash reporting may send us crash logs if you have opted into sharing them with developers; the app links no third-party crash or analytics SDK.

AI-generated content

Understory’s educational content is generated by large language models. When you type a topic or take a quiz, the text needed to generate that content is sent to AI providers (currently OpenAI and Anthropic) — as is a photo you ask the app to identify. Those requests travel through our own server, which holds the provider credentials; the app itself carries none. They carry the content itself — not your name or email. The nickname you choose is also checked by OpenAI's moderation service, through the same server, before other players can see it.

Generated content (topic overviews, questions, facts) is stored in a shared library, decoupled from your identity, so the next learner who opens the same topic gets it instantly instead of regenerating it.

Service providers

• Google Firebase — sign-in (Firebase Authentication, with Google Sign-In), database (Cloud Firestore), remote configuration, and the Cloud Functions our server runs on. Data is stored on Google Cloud infrastructure.
• Apple — Sign in with Apple, if you choose it.
• OpenAI and Anthropic — content generation and photo identification, reached through our server as described above.
• fal.ai — video and still-image rendering, only if video generation is switched on (it is off in the current release); only the topic text our server writes for the clip is sent.
• ElevenLabs — voice narration, only if premium narration is switched on; only the text being narrated is sent.
• Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata — topic images and grounding; only topic search terms are sent.
• Unsplash — fallback topic images, only if an image-search key is configured (none is in the current release); only topic search terms are sent.

How we use your data

To run the app: generate and sync your content across devices, power leaderboards and duels you take part in, enforce fair-use quotas, prevent abuse, and diagnose problems. That’s the full list.

Deleting your data

You can delete your account and personal data directly in the app: Settings → Account → Delete Account. This removes your sign-in account, profile (including your scores and visit history), quiz history, knowledge tree, duel lobby presence and pending challenges, and any reports or feedback you filed. Shared educational content is not tied to your identity and remains in the library. Two things are not removed automatically: your likes and dislikes on shared topics, and the records of duels you played (your user ID, the name you played under, and your score). Once your account is gone that user ID no longer links to anyone; email us if you want those removed as well.

You can also email us (address below) to request access to or deletion of your data.

Children

Understory is not directed at children under 13, and its App Store age rating reflects that its content is AI-generated.

Security

All traffic is encrypted in transit. AI requests go through our own server, which verifies your sign-in on every request, so provider credentials never reach your device. Database access is governed by server-side security rules: your personal data — your profile, your saved quizzes, your own votes — can be written only by you, while the shared library of generated content is readable and writable by any signed-in user, which is how the collaborative knowledge tree gets built. Your profile record is readable by other signed-in users, as described above.

Changes

If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and the effective date above. Meaningful changes will be called out in the app’s release notes.