Privacy Policy

Last updated: 23 July 2026 · Effective on launch

Terp is a small creature with one big eye. It sees your days — but only the way you tell it to. This policy explains what it collects, where that lives, and how you take it back.

1. Who we are

Terp ("we," "us," "our") makes a palm-sized home companion device with a camera and microphone, together with the companion app and owner portal ("the Service"). This policy covers information handled by the device, the app, and our cloud services. For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact us at privacy@terp.com.

2. What Terp is — and what it sees

Terp has a camera and microphone and is designed to sit in your home and notice everyday life. That means it can capture identifiable people — you, your household, and anyone who comes into view or earshot. We treat everything it captures as sensitive personal information, including biometric-adjacent data such as faces and voices.

A visible light on the device shows its state at all times: it signals when Terp is watching, when it is streaming live, and when its eye is closed and it is capturing nothing. There are no hidden capture modes.

3. What we collect

Account information

Your username and a securely hashed password.
Device registration and pairing details that bind a Terp to your account.
Your settings and preferences (name, quiet hours, retention windows, consent choices).

What the device captures

Photos and short video clips of your home and the people and things in it.
Audio when you are talking with Terp or when it is listening at your request.
Derived data: descriptions of scenes, recognized familiar faces you have opted to let it remember, moods, and the notes it keeps about what it has noticed.
If you carry Terp with you via the phone app, and only with the permissions you grant, location and movement data used to build your journeys.

Technical information

Basic diagnostics and logs needed to keep the device and Service running.

4. On-device by default; cloud only with your consent

Terp is built to keep as much as possible on the device itself. Capture, day-to-day noticing, and the memories it forms are stored locally by default.

Information leaves the device ("egress") only under an opt-in model:

Live streaming happens only when you open a live view, and the device shows its streaming light while it does.
Cloud features — such as thinking that draws on external services, sharing a postcard when your Terp meets another, or acting on your behalf through a connector — are off until you turn them on, one at a time, and are described to you before you consent.
Familiar faces are remembered only after you explicitly opt in for a given person.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use the contents of what your Terp sees or hears to advertise to you.

5. How we use what we collect

To let your Terp see, remember, and respond the way you have asked it to.
To provide the features you turn on, and to sync your settings across your devices.
To keep the Service secure and working, and to diagnose problems.
To meet legal obligations.

6. How long we keep it (retention)

Everyday photos and clips are designed to fade. You choose the retention window for images and video in the owner portal; when it lapses, that material is deleted. Items you deliberately keep — journal favorites and show-and-tell keepsakes — are retained until you delete them. Account information is kept for as long as you have an account and then deleted or anonymized within a reasonable period, except where we must retain it to meet a legal obligation.

7. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you have rights over your personal information. We honor these for all users wherever we reasonably can.

GDPR (EEA / UK)

Access, correct, or receive a portable copy of your data.
Erase your data ("right to be forgotten").
Restrict or object to certain processing, and withdraw consent at any time.
Lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority.
Our lawful bases are your consent, performance of our contract with you, and our legitimate interests in running and securing the Service.

CCPA / CPRA (California)

Know what personal information we collect and how it is used.
Delete your personal information.
Correct inaccurate personal information.
Opt out of any sharing — note that we do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined by law.
We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

You can delete your data directly in the owner portal, close an eye to stop capture at any time, or write to privacy@terp.com and we will respond within the timeframe the law requires.

8. Children, bystanders, and everyone else in the room

Because Terp lives in a home, it will inevitably see people who never signed up — guests, family members, and bystanders. The account owner is responsible for their home and for telling visitors that a recording device is present; the device's state light is designed to help. A guest mode lets you pause noticing when people are over.

Children (COPPA): The Service is intended for adults 18 and older, and an owner account may only be created and operated by an adult. We do not knowingly create accounts for, or direct the Service at, children under 13. We do not build advertising or marketing profiles of children. If a child is captured incidentally in the home, that footage is treated with the same on-device-first protections and retention limits as everything else, and a parent or guardian may request its deletion at privacy@terp.com. If we learn we have inadvertently created an account for someone under 13, we will delete it.

9. How we protect your information

We use encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, and the on-device-first architecture described above to limit exposure. No system is perfectly secure, but keeping data on the device by default is our first line of defense.

10. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy as the Service evolves and will note the effective date at the top. Material changes will be communicated in the app or portal before they take effect.

11. Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns: privacy@terp.com. You may also reach our data protection contact at the same address.