Privacy & Ownership
Your home. Your data.
The everyday life of a home is personal. We believe the history of it should belong to the people who live there, not to us.
This page explains where we want home information to stay, when it might need to leave, and what should always be your choice.
How information is meant to flow
Intended designIn your home
Compatible devices
- Door
- Water bowl
- Plant pot
- Room climate
Your Kinvalis hub
- Keeps your home’s history
- Holds your device settings
- Compares today with familiar patterns
- Prepares useful updates
Beyond the home
- Updates on your phoneHow they travel is still being decided.
- Optional backupOnly if you turn it on.
- Optional AI processingOnly with your permission.
Local-first, explained simply
A hub at home, not a central database.
We’re designing Kinvalis around a hub that stays in your home. The intention is for it to be the main place where your home’s history is kept and where today is compared with familiar patterns.
That way, Kinvalis shouldn’t need to collect a record of how your household lives in order to be useful to you.
What stays local and what may leave
Open about where information could go.
Before any product is offered, we intend to document where information goes, feature by feature. These are the categories that overview will cover.
Routine processing
Comparing everyday activity with familiar patterns.
Intended direction: Meant to happen on the hub
Remote access
Seeing updates when you’re away. This may need a connection between your hub and your phone.
Intended direction: May involve a connection
App notifications
Delivering an update to your phone often relies on a notification service. We’ll say what an update contains.
Intended direction: May involve a provider
Diagnostics
Information that could help find faults or keep devices up to date. We’ll say what, if anything, is sent.
Intended direction: Still to be decided
AI requests
If a feature sends selected information to an external AI service, we’ll explain what, when and why.
Intended direction: Only with your permission
Cloud backup
A copy of your history stored outside the home, so it can be recovered if something goes wrong.
Intended direction: Only if you turn it on
Third-party providers
Any outside company that helps deliver a feature, what it receives and why.
Intended direction: Named once decided
A feature-by-feature table will follow.
As the design is decided, we’ll publish where each feature’s information goes, and keep it up to date.
Optional backup · Optional AI
Two separate choices, both yours to make.
Some helpful things may need information to leave the home. We intend to keep them optional, independent of each other, and clearly explained before you decide.
Optional backup
A copy of your history kept outside the home, in case your hub is lost, damaged or replaced. It should never be switched on for you.
What we’ll explain first
- What is included
- Where it’s stored, and by whom
- How it’s encrypted
- How long it’s kept
- How to delete it
Optional AI processing
Some future features might use an external AI service. That would be a separate decision from backup: turning on one shouldn’t mean agreeing to the other.
What we’ll explain first
- Which information would be sent
- Which service receives it
- What permission it needs
- How long it’s kept
- Any cost involved
Control and retention
Your history, your decisions.
We want you to decide what happens to your home’s history. These are the controls we’re designing for.
We’ll only describe them as features once they’re built and tested.
How much is kept
Choosing how long your hub keeps its history.
Deleting history
Removing history you no longer want kept.
Taking a copy
Exporting your history in a form you can keep.
Recovering after a problem
Getting back on track if a hub fails or is replaced.
Ownership
Yours to own.
We believe buying a product should mean getting lasting value from it.
Our aim is to keep essential features working without a mandatory monthly subscription. Some services cost money to run every month, such as storing a backup or using an external AI service. If we offer those, they should be optional and clearly explained.
Intended to be part of what you own
- Your hub and the history it keeps
- Everyday insights prepared at home
- Adding compatible devices
- Your settings and controls
May be offered as optional services
- Backup outside the home
- External AI processing
- Other services with ongoing costs
Limitations & security updates
Honest about what can go wrong.
No technology is perfect. Here’s how we intend to handle the parts that matter most when things don’t go to plan.
Missing information, said clearly
Batteries run down, connections drop and devices fail. We want Kinvalis to tell you when information is missing, rather than staying quiet as if all were well.
Security is ongoing work
We won’t call anything completely secure. We intend to treat security as part of the product, with careful defaults and a clear plan for updates, including how long a product receives them.
Plain words when there’s a problem
If we find an issue that affects you, we intend to explain what happened, what it means for you and what we’re doing about it.
Not meant for emergencies
Kinvalis isn’t intended as a medical device or an emergency service. An update can describe a pattern, but it can’t confirm that someone is safe or well.
The legal part
This page isn’t our privacy notice.
Everything above describes our intentions for products that are still in development.
How this website handles personal data, for example when you contact us or sign up for updates, is set out in our Datenschutzerklärung (privacy notice).
Questions welcome
Have a question about privacy?
Tell us what you’d want to know before trusting a product like this in your home. It helps us decide what to explain, and what to build.