How you're protected

Use Bantr on your own in a private 1-on-1 thread, with another person, or in a larger group chat. You choose who to include. What you say in your private thread stays private, even when you also use Bantr with other people.

This isn't just a policy we ask the assistant to follow. The boundary is built into the system: when Bantr answers in one thread, it is only ever given the information that thread is allowed to see. Another person's private words are never placed in your conversation where the assistant could repeat them — even if someone tries to talk it into it.

In a group chat, a separate assistant answers. It has no access to anyone's threads, calendars, email, accounts or memories, only to what's said in that group and the group's own lists and reminders. Anyone in the group can reply STOP.

Nothing moves from your private thread into a shared conversation unless you explicitly say so. When you're not sure if something is shareable, Bantr asks rather than guessing.

When the people involved opt in to surprises, Bantr can help keep a surprise secret from the person it's for. It keeps the secret by declining to discuss it — never by lying — and a surprise is never quietly added to a shared calendar where it would give the surprise away.

When you manage money with other people, you agree on a spending threshold together. Shared spending over that threshold requires approval from the people responsible for that money — being in the same chat doesn't give someone permission to spend your money.

Bank and card accounts you connect (through Plaid) are private to you until you choose to share them into a shared budget. The access tokens that link those accounts are kept in an isolated vault that other people in your chats and the web app can't read.

You can connect a Google account so Bantr can help with your schedule. With your permission, it reads your calendar events to help organize your schedule, and it can add events you ask it to create (for example, "put dinner with Sam on Friday at 7"). It doesn't change or delete anything on its own.

A calendar only becomes visible to other people when you choose to add it to a shared schedule, and you can disconnect Google at any time. Bantr's use of information from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements — your calendar data is used only to provide these features, never sold, and never used for advertising.

Your private information stays separate from shared information. Sharing a conversation with someone doesn't give them access to your private data, and people outside a shared conversation don't gain access to it just because they also use Bantr.

Connections to Bantr and to the services it uses (your bank via Plaid, your calendar via Google) are encrypted in transit with TLS.

TLS is the same protection behind the padlock in your browser. It scrambles your data while it travels between your phone, Bantr, and those services, so anyone watching the network along the way, like someone on the same public Wi-Fi, sees only gibberish. That matters because what moves through Bantr is personal: your messages, your bank balances, and your schedule.

Bantr will not track or monitor one person for someone else ("tell me when they get home"), and it won't take sides or act as a weapon in a disagreement. It's here to help people, not to referee.

So you know exactly what you're trusting: Bantr is not end-to-end encrypted. To actually help — read your receipt, answer "when did we last…", draft a reply — the assistant has to be able to read your messages. Whether you use Bantr solo, with another person, or in a group, your private thread stays private, shared spending requires approval, and we don't sell your data.