Last Updated: April 18, 2026
Haagah ("Haagah", "we", "our", or "us") is the platform behind the Animus Project: humanity's family tree. Our purpose is the preservation of consciousness. We exist so that the voice, memory, and interior life of a person need not end when their body does. An Animus is a persistent, queryable approximation of a person — built from material that person (or a person with authority to act on their behalf) entrusts to us.
This is not a typical privacy policy. Haagah asks for material no ordinary service asks for: private writings, recorded voice, photographs, videos, government identification, intimate correspondence, and — where applicable — the records surrounding a person's death. The reason is that these materials are what a life is made of, and approximating a consciousness requires working from the substance of that consciousness.
We believe the correct posture for a platform that asks this much is disclosure, not concealment. This Policy describes, in plain terms, what we collect, why, how we use it, who else touches it, who is permitted to access the Animus we build, and what happens when you die. If any part of this Policy is unclear, write to us at privacy@haagah.com before entrusting us with anything.
By accessing or using Haagah, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by this Policy and by our Terms of Service. Our use of cookies and similar technologies is governed by our Cookie Policy, which forms part of this Policy.
If you do not agree to this Policy, you must not use the platform and must not upload any material to it.
This Policy applies to four groups:
This Policy applies to all information collected through:
Haagah is established in South Africa. We comply primarily with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), No. 4 of 2013. For users in the European Union, United Kingdom, and other jurisdictions with stronger protections in any particular respect, we apply the stricter standard. Specific references to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) appear where relevant.
To avoid ambiguity, these terms carry the following meaning throughout this Policy:
The Corpus is the heart of what we hold. This section describes, in categories, the kinds of material you may provide. We describe categories and purposes rather than technical mechanisms.
To create an Animus and to prevent impersonation, we collect:
Identification documents are retained only for so long as needed to verify identity and then reduced to a verification record. The underlying image of the identification document is deleted within a reasonable period after successful verification, unless retention is required by law.
Material you author, including:
Section 4 addresses the rights of other persons who appear in this material. This is a matter we take seriously and which you must read before uploading any communication.
In the course of operating the platform, we generate and retain:
This is the most sensitive section of this Policy and you must read it carefully before contributing any material that involves another person.
A Corpus that adequately represents a person's consciousness almost always contains material that is also about, involves, or originated from other people. Chat histories include the other side of the conversation. Photographs include family, friends, strangers. Diaries describe people who never consented to appear in anything.
Those other people have privacy interests of their own. Their interests do not disappear because their letters, messages, or likenesses are meaningful to you.
Before you contribute any material that involves another person, you are responsible for ensuring that you have the legal right to do so. In practice:
Section 7 of our Terms of Service contains your warranty that you have met this obligation. Upload is an affirmation of that warranty.
Material involving a third party is used only to inform the Subject's Animus — that is, to help reflect the Subject's communications, relationships, and experiences. The platform does not use third-party material to construct a separate Animus of the third party, nor to respond to queries as the third party, except where that third party has their own Animus and has authorized such use.
If you are a third party and you discover that material in which you appear has been contributed to another person's Corpus without your consent, you may request removal at privacy@haagah.com. Our process is described in Section 12.2. We will act on valid requests without requiring you to litigate.
Even with these protections in place, contributing communications and other material involving other people is an act of judgment on your part. By uploading, you accept responsibility for that judgment. Haagah cannot retroactively undo third-party exposure caused by content you chose to contribute.
Beyond the Corpus itself, operating the platform requires us to collect a narrow set of technical data:
Our use of cookies and similar technologies is described in our Cookie Policy.
We process your Corpus so that our AI language model can, at the time a Visitor interacts with your Animus, draw on relevant material from the Corpus in generating a response. The processing is in service of one purpose: approximating the Subject well enough that interaction with the Animus feels, to the Visitor, like engaging with the Subject.
An Output is generated. It is not retrieved verbatim from the Corpus. The language model writes a response that draws on the Corpus; the response did not, in most cases, exist as such in anything the Subject wrote, said, or recorded.
This means:
Section 6 of our Terms of Service contains the corresponding legal framing, and Section 13 of this Policy addresses the rights of persons who believe an Output misrepresents them.
Access to an Animus is governed by the settings established by the Founder or, after death, by the Subject's posthumous instructions and applicable Successor Custodian arrangements.
Every new Animus is private by default. Only the Founder may interact with it until they change the setting.
A Founder may grant access to specific named persons, who must themselves hold a verified Haagah account. Access may be revoked at any time during the Founder's lifetime.
A Founder may elect to make their Animus publicly queryable. Once an Animus has been made public, removing it from public access during the Founder's lifetime is possible but cannot retroactively undo interactions that already occurred.
A Founder may instruct the platform to alter access settings upon verified death — for example, to open an Animus that was private during life, to close an Animus that was public, or to restrict access to named Successor Custodians. In the absence of instructions, the access settings in effect at the time of death continue until a Successor Custodian provides verified instructions.
Section 10 of our Terms of Service addresses Successor Custodians in detail.
Operating the platform requires us to engage service providers. We share the minimum data necessary and bind every provider contractually.
Every provider is contractually required to process data only for the service they provide to us, to apply appropriate technical and organizational security measures, to comply with applicable data protection law, and not to use data for their own commercial purposes or for advertising.
Our AI model sees Corpus content when it is necessary to process a query — at minimum, the portions of Corpus retrieved to ground a particular Output, and the query text itself.
Partner providers operate in multiple jurisdictions. Where this Policy applies POPIA, transfers occur in accordance with POPIA Section 72. Where this Policy applies GDPR, transfers are made under standard contractual clauses or other valid mechanisms.
Corpus and Animus data is scoped to the Subject. No Founder has access to another Founder's Corpus or Animus through any feature of the platform. Access by Haagah personnel is limited, logged, and auditable.
If we become aware of a breach affecting your data, we will notify the Information Regulator of South Africa within the timeframes required by POPIA and notify you directly, without undue delay and in any case no later than 72 hours after becoming aware, where feasible.
Honesty requires us to be plain: no platform can guarantee absolute security. We describe our measures here so you can evaluate them. The decision to entrust us with your Corpus is yours, and it is a decision with durable consequences.
Haagah exists to preserve. Our retention practices reflect that purpose, while respecting your lifetime right to withdraw.
Your Corpus and your Animus are retained for so long as your account is active. You retain full control over what is contained, what is accessible, to whom, and on what terms.
At any time during your lifetime, you may:
Permanent Desynchronization is irreversible. Once executed, the Corpus is removed from operational systems, backups are overwritten on their scheduled cycle, and the Animus ceases to exist. Some limited records — audit logs, financial records, records required by law — may persist as described in Section 10.5.
On verified death, the platform applies your posthumous instructions. In the absence of instructions:
An Animus may be passed to a Successor Custodian. The Custodian inherits the right to configure access, provide limited corrective edits to the Corpus, and act on behalf of the Subject's ongoing presence on the platform. The Custodian does not inherit authorship rights over the Subject's writings or over what the Subject never shared.
If the platform ceases operations, we will provide no less than 180 days' notice to every Founder and every Successor Custodian of a deceased Subject, together with a mechanism to export the Corpus. We will take commercially reasonable steps to transfer Animi to a successor operator on equivalent or stronger privacy terms. Where no such transfer is possible, Corpus data is deleted in accordance with Section 10.2.
All data subjects have the right to:
Information Regulator of South Africa:
Where GDPR applies, you additionally have the right to data portability (machine-readable export), the right not to be subject to automated decision-making with legal or similarly significant effects, and the right to withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis of processing.
In addition to the above, a Founder has the right to:
Write to privacy@haagah.com.
The people who appear in a Subject's Corpus also have rights.
Write to privacy@haagah.com identifying:
We will acknowledge within 5 business days. Where your identity and interest are clear, we will act without requiring the material to be litigated over. Where the claim is contested, we will suspend public access to the specific material pending resolution.
Because Outputs are generated (Section 6.2), it is possible for an Output to include assertions about a third party that are inaccurate or harmful. If an Output generated by another person's Animus has caused you harm, write to privacy@haagah.com. We will investigate. Remedies may include adjustment of the relevant portions of the Corpus, suppression of query paths, and — where warranted — restriction of Visitor access to the Animus.
Haagah is not for children, and is not about children.
These rules are conservative by design. Their purpose is to avoid creating AI approximations of children, whether living or deceased.
For material changes, we will notify Founders via the email address on their account at least 30 days before the change takes effect, and will display an in-platform notice. Continued use after the change takes effect constitutes acceptance. Past versions of this Policy will be retained and made available on request.
Privacy Inquiries: privacy@haagah.com
POPIA Information Officer: infoofficer@haagah.com
Security Reports: security@haagah.com
Legal: legal@haagah.com
Postal Address: Haagah ehf., Privacy Office Gróska - innovation and business growth center Kristínargata 1, 102 Reykjavík Iceland
Effective Date: April 18, 2026
Last Reviewed: April 18, 2026
Next Scheduled Review: October 18, 2026
Approved By: Haagah Legal and Operations
This Policy should be read together with our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.