Privacy Policy
Last updated: 26 August 2026
This policy explains, in plain English, what personal information Betterself collects, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you have under Australian law. If anything is unclear, email us at hello@mybetterself.com.au and we’ll help.
1. Who we are
Betterself is an Australian responsible-gambling and financial-wellness app designed to help people track their spending, set limits, and build healthier money habits. It is operated by Betterself (ABN 35 696 928 097) based in Western Australia.
For the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Betterself is the APP entity responsible for the personal information we handle.
2. What we collect
We only collect what we need to make the app useful to you. That breaks down into three buckets:
Account information you give us
- Email address (required to create an account)
- First name or display name (optional)
- Mobile number (optional, used for account recovery and important notices)
- Your confirmation that you are 18 or over and an Australian resident
Information you create inside the app
- Savings goals and target amounts
- Weekly spending limit preferences
- Mood and urge check-ins
- Break-mode activations and time windows
- Messages you send to the in-app AI companion
Statement and transaction data
Betterself does not connect to your bank at launch. Your spending comes only from statements you upload or transactions you enter yourself.
- Transaction history (date, amount, merchant, category)
- Only transaction fields you review before import
We cannot move, transfer or access your money. Betterself does not connect to your bank and has no payment initiation capability.
3. How we use it
We use your data to provide the service you signed up for — nothing else. Specifically:
- Identify gambling-related transactions and surface them on your dashboard
- Calculate your weekly spend against the limit you set
- Track progress toward your savings goals
- Show trends, patterns and milestones in your Progress page
- Send important account or security emails
- Help the AI companion respond with context that’s relevant to you
- Fix bugs, diagnose crashes and improve the app (error reports are stripped of personal data before they leave your device)
We do not use your data for advertising, profiling for third parties, or training public AI models.
4. Who we share it with
We never sell, rent or trade your personal information. We share data only with the service providers we need in order to run the app, and each of them is bound by contract and Australian privacy law. Our current sub-processors are:
- MongoDB Atlas — encrypted database hosting.
- Render — application and API hosting (United States).
- Resend — transactional email delivery (password resets, account notices) (United States).
- Anthropic — powers the AI companion (United States). Your messages are sent to Anthropic to generate a reply, and are not used to train AI models.
- PostHog — anonymised product analytics (United States). No banking data, transaction content, check-in content or AI conversation content is sent to PostHog.
- Sentry — error and crash reporting, with personal identifiers and sensitive fields stripped before transmission.
- Mailchimp — the waitlist and marketing emails on this website only (United States). If you join the waitlist we send Mailchimp your email address, which form you used and the time you signed up. Mailchimp never receives anything from your Betterself account — no financial data, no check-ins, no conversations. You can unsubscribe from any email we send you.
Several of these providers are located outside Australia, as noted above. We take reasonable steps to ensure they handle your information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, including through contractual data-protection obligations.
We may also disclose information if we are legally required to do so — for example, in response to a valid court order or regulatory request. We will push back on overly broad requests wherever lawfully possible.
5. How we protect it
- All data in transit is encrypted with TLS 1.2 or higher.
- All data at rest is encrypted with AES-256.
- Access to production systems is limited to a small number of engineers, protected by multi-factor authentication.
- Passwords are hashed with industry-standard algorithms — we never see or store them in plain text.
- Session tokens are stored in secure, HTTP-only cookies that JavaScript cannot read.
6. How long we keep it
We keep your data for as long as your account is active. Account deletion starts a 24-hour grace window during which you can restore it using the confirmation email. After that window, your personal data is permanently deleted. We retain anonymised audit records containing no personal financial data for seven years to meet Australian record-keeping obligations.
6a. Accountability partners
You may nominate one person to receive a short weekly note about how you are going. If you do, we hold that person’s name and email address for that purpose only.
- They never see financial information — no amounts, no merchants, no transaction details, no account information.
- Nothing is sent until they accept, and the invitation lapses after seven days if they do not.
- They can stop it themselves at any time, permanently, without telling you.
- You can remove them at any time. It takes effect immediately and they are not notified.
- Their details are never used for marketing and are deleted when the arrangement ends.
7. Your rights under the APPs
Under the Australian Privacy Principles, you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you
- Correct anything that’s inaccurate or out of date
- Export your data in a portable format
- Delete your account and personal data entirely
- Complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au if you believe we’ve mishandled your data
To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@mybetterself.com.au. Export, correction and deletion can also be performed directly inside the app once you’re logged in.
8. Cookies and analytics
On this marketing site we use a minimal amount of first-party cookies to remember form submissions and deliver the site efficiently. We do not use advertising cookies. In the app itself, we use product analytics solely to understand which features are being used and where the experience is breaking — never for advertising and never shared with marketing networks.
9. Changes to this policy
If we make a material change to how we handle your data, we’ll update this page and, where appropriate, let you know by email. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page will always reflect the most recent revision.
10. Contact
If you have any questions about privacy, data handling, or your rights under the Australian Privacy Principles, please email:
Betterself
ABN 35 696 928 097
Email: hello@mybetterself.com.au