This Privacy Policy describes how First Principles Research, Inc. (“First Principles”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) collects, uses, and discloses information about you when you sign up for or use Atlas (the “Service”), including the Atlas signup site at chat.theatlasnetwork.ai, the Atlas iOS app, and the daily check-in conversations we send to your messaging platform.
By signing up for Atlas, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
1. Who we are
Atlas is operated by First Principles Research, Inc., a Delaware corporation with its principal office at 2261 Market Street #4899, San Francisco, CA 94114.
2. What information we collect
Information you give us at signup
- First name — what you'd like Atlas to call you.
- Phone number — used to send and receive your daily check-in messages and to verify it's really you (via a one-time code). Atlas currently supports phone numbers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica.
- Email address — used only for account recovery and support. Atlas does not currently send marketing email.
- Time zone and preferred check-in time — so the agent messages you when you actually want to be messaged.
- Conditions you choose to share — the chronic conditions you select (e.g., Long COVID, ME/CFS, POTS) plus any free text you add.
- Consent to receive automated text messages from Atlas at the number you provided (TCPA-compliant opt-in).
- Consent records — the IP address, browser type, and version of these terms you agreed to when you signed up. We store these so we can prove you opted in if anyone ever asks.
Information you create while using Atlas
- Conversation messages. The full text of every message you send to Atlas and every reply Atlas sends back. These are stored verbatim with timestamps.
- Voice notes. If you send a voice memo, we transcribe it to text and keep the written transcript. We do not keep the audio file once transcription is complete.
- Photos and other media. If you send the agent a photo or a document (for example, a lab result), we use AI to look at it so the agent can understand what it shows and refer back to it later. We keep both the file and the AI-generated description.
- Symptom and health observations. Things you tell Atlas about how you're feeling — pain, fatigue, brain fog, sleep, post-exertional malaise, medications you're taking, interventions you've tried, lifestyle factors. These are extracted from your messages and stored as structured records.
- Long-term memory the agent builds about you. Over time, Atlas writes down things it has learned about you — your conditions, what helps and what doesn't, the people and routines in your life — so future conversations feel like talking to someone who remembers you. You can ask us at any time to show you what's in this memory, or to delete parts of it (see Section 7).
Information collected automatically
- Message metadata — timestamps, message IDs, delivery status, and the messaging platform (e.g., iMessage) we received the message on.
- Basic device and browser information when you visit our website — IP address, user agent, the pages you view. This is used for basic security, debugging, and understanding traffic.
3. How we use your information
We use the information we collect to:
- Operate the Atlas check-in service and respond to your messages.
- Build and maintain a personalized record of your health journey so the agent's next conversation is informed by everything that came before.
- Send you the daily check-in at the time and on the platform you chose.
- Verify your phone number and protect your account from unauthorized access.
- Improve the Atlas product, including reviewing real conversations to fix bugs, improve responses, and train the team that builds the agent.
- Respond to your support requests and communicate with you about your account.
- Comply with our legal obligations.
4. Sharing your information
We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it with advertisers. We share information only in the limited circumstances described below.
Service providers (sub-processors)
Atlas runs on a small set of third-party infrastructure and AI providers. These vendors process information on our behalf so we can deliver the Service:
- Google Cloud Platform — hosts our backend, database, file storage, and logs (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Cloud Logging, Cloud Tasks, Cloud Scheduler).
- Google Vertex AI — the Google-hosted gateway we use to call the Anthropic Claude language models that power Atlas's conversational responses, and to call Google's Gemini model that transcribes voice notes. Conversation text and voice-note audio are sent through Vertex AI as part of generating a reply or a transcript.
- Anthropic, PBC — provides the Claude language models (Sonnet and Haiku) that power Atlas's conversational responses, message classification, and structured extraction. Per Anthropic's API terms, your data is not used to train their models.
- Google Firebase Authentication — verifies your phone number and email at signup and signs you in to the iOS app.
- Google Document AI — reads the text out of any PDF or photo you upload (for example, a lab result) so the agent can understand what it says.
- Linq — delivers and receives Atlas messages over iMessage.
- Twilio — used for phone-number verification (the one-time code at signup) and as an SMS/RCS fallback for delivering Atlas messages.
We may add or change sub-processors as the product evolves. Material changes will be reflected here.
Legal and safety
We may share information when we believe in good faith that it is necessary to:
- Comply with a law, regulation, subpoena, court order, or other legal process.
- Protect the safety of any person, including responding to a credible threat of self-harm.
- Investigate, prevent, or respond to fraud, security incidents, or violations of our Terms of Service.
Business transfers
If First Principles is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you and any successor will be bound by this Privacy Policy or a successor policy that is at least as protective.
Aggregated and de-identified data
We may share aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you — for example, to publish research, report on trends, or describe how the product is performing.
5. Atlas is not a medical service
Atlas is a research and self-tracking tool. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The information Atlas generates is not intended to be used to make medical decisions. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number — do not use Atlas.
6. How long we keep your information
Your messages, voice notes, and the structured records the agent creates are retained for as long as your account is active so that Atlas can give you informed, contextual conversations over time. We keep records on an append-only basis: corrections create new entries rather than overwriting old ones.
When you ask us to delete your account, we will delete your messages, voice-note transcripts, uploaded photos and documents, the long-term memory the agent has built about you, your symptom records, your analytics profile, and your account itself — typically within seven (7) days. The only things we may keep are records we are legally required to retain (for example, to resolve a dispute or comply with a court order), and any data we had already combined into anonymous, aggregated form before you asked us to delete you.
7. Your choices and rights
You can stop receiving Atlas messages at any time by replying STOP from your phone. Reply HELP for support information.
You can also ask us to:
- Tell you what personal information we hold about you.
- Show you the long-term memory the agent has built about you, and delete specific entries from it.
- Correct information that is inaccurate.
- Delete your account and the personal information associated with it.
- Pause or snooze your daily check-ins.
- Update your name, phone number, time zone, or check-in time.
To exercise any of these rights, email support@theatlasnetwork.ai. We'll respond within 7 days.
California residents
If you are a California resident, you have the rights described above plus the additional rights granted by the California Consumer Privacy Act, including the right to know what categories of information we collect and the right to opt out of any “sale” or “sharing” of personal information. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
EEA / UK residents
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our legal basis for processing your personal information is (a) your explicit consent, given at signup and any time you choose to message Atlas, and (b) the performance of our agreement with you. Where we need to act to protect someone's safety (for example, responding to a credible threat of self-harm), we rely on our legitimate interest in keeping people safe.
You have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you.
- Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Erase your information (subject to the limits in Section 6).
- Receive a portable copy of your information.
- Object to or restrict how we process it.
- Withdraw your consent at any time.
- Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
To exercise any of these rights, email support@theatlasnetwork.ai.
8. Security
We use industry-standard measures to protect your information. Your data is fully encrypted at rest and in transit — meaning every message you send, every voice-note transcript, every photo or document, and every record we keep about you is encrypted on our database, encrypted in our file storage, and encrypted on the wire when it moves between our servers and yours. Access to our production systems is controlled and audited, and production environments are isolated inside a private network.
Before any of your data leaves our systems for analytics or debugging tooling, we run it through an automated scrubber that removes personally identifying information. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information.
If we become aware of a security incident that affects your personal information, we will notify you and any required regulators without undue delay.
9. Children
Atlas is intended for adults. The Service is not directed to children under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.
10. International transfers
Atlas is operated from the United States and your information will be processed there. If you access the Service from outside the U.S. — including from the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, or any other supported region — you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S., which may have different data protection rules than your country.
For transfers from the EEA or the UK, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (or the UK's equivalent international data transfer addendum) with our infrastructure providers, together with the technical safeguards described in Section 8 (Security).
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we'll change the “Last updated” date at the top. If the changes are material, we'll let you know in the Atlas conversation or by another reasonable means before they take effect.
12. Contact
Questions about this Privacy Policy or how Atlas handles your data? Email support@theatlasnetwork.ai, or write to us at:
First Principles Research, Inc.
2261 Market Street #4899
San Francisco, CA 94114