Privacy policy

Updated 2026-10-21. OBI is operated by Zimbolo LLC. Privacy questions: contact@zimbolo.com.

Voice conversations use Google Gemini. While a conversation is active, OBI sends its microphone audio through our hosted service to Google's Gemini API to generate spoken answers. This may include nearby speech. The iPhone app does not use your phone's microphone.

When OBI listens

Press the center button to start. Listening continues between answers until you stop the conversation, engage mute, or a connection error ends it. Press the button again to stop. Mute ends the conversation; unmuting does not restart it. Make others nearby aware when OBI is listening.

What we handle

Live audio, generated speech and temporary text from speech recognition are processed to answer and recognize voice Stop. OBI's hosted account service does not save conversation recordings or transcripts.
Your email, password hash, account/device identifiers, setup authorizations, permission choices and sign-in sessions support account access and device ownership. Passwords are not stored in readable form.
Wi-Fi names and passwords pass from the phone to OBI over Bluetooth and are saved on OBI. They are not sent to our account service. The phone saves setup progress and an account session, not your Wi-Fi or account password.
Usage counts, measured API costs, credit records, connection diagnostics and firmware status support allowances, reliability and operations.
Our hosting and email providers process necessary service information, such as IP addresses, request timing and reset-email delivery. If you email support, we receive your message and address. Do not send passwords, keys or conversation recordings.

Service providers

Railway hosts the account/voice service and private encrypted backup storage. Resend delivers account-recovery emails. Google processes voice requests and generates answers. OBI uses a billing-enabled Google Cloud project for the Gemini API. Under Google's paid-service terms, Google does not use prompts and responses to improve its products under those terms unless separately shared with Google. Google may retain content for safety and abuse monitoring; this is not a zero-retention promise.

See Google's Gemini API terms and abuse-monitoring policy for its retention and review practices. No statement that we do not save recordings changes Google's independent processing. Provider request logging/data sharing settings must also be checked for the production project.

Retention and recovery

Account, ownership and usage records remain while needed to operate your account. Routine maintenance removes expired sign-in/setup tokens. Default diagnostic retention is up to seven days and firmware-report retention up to 30 days; count limits may remove them sooner. Password-reset records are normally removed within 30 days. These service defaults can be adjusted. Hosting/email logs have their providers' retention rules.

Recovery copies may retain earlier data after live deletion. Local snapshots rotate. Daily encrypted backups in private storage keep the latest 30 successful copies, not a guaranteed 30-day erasure deadline. Upload and read-back have been verified; a full restoration exercise remains pending. Anonymous service cost totals, retired credential hashes and a minimal pseudonymous deletion journal are retained for accounting, replay protection and recovery. Deletion is not a promise of immediate forensic erasure from every copy.

Your choices

Voice permission is separate from account access. The updated app's Privacy screen lets you allow or withdraw device voice sharing; withdrawal ends an active conversation and blocks new ones. Stopping or muting OBI always stops the current conversation. Our permission-enforcement rollout is coordinated with the updated app; it is not represented as active on older installations.

You can request account deletion from Account settings in the updated app or the management website. Unused credit, payment references and unresolved paid-usage summaries are kept privately for refund review after deletion; deletion does not automatically issue a refund. These transaction records contain no account email or password in our service, but payment references can still be linked to a payer by the payment provider. Contact us at contact@zimbolo.com for access, correction or deletion requests. Factory reset OBI before transferring it; deleting a cloud account alone does not erase the physical device's saved Wi-Fi.

Advertising and app permissions

The app has no advertising or cross-app tracking feature. Bluetooth is used for nearby setup. The current setup does not require the phone's microphone or camera. The built-in demo uses only preset examples in memory and does not connect to real hardware or accounts.

Release scope and changes

OBI is intended for adults aged 18 and over. The initial release is limited to the United States. Do not provide OBI for use by anyone under 18. This audience restriction follows Google's current Gemini API terms. We will update this page when material data practices change and request a new voice agreement where needed.