Legal
AI features
Obsession has two optional AI features: Bragging rights and Your nickname. Neither sends anything until you say yes, and both send only a few names. Here's exactly what happens.
Bragging rights
Bragging rights finds the best things the web says about one of your possessions, with their sources and a few YouTube videos. Open a possession and tap Look it up.
- What you get: a short write-up of proud facts, each linked to the page it came from where the search can tell, a few things it's loved for, a few videos, and Google's search suggestions, which must be shown with the write-up.
- Only the good parts. Our server never edits the words: it shows a whole result or none. If a result has too few sourced facts, or reads negative or like a sales pitch, it asks once more and then tells you the web's quiet on this one. Your own words show instead.
- Which one is yours? If the name could mean several products, the app asks you to pick the closest, or to type the brand and model.
- Automatic look-ups. Once you've said yes, Look up new ones automatically is on. Each new possession you shelve is then looked up once, as soon as it has a name. You can turn this off.
Your nickname
Your nickname reads your shelves and suggests five flattering nicknames, each with a line on why it fits, plus your collector type, such as The Explorer. Wear one, or none. A worn nickname shows on Home and can go on your share cards. You can shuffle for new ones, type your own, or take it off. Your collector type is worked out on your phone.
Asking first
The first time you use each feature, the app shows a sheet with what it sends, what it never sends, who sees it and what you get. Nothing is sent unless you tap Yes, look it up or Yes, find my nickname. Each feature asks separately, and you can change your mind in Settings › Bragging rights.
What is sent, and what never is
Bragging rights
Sent
- The possession's name and description
- The name of its obsession
- The exact product, if you picked or typed one
- The app's language
- A random install ID
Never sent
Photos or stickers, prices, dates, why you bought it, why you love it, your journal, places, your loves.
Your nickname
Sent
- The names of your obsessions
- How many things are in each, and the year each began
- Up to eight possession names for each obsession
- Your collector type and the app's language
- A random install ID
Never sent
Photos or stickers, prices, descriptions, dates other than the year an obsession began, why you bought or love something, your journal, places, your loves.
The install ID is made up by the app. We use it only to apply daily limits; it isn't linked to you, to an account or to your device's identifiers.
Who processes it
- Our server (Big Helpers, bighelpers.in) passes the request on and sends the answer back to your phone. It keeps no copy of what you sent or what came back. Daily counts are kept under one-way hashed names and deleted automatically after a few days; its logs hold only counts and outcomes and are deleted after about 30 days.
- Google Gemini with Google Search searches the web, writes the Bragging rights write-up from what it finds, and finds the videos. It receives the product's name, the obsession's name and your name for the possession. When DeepSeek is unavailable, Gemini also does DeepSeek's jobs and receives what DeepSeek would have. See the Gemini API terms and Google's privacy policy.
- DeepSeek, an AI company, works out the exact product from the name and description, and suggests the nicknames. DeepSeek processes and stores data on servers in the People's Republic of China. See DeepSeek's privacy policy.
- YouTube gives our server each video's title and channel. Your phone loads video thumbnails from YouTube's image servers, and videos play from YouTube in privacy-enhanced mode, under YouTube's privacy policy.
Results come back to your phone and are stored only there. The privacy policy has the full detail.
Daily limits
Each feature has a daily limit. Today the limits are:
| Feature | For each install | For each internet address |
|---|---|---|
| Bragging rights look-ups | 20 a day | 60 a day |
| Nickname shuffles | 3 a day | 20 a day |
On top of that, Look again works once a day for each possession. At a limit, the app says Try again tomorrow or Shuffle again tomorrow. Anything you already have stays put.
AI can be wrong
Write-ups and nicknames are made by AI. They can be wrong, out of date or about a different product. Each fact links to its source when there is one, so you can check it. If it found the wrong thing, use Not the right one? to fix the name. Nothing here is medical, financial, legal or safety advice, or a valuation of what you own.
Turning them off and clearing results
Settings is in the profile menu at the top of Home: on iPhone, tap You, then Settings; on Android, tap the profile button, then Settings.
- Turn Bragging rights off: Settings › Bragging rights › Look things up. Off hides it everywhere, and slips print your own words.
- Stop automatic look-ups: Settings › Bragging rights › Look up new ones automatically.
- See what gets sent: Settings › Bragging rights › What gets sent.
- Clear results: Settings › Bragging rights › Clear saved write-ups. On a single possession, the three-dot menu has Hide bragging rights.
- Your nickname: it only asks for names when you tap for them. To stop wearing one, tap the profile button at the top of Home, open your nickname and tap Take it off.
Deleting the app removes every result, along with the rest of your collection.
Everything else happens on your phone
Peeling the background off your photos runs on your phone: Apple's Vision framework on iPhone, and Google's ML Kit on Android (which sends Google the diagnostics described in the privacy policy). Share cards, collages and reels are made on your phone too.