You run a recovery community.
Here's exactly what we can and cannot see.

Before you'd ever let an app near your members, you'd want to know what it does with the most sensitive data a person has. This page is that answer, in plain language, including the limits and the parts we simply cannot protect.

I'm Darin. I built Kinship, an iPhone app for people quitting drink, drugs, or a behavior that's running their life: a sobriety clock, tools for the hard minutes, and a community where nobody has to use their real name. This page exists because I'm asking people like you to tell me what's wrong with it.

What we cannot see, by design

👤
A member's real name is never shown to another member.
Public identity is always a chosen handle. The real name exists only to greet its owner. There is no setting that changes this, for anyone.
💬
We cannot read direct messages.
There is no admin view of DMs. This was a deliberate build decision, not a policy we promise to follow. When a member reports a message, the reported content comes to a human through the report itself.
🔐
A member's recovery history is end-to-end encrypted, and the key never reaches us.
The key lives in the member's own iCloud Keychain, with an optional 24-character recovery code they hold. We considered keeping a copy server-side so we could "help" people who lose access. We rejected it, because it would make this sentence false.
📵
The most dangerous list in the app never leaves the phone.
Kinship's "Make It Harder" feature is where a member lists their cues, sources, and access to their substance. That list is deliberately excluded from cloud backup, because anything in a cloud account is discoverable in custody disputes and criminal proceedings. If they delete the app, that list dies with it. We accept that trade.
📍
No precise location, ever.
A member can share a general metro area for finding nearby events, or nothing at all. There is no address, no GPS trail, no map of members.

What we can see, honestly

📝
Public posts and group posts.
What a member chooses to post to the feed or a group is visible to us the same way it's visible to other members, and it's what our moderation acts on.
🚩
Reports, when a member files one.
Reports are weighted and always land with a human. Nothing is auto-punished by a score. Uploaded images are machine-scanned; only explicitly adult content is removed automatically, and everything else goes to a person.
✉️
Account basics.
The email a member signs up with, their chosen handle, and the substance paths they've set up. We need these to run the service. They are never shown to other members.

Things you'd otherwise have to ask

🆓
Crisis and safety resources are never behind the paywall.
Neither is the clock, the community, the urge tools, or the daily plan. The paid tier is a smarter companion and deeper insights. Every new member gets it free for 90 days, no card, and it does not convert into a subscription.
🧭
Kinship is peer support, not treatment.
It does not diagnose, treat, or replace detox or professional care, and it says so to members. For alcohol and benzodiazepines especially, the app is explicit that stopping abruptly can be medically dangerous and points to real help.
🙅
No referral tracking, on purpose.
We deleted our referral program. The app cannot tell who joined because of whom, including because of you. If you ever mention Kinship to your members, we have no way to know, and that's how it should be.
🚫
This website runs no ad trackers.
No advertising pixels, no analytics beacons on this page. In this category, that isn't a detail: a well-known alcohol recovery company paid a $2.5M FTC penalty for sharing user health data with advertisers, and a large behavioral-addiction app exposed hundreds of thousands of users' private activity in a breach. Those two stories are why this page is written the way it is.

What I'm actually asking you

Not to share this. Not to pin it. You know this world far better than I do, and I want your judgment before I put this in front of more people:

Before recommending any app to your members, what do you need to know about it?
What's wrong or missing in the design above? What would you attack first?
What would make you distrust an app like this immediately?
What does your community need that no app currently does?
If your answer is "apps don't belong anywhere near recovery," I want to hear that too, and why.

Reply to the message that brought you here, or email me directly: hello@trykinship.app. I read and answer everything myself. If you'd rather tear this apart in public, that's fair too.

The blunt version

Kinship makes money one way: a $4.99/month, $29.99/year, or $79.99-once upgrade that some members choose after 90 free days. It does not sell data, run ads, or take referral fees from treatment centers. If the design above has a hole in it, I would rather hear it from you now than from a journalist later.