This Policy explains what personal information TaoChi collects, how we use and share it, and the choices available to you. It applies to our website at taochi.net, related services and communications, including information submitted about another person. This version is dated 10 November 2026 and takes effect at 19:00 Hong Kong time (UTC+8) on that date. It replaces the version that took effect at 18:00 on 10 November 2026. The advertising-measurement implementation in section 8 was clarified on 11 November 2026; the other provisions are unchanged.
1. About us
TaoChi is operated by TAOCHI TECHNOLOGY LIMITED (道吉科技有限公司). We are responsible for the personal information covered by this Policy. Our registered office is Unit 1405A, 14/F, The Belgian Bank Building, Nos. 721–725 Nathan Road, Mong Kok, Hong Kong.
For privacy questions or requests, write to [email protected] or [email protected], or submit a support request; you do not need an account. If you do not receive confirmation of a request within five business days, write to [email protected] so that we can follow it up.
This Policy covers TaoChi’s main site. A site run by an independent partner must name its own operator and privacy notice.
2. Information we collect
Account information: your email address or username, display name, password, language preference and communication choices. If you sign in with Google, we receive your Google account identifier and the profile and email information provided during sign-in, but not your Google password.
Reading information: the birth date, time, city or location and time-zone details, gender selection and optional name you provide, together with the charts, interpretations, comparison results and scores generated from them. If someone else submits your information with permission, we receive it from that person. Public-figure information used for comparisons comes from public biographical sources.
Content and transactions: mood and journal entries, community posts, support correspondence, survey answers, and order, payment, refund, access and redemption records. Surveys may include interests, expectations, language and optional country information and are associated with your account and discount eligibility. Payment records include the purchased offer, order and transaction references, amounts, currency, times and payment or renewal authorisation records. For card renewal, we also retain PayPal’s customer and saved-payment-method references. PayPal receives full card details directly; TaoChi does not store the full card number or security code.
Usage information: IP address, browser and device details, device and session identifiers, access times, error and security records, and service actions such as requesting a report. Where you allow optional website analytics, we also collect page views and feature interactions. Email delivery records are described in section 10; they do not include marketing-email open or click tracking.
Journal and mood records are optional and stored with your account for you to view and manage. They are not public, sent to AI, or used for advertising. Before enabling saving, you must separately give explicit consent using an unchecked choice covering any sensitive health, religious-belief or sex-life information you choose to provide. We record the wording version, language and time; an ordinary Save action is not treated as consent. You can withdraw in the journal or under Account → Privacy & personal data. Confirming withdrawal deletes all online journal and mood records and stops new saves without affecting other membership features. Withdrawal does not affect earlier lawful processing; backups follow section 7. You can still read, export or delete existing entries without giving fresh consent for those actions. Avoid identity-document numbers, card details or medical records in free-text fields. A birth city is used for the reading, not live GPS tracking; payment providers may separately require a billing address or verification information.
3. How we use your information
We use account and reading information to provide the services you request: creating and managing your account, calculating charts, generating interpretations, saving reports, and answering enquiries. Where EU or UK data protection law applies, we generally rely on performance of our contract with you or steps taken at your request before entering it. For information about another adult submitted for a comparison, we rely where appropriate on our legitimate interest in providing the authorised comparison, subject to that person’s rights.
We use technical and service records to protect accounts, prevent fraud and abuse, resolve faults, and assess service performance and feature use. This serves our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure, reliable and useful. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests as explained in section 9.
We use order and payment records to deliver purchased access, handle refunds and disputes, and meet accounting and other legal requirements. Depending on the purpose, we rely on performance of a contract, compliance with a legal obligation, or our legitimate interest in establishing or defending legal claims.
Optional website analytics, advertising measurement (section 8), promotional emails and account grouping for relevant campaigns each require your choice. Campaign grouping uses purchases, access status and recent sign-ins only after you opt in to personalisation in your account privacy settings. This choice is separate from receiving promotional emails and is off by default. You can withdraw either choice without losing core features. We do not record marketing-email opens or link clicks.
Forms indicate the information required for each feature. Without the necessary birth details we may be unable to generate a reading; without account or contact information we may be unable to authenticate you or reply. Optional names, journals, website analytics, advertising measurement and promotional emails are not required to use the core chart service.
Survey answers help us understand requested improvements and administer an optional introductory offer. Submitting answers is voluntary and does not authorise marketing or require a positive review. We use your account, payment and offer-use records to check eligibility for the offer (it is only for accounts that have never paid) and to avoid duplicate use; the purchase terms explain the discount. Any different use of personal information requires an appropriate legal basis and notice.
We rely on your consent to store journal and mood records, including explicit consent for special-category information for this purpose. It is separate from accepting the Terms and from marketing or advertising choices. We keep the version, language, action and time needed to demonstrate consent and withdrawal. These records are deleted with your account and are not retained as accounting evidence.
4. AI-assisted readings
We use the DeepSeek API, provided by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., to write the overview and the major-period readings and to translate report text into the language you use.
What we send is mostly our own material. An overview request contains passages from TaoChi’s library of pre-written interpretations, chosen and combined according to your chart, together with your gender and approximate age. A major-period request contains the chart features of that period (its traditional stem-branch label and main stars), its age range and calendar dates, and whether it lies in the past, present or future. A translation request contains pre-written passages, chart labels such as pattern names and zodiac animals, and already generated personalised overview and major-period text.
These AI requests do not include your name or nickname, email, account or payment details, order references, exact birth date or time, birthplace, user IP address or device identifiers. We do not send journals, community posts or support messages. Requests originate from our servers. Gender, age and chart time ranges may still indirectly reveal information such as a birth year, so these requests should not be understood as unidentifiable anonymous data. We do not guarantee that a recipient cannot link them with other information. Within TaoChi, a request can be linked to a saved report and remains protected as personal information.
DeepSeek’s privacy policy (https://cdn.deepseek.com/policies/en-US/deepseek-privacy-policy.html, updated 10 February 2026) describes storage and processing in the People’s Republic of China and model-improvement and training uses in its own services. It also explains that developers must provide notice of personal-data processing in applications built on its API. That policy alone does not establish that TaoChi API requests are, or are not, used for training. We have not obtained applicable written documentation confirming retention periods, training uses and deletion assistance for these API requests, so we cannot confirm zero retention or no training. This disclosure does not remove TaoChi’s responsibilities for supplier management, data protection or international transfers.
Readings and scores are for entertainment and personal reflection. They are not verified assessments of your personality, health or future. We do not use them to decide eligibility for employment, credit, insurance, healthcare or other matters with legal or similarly significant effects.
5. Who receives your information
Cloudflare provides website delivery, security, application hosting, database, storage and background processing. DeepSeek processes the reading and translation information described in section 4. Resend delivers transactional messages and any promotional messages you choose to receive. Zoho hosts our company email, including customer-service correspondence. They receive the information needed for those services. Our staff access personal information only as needed for their work.
PayPal processes payments, authentication, saved payment methods and refunds, and may independently use information for fraud prevention and legal obligations under its own notice. Closing a TaoChi account does not erase records PayPal is independently required to keep. If you allow advertising measurement, Google also receives the measurement information described in section 8. If you choose Google sign-in, Google processes sign-in information under its own privacy policy; this does not give Google your TaoChi password or automatically send it your reading.
Community posts are visible to their intended audience. Reports and journals saved in your account are not made public by saving them. If you share a report or image outside TaoChi, recipients may keep or redistribute their copies.
We may disclose information to public authorities, professional advisers or other relevant parties where required by law, to establish or defend legal claims, or to protect people from harm. Information may also be transferred in a merger, acquisition or sale of the business, subject to applicable privacy requirements. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. You can contact us for details of recipients relevant to your information.
6. International data transfers
TaoChi is based in Hong Kong. Its cloud, email, payment and AI providers operate internationally, so providing these services can involve processing outside your country. Our provider records show that email is stored in the United States, and DeepSeek processes AI requests in the People’s Republic of China (section 4); Cloudflare and payment processing can involve other locations. Selecting a delivery region does not by itself mean all storage and support stay in that region. If you allow advertising measurement, Google also processes the information described in section 8, including in the United States.
International transfers must meet applicable data-protection requirements. Where EU or UK law applies, the appropriate transfer mechanism and necessary safeguards must be implemented, such as an applicable adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses with the required assessment. Publishing this Policy alone does not meet those requirements. We have not obtained complete processing-agreement and EU/UK transfer-safeguard documentation applicable to TaoChi’s use of the DeepSeek API. You may contact [email protected] for verified processing locations, applicable arrangements and available safeguard documents.
7. How long we keep information
Reports created without an account expire seven days after they are created, unless saved to an account, and are then removed by scheduled cleanup. Saved account reports, birth profiles and journals remain until you remove them or close the account. Account deletion revokes access immediately and removes these records, related translations, sessions, support content (except withdrawal notices, described below) and ordinary activity records from the live service. If a cleanup service is temporarily unavailable, deletion is retried and the receipt shows that processing is pending.
Necessary accounting, tax and contract evidence is stored separately from ordinary account data. Accounting evidence includes order and transaction references, dates, amounts, currency and refund status. Hong Kong tax records are retained for at least seven years after completion of the relevant transaction, act or operation. Company accounting records are retained for at least seven years after the financial year to which the last relevant entry relates, using the later deadline where several rules apply. Our first financial year ends on 1 September 2027, with a 1 September year end thereafter. Contract-acceptance versions and times are kept for seven years from the later of acceptance and the related recorded performance of the contract. Withdrawal notices and receipt times are kept for seven years after receipt. These contract-evidence periods are assessed separately from accounting records. Other applicable tax-record rules or a specific dispute may require longer retention. These reasons do not justify long-term retention of birth information, private readings, journals or login credentials.
Ordinary activity and email delivery logs are scheduled for deletion after 30 days; completed background delivery records after seven days. Expired verification, password-reset and login records are cleaned up. Translated private report text is removed with its report. Community messages removed for breaking the community rules are kept hidden for 30 days for appeals and then deleted. Ad click details kept on our servers are deleted 90 days after the click.
Backups are isolated from ordinary use. New full backups have a 29-day cleanup schedule and the database recovery service has a 30-day window. Copies in historical migration archives or still held by providers are deleted on their own schedules, so they may remain for some time after an account is deleted. We keep limited deletion markers so that restoring an older backup cannot reactivate deleted accounts or restore journal and mood entries after consent has been withdrawn, and disclose any outstanding retention when handling a request. A supplier deletion request remains open until completion is recorded.
Logging out or allowing paid access to expire does not close an account. Use Account → Privacy and your data to export your data or request deletion, or contact [email protected]. If an external automatic renewal is still active, it must first be cancelled so account closure does not leave further charges running.
Deletion dates are calculated under the applicable rules. Later refunds, related accounting entries or a specifically documented dispute may update a date. Records with uncertain dates or categories enter a review list before the applicable deadline is applied; we do not delete them on an assumed date or extend retention indefinitely merely because they might be useful. On request, we will explain the basis, period and end date applicable to the relevant records.
9. Your rights and choices
Use Account → Privacy and your data to download a portable copy of your information, change marketing and personalisation choices, or request account deletion after verifying your identity. You can also contact [email protected] or submit a support request without signing in. Identify the account or report concerned; we request only information reasonably needed to verify identity or an agent’s authority.
Where EU or UK data protection law applies, your rights may also include restricting processing, receiving a portable copy of your data, objecting to processing based on legitimate interests, withdrawing consent and challenging certain automated decisions. These rights are subject to the conditions in the applicable law. We normally respond within one month and will explain any permitted extension within that period.
Under Hong Kong’s Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, you may request access and correction. We handle requests within the applicable statutory periods, generally 40 days for an access request, and explain any lawful refusal or fee. Where US state privacy laws apply, you may also have rights to know, correct, delete or obtain a copy of information, opt out of specified uses, and appeal a refusal. Contact us through the same channels; applicable legal deadlines will apply.
Right to object to marketing: you may object at any time, without giving a reason, to direct marketing and related account grouping by contacting [email protected]. You can also unsubscribe from promotional emails using the link in the message. Where other processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting earlier lawful processing.
We will not penalise you for exercising your privacy rights. If deleting information needed for a feature means we can no longer provide that feature, we will explain this when handling your request.
10. Emails and communications
If you opt in, we use your contact details and language preference to send TaoChi updates and offers. Optional campaign personalisation has a separate consent control in account privacy settings. You can unsubscribe without charge through the email link, account preferences or by contacting us. Essential account, security, purchase and support messages may still be sent after you unsubscribe.
We record delivery, bounce and complaint information for delivery and abuse prevention. We do not add tracking pixels or click tracking to marketing messages. Previously issued TaoChi tracking URLs no longer record opens or clicks. Our email provider processes message content and delivery metadata under its own retention and processing arrangements; we handle requests concerning those copies with the provider.
11. Security and age requirements
We use encrypted connections, password protection and access controls to protect personal information. No method of online transmission or storage is completely secure. If you suspect a data security incident, contact [email protected]. We will investigate and notify affected people or regulators where required by law.
TaoChi is intended for adults aged 18 and over. Please do not submit information about anyone under 18. If you believe we hold such information, contact us so we can investigate and take appropriate steps to delete it or restrict its use, subject to any necessary legal retention.
12. Complaints
If you have a concern about your information, contact [email protected] or [email protected]. We respond to complaints within five business days of receipt, meaning Monday to Friday excluding Hong Kong statutory holidays. This is an initial-response commitment, not an extension of any statutory rights-request deadline. If we decline a request, we will explain the reason and any available review, appeal or complaint route.
You may also complain directly to the relevant regulator. In Hong Kong, this is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (pcpd.org.hk); in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk). In the EEA, you may complain to the supervisory authority where you live, work or where the alleged infringement occurred. You do not have to contact us before doing so, and any right to a judicial remedy remains available.
13. Changes to this Policy
We may update this Policy to reflect changes to our services, data practices or legal requirements. The latest version date appears above. We will notify you of material changes through the website or another appropriate channel and request consent before new processing where required.
Language. This Policy is published in English and in Chinese. The English version governs if the two differ, except where mandatory local law requires otherwise. Your statutory privacy and consumer rights are unaffected.