HQ Evolve Group

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026

This policy covers the Evolve app (web and phone), the Evolve AI membership with Evolve Coach, our AI coach, 1-on-1 coaching, and this website. It is written to be read. If anything is unclear, email hello@hqevolve.com.

1. Who we are

HQ Evolve Group is a business name of Nicholas Trotter (ABN 22 851 950 861), an online fitness coaching business operated from Australia. We are the data controller for the information described here and we comply with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988.

2. What we collect

Account and contact. Name, email, phone number, password (stored hashed by our authentication provider), and, if you use them, your Apple or Google sign-in identifiers.

Payment. Handled by Stripe on the web and by Apple for App Store subscriptions. We receive confirmation of payment, your subscription status and, from Stripe, the last four digits and card type. We never see or store your full card number, and Apple never shares card details with us.

Your profile and goals. Age, sex, height, weight, goal, training experience, days and equipment available, injuries, health conditions and dietary needs you tell us about in onboarding, questionnaires and check-ins.

Everything you log in the app. Workouts and every set, rest and effort ratings, notes on sessions, food and water, body weight, photos of your scale at weigh-ins, measurements, progress photos, activities, habits, and the answers in your check-ins.

Messages. Text, photos, videos and voice notes you send to your coach or to Evolve Coach, and the replies.

Safety records. If you tell Evolve Coach (or type into the food scanner) something our safety check recognises as a sign you might be at risk, like thoughts of self-harm, signs of an eating disorder, violence at home or a medical emergency, it replies with fixed safety wording and helpline numbers, and the app records that a safety message was shown: the kind of message, which of our checks spotted it, and the time, not a copy of what you wrote. The same kind of record is made if you tell us you're under 18. Nothing is recorded for other health topics, like a pregnancy or a question about medication. That record is used only to pause, for a while, Evolve Coach's Monday note, the "it's been a while" and weekly summary notifications, our automated "we haven't seen you" emails and texts, weigh-in reminders we send to a browser, and our trial emails; to hold back calorie suggestions after signs of an eating disorder; to keep Evolve Coach careful with you for a while; and, for an age, to stop coaching and plan building. If our quick safety read (section 4) couldn't be done, the record says so, and then it only pauses those messages: it doesn't change how Evolve Coach coaches you or hold back calorie suggestions. It is never used for marketing.

Health data you connect. If you connect Apple Health or Health Connect: steps, workouts, sleep, heart rate, active energy and body measurements, read only. We never write to your health record. A daily summary of that data (steps, sleep, resting heart rate, active energy) and the workouts the app imports are sent to and kept on Evolve's servers, tied to your account, so your coach and Evolve Coach can see them and adjust your plan; the raw samples stay on your phone. Disconnecting in the app deletes the daily summaries from our servers; imported workouts stay on your calendar until you remove them or delete your account. We never sell health data or use it for advertising.

Device and usage. Device type, app version, crash reports, which screens and features you use, and the time you use them, so we can see what to fix and improve. No advertising identifiers, no cross-app tracking.

Push notifications. A device token if you allow notifications, and your reminder preferences. A "Evolve Coach replied" notification never shows what it said.

Referrals. When a client gives us a friend's name and mobile on our referral form, with that friend's OK to be called, we use them only to call that friend about coaching, keep them with the client's referral, and never share or sell them. A friend can ask us to delete their details any time: email hello@hqevolve.com.

3. How we use it

We do not sell your information. We never use what you log or tell us in the app or in an application (training, food, body, health answers, messages) for advertising. We do not build profiles of you for anyone else. The one thing we share for our ads is set out in section 12, "Measuring our ads", and only if you say yes: which step you reached on our website and, if you also tick the box on our application, your email and phone scrambled (hashed), so Meta can tell us whether an ad worked.

4. AI processing, in plain terms

Evolve Coach is AI. Evolve Coach, our coach inside the app, is software built on AI. It is not a person and not a qualified health professional, and if you ask it whether it's a person or AI, it tells you.

What goes to the AI provider. When you message Evolve Coach, send it a photo, or ask for a program or meal plan, the parts of your data it needs (your message, your goals and profile, your recent training and food, health details you've given us, and your watch summary if you've connected one) go to our AI provider, Anthropic, in the United States and other countries where Anthropic runs its service. Anthropic uses it only to produce the reply, under commercial terms that prohibit training its models on it. Voice notes are turned into words by your phone where it can; if it can't, the recording goes to OpenAI's speech-to-text service, which does not keep it.

Food photos you scan. When you take or choose a photo in the food scanner, the photo (and anything you type or say to fix what it found) goes to Anthropic, in the United States and other countries where it runs its service, so its AI can work out what food is in it. That is all it is used for: Anthropic's commercial terms don't let it train its AI on your photo, and it deletes what we send within 30 days (it can keep it for up to 2 years only if its systems flag it for a check on misuse). Evolve keeps the photo only if you log a meal from a photo of your plate: then a copy stays with that meal in your food log, where you (and your coach, if you have one) can see it, and deleting the meal deletes the photo. A photo of a menu, the fridge, a packet or a receipt, or a scan you don't log, isn't kept by Evolve. We don't keep the back-and-forth with the scanner either: only a note that a scan happened, what kind of photo it was and how many foods it found, for daily limits and costs.

A quick safety read. Some words could be a sign you're at risk or could just be a rough day ("I'm so over it"). When a message to Evolve Coach, or a note you type into the food scanner, has words like that, that message on its own also goes to Anthropic for a quick read of whether it's a safety risk, before any message limit applies and even if your membership has ended. If the read can't be done, Evolve Coach answers with its safety wording and helpline numbers to be safe. We keep no copy of your words from that read.

It can be wrong. An AI-written program is checked by our own code (it has to be a complete, valid plan) and reviewed by a second AI pass against your goal, experience, equipment and injuries before it's saved. Evolve Coach's chat replies follow Evolve's training, nutrition and safety rules, messages our safety check recognises as a sign you might be at risk get fixed wording written by people rather than the AI, and we test its answers before we change it. Each reply the AI writes as Evolve Coach in your chat with it also goes through an automatic check of our own before you see it. It is narrow: it adds a helpline number a reply names without one, stops a reply that shows Evolve Coach's internal instructions, keeps calorie and macro numbers out while they're paused for you, and hides your email, phone number or a card number if a reply repeats one. It doesn't catch every mistake, and AI can still get things wrong. Its advice is general fitness guidance, not medical, dietetic, physiotherapy or psychological advice. Check with a professional before acting on anything important.

Notes on Evolve Coach's replies. When that check changes one of Evolve Coach's replies, or your next message says it got something wrong ("that's wrong", "I told you") or asks the same thing again, we note it against its reply: which check, or which kind of phrase, never your words. We look at these notes added up across everyone, to see where Evolve Coach needs to get better.

Who reads your chats with Evolve Coach. Nobody at Evolve reads them as a matter of course. We look at a conversation only when you report one of Evolve Coach's replies, when you ask us to fix a problem, or when the law requires it.

5. Who else sees your data

Only the providers we need to run the service, each receiving only what its function requires: Stripe (web payments), Supabase (database, authentication and file storage), Railway and Vercel (hosting), Anthropic and OpenAI (AI processing as above), our email and SMS providers (service messages), Apple (App Store payments, app distribution, sign-in and push notifications where you use them) and Google (app distribution, sign-in and push notifications where you use them; on this website, Search Console, which shows us search totals and nothing about you) and Meta (Facebook and Instagram, to measure our ads, as set out in section 12). Your coach, if you have one, sees what they need to coach you. We may also disclose information where the law requires it or to protect someone's safety.

Some of these providers store or process data outside Australia: mainly in the United States (Stripe, Anthropic, OpenAI, Vercel, Meta, Apple, Google and our SMS provider, Twilio) and Singapore (where our app servers run). Our AI provider, Anthropic, processes it in the United States and other countries where it runs its service. Where that happens we take reasonable steps, including contractual terms, so your information is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.

6. Photos and videos

Progress photos, form-check videos and food photos are stored in private storage, are only accessible to you (and your coach, if you have one, for form checks and check-ins) and are never used in marketing without your separate written permission. You can delete any photo in the app.

7. How long we keep it

Applications. Our coaching application asks your age range, whether you're pregnant or breastfeeding, about any medical conditions, how much weight you want to lose, your goals and your contact details. We ask the health questions so your coach can check the program is safe for you, and only with your OK on the form. Only our coaching team sees them, and we never share them with Meta or any advertiser. If you don't become a client, we delete your health answers (pregnancy, medical conditions and weight answers) 90 days after you apply.

Giveaway entries. When you enter our giveaway we keep your application, your contact details and your 25-word answer to judge the round, contact the winner, give qualified entrants their discount and follow up about coaching (entering asks our team to call you about joining: the button says Enter and get my call). We don't publish the winner's name: we share their first name and last initial only if they agree to it. We never publish anyone else's answer or details, and we delete giveaway answers 12 months after the round.

Decisions our software makes. Two things are worked out automatically from your answers, by our own code: whether our coaching application offers you a call (for example, people under 18, or pregnant or breastfeeding, aren't offered the 8-week program), and whether a giveaway entrant is a qualified entrant who gets the entrants' discount (from your age, pregnancy, how soon and ready-to-invest answers, as the giveaway terms say). Evolve Coach (AI) also drafts programs and meal plans from your data, and on coaching a coach checks them. If you think a decision about you is wrong, email hello@hqevolve.com and a person will look at it.

For as long as your account is open. When you delete your account, your profile, logs, messages, photos and health data are deleted within 30 days; we keep only what the law requires us to keep, such as payment records for seven years. If your membership lapses without deletion, we keep your data so you can pick up where you left off, and delete it after two years of inactivity. Website analytics are kept separately from your account: our own website counts, which carry only random IDs, are kept no longer than we need them to compare one period with another.

8. Your controls

To exercise any right, or to complain about how we have handled your information, email hello@hqevolve.com. We reply within 30 days. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

9. Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is limited to the people and systems that need it, storage buckets are private and served through short-lived signed links, and uploads are checked before they are stored. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach is likely to cause you serious harm we will notify you and the regulator as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

10. Children

Evolve is for people 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If you give an age under 18 when you sign up, or tell Evolve Coach you're under 18, Evolve Coach won't coach you, plan building stops, and we're told (not what you wrote, just that the account needs an age check) so we can close the account and delete its information.

11. Safety

Evolve Coach is not a crisis service, and nobody at Evolve watches chats in real time. If you're in danger, call 000. For support any time, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For eating or body-image worries, the Butterfly Foundation is on 1800 33 4673 (8am to midnight). If you're not safe at home, 1800RESPECT is on 1800 737 732, any time.

Evolve Coach answers messages our safety check recognises as a sign you might be at risk with fixed wording and these numbers, even if you've used your messages for the day or your membership has ended. No check catches every way of saying it, so when Evolve Coach has reached its limit for the day or the month, its reply saying so also gives Lifeline (13 11 14) and 000. After a safety message, Evolve Coach's Monday note and the app's "it's been a while" notifications pause for a while.

12. This website

What we count ourselves. hqevolve.com counts page visits, button taps and how far people get through our forms, using our own system. It keeps in your browser a random visitor ID and a note of how you first found us (both for up to 30 days), and a random session ID that is cleared when you close the tab or after 30 minutes without activity. It records which page you are on, the website you came from (its name only, never the full address), any campaign tags in the link, the kind of device, how long a page was open and how far down it you scrolled, and which form questions you reached and finished, where you stopped, and how long each took. It never records what you type into a form, and never your name, email, phone number or IP address (your IP address is only used for a moment to stop abuse and is not stored). This counting sets no cookies and needs no consent. To turn it off in your browser, add ?notrack=1 to any page address. Apart from the Meta Pixel below (only if you accept it) and the one cookie that remembers your answer about it, this website sets no cookies and runs no Google Analytics, advertising pixels or other third-party trackers.

Measuring our ads (Meta), only if you say yes. When we run ads on Facebook or Instagram, we'd like to use the Meta Pixel on this website and Meta's Conversions API from our servers to see which ads bring people in, and to show our ads to people more likely to want coaching. A bar at the bottom of the page asks first. Until you tap Accept, nothing of Meta's loads and nothing about you is sent to Meta; if you tap Decline, nothing is sent at all. We remember your choice for a year (a cookie on this website). Change your choice. If you accept, the Pixel (Meta's code) sets Meta's own cookies in your browser and tells Meta which of our pages you opened, and when you send a coaching application or book a free call. When you do either, or pay for coaching, our servers send Meta that step with your country, your browser's IP address and type, and Meta's cookie and ad click IDs (we keep the cookie and click IDs and your browser type with your application, never your IP address, so a payment days later still counts for the ad), and for a payment its amount. Only if you also tick the optional box on our application do we add your email, phone number and first name, scrambled first (hashed, so Meta can only match them to an account it already knows, never read them). We never send Meta your answers to the application or anything from the app: not your weight, goals, health, pregnancy or GP answers, training, food or messages. Meta uses this under its own terms and privacy policy, and may process it outside Australia. To stop Meta using it to choose the ads you see, change your settings at facebook.com/adpreferences (or Instagram's Accounts Center, Ad preferences). Adding ?notrack=1 to any page address also turns the Pixel off in that browser, and then nothing about your application or booking is sent to Meta.

What people search on Google. We use Google Search Console to see which Google searches show our pages and how often people click through. Google gives us totals per search phrase and per page only. It does not tell us who searched, and nothing is collected from your browser for it.

Forms and the app. When you send a form we get what you type in it, plus how you first found us (the page you first landed on, the website you came from, any campaign tags in the link and whose link you used, and Meta's ad click ID if you came from an ad), so we can see which pages and ads bring people in. That note is kept with your application or sign-up. The app stores a small amount of data on your device so it works offline and keeps you signed in; signing out or clearing your browser data removes it.

13. Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top and, for anything material, tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.