Mental Load Network

Privacy

Privacy Policy

Effective 18 October 2026

In short

  • We use your household's information only to run the app for your household.
  • With your permission, the app reads your Gmail and Google Calendar to find bills, receipts, appointments and other household admin. It never sends email and only adds to your calendar after you approve.
  • We don't sell your information, use it for advertising, or use it to train AI models.
  • You can download your household's data, ask us to delete it, or remove the app's access to Google at any time.

Who we are

The Mental Load Network is a household organising app run by the team at The Lookahead App in Australia. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean that team, and "the app" means the Mental Load Network app, website and services at thementalloadnetwork.com.

The app is in a pilot with a small number of households. Questions about this policy or your information go to hello@thementalloadnetwork.com.

What we collect

Information you give us

  • Your account: your name and email address, and the sign-in details managed by Google Firebase Authentication. We never see your password.
  • Your household: the people in your household and their roles, and what you enter in the app: tasks, shopping lists, meal preferences, budgets, bills and receipts, vendors, school details, appointments, medications, birthdays and gift ideas, and your comments and corrections to the app's suggestions.
  • Files you upload: bank statements for the weekly budget, and photos you add to create tasks.

Information from your Google account

Only if you connect a Google account, and only with the permissions you approve on Google's consent screen. The next section explains exactly what we access and why.

Information about how you use the app

We record actions in the app, such as completing a task or approving a suggestion, so that the app's assistants can learn your household's preferences and so we can see which features help. We don't use third-party analytics or advertising trackers.

How we use your Google data

When you connect a Google account, the app asks for these permissions:

PermissionWhat the app does with it
Read your email
gmail.readonly		 Looks through your email for household admin: bills and due dates, receipts, vendors and accounts, school notices, prescription and pharmacy emails, and booking confirmations. It skips senders you tell it to ignore. It reads a message's sender, subject and text to pull out those details, then keeps only the details and the message's ID. It doesn't store a copy of your emails.
Write email drafts
gmail.compose		 Puts a draft email in your Drafts folder when you ask, for example to ask a vendor to update your account, or to request a booking. The app never sends email. You review and send any draft yourself.
Read your calendars
calendar.readonly		 Reads upcoming and recent events to turn them into to-dos, track regular appointments, find free time for your goals, and read birthdays from Google's Birthdays calendar.
Add and change events you approve
calendar.events		 Adds an event to your calendar only after you approve it, such as time set aside for a goal, a hold for an appointment, or a block for a task. It can remove events it created. It doesn't change or delete your other events.

We use Google data only to provide these features to your household. We don't use it for advertising, we don't sell it, and we don't use it to train or improve artificial intelligence or machine learning models, ours or anyone else's. No person at The Mental Load Network reads your Google data, unless you ask us to (for example, to look into a problem with a specific email), it's needed for security or to investigate abuse, or the law requires it.

We transfer Google data only to the service providers below that process it for us, under contract, so the app can work. To pull details out of an email, the app sends the email's text to Anthropic's Claude service, which processes it and returns the details. Anthropic doesn't use this data to train its models.

The Mental Load Network's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

How we use the rest of your information

  • To run the app: show your tasks, budget, meal plan and reminders, and route tasks to the right person in your household.
  • To make suggestions, using Claude by Anthropic: for example, sorting a task, drafting a meal plan, suggesting gift ideas, or answering a question you ask the app.
  • To learn your household's preferences from your approvals, corrections and comments, so suggestions improve over time.
  • To send the household's daily digest and reminders to the people you choose.
  • To keep the app secure, fix problems, and meet our legal obligations.

Health information

Medications, scripts and appointments are health information. We collect them only with your consent, when you enter them or connect your email, and use them only to remind your household about refills, scripts and bookings. For appointments, the app keeps the logistics (who, where, when). It doesn't store or send the reason for an appointment, results, or conditions.

Who we share information with

We don't sell or rent your information. We share it only with:

  • Google Cloud and Firebase, which host the app, store its database and handle sign-in.
  • Anthropic, which provides the Claude AI service the app uses to read emails and make suggestions.
  • Kit, only if you join our waitlist or newsletter, to send those emails.
  • Other people in your household, who see the household's shared information according to their role in the app.
  • AI assistants you connect yourself, through Connected assistants, which can see what you allow.
  • Authorities, if the law requires it.

Where your information is stored

The app and its database run on Google Cloud in the United States (Iowa), and Anthropic processes data in the United States. This means your information is stored and processed outside Australia. We choose providers that protect it to a standard similar to the Australian Privacy Principles.

How we protect it

  • Information is encrypted in transit and at rest.
  • The tokens that let the app reach your Google account are stored encrypted, and are used only by the app's own services.
  • Each household's information is kept separate from every other household's, and access is limited to the people and services that need it.

How long we keep it, and deleting it

  • We keep your household's information while your household uses the app.
  • You can download your household's data at any time, from Account, then View & edit your household data.
  • You can ask us to delete your account or your whole household by emailing hello@thementalloadnetwork.com. We'll delete it within 30 days, apart from anything the law requires us to keep.
  • You can remove the app's access to your Google account at any time from your Google Account permissions. The app then can't read your Google data. Ask us and we'll also delete the details it found and the stored connection.

Your choices and rights

You can see and correct most of your information in the app. You can also ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, or to correct or delete it, by emailing hello@thementalloadnetwork.com. We'll reply within 30 days.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, tell us first and we'll try to put it right. You can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Children

The app is for adults running a household. Parents may add information about their children, such as school notices or birthdays; that information is handled under this policy like the rest of the household's.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top, and tell you in the app or by email before a significant change takes effect.