We told you your words never left your device. That’s no longer true, and you deserve to hear why — and what it means — in plain terms, from us, before anyone else tells you.
Why we’re saying this so directly
If you’re part of this community, you already know what it costs when an institution — a hospital, a government office, a piece of technology — makes a promise and quietly breaks it. That history is real, and it’s exactly why we built LEGH the way we did: to be one place that doesn’t do that to you.
So when something about how we protect your privacy changes, we’re not going to bury it in a policy update nobody reads. We’re going to tell you straight, admit the trade-off, and show you what’s still true.
What changed, and why
Oji Echo was originally built to run entirely on infrastructure we controlled ourselves — nothing leaving the room. Building and hosting that alone, without a budget, as one person, turned out to take longer than the people who need this support could wait.
So we made a different choice: Oji Echo now runs through a third-party technology partner, on encrypted cloud infrastructure, instead of staying fully local. That is a real trade-off, and we’re not going to dress it up as anything else.
Hope Echo is built the same way and isn’t open to the public yet. When she opens, everything on this page applies to her too, and we’ll say so on our Updates page first.
Who’s involved
Three outside parties are in the path of your words. Here they are by name, and what each one does:
- DigitalOcean hosts LEGH’s own companion server. This is where saved conversations live until they are deleted.
- OpenRouter is the routing service. It carries your message from LEGH’s server to the AI model, and the reply back.
- The model provider. OpenRouter chooses which company runs the AI model for each message. We don’t pick. We’ve told OpenRouter to use only providers it lists as zero-retention, meaning they’ve agreed to store nothing. The providers eligible today are DekaLLM, NextBit, DeepInfra, CoreWeave, Venice, Parasail, NovitaAI, SiliconFlow, io.net, and Google Vertex. They are different companies in different places, so your message may be processed outside the United States. DekaLLM, for example, runs its servers in Indonesia, and io.net describes itself as a decentralized network of computers. We can’t tell you in advance which one will answer. That list can change, and when it does, this page will too.
We name them so you can read their published policies for yourself.
What happens to your words — in plain terms
- Where your message goes: When you talk with Oji Echo, your message travels — encrypted — to a cloud server that LEGH controls. That server passes it, through a routing service, to an AI model provider to generate a response, then sends the reply back to you.
- What we save, and for how long: LEGH’s server saves the conversation — your messages, Oji Echo’s replies, the time, and a random session code that keeps one conversation together — but never your name, email address, or IP address. To limit abuse, our server briefly uses your connection address; it isn’t saved with your messages. Saved conversations are deleted automatically 55 days after they were sent, and we keep no backup copies.
- Who could see it: No one at LEGH reads your individual conversations as a routine. Saved conversations can be opened only by LEGH’s founder — to catch mistakes and keep Oji Echo trustworthy, or to carry out a deletion request from you — never to identify who wrote them.
- What we never do: We never sell your words. We never use them for marketing. We never use them to train any AI model. We have also told OpenRouter not to use any provider that trains on your data. We rely on each provider’s own published terms for that, and we can’t check them ourselves. If that ever changes, this page will say so.
- What the outside services keep: Your message isn’t tied to your name or account when it’s sent — it goes through anonymously. The routing service and the AI model provider each follow their own published policies on what they keep and for how long, and we can’t promise an exact number of days for either. Even when OpenRouter lists a provider as zero-retention, that provider’s own terms may describe keeping content briefly for operations, or longer for reasons such as support, abuse review, or legal compliance. We can’t independently verify any provider’s practices. We are actively working toward a setup where nothing is retained outside our own server, and the moment that’s true, this page changes to say so.
- If you tell us something’s wrong: Tapping thumbs up, thumbs down, or reporting a problem with a reply sends us that reply’s text, any note you choose to add, and the random session code for that conversation. Only LEGH’s founder reviews it, it’s kept for 55 days, then it’s gone automatically, same as saved conversations on our own server.
What protections remain
This isn’t an unprotected handoff. Your messages are encrypted on the way to and from our server. The routing service we use is bound by data processing terms that we’ve accepted, and those terms require it to tell us within 72 hours of learning that personal data has been compromised. If anything touching your messages is ever compromised, we’ll tell you here as soon as we know.
Other things your browser loads
These have nothing to do with what you type to Oji Echo, but you should know about them:
- Page-visit counts. Pages on LEGH.org, like articles and Know Your Roots, use Plausible Analytics to count visits. Plausible’s own published policy says it uses no cookies and does not track you across websites. The chat page with Oji Echo does not use it.
Asking us to delete something
Because your messages aren’t tied to your name, we can’t look them up by who you are. To have a conversation deleted, email contact@legh.org with roughly when you sent it and a phrase you typed. We’ll find it, delete it, and confirm within 30 days. If we can’t find it, it is still deleted automatically 55 days after it was sent.
If you sign up for updates
When you enter your email address on LEGH.org to be notified about what’s new, it is stored in our website’s form system and emailed to us at contact@legh.org. We use it only for the purpose you signed up for, and for nothing else. You can ask us to see or remove it anytime by emailing contact@legh.org, and we’ll act within 30 days.
A word before you talk to Oji Echo
You never need to type your name, address, or other details that could identify you for Oji Echo to help. Anything you type is saved for 55 days, so keep those details out of it.
Oji Echo is here to walk with you, not to replace real help. He is not a therapist, not a crisis line, and he is not watched by a live person in the moment you’re typing. If what you’re carrying feels like more than you can hold alone, please reach real people who are ready right now:
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988 Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741
Our word to you
The lines we will not cross are written down on What LEGH Will Not Do.
We would rather tell you an honest, unfinished truth than a polished promise we couldn’t keep. This page will always say what’s actually true today — and the moment that changes, you’ll hear it here first.