Your privacy matters most when you're reaching out for support. talk.help is a free, no-account chatbot, and it's built so you can talk freely. There's no sign-up, no advertising, and no tracking of who you are.
What talk.help is
talk.help is an AI chatbot for wellbeing and crisis support. You're talking to a language model, not a human counsellor. It can listen and help you find real, vetted, local resources, but it is not a substitute for emergency services, a doctor, or a therapist. If you're in immediate danger, call your local emergency services.
Nothing is kept on your device
Your conversation lives only in memory in this browser tab while you're using it. We do not save it to cookies, localStorage, or anywhere else on your device. If you reload the page or press Quick Exit, the conversation on your screen is gone.
The one small thing we remember in your browser is your light/dark theme preference. It's a setting, not a tracker, and it never leaves your device.
What is stored on our side
To keep this service safe and accountable, the text of conversations is logged on our server. We're candid about this because it's an important exception to "nothing is stored":
- Encrypted at rest — transcripts are encrypted (AES-256-GCM) before they're written to our database. They're kept only for safety and compliance purposes, not to build any profile of you.
- Time-limited — transcripts are kept only for a limited time and then automatically deleted.
- No account links them to you — there are no usernames or logins, so transcripts aren't tied to an identity. A short-lived, random session id groups the turns of a single conversation, nothing more.
Location and abuse prevention
- Approximate location — we detect only your country (and sometimes region) from your network, so we can show helplines that are local to you. Your IP address is not stored.
- Rate limiting — to keep the service available and prevent abuse, we use a one-way hash of your IP address. The hash can't be reversed back into your IP, and we don't store the raw address.
How we decide what to show
Messages are checked by an automated safety classifier so the interface can surface relevant crisis resources when they might help. The resources you see come from a vetted database (NOPE), chosen for your location. The chatbot itself never invents phone numbers or service names; the real, local resources are surfaced by the interface.
When you contact a helpline
When you call, text, or chat with a helpline shown here, you're communicating directly with that organization, not through us. Each helpline has its own privacy policy and confidentiality practices.
Most helplines are confidential, meaning they won't share what you discuss. However, they may have obligations to act if there's an immediate risk of serious harm. The helpline will explain their policies when you contact them.
Services we rely on
- AI model — replies are generated by a large language model accessed through OpenRouter. Your messages are sent to that provider to produce a response.
- Safety & resources — risk signalling and crisis resource lookup are provided by NOPE.
- Hosting — this site runs on Railway, with our encrypted transcript store and rate-limit counters on a managed Redis service.
Quick Exit
The "Quick Exit" button immediately navigates away from this site. It's there for your safety if you need to leave the page fast. Note that this site may still appear in your browser history, so you may want to clear your history if that's a concern.
Your rights
Because there are no accounts, transcripts aren't linked to an identity we could look up, and they're deleted automatically after a short retention window. If you have a question about your data, you can reach us through nope.net.
Changes to this policy
If we update this policy, we'll note the date at the top of this page. We won't make changes that reduce your privacy without clear notice.