Privacy by Design: How MEMEX Protects What Matters Most

Aug 20
2 min read

When people first hear that MEMEX is a “monitoring tool,” their first question is almost always the same: “But what about privacy?”

It’s a fair question — because privacy isn’t just important, it’s everything.

We built MEMEX to protect vulnerable people without stripping away their dignity, independence, or trust. That meant designing it very differently from the kinds of tools you might use to monitor children, employees, or devices.

Here’s how MEMEX keeps privacy at the center of everything it does:

1. Their Data Stays on Their Device

By default, all notifications stay local to the device. Nothing is stored in a cloud database waiting to be hacked or misused.
You control which apps MEMEX can read. Don’t want it scanning their work email? Just don’t select it — those notifications are ignored completely.
When notifications are processed, they are encrypted in transit (via HTTPS), deleted immediately after analysis, and never stored persistently on our servers.
We don’t even ask for their real name or email address. MEMEX works anonymously. OpenAI may temporarily see a message like “My carer, Lisa, was late today” in order to generate an analysis, but they will never know who Lisa is.

2. What MEMEX Doesn’t Read

Unlike parental control tools or spyware apps, MEMEX is intentionally limited:

It has zero control over the phone — MEMEX can’t change settings or install anything.
It cannot watch the screen — no screenshots, no screen recordings.
It cannot see browser history — your searches, websites, or bookmarks remain private.
It cannot read entire conversations — only inbound communications are analyzed, and only for signals of concern.
It does not track location — no GPS, no check-ins, no movement history.
It does not monitor photos, camera, or microphone — your media and private moments stay private.
It does not record calls — spoken conversations are never captured.
It does not request contacts or social graphs — who you know and how you connect remains yours alone.

In short: MEMEX looks at signals, not surveillance.

3. Guardians Don’t See What’s Private

Even when MEMEX does process a notification, that content is not shown to the guardian unless it is flagged as a risk. If a text is harmless, it stays invisible. The guardian never reads private conversations — they only see an alert if something truly concerning is detected.

4. Privacy by Intentional Design

All of this isn’t just a technical choice — it’s a moral one.

We designed MEMEX to balance two truths:

Vulnerable people deserve protection.
Vulnerable people also deserve privacy.

By focusing only on what matters, MEMEX delivers the highest quality alerts — because the most reliable signals of risk come from inbound communications. That’s where scams, manipulations, and emotional pressures usually appear: in texts, emails, app notifications, and system alerts. By watching the flow of what comes into someone’s life, MEMEX can spot problems early, without needing to pry into everything else.

The Bottom Line

MEMEX is not surveillance. It’s not control. It’s a quiet layer of reassurance that protects without intruding.That’s why we call it privacy-first monitoring — because your loved one’s dignity is worth as much as their safety.