Important: AskFredd.ai provides educational information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Privacy Policy

AskFredd.ai is a free, public educational tool. It requires no registration and is designed to collect as little personal data as technically possible. This policy applies to all users worldwide, whether they are located inside or outside the European Union.

Last updated: 2026

1. Data Controller

AskFredd.ai was conceived and created by Federico Baranzini, who acts as the data controller for the limited processing described in this policy. For any privacy-related request, you can reach out through his contact page.

2. What Data We Process

AskFredd.ai is intentionally minimal in its data handling:

  • No account data. We do not ask you to sign up, and we do not collect your name, email address, or any contact details.
  • Questions you type. The queries you submit are sent to our AI service and to a web-search provider so we can generate an answer. They are processed to produce your response and are not linked to your identity.
  • Technical data. Like most websites, our servers may temporarily process technical information such as your IP address and basic request logs, strictly for security, abuse prevention (rate limiting), and to keep the service running.
  • Essential cookies only. We use a single local preference (your cookie-consent choice and theme) stored in your own browser. We do not use advertising or profiling cookies.

3. Please Do Not Share Personal Health Information

AskFredd.ai is an educational tool, not a clinical service. We strongly advise you not to enter personal identifying information or your own health details (such as your name, medical history, or specific symptoms tied to you) into the search box. Ask questions in general, educational terms instead. We do not create patient records and do not want to receive sensitive personal data.

4. Reporting a Problematic Response

Each AI answer includes a report button (triangle icon) that lets you flag a response you consider inaccurate, potentially dangerous, poorly sourced, inappropriate, or affected by a technical problem. When you send a report, an email is delivered to the person responsible for the tool so the content can be reviewed and improved. To allow this review, the report includes the question and the answer involved, plus any optional note you choose to add.

Because the report is sent by email, please do not include any identifying or personal information in it. Do not type names, surnames, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, or any detail that could identify you or another person — either in your original question or in the optional note. Describe the problem in general terms only. The optional note is free text: whatever you write there will be sent as-is, so keep it strictly about the content issue.

Reports are used solely to check and improve the quality and safety of the answers. They are not used to build a profile of you or to retrain the AI models. This feature is optional: it is used only when you actively choose to send a report.

5. Purpose and Legal Basis

We process the limited data above only to:

  • generate answers to your questions and display relevant sources;
  • keep the service secure, stable, and free from abuse;
  • remember your cookie and display preferences on your device.

For users in the European Union, the legal basis is our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) in providing and securing the service, and your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) for non-essential storage where applicable. For users outside the EU, we apply these same principles as our baseline standard everywhere.

6. Third-Party Service Providers

To operate, AskFredd.ai relies on a small number of specialised providers that process your queries on our behalf:

  • an AI language model provider, which generates the educational answers;
  • a web-search provider, which retrieves live results and sources from the internet;
  • our hosting and infrastructure provider, which runs the website.

These providers act as data processors and only receive what is necessary to perform their function. We do not sell, rent, or trade any data with anyone.

7. International Data Transfers (Users Inside and Outside the EU)

AskFredd.ai is accessible worldwide. Because our AI, search, and hosting providers may operate servers in various countries — including outside the European Economic Area, such as the United States — your queries may be processed in a country whose data-protection laws differ from those of your own.

If you are in the EU/EEA: such transfers are made on an occasional basis and rely on appropriate safeguards where available (for example, Standard Contractual Clauses) and, where those do not apply, on the exception for transfers necessary to provide a service you have actively requested (Art. 49 GDPR).

If you are outside the EU/EEA (for example in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Latin America, or elsewhere): by using AskFredd.ai you understand that your queries are processed internationally in order to deliver the service. We still apply the minimal-data and no-profiling principles described here regardless of your location.

8. Data Retention

Conversations are session-based: the questions and answers shown in your browser are not stored in a personal profile and are cleared when you close or refresh the session. Technical security logs are kept only for the short time needed for security and abuse-prevention purposes, then deleted or anonymised.

9. No Profiling or Automated Decisions About You

We do not build user profiles, we do not track you across other websites, and we do not make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you. The AI generates general educational content only.

10. Artificial Intelligence and the EU AI Act

AskFredd.ai is an automated AI system. When you use it, you interact with software, not with a person, and no human or clinician reviews the answers before they are shown to you. In line with the transparency obligations of the EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50), we make this clear through a permanent notice in the chat and a mandatory acknowledgement before you can start.

The educational answers are synthetic content generated entirely by artificial intelligence, using large language models accessed through the Abacus.AI platform together with real-time web search. Your queries are sent to these providers only to generate your answer; they are not used to build a profile of you and are not used to retrain the AI models.

Because this tool covers mental-health topics, anything you type could reveal sensitive information (special-category data under Art. 9 GDPR). For this reason we ask you not to enter your name, other people’s names, or any personal or identifying health information in the chat. Full details are set out in our AI Policy.

11. Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your personal data. For EU/EEA users under the GDPR these include the right to access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, and data portability, as well as the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. Users in other regions (for example under UK GDPR, or US state privacy laws such as the CCPA/CPRA) may have comparable rights.

Because we do not maintain accounts or user profiles, we typically hold no personal data that can be linked to you individually. If you believe we process data concerning you, you may contact us through the contact page and we will respond in line with applicable law.

12. Children

AskFredd.ai is intended for adults, in particular healthcare professionals and informed members of the public. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect data from minors.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or in applicable law. The most current version will always be available on this page, with the “Last updated” date revised accordingly.

14. Related Information

Please also read our AI Policy, our Disclaimer & Terms of Use, and our Cookie Policy. If you or someone you know is in crisis, see our Emergency Resources page.