Happify

First reviewed April 20, 2022. Review updated, April 25, 2023

Happify is an app that seems to have not gotten better or worse over the last year. This year we could no longer find any mention in their privacy policy saying the company could be collecting data about your from public or third party privacy sources (like, potentially, data brokers), which is good. They still do collect a good bit of personal information and say they can share with affiliates and partners, which you hope will be OK. We did have concerns about how long they say they can retain your data after you request it be deleted. Their privacy policy reads, "We will comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable," which is rather vague. But, they do say they will delete your data, no matter what privacy laws you live under so that's good.

In 2023 we're still unable to confirm if Happify meets or Minimum Security Standards, as they didn't respond to our emailed questions sent to the email address listed in their privacy policy for such questions. That's bad form, Happify. More bad form from Happify (and something that really irks privacy researchers) is they signed your lovely privacy researcher up for their email list without consent. Bad! They also drop people looking to get started using Happify into a questionnaire that asks about gender, age, race, employment status, relationship status, parental status, your mental state, and other sensitive questions before they offer you a privacy policy or any idea how all this personal information can and will be used on you. Unfortunately, this isn't uncommon for mental health apps, but dang it sure does feel icky.

Read our 2022 review:

First of all, we're not at all sure why Happify needs access to your phone's flashlight, but indeed, it does request permission to control your device's flashlight when you download the app. Which is kinda funny, but also a good reminder to check the permissions an app will require before downloading it. Some of them might surprise (or frighten) you.

Happify does collect a fair amount of personal information and app usage data, as we found with nearly all the mental health apps we reviewed. They do say they can use data they collect for advertising purposes. Happify also says they reserve the right to share or sell aggregate or group data about Happify users. Generally, this aggregate data is data with no personally identifiable information. However, with the use of things like device identifiers and location data, both of which Happify says they can collect, it has been found to be relatively easy to re-identify such user data.

On the security front, we were unable to confirm is Happify has a way to manage security vulnerabilities. We emailed the company multiple times at the email provided in their privacy policy for privacy related questions to try and get answers to our questions.. We received no response. There is this line in Happify's privacy policy (many privacy policies we read contain something similar) that states, "Please be advised, however, that while we take every reasonable precaution available to protect your data, no storage facility, technology, software, security protocols or data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Computer hackers that circumvent our security measures may gain access to certain portions of your Personal Information, and technological bugs, errors and glitches may cause inadvertent disclosures of your Personal Information." Which is a good reminder that, yeah, any personal data you share pretty much anywhere on the internet, Happify included, is not safe.

What's the worst that could happen? Well, no one wants their terrible happiness score available for all the world to see. Here's hoping that never happens.