Privacy Policy

Gather is a shared space for a family's holidays — gatherings, travel plans, wishlists, gift exchanges, jobs, recipes, and photos — on the web and as an iPhone app. It's made by Nordighund LLC ("we", "us"). This policy explains what information Gather handles, who can see it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. The short version: what you add to a family is there for that family, and we don't sell it, advertise with it, or track you. The rules for using Gather are in our Terms of Use.

Information We Collect

When you use Gather, our server stores what you give it:

• Your account: your email address, your name, and your password, which we store only as a scrambled, one-way hash — never the password itself. We also store which app icon you've picked and, if you set one, who your partner is.
• Your families: which families you belong to, which one you started (its admin), and each family's name and join code.
• Kids you add: a kid's name, their parent, and an optional second parent. Kids don't have their own login or email address.
• Wishlists: each wish's name, price, link, notes, and photo, who added it, and — so two people don't buy the same gift — who has put it in their cart or bought it, and when.
• Gatherings: the occasion, title, dates, place, and notes.
• Travel plans: your dates, where you're staying, flight numbers, and any details you add.
• Gift exchanges: their name, budget, date, notes, who's playing, and the names drawn — who is giving to whom.
• Pitch In jobs, recipes (text, links, and photos), and photos you add to a family's albums, with any caption, the holiday they belong to, and when they were taken.
• A push notification token, if you allow notifications in the iPhone app, along with the device name your phone reports. It's used solely to deliver notifications.
• Emails you send to Gather's wishlist address, if you use it: we read the sender's address to find your account and the subject and first link to add the wish.
• Standard server logs, like most servers keep — for example, IP address, time, and the page requested — used for security and fixing problems. Passwords, email addresses, and tokens are filtered out of them.
• If you use the web form to request account deletion, the email address and name you enter, used only to find your account and reply to you.

Gather does not ask for your phone number, contacts or address book, location, or payment details — Gather sells nothing, so there's no billing information to collect.

Photos. Every photo you add — to an album, a recipe, or a wish — is resized and re-compressed on our server, and the copy we keep has its embedded metadata (such as camera details and GPS location) removed. We don't keep the original file.

Google Photos. If you choose to import from Google Photos, you sign in with Google and pick photos in Google's own picker. Gather asks only for read-only access to the photos you pick — it can't see the rest of your library. We download the ones you import, keep the copies described above along with Google's identifier for each photo (so it isn't imported twice), and close the picker session when you're done. The access Google gives us is held only in your signed-in session, never saved to our database, and expires on its own.

What Other People Can See

• The people in a family see what's added to that family: its gatherings, travel plans (including flight numbers), jobs, recipes, photos, gift exchanges, and who's in it — the grown-ups, their kids, and who is partnered with whom.
• Your wishlist, and your kids', can be seen by everyone in every family you belong to.
• On a wishlist, other people can see whether a gift has been claimed or bought, and by whom. You never see that on your own wishlist; parents see it on their kids' lists.
• In a Secret Santa, you see only the person you drew. Parents see who their kids drew. Nobody else is shown your draw in the app.
• The family's admin can see the family's join code and invite link, which let anyone who has them join the family. The admin can change the code at any time.
• Nothing you add to Gather is public. There are no public profiles, and nothing is visible to people outside your families.

How We Use Information

• To run Gather: sign you in, show your families what they've shared, draw names for gift exchanges, and keep wishlists from spoiling surprises.
• To send you email: password and sign-in links, family invites, your gift exchange draw, and notices when something happens in your family — a gathering is planned, someone adds travel plans or photos, a job is assigned to you, or someone joins.
• To send push notifications in the iPhone app for those same things, if you've allowed them. A kid's notifications go to their parents.
• To find a product photo for a wish with a link: our server fetches that web page and picks out its product image. The request comes from our server, not your device.
• To keep the Service secure and working, and to fix problems.

We do not use your information for advertising, to build a profile of you, or to train machine learning models.

No Ads, No Tracking

Gather shows no ads and doesn't track you across other companies' apps or websites. The iPhone app contains no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs — only Hotwire Native, an open-source framework that displays Gather's pages — does not use your device's advertising identifier, and doesn't ask for App Tracking Transparency permission because there's nothing to ask for.

Gather's pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, so, as with any website that uses Google Fonts, your browser or the app asks Google's servers for the font files, and Google receives your IP address and basic browser information in doing so. Google handles that under its own privacy policy. Gather sends Google nothing about you or your account.

Flight numbers in travel plans link to FlightAware's live tracking page, and wishes link to wherever you or your family pointed them. Following one of those links takes you to that site, which handles your information under its own policy.

Sharing of Information

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We use a small number of service providers to operate the Service, each handling only what its job requires:

• Cloudflare, which carries traffic between your browser or the app and our server.
• Postmark, our email delivery provider, which delivers the emails described above — including invites, which go to the email address a family admin enters for the person they're inviting.
• Apple, which delivers push notifications to the iPhone app. A notification carries its title and short message — for example, who planned which gathering, or the name of a job you've been asked to do. Gift exchange draws are never sent in a push notification; you see who you drew in the app or the draw email.
• Google, only if you import from Google Photos, as described above.

We may also disclose information we hold: to comply with a law, regulation, or legal process; to protect the rights, property, or safety of our users or the public; or if Nordighund LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, in which case we'd notify you before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

How Long We Keep Things

• Your account and the things you've added are kept until you delete them or your account is deleted.
• Things you add to a family — gatherings, jobs, recipes, photos, and gift exchanges — belong to that family. If you leave a family, what you added stays with it; ask us if you'd like something removed.
• Kids' profiles and wishlists are kept until a parent removes them.
• Push notification tokens are kept until you sign out of the app, until Apple tells us the token is no longer valid, or until your account is deleted.
• Your sign-in in the browser or app lasts up to a year, unless you sign out.
• Password reset links stop working after 15 minutes, or as soon as they're used.
• Server logs are rotated automatically and overwritten as new ones come in.
• A web account-deletion request is kept by email only as long as needed to act on it and reply.

Where Your Data Lives

Gather runs on a server we own and operate ourselves in the United States, and your information — including photos — is stored in our own database and file storage on it. We don't use a third-party backend-as-a-service or hand your data to a cloud database vendor.

Your Choices

• Edit or delete what you've added — wishes, travel plans, recipes, photos, and the rest — at any time.
• Leave a family from the Family page. A family's admin can also remove a member.
• Notifications. You can turn off Gather's push notifications at any time in your device's Settings.
• Google Photos. You can remove Gather's access at any time from your Google Account's security settings.

Delete your account. In the app or on the website, go to the Family page and choose Delete my account (it's also on the welcome screen if you haven't joined a family yet). This immediately and permanently deletes your login, name, and app icon, your wishlist, the travel plans, recipes, and photos you added, your place in every family and gift exchange, and your push notification registration. A family you started passes to its longest-standing other member, along with the gatherings, jobs, and gift exchanges you set up in it; if nobody else is in it, the family and everything in it is deleted. A kid you added stays with their other parent, if they have one; otherwise the kid's profile and wishlist are deleted too. If you can't get into your account, use our account deletion form or email us at [email protected].

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal information under laws such as the GDPR or CCPA, including rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your data. To exercise any of them, contact us and we'll respond within the time the law requires.

Children's Privacy

You need to be at least 13 to have your own Gather account. Younger kids don't sign up or log in: a parent adds a kid's name and looks after their wishlist, and that information is shared only with the parent's families. We do not knowingly collect information directly from anyone under 13, and if we learn that we have, we will delete it. A parent can remove a kid's profile at any time, or contact us to have it removed.

International Users

Our server is located in the United States. If you use Gather from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may have different data protection laws than your country.

Security

Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes. Traffic between your browser or the app and our server is encrypted in transit. When our server fetches a link for a wishlist photo, it refuses to connect to private network addresses. Your information is not end-to-end encrypted: it's stored on our server so your family can see it, and we may access it when needed to operate the Service or comply with the law. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information using reasonable technical and organizational measures.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we will update the effective date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify you by email or in the app.

Contact Us

Questions about this policy or your data? Email us at [email protected].