Privacy Policy

Draft — not yet legal advice. This policy may change as FamKnit develops.

Who we are

FamKnit (“we”, “us”) is a family organizer app, based in the United Kingdom. Contact: privacy@famknit.app.

For the purposes of UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are the data controller for the personal data described below.

What data we collect

We do not collect: phone numbers, precise location, advertising identifiers, analytics profiles, or any data for marketing. There are no ads and no third-party tracking in FamKnit.

Email communications: we send three kinds of email, and no others.

1. Account and security email (verification, password reset, notice that your password changed, an invitation an administrator sends you to join a family or to have your own login, and a notice that you were removed from a family, that someone left, or that a family has closed). Necessary to operate your account and your membership of a family, so these are always sent.
2. Reminders you asked for. If you set your reminder channel to Email in Preferences, we email you about your own tasks at the times you configured. These are service messages rather than marketing: you turn them on yourself, they only ever concern your own content, and every one carries a link back to Preferences. Turn them off by switching your channel back to push, or switch off notifications entirely, and they stop immediately.
3. Anything else is sent only if you have separately opted in, and you can withdraw that consent at any time in Preferences.

We never send marketing email, and we do not sell or share your address.

Cookies. FamKnit uses a small number of cookies to run the service, and none for advertising, analytics, or tracking. The session cookie that keeps you signed in, and a handful of short-lived cookies used only during sign-in (Google sign-in, password reset) are strictly necessary and are covered by that exemption under UK PECR — no banner is shown for them. Two further cookies, famknit_theme and famknit_accent, remember your display choices: whether you've chosen Light or Dark mode (or left it following your device), and which accent colour you picked, so the app can show them immediately when a page loads. Each holds only that one choice, nothing else, lasts up to a year, and is set only once you actually make a choice in Preferences. None of these cookies are used to track you across other sites, and we set no third-party cookies at all. The sign-in and sign-up forms use Cloudflare Turnstile to tell people from automated bots. It runs in a frame served by Cloudflare and stores a small identifier in your browser's local storage for that purpose; we use it only for bot protection, never for advertising or analytics.

Where your data lives

All application data is stored with Supabase in a UK/EU region data centre and is not transferred outside the UK/EEA, with one exception: push notifications are delivered via Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which processes the minimum data needed to deliver a notification (device token and message content). Google participates in the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and offers UK-approved transfer safeguards.

We do not use Firebase for anything other than delivering push notifications. No analytics, crash reporting, or advertising service from Firebase or anyone else is enabled in FamKnit.

Our processors:

• Supabase — database, authentication, hosting of server functions
• Vercel — web application hosting
• Resend — sending account and security emails (verification, password reset, password-changed notices), and task reminders if you have chosen email as your reminder channel
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging — push notification delivery
• Google (only if you choose Google sign-in) — authentication
• Cloudflare (Turnstile, on the sign-in and sign-up forms) — bot protection; it receives technical browser signals, such as your IP address and browser details, to decide whether a visitor is a person or a bot; see “Cookies” above
• Anthropic — reads the photo, pasted text or voice transcript you submit through the optional AI-assisted capture feature, only if you've turned it on; see “AI-assisted capture” below
• Amazon (only if you link the optional Alexa skill) — receives the text of what you ask and FamKnit's spoken reply, in order to answer you on your Echo device or in the Alexa app; see “Voice assistant integration” below

Children and teen accounts

FamKnit has two kinds of entry for a child in a family.

Child profiles. An adult family administrator can add a child by name only. These entries:

• are created and controlled by the adult administrator, not the child;
• contain only a first name/nickname and colour tag;
• have no login, no email, and no device associated with them.

We do not collect personal data from the child through a child profile. Administrators are responsible for the names they add.

Teen accounts. An administrator can give an existing child profile their own login, for example when the child gets a phone. We then hold, for that teen, the same data as for any other member: the email address they sign in with, their sign-in details (a password, or a Google account identifier), their name and colour, the events, to-dos and shopping items they create, their reminder settings and device push token, and their use of the optional features described below. The invitation is emailed to the address the administrator enters. A teen is a member who is not yet an adult, and cannot rename the family, invite or remove anyone, change roles, or become an administrator until an administrator makes them an adult. Nothing changes automatically at any age: only an administrator can make a teen an adult.

Age. FamKnit does not ask for or store dates of birth and cannot verify anyone's age. To give a child a login, the administrator must confirm that the child is 13 or over and that they are the child's parent or legal guardian, or have their permission to set up the account, and administrators must not give a login to a child under 13. We record that confirmation (who gave it and when) in the family's security activity log. The administrator is responsible for that decision and for the accuracy of the confirmation. FamKnit is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly hold a login for a child under 13.

What a teen's family can see. A teen can mark their own events, to-dos and shopping items private, which hides them from the other members of the family, including other teens. The teen's “responsible adults” (by default every adult in the family, which an administrator can narrow to specific adults) can still see those private items, and are reminded of the teen's events. The teen is told this in the invitation email, on the invitation page, and beside every Private control. It applies only to a teen: an adult's private items are never opened up in this way, whether or not the viewer is an administrator. When a teen becomes an adult, their private items become fully private and their responsible adults stop being reminded of their events.

Optional features. A teen account can use the optional features described below (AI-assisted capture and the Alexa skill) on the same terms as any other member: each is off by default and each member turns it on for themselves. AI capture draws on the family's shared monthly allowance.

Your rights. A teen has the same rights as any member (see “Your rights” below) and can download their own data, leave the family, or delete their account themselves. If a teen leaves or their account is deleted, their content is handled exactly as for an adult (see “How long we keep data”).

AI-assisted capture (Smart Scan and Voice notes)

FamKnit has an optional feature that turns a photo of a letter, list or note, pasted text, or a spoken note into event, to-do and shopping suggestions you can review before anything is added. It is off by default, per member, and currently available only to a small number of families while we test it — even where it's available to your family, nothing happens with it until you turn it on yourself in Preferences → AI features.

When you use it:

• What's sent. The photo you take or choose, the text you paste, or the transcript of what you said, is sent to Anthropic (the company behind the Claude models) to identify events, to-dos and shopping items in it. Nothing is added to your calendar or lists automatically — every suggestion is shown to you to review, edit or discard first.
• Voice notes. Your spoken words are turned into text on your own device or by your browser's own speech recognition. The recording itself is never sent to Anthropic or stored anywhere, by us or by them — only the resulting text is. If FamKnit reads a suggestion back to you to confirm it, that's your device's own text-to-speech doing the talking, not Anthropic.
• Images aren't stored. We don't keep the photo once it's been processed, and neither does Anthropic beyond the short period below.
• Retention with Anthropic. Anthropic doesn't use anything you send through this feature to train its models. Under its standard API terms, both what you send and what it returns are deleted from Anthropic's own systems within 30 days; a narrower record may be kept for up to 2 years (or, for safety classification only, up to 7 years) if flagged for Trust & Safety review. This is Anthropic's own retention policy, not one FamKnit sets.
• Turning it off. Preferences → AI features lets you switch Smart Scan and Voice notes off independently, at any time; the entry points in the app disappear as soon as you do.

Voice assistant integration (Alexa)

FamKnit has an optional Alexa skill that lets you ask about your day and add items to your shopping list by voice, on any Echo device or the Alexa app. It's off by default: nothing about your account is reachable from Alexa until you deliberately link it, family member by family member.

When you link it:

• What's shared. Linking gives the Alexa skill access to the same to-dos, events and shopping list you can already see in the app, scoped to you specifically. Private to-dos, events and shopping items are never included in anything the skill reads aloud, no matter who asks.
• What Amazon sees. To answer a question or add something you asked for, Amazon's Alexa service necessarily receives the text of your spoken request and FamKnit's spoken reply (which may include, for example, the titles of what's due today) in order to read it aloud on your device. This is a normal part of how any Alexa skill works and is governed by Amazon's own Alexa privacy notice; FamKnit does not control how long Amazon's voice service itself retains this.
• Voice recognition. If your household has Alexa's Recognized Voice / Voice ID feature turned on, each family member can link their own FamKnit account to their own voice separately, so a shared Echo answers each person from their own account rather than one shared one. This is entirely Amazon's own feature; FamKnit only ever receives whichever account's access token Amazon's request carries.
• Adding items by voice. Asking the skill to add something to your shopping list writes it directly to your family's shared shopping list, the same as adding it in the app — there is no separate review step before it's added.
• Turning it off. Unlink at any time from Preferences → Connected apps and devices → Alexa (Disconnect), or from the Alexa app itself. Either way, the link is revoked immediately and Alexa can no longer reach your account.

How long we keep data

Your data is kept while your account is active. If you delete your account, your membership, preferences, push tokens, and reminder logs are deleted immediately, and so is everything you created — every event, to-do, and shopping item, whether or not other family members were also on it. The only exceptions are a shared list (like the family's shopping list) and a recurring event series you created: these stay with the family rather than being deleted with you, because removing them would also remove every other family member's items or upcoming occurrences, not just yours. If you're the only remaining adult in your family, deleting your account deletes the whole family, including any child profiles on it, since nobody would be left to use it. A teen's own login is not deleted when this happens, but they are no longer in a family, and we email them to say the family has closed.

Security activity log

Separately from the above, we keep a security log of significant account and family actions: creating, renaming or deleting a family, rotating an invite code, someone joining, a child profile being added, a child being given their own login (including the administrator's confirmations about the child's age and their own authority), a teen being made an adult, a member's role being changed, a member being removed or leaving, and an account being erased. Each entry records what happened and when, who did it (their name, email address, and the role they held at the time), and the IP address and browser the action came from. It does not record the contents of your events, to-do items or shopping lists.

We keep these entries for 365 days, after which they are deleted automatically. This log exists for security: it is how we, or you, can establish what actually happened if an account is misused or a change is disputed. For that reason it is retained even after you delete your account, for the remainder of that 365 days. UK GDPR allows this where keeping limited personal data is necessary for the security of the service and for establishing, exercising or defending legal claims (Art. 17(3)). These entries are never used for marketing, profiling or any other purpose.

Where this log is shown to family administrators inside the app, the view is redacted: it shows the action, who did it and when, but never email addresses or IP addresses.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, correct, export, delete, and object to processing of your personal data. In-app:

• Export: Settings → “Download my data” gives you a complete JSON copy of your data (Art. 15/20).
• Delete: Settings → “Delete my account” permanently removes your account and associated personal data as described above (Art. 17).

For anything else, email privacy@famknit.app. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

Security

• All traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS is enforced across famknit.app).
• Data is encrypted at rest by our hosting providers.
• Access to your family's data is enforced at the database level (row-level security): private events are visible only to the people they are shared with, and no one outside your family can access any of it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we will notify account holders by email or in-app notice before the change takes effect.