Privacy Policy

What Circle is

Circle is an app for small private groups — friends, family, roommates, teams — to chat, plan, coordinate and settle up. People join a group (a "circle") by invitation. This policy explains what Circle collects and what it does with it.

What we collect

• Your account: your name, a username, your email address, and your password (we store only a one-way hash of it, never the password). A phone number if you choose to add one; Circle does not send text messages to it.
• Your profile: the Circle Buddy you pick or a photo you upload, and a short bio if you write one.
• What you add to a circle: messages, photos, polls and votes, plans and RSVPs, tasks, expenses and who owes whom, the times you say you are free, and the names and descriptions you give circles and plans. Other members of that circle can see what you add to it.
• Your location — only if you turn on sharing with a circle or a plan. It is precise while you share, goes only to that circle's members, expires on its own at the time you choose, and no history of where you have been is kept.
• Your calendar — only if you connect one (Apple/iCloud, Google or Outlook). Circle reads when you are busy so it can suggest times that work; other members only ever see whether you are free or busy, never what an event is. Event titles are stored only if you turn that on. The sign-in details for your calendar are encrypted where they are stored.
• Your phone's notification address (a push token) so we can notify you, and your notification choices, including any circle you mute.
• Technical information: your IP address and device type when you sign in (to keep your account secure and to limit abuse), and basic records of what you use in the app so we can see whether features work. This stays with us and is never shared with advertisers.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your information, show advertising, or track you across other apps and websites.
• We do not read your contacts, and Circle does not ask for them.
• Face ID, if you turn it on, stays on your phone: we never receive your face or fingerprint.

Who else receives some of it

Circle uses a few services to work. Each receives only what it needs:

• Our hosting and database provider, which stores everything above on our behalf.
• Our email service, which receives your email address and the message when we send a password reset, a confirmation or an invitation.
• Apple, which delivers push notifications to your phone (it receives the notification text).
• Your calendar provider (Apple, Google or Microsoft), only if you connect one.
• A weather service, which receives the approximate position of a plan's place — not who you are.
• OpenStreetMap-based services, which receive the text you type to search for a place and the area of any map you look at — not who you are.
• Apple or Google, if you choose to sign in with them.
• Other members of your circles — what you post in a circle is visible to the people in it.
• Anyone the law requires us to give it to, if we are ever legally required to.

How long we keep it

• Your account and what you added stay until you delete them or your account.
• Sign-in sessions last up to 30 days and end when you sign out.
• A shared location ends at the time you set and is not kept afterwards.
• Reports about content are kept for as long as needed to protect people and the service.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself, inside the app: open the You tab, scroll to the bottom and choose Delete account. We then permanently remove your sign-in, sessions, devices, calendar connections, location, availability and profile picture, and replace your name, username, email and bio with anonymous placeholders. Circles you own pass to another member, or end if you were the only member.

Messages and other things you added to a circle stay, because other people's conversations depend on them, but they no longer identify you — they show as from a deleted user. If you want something removed first, delete it before you delete your account, or write to us.

Your choices and rights

• You can edit or remove your profile and anything you posted.
• You can stop sharing your location, disconnect a calendar, mute a circle, block a person or turn off notifications at any time.
• You can ask us for a copy of your data or ask us to correct or delete it: write to the address below.

Safety

Everything between your phone and Circle is encrypted in transit. Calendar sign-in details are encrypted at rest and passwords are stored only as hashes. No service is perfectly secure, so please use a password you do not use anywhere else.

Children

Circle is for people aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If you think a child has signed up, tell us and we will delete the account.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and tell you in the app.

Who to contact

The contact address for this Circle server has not been set yet.