ShareRound Privacy Policy

ShareRound (“ShareRound,” “we,” “us”) operates a mobile application and website (the “Service”) that lets people catalog the things they own and keep track of what they have lent to and borrowed from other people. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights and choices you have.

This policy applies to the Service. It does not apply to anything another user does with information you share with them, or to any website or service we link to.

The short version: we collect the minimum we need to run the Service. We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, we do not use third-party analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting tools, and we do not send text messages.

1. Information we collect

We collect the following categories of personal information, using the categories set out in the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”):

We do not collect: precise geolocation, government identifiers, financial account or payment card numbers, biometric information, health information, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, union membership, sexual orientation, immigration status, the contents of your communications outside the Service, or your contact list (we never read or import your device address book). We do not use cookies or similar technologies for advertising or cross-site tracking.

You are not required to give us a phone number or a photo. If you do not, the Service still works.

2. Where the information comes from

3. Why we use it

We use personal information for these business purposes, and only these:

We do not use your personal information for targeted advertising, for profiling, or to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models, and we do not sell it or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not use automated decision-making technology or profiling to make decisions about you.

4. Who we share it with

With other users

Your first name is visible to other users. Additional profile details, such as your last name, profile photo, email address, or phone number, are visible to others only if you turn that on in your settings. Items you list, and your lending and borrowing activity, are visible to the circles and connections you choose to share them with, and to the specific people involved in a given loan. Please assume that anything you make visible to another user can be copied and kept by them.

With service providers

We use a small number of vendors to run the Service. Today those are Appwrite (cloud database, storage, and authentication, hosted in the United States) and our web hosting provider, Bluehost, which delivers our email. They process personal information on our behalf, under contract, only for the purposes we specify, and are not permitted to sell it, share it, or use it for their own purposes. We may change providers from time to time, and will update this policy when there is a material change to the categories of providers we use.

For legal and safety reasons

We may disclose information where we believe in good faith that it is required by law or legal process, or that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of ShareRound, our users, or the public, or to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims. See Section 10 on how we handle legal requests.

In a business transfer

If ShareRound is reorganized, incorporated, transferred to or affiliated with a company or a nonprofit organization, merged, acquired, or if all or part of its assets are sold or transferred, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will require the recipient to continue handling personal information in a manner consistent with this policy unless and until you are given notice of, and an opportunity to respond to, a materially different policy.

We have not sold or shared personal information in the preceding twelve months, and we have no plans to. If that ever changes, we will update this policy, give you advance notice, and provide a “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link and a working opt-out before any sale or sharing begins. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16.

For Rhode Island residents: we do not sell personal information, and there are no third parties to whom we sell or may sell it. Should that change, we will identify those third parties here before any sale occurs. You may contact us at the address in Section 13.

5. How long we keep it

We do not keep personal information for any fixed period. We keep each category only for as long as it is reasonably necessary for the purposes described in Section 3, and then delete it or render it no longer associated with you. The California Consumer Privacy Act permits us to describe the criteria we use to determine that period rather than a set number of days, and that is what the table below does, because the right period depends on your account, on the other users involved, and on our legal obligations.

Across every category, the criteria we apply are the same four: how long the information is needed to provide the Service to you and to any other user involved; how long it is needed to keep the Service secure and to prevent fraud and abuse; the period within which a related legal claim could be brought or defended; and any retention obligation imposed on us by law. We may keep information longer where necessary to comply with law, resolve a dispute, enforce our Terms of Use, or where a legal hold applies. Deleted information may persist for a further period in routine backups, which are overwritten on a rolling basis, before it is fully purged.

6. Your rights and choices

Available to everyone

California residents

Under the CCPA, California residents have the right to:

We are a very small operation and may fall below the CCPA’s applicability thresholds. We honor these rights regardless.

Residents of other U.S. states

Depending on where you live, including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Florida, and other states with comprehensive privacy laws, you may have rights to confirm whether we process your personal data, access it, correct it, delete it, obtain a portable copy, and opt out of targeted advertising, sale, or profiling. We do not engage in targeted advertising, sale, or profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects. Nevada residents may direct opt-out requests regarding sale of covered information to privacy@shareround.org.

Appeals. If we decline a request and you live in a state that provides an appeal right, you may appeal by replying to our decision or writing to privacy@shareround.org with “Appeal” in the subject line. We will respond in writing within the period your state’s law allows and, if we again decline, will tell you how to contact your state attorney general.

How to make a request

Email privacy@shareround.org, or use the account tools in the app. We will confirm receipt within 10 business days and respond within 45 days, extending by another 45 days if necessary, with notice to you. Requests are free unless they are manifestly unfounded or excessive.

Verification. To protect you, we verify requests by asking you to submit them from the email address on your account, and, for requests about specific pieces of information, by asking you to confirm details we already hold. If we cannot verify you to a reasonable degree of certainty, we will tell you and explain why.

Authorized agents. You may use an authorized agent. We will ask for written permission signed by you, and we may ask you to verify your own identity directly with us.

7. Do Not Track and opt-out preference signals

Our Service does not track users across third-party websites or services, and we do not permit third parties to do so through the Service. Because there is no consistent industry standard for “Do Not Track” browser signals, we do not respond to them differently. There is nothing for them to change. We do treat Global Privacy Control and other recognized opt-out preference signals as a valid opt-out of sale and sharing, which is moot today because we do neither.

8. Information about people who are not ShareRound users (“Managed Profiles”)

The Service lets a user create a placeholder record for someone who does not have a ShareRound account, so the user can track what they lent to or borrowed from that person. A Managed Profile contains the person’s name and, optionally, an email address or phone number.

If someone has created a Managed Profile about you:

Your rights. You have the same rights over this information as any other person whose information we hold, including the right to know what we have, to correct it, and to have it deleted. Email privacy@shareround.org and tell us the name, email address, or phone number that would appear in the record. We will search for it and, if we find it, delete or restrict it. We will not ordinarily identify you to the user who entered the information. Because we have no account to authenticate you against, we may need to ask you a small number of questions to confirm the record is yours. We will not create an account for you, and we will not retain anything beyond what is needed to process the request.

If a Managed Profile is later claimed by the person it describes, it becomes their account and the information in it becomes theirs to control.

9. A note about phone numbers

Providing a phone number is optional, and ShareRound does not send text messages. A phone number is stored only so that another user who already knows it can find you in the app, and only if you have turned on that visibility in your settings. Your phone number is not shown to other users unless you choose to show it. We do not use it for marketing, do not disclose it to any third party for marketing, and do not enroll you in any messaging program.

10. Legal requests and disputes between users

ShareRound is not a party to arrangements between users and does not maintain records for the purpose of proving anything in a dispute between them. We are under no obligation to preserve, produce, certify, or testify about records in any dispute between users, and we delete data in the ordinary course under Section 5.

If we receive a subpoena or other legal process seeking information about a user, then, to the extent permitted by law, we may object, move to quash, seek a protective order, seek reimbursement of our costs from the requesting party, or decline to respond. We may, but are not obliged to, notify the user. We will not disclose the contents of communications except where the law permits, and we may assert the protections of the federal Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq.) and any comparable law.

11. Children

The Service is intended for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, and we ask for your birth month and year at sign-up. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. We do not sell or share personal information at all. If we learn that we hold information about someone under 18, we will delete the account and the information promptly. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact privacy@shareround.org and we will act on it.

12. Security and international users

We use reasonable administrative and technical safeguards designed to protect personal information, including encryption in transit, hashed passwords, and access controls. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot and do not guarantee the security of any information.

The Service is operated in and directed to the United States, and personal information is stored on servers in the United States. It is not intended for individuals in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland. If you access the Service from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and you understand that your information will be processed in the United States.

13. Changes to this policy, and contact

We may update this policy. We will post the updated version with a new “Last updated” date and, for material changes, give notice by email or in-app notice before the change takes effect. If we ever begin selling or sharing personal information, or using it for targeted advertising, we will update this policy and provide the notice and opt-out that applicable law requires before we do so.

Questions, requests, or complaints:

If you need this policy in an alternative accessible format, email privacy@shareround.org and we will provide one.