Privacy Policy
Last updated October 30, 2026 · applies to the frienminder beta
The short version
- frienminder helps you keep in touch with friends. To do that, it needs to know when you're busy, not what you're doing. It never uploads the titles, notes or attendees of your calendar events.
- Phone numbers, yours and your contacts', are scrambled on your phone before anything is sent. We never see or store a raw phone number.
- How often you want to see each friend is private. Your friends never see your goal for them.
- Your contacts' photos and addresses are read only on your phone and never sent to us.
- We don't sell your information, show ads, or use outside analytics or tracking tools.
- You can delete your account and everything we hold about you from inside the app, at any time (we keep only the record that you accepted the beta agreement). If you can't use the app, see how to delete your account by email.
- If you're in the EU or the UK, you have rights under data protection law (GDPR). See below.
What we collect and why
Your account
Your email address and password, used only to sign you in and to email you a code if you forget your password. Your password is stored only in scrambled (hashed) form, so we can't read it. Your email is never shown to other users.
The beta agreement
When you accept the Beta Tester Agreement in the app, we record the email address of your account, which version you accepted, the date and time, and which version of the app you used. We email a copy of the agreement to you, with a copy to us at [email protected], and, if you're new to frienminder, a one-time welcome email with tips for getting started, both sent through our email provider. We don't keep your address for the welcome email once it's sent. We keep this record as proof of what was agreed (see "How long we keep it").
Your profile
The name you type, the home city you enter (turned into approximate map coordinates and a metro area such as "Washington, DC"), and your phone's time zone. We use these to show you to friends, to tell whether a friend is close enough to meet up or better for a call, and to suggest times in the right time zone. frienminder never tracks your location.
Your phone number
You enter your mobile number so friends who have it saved can find you. Your phone scrambles it with a one-way function before sending, and our server scrambles it again with a secret key before storing it. We keep only that scrambled version. It can't be turned back into your number, and it's never shown to anyone, including you.
Your contacts
If you allow contacts access, the app scrambles your contacts' phone numbers on your phone and sends only those scrambled values to check which of your contacts are on frienminder. To stop anyone using this check to look up large numbers of strangers, each account can check a limited number of different numbers in any 30 days. To tell numbers you've checked before from new ones, we keep a short scrambled tag for each number checked, for 30 days. It can't be turned back into a phone number, and it's deleted after 30 days or when you delete your account. Nothing else from the check is stored.
If you choose to add or invite a specific contact, we keep their scrambled number and the name you've saved for them, so frienminder can remind you to reach out and connect you when they join. We keep these only for the people you pick, never your whole address book. If you set where one of them lives (the app may suggest it from their contact card), we keep only that time zone with the contact so reminders come at a good time for them. It's private to you, deleted with the contact, and the contact isn't told anything. Contacts' addresses, used to spot friends near a place you're traveling to and to suggest a contact's time zone, are read only on your phone and never sent to us. (To place them on a map, your phone may ask Apple, on iPhone, or Google, on Android, to look up the city name; see Services.)
Contact photos: where a friend appears in the app, it can show the photo you saved for them in your Contacts. The photo is read from your phone each time and never uploaded. Your friends see whatever photo they saved for you, or your initials.
Your calendar
If you allow calendar access, the app reads your calendar on your phone and sends two things:
- Busy times: the start and end times of busy periods for about the next three months, so frienminder can find times you and a friend are both free. Past busy periods are deleted the next time your app syncs.
- Trips: when an event looks like travel (for example "Flight to Chicago"), the app works out the destination on your phone and sends only the city, its approximate coordinates, the dates, and the calendar's internal ID for that event, so updates to the same trip are recognized. The event's actual title and text are not sent.
Event titles, descriptions, attendees, notes and exact addresses never leave your phone. You can choose which of your calendars frienminder looks at (Settings → Calendars frienminder uses); that choice is stored only on your phone. frienminder reads the calendars on the phone it's signed in on, so if you share a phone, choose only your own calendars there.
If you tap Add to calendar on a confirmed plan, the event is added with the plan's place as its location if it has one. On iPhone you see it to review before it's saved; on Android it goes straight into your main calendar. The event is created in your calendar on your phone; nothing about it is sent to us. If the plan is cancelled before it happens, frienminder removes the event it added.
Friends and activity
- Who you're friends with, pending friend requests, and anyone you've blocked.
- Your goal for how often to connect with each friend or contact, and any break you've set. These are private to you.
- Optional settings you choose for a friend, all private to you: the hours you like to take calls from them, and a relationship label (such as "Wife" or "Partner"), which only changes wording like "a date". Friends never see these.
- Catch-ups you log (the date and whether it was a call or a get-together), and any note you add. Notes are private to you; friends never see them.
- Plans you propose or accept, and your answers when a friend says they're coming to your town.
- A place added to a plan: its name and, if someone adds them, an address and a booking link. Everyone in that plan can see it. Find a spot opens Resy, OpenTable or Yelp only when you tap it, filling in the plan's date, time, party size and city. We never book for you, see your accounts on those sites, or learn whether you booked. On iPhone, if you search for a place by name, what you type goes to Apple Maps to find matches, as in Apple's Maps app, along with the centre of the plan's city (never your location). It isn't sent to us. On Android you type the place's name and nothing is looked up. Tapping an address for directions opens Apple Maps on iPhone or Google Maps on Android.
- Groups you create or join: the group's name, who's in it, the times suggested, and your answers to them. See Groups for who sees what.
- Who invited you, if you joined through an invite. We use this to understand how the beta spreads.
- When you last opened the app, so we can send a gentle reminder if you haven't been back in a week. We don't record what you do in the app.
- Overall numbers. We look at totals, such as how many plans turn into real catch-ups or how many people opened the app this week, to improve frienminder. We never look at individual people's plans, notes or activity for this, and no outside analytics tools are involved.
Notifications
If you allow notifications, we store a push token for your phone, a random identifier that lets us send it notifications. We also keep a record of the notifications we send you so you don't get the same one twice. Their text is removed after 30 days; after that we keep only what kind of notification it was and when, and delete even that after about 13 months.
Invites
When you invite someone, the invite text is sent from your own Messages app. frienminder doesn't send texts and doesn't store the message.
Each invite code works once, for 7 days. If you invite someone from your contacts, or tell the app who a code was for, we keep their first name with the code so we can remind you on day 6 if it hasn't been used. Only you see it, and it's removed when the code is used or expires. Their number stays on your phone; the reminder is a text you choose to send. An expired code is deleted, keeping only the code itself and its dates so it can't be reused.
What your friends can and can't see
| Friends can see | Friends can't see |
|---|---|
| Your name and home metro area | Your email, phone number, or exact home location |
| Times you're both free, when frienminder suggests getting together | Your calendar or what you're busy with |
| When you two last caught up | Your notes about a catch-up |
| Your trip's city and dates, only if you choose to let them know | How often you want to see them |
| — | Whether you declined, paused, removed or blocked them (these are silent) |
Someone who already has your phone number saved can see that you're on frienminder, as with most messaging apps.
Groups
A group is up to five people who plan together. Everyone invited must be a friend of the person inviting them, but members don't have to be friends with each other.
- Joining is your choice. Until you accept, other members don't see your name, and you see only who invited you and how many have joined. Only the person who invited you knows you were invited. Declining or leaving is silent.
- Once you join, other members see your name (including members you aren't friends with), and when you're "in" for a suggested time. If you say you can't make it, that is never shown; it looks the same as not having answered.
- Group free times are worked out from everyone's busy times on our server. Members see only a few times per day when everyone is free, never anyone's calendar or busy times.
- Your goals, notes, call hours and relationship labels are never shared with a group.
- If you block someone, you quietly leave any group you share with them.
Services that handle data for us
frienminder uses a few companies to run the app. They process data only to provide their service:
- Supabase hosts our database and sign-in, in the United States. Everything described above is stored there.
- Expo delivers push notifications, through Apple on iPhone and Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) on Android. They receive your push token and the notification's text, which can include a friend's first name.
- Apple, on iPhone, or Google, on Android, also turns place names into map coordinates on your phone: your home city, a trip's destination, and the city, state and country from your contacts' addresses (to spot who lives near a trip). They receive only the place name, not who it belongs to and not your location. On Android this lookup needs location permission, so the app asks for approximate location when you enter your home city; you can say no and pick your area from a list instead. frienminder never reads where your phone is, and precise location is switched off in the app.
- Resend sends password-reset emails, the copy of the beta agreement you accept, and the welcome email. It receives your email address and the email's contents.
- Cloudflare hosts this website. Like any web host it handles visitors' IP addresses to deliver the pages. The site sets no cookies and uses no analytics.
How we protect it
Data travels over encrypted connections. The app can reach your information only through a fixed set of server functions, each of which checks who's asking. Nobody's app can read the database directly. Phone numbers are stored only in scrambled form, using a secret key kept in an encrypted vault on the server, separate from the data itself.
How long we keep it
- Busy times: only upcoming ones are used; past ones are deleted whenever your app next syncs, and all of them when you delete your account.
- Friend requests that go unanswered: they fade from both people's lists after 60 days.
- Scrambled tags from checking your contacts: 30 days.
- Notification text: 30 days. The record that a notification was sent: about 13 months.
- The record that you accepted the beta agreement (email, version, date and time, app version), and our copy of the confirmation email: kept even if you delete your account, until three years after the beta ends, so we can show what was agreed.
- Everything else: for as long as you have an account.
Your choices
- Turn off access to your calendar, contacts or notifications at any time in your phone's settings. frienminder keeps working with less information.
- Leave out calendars that aren't about your own time, such as a shared family calendar, in the app's Settings.
- Change your name, phone number or home city in the app's Settings.
- Delete your account in the app: Settings → Delete account, or by email (see Delete your account). This permanently removes your login and everything frienminder holds about you, except the record that you accepted the beta agreement (see "How long we keep it"). Friends aren't notified; you simply stop appearing for them.
- Block someone in Settings. They aren't told.
- Report a concern about someone from their page or in Settings. This opens an email to us from your own mail app, with your account email and the other person's name and account ID filled in; nothing is sent until you send it. See our Child Safety Standards.
If you're in the EU or the UK (GDPR)
If you live in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, or the UK GDPR) gives you the rights below. This section adds to the rest of this policy.
Who is responsible
The "controller" of your information is frienminder LLC, a Maryland limited liability company that owns and operates frienminder. Contact: [email protected].
Why we're allowed to use your information
| What | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Your account, profile, friends, goals, plans, groups and logged catch-ups: running the app you signed up for | Performing our agreement with you (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| The record that you accepted the beta agreement, and emailing you a copy | Performing our agreement with you (Art. 6(1)(b)); keeping the record after you leave: our legitimate interest in being able to show what was agreed (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Busy times and trips from your calendar, checking your contacts, and notifications | Your consent, given when you allow access on your phone (Art. 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time in your phone's settings; the app keeps working with less. |
| The contacts you choose to add or invite (their scrambled number and the name you saved), and the first name kept with an invite code until it's used or expires | Our legitimate interest, and yours, in reminding you to keep in touch (Art. 6(1)(f)). We keep only what's needed and never contact them. |
| Keeping frienminder safe: the limit on number lookups, blocking, and preventing misuse | Our legitimate interest in protecting users (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Overall usage numbers (totals only, never about one person) | Our legitimate interest in improving frienminder (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Remembering who invited you, and a reminder if you haven't opened the app in a week | Our legitimate interest in running the beta (Art. 6(1)(f)). You can object at any time; turning off notifications also stops the reminder. |
We don't make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects. frienminder's suggestions of who to reach out to and when are just suggestions.
Your rights
- Access: ask for a copy of the information we hold about you.
- Correction: fix your name, number or home city in Settings, or ask us.
- Deletion: delete your account in Settings, or ask us.
- Portability: ask for your information in a common machine-readable format.
- Objection and restriction: object to uses based on legitimate interest, or ask us to limit how we use your information.
- Withdraw consent: turn off calendar, contacts or notifications in your phone's settings at any time. This doesn't affect what was done before.
Email [email protected] from the address on your account. We'll reply within one month.
If you're in someone's contacts but don't use frienminder, you can also ask us about, or to delete, anything we hold that relates to your number. Because we only store numbers in scrambled form, we may ask for your number to find it.
You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live or work, for example the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens in the Netherlands, the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD) in Portugal, or the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in the UK. We'd appreciate the chance to sort it out with you first.
International transfers
frienminder's database is in the United States, so information from the EU or UK is transferred there. Supabase (our database) and Resend (password and agreement emails) include the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, and the UK's Addendum to them, in their data processing terms. Expo, Apple and Google handle push notifications under their own terms and safeguards for international transfers.
Children
The beta is for invited adults (18 and over). We don't knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If you believe a child has an account, contact us and we'll delete it.
Changes
frienminder is in beta and may change. If we change how we handle your information, we'll update this page and the date at the top, and tell beta testers about significant changes.
Contact
Questions or requests: [email protected]