Porch privacy policy
This policy explains what information Porch collects, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It covers the Porch app and our website, theporch.club. "Porch", "we" and "us" mean the team that runs Porch.
Porch is a private app for sharing weekly moments with small groups, called porches, that you choose. There are no public profiles, no discovery and no advertising.
Information we collect
Information you give us
- Account information. Your phone number, which every account has, and an email address if you signed in with one. Your display name and color. If you set a home city in an earlier version of the app, we also keep that city.
- What you capture and share. Photos, short videos, voice notes, text notes and songs you keep as moments, with their captions, capture dates, and the porches you share them with. Notes, stamps and messages you write on a porch; porch names and cover photos; questions you ask a porch and your answers to them; your Porch Ponder answers; events you put on the calendar; and time capsules you leave, including who they are for and when they open. Photos are uploaded at a reduced size; the full-resolution original stays on your phone.
- Invites. When you invite someone, we keep that you invited them, the name you have them saved under, and a salted hash of their phone number (not the number itself), so we can recognize them when they sign up.
- Messages to us. What you send us when you email support or report something. If you join the waitlist on our website, the email address or phone number you give, and, if you choose one, what kind of porch you want.
Information collected when you use Porch
- Location, if you allow it. When you keep a moment, your phone's location at that moment, or the location a photo or video already carries when you add it from your library. We use it to label the moment with a place and to file it under the right day. See "Places on moments" below.
- Usage information. Which days you opened the app; when you were on a porch during its live hour; the steps an invite or referral link went through (opened, app reached, joined, and whose link it was); whether you made or shared a week card; and whether you corrected a suggested place. We do not record which screens you visit, what you tap or how long you spend.
- Device information. A push notification token if you allow notifications, and your phone's time zone. When someone opens a personal invite link on our website, a salted one-way hash of the network address it was opened from, so a link opened twice in an hour counts once. We never keep the address itself.
Information from other services
- Google Calendar, if you connect it: the permission token Google gives us and the email address of that Google account. See "Google Calendar" below.
- Music services: the title, artist, album, artwork and service links for a song you keep, looked up from Spotify and Apple Music.
What stays on your phone
Porch asks for the camera, microphone, photo library, contacts and location only when you first use a feature that needs them, and nothing is recorded without you starting it. Your contacts are read on your phone to show you names when you invite someone, and the list is never uploaded. Place names are looked up on your phone through Apple's Maps services. The home screen widget reads only Porch's data on your phone.
How we use information
We use the information above to:
- Run Porch: store and back up your moments, deliver them to the porches you chose at the drop, sync your account across devices, sign you in, and send notifications you've allowed.
- Support you and keep in touch. We answer your messages and may contact you about your account and about Porch. While Porch is in beta, our team may look at how your account is getting started (whether you've signed up, started or joined a porch, when your porch's hour is, how many people have joined it and how many came) so that we can follow up with you personally.
- Understand and improve Porch, by looking at how the app is used, both account by account and in aggregate.
- Keep Porch safe: review reports, enforce blocks, prevent abuse, and protect the people who use Porch.
- Meet legal obligations and enforce our terms.
A small number of people on the Porch team can access account and usage information when it's needed for the purposes above. We don't look at the content of your moments except to review a report, when you ask us to, or when the law requires it.
We don't sell your information, we don't show ads, and we don't track you across other companies' apps or websites. Porch uses no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs.
What other people on Porch can see
- Your moments are seen only where you share them. A moment you keep to yourself ("Just me") is visible to you alone. A moment you share with a porch is visible to that porch's members from the weekly drop onwards; if you take it out of a porch, they can no longer see it. This is enforced on our server, not just in the app.
- Your display name and color are visible to the people on your porches.
- Questions you ask a porch are anonymous to its members. Who asked is stored where no member can read it. In a porch of two, the other person will know it was you, and the app says so before you ask. Answers carry the name of the person who gave them.
- Places on moments. Your porches see a moment's place only at the level you choose: the exact place, the neighbourhood or the city. You can take the place off before the week drops, which deletes it. The position your phone measured is visible only to you. Photos and videos you add from your library are saved without the location their file carried.
- Events and time capsules. An event is visible to everyone on your porches unless you make it just for you. A time capsule shows its recipient only who it's from and when it opens until that day, and from then on only the recipient can open it.
- Invites. People on a porch can see the name and status of invites sent from it.
- Blocking hides your content from the person you block, and theirs from you.
How we share information
We share information only:
- With the people you choose, as described above.
- With service providers that run Porch for us, who may use it only to provide their service to us: cloud hosting and database (Supabase), text message delivery for sign-in codes (Twilio), email delivery, push notifications and app updates (Expo, which passes notifications to Apple), place names (Apple Maps, on your phone), song lookup (Spotify and Apple Music, which receive the song link or search, never who you are), Google Calendar if you connect it, and website hosting for theporch.club and its waitlist (Google Firebase). Some notifications contain words someone on your porch wrote, such as a note on your moment or a question; those words pass through the push service and can appear on your lock screen. No notification carries a photo, video, voice note or place.
- For legal reasons, when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, or to protect the safety, rights or property of the people who use Porch, the public or Porch.
- In a business transfer, such as a merger or acquisition, in which case this policy continues to apply to your information.
- With your consent.
Google Calendar
You can put a porch's hour on your Google Calendar as a weekly event. If you choose to, Porch asks Google for permission to add and edit events on your calendar, and you sign in to Google yourself; Porch never sees your Google password. What we store is the token Google gives us for that permission, the email address of the Google account, and, for each porch you add, the identifier of the one event we created. We use them for exactly one thing: creating a weekly event for each porch's hour, updating it when the porch's time or name changes, and deleting it when you leave the porch or disconnect.
Porch does not read your calendar. It never looks at your other events, and nothing on your calendar is shown to anyone on a porch, or to us. The events we create contain the porch's name, its hour, a line about Porch, and a link that opens the porch in the app.
Disconnecting, under Settings, removes the events we created, revokes the permission with Google, and deletes the token and the email from our server. Deleting your account does the same. Porch's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
How long we keep information
We keep your information for as long as your account exists. Deleting a moment deletes it from your phone and our server. Deleting your account removes your account and everything you shared, including events and time capsules, and the usage records tied to it. Deleted information can remain in our database backups for up to 30 days before they expire. We may keep totals that can't be traced back to you, and information we need to keep for legal reasons or to handle a report.
Your choices and rights
- Permissions: you can turn off camera, microphone, photos, contacts, location and notifications at any time in your phone's settings.
- Your content and profile: you can edit or delete moments, change who they're shared with, and change your name in the app.
- Delete your account in the app under Settings. This clears Porch's data from that phone. Other phones you signed in on keep their local copies until you delete the app there.
- Block and report from any moment, note or message.
- Requests: depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or get a copy of your information, or to object to how we use it. Email support@theporch.club and we'll respond within the time the law requires. We won't treat you differently for asking.
Children
Porch is not meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we'll delete it.
Security
We protect your information with measures such as encryption in transit, server-side access rules that check every request against who you are and what was shared with you, and limited team access. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep yours safe.
Where information is processed
Porch is run from the United States. Your information may be stored and processed in the United States and in other countries where our service providers operate.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. When we do, we'll change the effective date above, and if a change is significant we'll let you know in the app before it takes effect.