Privacy Policy

Grab a Seat ("we", "us", "our") operates the Grab a Seat mobile application (the "Service"). This Privacy Policy informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Service, and the choices you have associated with that data.

1. Information We Collect

a) Information You Provide to Us

• Account information: The email address or phone number you sign in with. We do not store your name: if you sign in with Google or Apple, your name stays with that provider and is never written to our database.
• Contact data: Names, phone numbers, email addresses, notes, biographical details, interaction history, the circle you place them in, and communication preferences for people you add to your contact list.
• Payment information: Billing details are collected and processed by Stripe. We do not receive or store your credit card number or banking information.

b) Information Collected Automatically

• Device information: Device platform (iOS/Android) and push notification token, if you enable notifications.
• Notification preferences: Your timezone and quiet hours settings.
• Usage data: Events describing how you use the app: which screens you open and which actions you take, such as opening the app, logging that you reached out, or being shown a celebration. Each event is recorded with the app version and the time it happened, and is linked to your account. We use this to understand which parts of the app people actually use and to find things that are broken. These events are recorded on our own servers, not by a third-party analytics provider, and they do not contain your contacts' names, phone numbers, email addresses, notes, or anything you searched for. You can see every event we hold about you in your data export.

c) Information from Third-Party Services

If you choose to import contacts from Google, we request read-only access to your Google Contacts through the Google People API. Contacts are fetched once during the import process. We do not store your Google authentication token.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• To provide and maintain the Service
• To display your contacts and relationship information
• To send you reminders to reach out to contacts
• To sync your data across your devices
• To process subscription payments
• To respond to your support requests
• To notify you of changes to our Service

3. Data Sharing and Third-Party Services

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties. We share data only with the following service providers, solely to operate the Service:

• Clerk: Authentication provider. Manages your login credentials and sign-in sessions.
• Stripe: Payment processor. Handles billing for paid subscriptions.
• Google: Signing in with Google authenticates you and tells us an account identifier and your email address. Separately, if you opt to import contacts, we request read-only, one-time access to your Google Contacts through the Google People API. We do not store your Google authentication token.
• Apple: Sign in with Apple authenticates you if you choose it, and tells us an account identifier and the email address you agree to share, which may be a private relay address rather than your own. The Apple Push Notification service also carries our notifications to iPhones and iPads.
• Expo Push Notification Service: Delivers push notifications to your device. A reminder names the person it is about, so the notification text we hand to Expo, and to Apple’s push service after it, contains that contact’s name.
• Railway: Cloud infrastructure provider hosting our database and backend server.
• Cloudflare: Content delivery and network provider for grabaseat.app. It serves our website and the public copy of this policy, and handles the network requests that reach them, including your IP address.
• Sentry: Error monitoring. Receives diagnostic reports when the app or our server hits an error: the error message, the stack trace, the API path that failed, the app version, and your account identifier. Our server reports only when it is running in production, and every released build of the app reports as production. It does not receive request bodies, authentication headers, or session tokens, and we do not send it your contacts’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, notes, or search terms.

Each third-party service processes data in accordance with its own privacy policy.

Grab a Seat’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

4. Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted on Railway. On mobile devices, a local SQLite database caches your data on-device for offline access. The local cache remains on your device and syncs with our server when a connection is available.

We take reasonable measures to protect your personal data from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

5. Data Retention

We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you the Service. When you delete a contact, it is soft-deleted and permanently removed from our servers after 30 days. When you delete your account, your contacts, notes, interactions, reminders and subscription record are erased from our live database straight away, and your sign-in record is deleted at Clerk in the same step. Any copy that remains in an operational backup is retained no longer than 30 days.

6. Your Rights and Choices

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Access and portability: Export all your data as JSON from Settings → Data & Privacy → Export My Data.
• Deletion: Permanently delete your account and all associated data from Settings → Danger Zone → Delete Account.
• Correction: Edit or update any contact, note, or other data at any time within the app.
• Opt-out of notifications: Disable push notifications from Settings → Notifications.

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), you have additional rights under the GDPR, including the right to object to processing and the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. If you are a California resident, you have rights under the CCPA, including the right to know what personal information is collected and the right to request deletion.

To exercise any of these rights, use the in-app features described above or contact us at privacy@grabaseat.app.

7. Tracking and Advertising

Grab a Seat does not use third-party analytics SDKs, advertising networks, or tracking pixels, and there is no advertising in the app. We do not track you across other apps or websites, and we do not sell or share your information for advertising purposes. We do record the in-app usage events described in section 1(b) above, on our own servers, to understand how the app is used.

8. Children's Privacy

Our Service is not directed to anyone under the age of 13 ("Children"). We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. If we become aware that we have collected personal data from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to remove that information from our servers.

9. International Data Transfers

Your information may be transferred to and maintained on servers located outside of your state, province, country, or other governmental jurisdiction where data protection laws may differ. By using the Service, you consent to the transfer of your information to the United States and other countries where our service providers operate.

10. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy within the app and updating the "Effective date" above. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes are effective when they are posted.

11. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:

Grab a Seat
Email: privacy@grabaseat.app