Privacy policy

California notice at collection and state privacy rights: see the state privacy rights notice at the end of this policy for important information about your rights under applicable state privacy laws.

Bond ("Bond", "we", "us" or "our") provides an iPhone app for couples: one question a day, which both of you answer separately, and neither of you sees the other’s answer until both have written. This Privacy Policy describes how Bond processes personal information that we collect through the app, the website at bondcouples.com, and the feedback board on it (together, the "Service").

In short

• We collect what the app needs to work: how you signed in, your first name, a little about your relationship, your settings, and the answers you write.
• Your answers are shown to your partner once you have both answered that day’s question, and to nobody else by design.
• We do not sell your information, show ads, use trackers, or use your answers to train AI.
• The weekly recap, which reads a week of your answers, runs only if both of you say yes, and either of you can turn it off.
• You can delete your account from inside the app. Your answers go with it.

Personal information we collect

Information you provide to us

• Account data. You sign in with Apple. We receive the identifier Apple assigns to you for Bond and store it with a user id and the date you joined. We do not ask Apple for your name or email address, so we do not hold either. Sign-in sessions are handled by our authentication provider, Supabase.
• Names. The first name you give yourself, and the name you call your partner. When your partner joins, the name they give themselves replaces the one you gave.
• Relationship data. Whether you are dating, living together, engaged or married; the date you got together; whether you are apart at the moment; the time zone you live in; the themes you would like more questions from; and how deep you want the questions to go. We use this to choose questions.
• Your answers. What you write in response to each day’s question, with the time you sealed it. Some themes (Desire and Hard things, for example) invite answers that may reveal your sex life, health, beliefs or other sensitive matters. We treat every answer as sensitive personal information.
• Preferences. When you want your daily reminder, and whether you have said yes to the weekly recap. A yes is recorded with the time you gave it and the wording you saw, so that we can show both of you agreed.
• Invite data. A six-character invite code made on your phone, whether you have opened the share sheet to send it, whether we have reminded you about it, and the date your partner joined.
• Feedback board content. Anything you post on the board at bondcouples.com/feedback, which is public and needs no account, plus a random identifier your browser keeps so that you can vote once on each item.
• Communications data. Whatever you include when you email us.

Information collected automatically

• Device data. A device token from Apple, so that we can send you push notifications, and whether your copy of the app came from the App Store or from testing. When the app talks to our server or you visit the website, our hosting providers record standard connection information such as your IP address, the time of the request and the app version, which we use for security and troubleshooting. Our server also uses your IP address, without storing it, to limit how many wrong invite codes can be tried from one address.
• Subscription data. Payments are made through Apple’s App Store and managed by RevenueCat. From RevenueCat we receive which plan your couple has, when it started, when it renews or ends, whether it is a trial, and whether a payment failed. Apple keeps your payment details; we never see your card or your Apple account.
• Usage data. The app records a short list of things you do in it, so that we can see how it is used: that you finished setting up and whether you started a couple or joined one, shared an invite, saw your partner join, sealed an answer, read a day you had both answered, opened a recap, changed the week’s theme, or finished or skipped the introduction, and when the app was opened, put away, installed or updated. With some of these we record the theme of the question (for example “Play”), and with a sealed answer whether it was sealed just after midnight. We record them against the random identifiers we gave your account and your couple, together with general details of your device and app: the device type and model, operating system version, app version, screen size, language, time zone, and whether you were on Wi-Fi or a mobile network. We do not keep your IP address with this data, and we do not work out your location from it. We never record a question, anything you or your partner wrote, or either of your names, and we do not record your screen or what you tap.
• Feedback board data. A one-way hash of your IP address, kept only to trace a run of junk posts.

Information we do not collect

Nothing from your contacts, photos, calendar or location. No advertising identifiers. No email address, unless you email us. The website sets no cookies and uses no analytics. The app contains no advertising or tracking service, no session recording and no crash-reporting service; the usage data described above is the only analytics in it. If any of this changes, this policy will change first.

Data about others

When you invite your partner, you tell us the name you call them, and the app can send them your invite code by whatever means you choose. Please invite only someone who has agreed to use Bond with you.

Tracking technologies

We do not use cookies, pixels or similar technologies on the website or in the app. The feedback board keeps one random identifier in your browser’s local storage so that you can vote once per item; it identifies your browser to the board and nothing else.

Artificial intelligence. The weekly recap is written by OpenAI’s models. If both of you have said yes, then once a week, if you both answered on at least two days, our server sends that week’s questions and both of your answers to OpenAI, which writes a short letter back to the two of you. Nothing older is sent. We use OpenAI’s developer API under its business terms, under which what we send is not used to train OpenAI’s models. Either of you can turn the recap off in Us at any time, and it stops immediately for both of you.

How we use your personal information

We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

• Service delivery and operations. To choose each day’s question; to hold your answer sealed until your partner has written theirs and then show both of you the answers together; to keep your journal, compute your streak and look back at earlier days; to run your subscription so that one payment covers both of you; and to respond to your requests, questions and feedback.
• The weekly recap, as described above, only for couples who have both said yes.
• Notifications. To tell you when your partner has answered or joined, when a recap is ready, once if the partner you invited has not joined after a few days, and, if you are the paying partner, before a trial ends. A notification may name your partner by first name. It never contains the question or a word of an answer. Your daily reminder is scheduled on your own phone and never leaves it.
• Service improvement. To understand, in aggregate, how the Service is used and to make it better. We do this from the records and the usage data described above, and never from the content of your answers.
• Compliance and protection. To comply with applicable laws, lawful requests and legal process; to protect our, your or others’ rights, privacy, safety or property; to enforce the terms that govern the Service; and to prevent, investigate and deter fraudulent, harmful, unauthorised or illegal activity, including limiting how often one address can post to the feedback board or try an invite code.

We do not use your personal information for marketing or advertising, do not sell or rent it, do not build profiles of you, do not make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects, and do not use your answers or anything else you give us to train AI models. If we ever want to use your personal information for a purpose not compatible with these, we will ask you first.

Who can see your answers

• Your partner, once you have both answered that day’s question. Before that, neither of you can see the other’s.
• Bond. Your answers are encrypted in transit and at rest on our database provider’s infrastructure, but they are not end-to-end encrypted: our systems can read them, which the weekly recap and support need. Automated jobs read answers only for their stated purpose. A person at Bond reads an answer only when you ask us for help with a specific problem or when the law requires it. "Private to the two of you" describes how Bond is designed; "nobody at Bond could ever read this" would not be true, and we will not say it.
• People your partner shows. The app can turn a day you both answered into an image with both of your first names and both answers, to save or share, including to Instagram Stories. The image is made on your phone. Sharing a day is a choice each of you makes for yourself; we cannot stop your partner sharing a day you both answered, just as we cannot stop you.
• Your phone. The home-screen widget shows today’s question and, once both have answered, the start of your partner’s answer. That stays on your phone and is hidden while the phone is locked.

How we share your personal information

• Service providers. Third parties that provide services on our behalf and may use your information only to provide them: Apple (Sign in with Apple, App Store billing and push notifications), RevenueCat (subscription management), Supabase (our database and sign-in), Railway (which runs our server), PostHog (the usage data described above, and nothing else), and OpenAI (the weekly recap only, only for couples who have both said yes).
• Instagram, only if you choose to share a day to Instagram Stories. The image is handed to the Instagram app on your phone, and Meta’s privacy policy applies from there.
• Third parties designated by you, where you have instructed us or given your consent.
• Professional advisors, such as lawyers and accountants, in the course of the services they render to us.
• Authorities and others. Law enforcement, government authorities and private parties, as we believe in good faith to be necessary or appropriate for the compliance and protection purposes described above.
• Business transferees. If Bond is sold, merged or reorganised, or in an insolvency, your personal information may be transferred to the acquirer or successor as one of the business’s assets. We will tell you before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
• The public. Anything you post on the feedback board is visible to anyone, and can be copied, cached or stored by others. We are not responsible for what others do with it.

Retention

We keep your personal information for as long as you have an account, and afterwards only as long as needed for the purposes described here, including to satisfy legal, accounting or reporting requirements, establish or defend legal claims, or prevent fraud.

When you delete your account in Us:

• your account, your answers, your device tokens and your sign-in are deleted, and your Sign in with Apple authorisation is revoked;
• every weekly recap for your couple is deleted, because each one was written from both of your answers;
• your partner keeps their own answers on the days you both answered, and those days show "removed" where yours were;
• your partner is told you have left, and no new questions are asked.

Deleted data may remain in our providers’ backups for a matter of weeks before those backups expire on their own schedule. Subscription records are kept as long as accounting and tax rules require. Feedback board posts stay up until we take them down; email us if you want one of yours removed. Emails to us are kept for up to two years.

Your choices

• Access or update your information. Change your name, themes, reminder and recap setting in Us in the app. Your partner cannot change yours, and you cannot change theirs.
• Turn the recap off in Us. It stops immediately for both of you.
• Notifications can be turned off in iPhone Settings. The daily reminder can be changed or removed in Us.
• Delete your account in Us. Your subscription is billed by Apple and does not stop when your account goes; cancel it in your Apple account settings first.
• Declining to provide information. Bond needs a name, a few facts about your relationship and your answers to work. If you do not provide them, the app cannot do what it is for.
• Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. Because we do not track you or sell or share your information, there is nothing for these signals to stop. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal as a valid opt-out in any case.
• Ask us to access, correct or delete your information by emailing support@bondcouples.com.

Other sites and services

The Service may contain links to websites and services operated by others, such as Apple, Instagram and JAMS. We do not control them and are not responsible for them, and a link is not an endorsement. Please read the privacy policies of the sites and services you use.

Security

We employ technical, organisational and physical safeguards designed to protect the personal information we collect. All traffic is encrypted; our database is encrypted at rest and is not reachable from the app, since every request goes through our server, which verifies your session and lets you reach only your own couple’s data; access to production systems is limited to the people who run Bond; and we hold as little as we can. Security risk is inherent in all internet and information technologies, however, and we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information.

International data transfer

We are based in the United States, and our servers and providers are in the United States and Canada. If you use Bond from elsewhere, your personal information will be transferred to and processed there, where privacy laws may not be as protective as those of your home.

Children

The Service is not intended for use by anyone under 18. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we have collected personal information from a child, please contact us and we will delete it as the law requires.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes, we will update the effective date at the top, post the new version on the website, and tell you in the app before the change takes effect. Your use of the Service after the effective date of a modified policy means the modified policy applies to your interactions with the Service.

How to contact us

If you have questions about our practices or would like to exercise a privacy right, email support@bondcouples.com. A person will answer.

State privacy rights notice

This section applies to residents of U.S. states whose privacy laws apply to us and grant their residents the rights described below (the "State Privacy Laws"), including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon and others. Not every right is available under every state’s law, so we may decline a request where the law permits. For this section, "Personal Information" and "Sensitive Personal Information" have the meanings the State Privacy Laws give to those or similar terms.

Your privacy rights. The State Privacy Laws may give you the right to:

• Information. Know the categories of Personal Information we have collected, the sources, the purposes, and the categories of third parties with which we share it.
• Access. Receive a copy of the Personal Information we have collected about you.
• Correction. Have inaccurate Personal Information corrected.
• Deletion. Have the Personal Information we have collected from you deleted.
• Opt out. Opt out of the sale of Personal Information, its sharing for targeted advertising, and profiling in furtherance of decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. We do none of these, so there is nothing to opt out of; a Global Privacy Control signal is honoured as an opt-out in any case.
• Sensitive Personal Information. Your answers may contain Sensitive Personal Information. We use it only to provide the Service as described in this policy and never to infer characteristics about you.
• Appeal. Appeal our refusal of a request by replying to our answer; we will reconsider it and tell you the outcome.
• Nondiscrimination. Exercise these rights without being treated differently for doing so.

Consumers under 16. We do not have actual knowledge that we collect, sell or share the Personal Information of anyone under 16, and the Service is for adults.

How to exercise your rights. Email support@bondcouples.com. We will respond within the time the applicable law allows.

Verification and authorised agents. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. Because we hold no email address for you, we may ask you to confirm something only the account holder would know, or to make the request from inside the signed-in app. You may use an authorised agent to submit a request on your behalf; we may ask for the agent’s proof of authority, such as a signed permission from you, and may ask you to confirm the request directly.

Information practices. The following describes our practices now and during the past 12 months. We collect the categories of Personal Information listed below from you and from the providers named in this policy, for the purposes described above. We keep it for the periods described under Retention. We do not attempt to reidentify deidentified information.

Additional information for California residents. Under California’s Shine the Light law (Civil Code Section 1798.83), California residents may ask companies with which they have a business relationship for personal, family or household purposes which third parties received their personal information for those third parties’ own direct marketing in the preceding year. The answer is none: we do not disclose personal information for others’ direct marketing. You may still send such a request to support@bondcouples.com with the words "Shine the Light Request", your name and a statement that you are a California resident.

Additional information for Nevada residents. We do not sell personal information for monetary consideration within the meaning of Nevada law. If you would like to make a request to opt out of any potential future sale, email support@bondcouples.com.

Additional information for Texas residents. We do not sell sensitive personal data within the meaning of the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act.

Contact us. If you have questions or concerns about this notice or our information practices, contact us at support@bondcouples.com.