Privacy policy

You enter your name, what you're bringing, how many people it serves, and optional dietary info and notes. This is saved in the site's database as part of that event. Your name and item are shown on the event page to anyone who has its link.

Your browser also remembers which sign-ups are yours (in local storage) so you can change or remove them later.

You enter your name, how many are coming, and optionally your group's dietary needs and food allergies, so the cooks know how much to make and what to avoid. Your name and answers are shown only to you and to the event's organizers and admins. Everyone else with the link sees only totals (how many are coming, how many need each diet) and a list of the foods to avoid, never who said them. In a small group, people may still be able to guess.

Allergy information is health information. Only share what you're comfortable with; it's always optional. If you remove your RSVP (“Can't make it”), it is erased right away. Your browser remembers your RSVP and your last answers (in local storage) so you can change them and don't have to retype them next week.

An event's organizer or admins can ask you to bring something by entering your name and, optionally, your email address. Like any sign-up, your name and the item are shown on the event page, marked as waiting for you to accept. The email is saved only so the assignment can show up for you when you sign in with that Google account. It is never shown on the page.

The page also compares assignments with the name your browser last signed up with (kept in local storage on your device), so it can show the ones meant for you. That name isn't sent anywhere for this.

If you turn an assignment down, it is removed like any other sign-up (see below). If someone else claims it, it is replaced with their sign-up, and your name and email are removed from it.

Signing in is optional for people bringing food. If you do, Google tells this site your name, email address and profile picture. Your email is saved with your sign-ups so you can manage them from any device. It is never shown on the page. A cookie keeps you signed in for up to 30 days, or until you sign out.

Joining a group takes signing in with Google. The group keeps your name and email address so it knows who its members are. Only the group's owners and admins can see the member list; anyone with the group's link sees how many members it has. If you leave, or an admin removes you, you're taken off the list. If the group is deleted, its member list is deleted with it.

Members can post a connection: a place and time they'll be somewhere, so others can join them. A connection, with the poster's name and the names of everyone who said “I'm in”, is shown only to members of that group, never to anyone else with the link. It stops showing a couple of hours after it starts. Cancelling it deletes it; leaving the group deletes your connections and “I'm in”s there. The site never asks for or tracks your actual location: a connection only says what you type. The places you post are remembered on your account (your most recent few) so you can pick them again; only you see them, and you can remove any of them from the form.

If you add your groups to your calendar, you get a private link that your calendar app reads. It contains the connections and event dates you chose, including the names of people going. Anyone who has the link can read it, so keep it to yourself; “Make a new link” on the Groups page turns the old one off. Leaving a group takes its items out of your link.

You can save your schedule: the times you're usually busy, like work or rotating shifts. Nobody else sees it. Members of your groups only see, for a given time, how many members are usually free and their names. A group's owners and admins also see, for each member who shared a schedule, how many of the group's gatherings clashed with it (and how many they joined), so they can pick times that include more people. Choosing “Not set” and saving deletes it.

Messages you send in a group's chat, or in the thread on one of its gatherings, are saved with your name and shown only to that group's members. You can edit or remove your own messages, and the group's owners and admins can remove any message; a removed message's text is deleted. Messages stay in the group if you leave it, and are deleted if the group is deleted.

If a group's admins turn on approval, asking to join shares your name and email with its owners and admins so they can decide. Until they let you in you don't see anything only members see. Cancelling or being declined deletes the request.

If a group has a directory, you can choose to add yourself. You decide who can see your listing (only people listed in the same directory, or anyone with the group's link) and, for each detail you enter (photo, phone, email, address, birthday month and day, household, about you), whether it's hidden, shown to directory members, or shown to anyone. A detail is never shown more widely than your listing. Your Google account's email is never shown; only details you type in. The group's owners and admins can remove a listing. Taking yourself out, or leaving the group, deletes your listing. If a group turns its directory off, listings are hidden and kept until it's turned back on or the group is deleted.

A detail can also be ask first: people listed in the same directory can ask to see it, with an optional note saying why. You see who asked, how long they've been in the group, and their note, and choose whether to share; you can stop sharing later. The site keeps a record of requests and answers so it can show them to you. Each person can make a limited number of requests a day.

Families. An adult can add a family card (a family name and, if they choose, a home phone and address with the same choices as above), invite another adult (who's only added once they accept), and add children by first name with an optional birthday. Children are only shown by name to people listed in the directory, never on a card anyone can see, and a child's birthday is only shown if their family chooses, never to anyone outside the directory. When the last adult leaves a family, it's deleted along with its children's details.

A group's owners and admins can turn on summaries: a short recap of the chat and plans each day, week and month, shown to the group's members. To write them, the group's messages (with the names people use in the group), its gatherings and its event dates are sent to Groq, an AI service, once a day. Email addresses are never sent. Summaries are off unless an admin turns them on, and turning them off stops anything more being sent. Groq handles that data under its own privacy policy.

If you turn on notifications, your browser gives the site an address to send them to (through your browser's own push service, such as Google's or Apple's). Notifications include the group's name and the start of a message or the new gathering. You choose, for each group, whether to get chat messages and new gatherings, and can set quiet times; quiet times can use your saved schedule. Turning notifications off on a device removes its address.

The site keeps each event's details (its name, place, times, menus and settings) along with the email addresses of its owners and admins, so they can find and manage their events. Creating an event doesn't ask for access to your Google Drive.

Events used to be kept in Google Sheets. Their weeks, menus and sign-ups were copied into the site's database; the original spreadsheets were left as they were, with their owners, and the site no longer changes them.

An event's owners and admins can see everything in their event, including the email addresses of people who signed in and any emails entered for assignments. The site runs on Vercel (hosting) and stores data in a Neon Postgres database in the United States. Each handles data under its own privacy policy. Nothing is shared with anyone else.

You can remove your own sign-ups from the event page, and turn down an item assigned to you. A removed sign-up disappears from the page right away and is kept for 30 days so a mistake can be undone, then deleted for good. For anything else, ask the event's organizer or email the site owner below, and we'll delete it.

You can revoke this site's access to your Google account at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Questions? Email elimtrot@gmail.com.