Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

GiftAhead ("we", "our", or "us") helps users organize recipients, occasions, gift ideas, and reminders.

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices available to you when using the GiftAhead mobile application and website.

2. Information We Collect

Depending on how you use GiftAhead, we may collect:

Account Information

• Email address
• Authentication information provided through email/password or Google Sign-In
• Account creation date

Information You Create

You may choose to store:

• Recipient names
• Relationships
• Budgets
• Interests
• Dislikes
• Personal notes
• Events and reminder dates
• Saved gift ideas
• Feedback on gift recommendations

Technical Information

To operate the application, we may process:

• Notification tokens used to deliver reminders
• Device type
• Operating system version
• App version
• App-instance and similar technical identifiers where analytics is enabled
• Purchase product, price, currency, status, purchase token or receipt, and purchase history for in-app credit purchases
• Crash and error logs from the mobile application, including device and operating-system information, app version, and stack traces, used to diagnose technical problems

Information About Other People

If you enter information about a gift recipient or another person, you are responsible for having an appropriate basis to provide and use it. Please do not enter sensitive or unnecessary information in free-text fields.

We do not intentionally collect unnecessary personal information.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Create and manage your account
• Synchronize your data across devices
• Generate gift recommendations
• Save your preferences
• Schedule reminder notifications
• Respond to support requests
• Maintain and improve the application
• Protect the security and integrity of our services

Legal Bases

We process account data, user-created content, recommendations, reminders, and purchase information as necessary to provide GiftAhead and perform our contract with you. We process security, fraud-prevention, support, and limited operational information to comply with legal obligations and, where applicable, based on our legitimate interests in operating and protecting the service. We process non-essential analytics based on consent where required. You may withdraw consent at any time.

4. AI Recommendations

When you request gift recommendations, selected information such as a recipient's name, relationship, interests, notes, occasion details, budget, and relevant gift preferences may be processed by OpenAI to generate personalized product-search suggestions.

We only send the information necessary to generate recommendations.

The resulting product-search terms may be sent to marketplace providers such as eBay to retrieve matching products. Marketplace providers receive search terms rather than the complete recipient profile. These recommendations assist with gift discovery and do not make legal or similarly significant decisions about you or a recipient.

5. Third-Party Services

GiftAhead relies on trusted third-party providers to operate the service, including:

• Supabase: Authentication and database
• Google: Optional sign-in
• Google and Firebase: Optional sign-in and consent-based website and mobile-app analytics
• Google Firebase Crashlytics: Crash and error reporting in the mobile application to diagnose and fix technical problems
• Expo: Notification delivery and app services
• OpenAI: Recommendation search generation
• eBay and other marketplace providers: Product search and availability
• RevenueCat, Google Play: Purchase validation, purchase history, credits, and entitlement management
• IONOS: Hosting providers used for the GiftAhead website

These providers process information only as needed to provide their services.

6. External Retailers

GiftAhead may display products from third-party retailers.

Selecting a product link opens the retailer's website. Purchases are completed directly with the retailer and are governed by that retailer's own privacy policy and terms.

GiftAhead credit purchases are processed by the applicable app store. GiftAhead does not receive or store complete payment-card or bank-account details. GiftAhead and RevenueCat receive limited purchase information such as the product purchased, price, currency, transaction status, purchase token or receipt, purchase history, and an app user identifier to validate purchases, prevent fraud, grant credits, and support purchase restoration.

7. Analytics and Tracking

We use Google Analytics 4 on the GiftAhead website to understand how visitors use the website and to help us improve its content, performance, and usability. Google Analytics may process information such as pages viewed, interactions with the website, approximate location, referrer, browser and device information, timestamps, and cookie or similar identifiers.

With your consent, we also use Google Analytics for Firebase in the GiftAhead mobile application. Firebase Analytics may process an app-instance identifier, device and operating-system information, app version, approximate location derived from the IP address, timestamps, sessions, screens viewed, and limited interaction events such as login or registration method, creation of a recipient or event, generation of recommendations, notification opens, and in-app purchases. We do not intentionally send recipient names, email addresses, notes, event titles, product URLs, or recipient and event database identifiers to Google Analytics.

On the website, we use a self-hosted cookie consent tool to ask for, record, and manage your cookie choices. Your consent choice is stored in your browser and is not shared with a third party. Website analytics cookies and identifiers are enabled only after you consent. You can withdraw or change your consent at any time through the website's cookie settings, available in the footer. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing that took place before withdrawal.

In the mobile application, Firebase Analytics collection is disabled by default. We ask for your choice before enabling it and store that choice and its timestamp on your device. You can grant or withdraw consent at any time under Settings > Privacy > Share app analytics. Withdrawing consent stops future analytics collection from the app on that device.

Our Google tag uses Google Consent Mode. If you do not consent to analytics cookies, analytics storage remains disabled. Google Analytics may nevertheless receive limited, cookieless signals, such as the consent state, timestamp, user agent, referrer, page information, and a random number, for basic measurement and modeling. These signals do not use Analytics cookies on your device.

The legal basis for storing or accessing analytics information on your device and for the related analytics processing is your consent, where required by applicable law. We process strictly necessary consent information to record and respect your choices and to demonstrate compliance with our legal obligations.

Google, OpenAI, RevenueCat, Supabase, Expo, and marketplace providers may process information outside your country, including in the United States. Where required, transfers are protected using recognized legal safeguards. Analytics event-level data is retained according to the retention period configured in our Google Analytics property and is then deleted or aggregated. Website cookie-consent records and the mobile consent choice are retained only as long as needed to document and respect your choices and comply with applicable law.

For more information about how Google uses information from websites that use its services, see Google's Privacy & Terms information.

8. Data Retention

Account information and user-created content are generally retained while your account remains active. Notification tokens are retained while needed to provide enabled notifications. Purchase and transaction records may be retained as needed to provide credits, restore purchases, prevent fraud, and comply with accounting or other legal obligations. Support and security records are retained only for as long as reasonably necessary for their purpose.

If you delete your account, we delete or anonymize personal information from active systems unless retention is required by law or necessary to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims. Residual copies may remain temporarily in provider backups until they are overwritten under the provider's backup schedule. Analytics and consent information follow the retention periods described in Section 7.

9. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the right to:

• Access your personal information
• Correct inaccurate information
• Request deletion of your account and associated data
• Request a copy of your personal information where applicable
• Withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent
• Object to or request restriction of certain processing where applicable
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority

10. Security

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information. However, no method of electronic storage or transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

11. Children's Privacy

GiftAhead is not intended for children under the age required by applicable law without parental permission.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be published within the application or on our website.

13. Contact

The controller responsible for GiftAhead is Thu Giang Pham, Kolonnenstr. 8, 10827 Berlin, Germany. If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your privacy rights, please contact:

privacy@giftahead.app