Privacy policy

Giftnote Secret Santa (santa.giftnote.com) is run by Giftnote Online Pty Ltd ACN 655 779 829 (“Giftnote”, “we”, “us”). We handle personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

This policy covers Secret Santa only. Giftnote’s gifting service for shops has its own policy at giftnote.com.

• Your account: your name and email address. If you sign in with Google, we get your name, email address and profile picture from Google, and keep none of the sign-in tokens it gives us. If you sign in with Shop, we get only your email address. For sign-in codes and links we keep only a scrambled form, never the code itself.
• Exchanges: each exchange’s name, date, budget, message and who-sees-what setting; the people in it and, for each, when they were invited, joined, last visited, opened their match and marked a gift bought or given; any rules for the draw (such as couples not drawing each other); and who drew whom.
• Wishlists: each list’s title, the gifts you add (title, brand, picture link, price, shop link, how much you want it and your note), and which gifts have been reserved.
• Messages: what you write in a gift thread, and the reason you give if you report one.
• Messages to the organiser: what you and the organisers of an exchange write to each other, which organiser wrote each reply, and the reason you give if you report the conversation.
• Groups: if your company runs Secret Santa with us as a group, its name, logo, colour and welcome text, its members and their roles, and a log of what was done and when.
• Keeping it safe: with each sign-in session, the IP address and browser it came from. To stop misuse, we also count requests from each IP address, email address and account for about a day.
• Your country, to set up the gift shop: when you open it, Vercel tells us which country your connection comes from. We use it only to pick the currency the shop starts in and to offer a filter for shops in that country, and we don't store it.
• Emails we send: who each one went to, its kind and subject, which account’s action caused it, when it was sent, and whether it was sent, bounced or marked as spam. We don’t keep what the email said.

An organiser types in the names and email addresses of the people taking part. If someone added you, that’s where we got your details. We use them only to run that exchange: to invite you, to tell you who you’re buying for, and to remind you before the gift day.

Every email we send, except the sign-in codes you ask for, has a link to stop all Secret Santa emails.

• Who drew whom: each person sees only who they’re buying for. The organiser chooses whether to show the pairs after the gift day. Once anyone else joins, they can only switch that off, and once they do the draw, not at all. If they do: Nobody sees who drew whom until the day after gift day, when everyone finds out who had them and the organiser can see every pair. If they don’t: Nobody, the organiser included, will ever see who drew whom. When three or fewer people are in the draw, everyone can work out the whole draw from who they’re buying for, whatever the organiser chooses. With four, what the reveal shows is enough to work it out. When the organiser’s rules leave few choices, who you’re buying for, or what the reveal shows, can be enough however many people are in it. In a group’s exchange, every owner and admin of the group can see what the organiser sees.
• The organiser sees the names and email addresses of the people in the exchange, and whether each has been invited, has joined, has declined or was removed, and has a wishlist. How many people have opened their match or bought a gift, and how many threads were reported, show only as totals, and only when at least five people are in the draw. They also see which invitations and “your person is ready” emails went to which address, when, and whether each was sent, could not be sent or delivered, or we’re not sure it arrived. If no more of our emails can reach you, because you unsubscribed, an email to you bounced or your email service told us you marked one as spam, their list shows “Won’t get more emails” beside the emails to you while you’re invited or taking part. The mark never says which of those it was. As organiser, they never see anyone’s wishlist or gift-thread messages, unless they take part and turn on shared wishlists: then they see wishlists as a member, like everyone else; if they’re in the draw too, they see what every other person in it sees.
• Your wishlist is seen by you and by whoever drew you in each exchange you added it to. If the organiser turns on shared wishlists, everyone taking part in that exchange can see it too. Which gifts have been reserved stays hidden from you and from them.
• Gift threads let the person buying for you ask you questions without you knowing who they are. When you report a thread, your reason and that thread go to our team, never to the organiser.
• Messages to the organiser aren’t anonymous. Every organiser of the exchange (the person who set it up and, in a group’s exchange, every owner and admin of the group) reads what you write, with your name, and you see which organiser wrote each reply. Nobody else in the exchange sees them. If the organiser changes the email address of your place or gives it to someone else, the conversation is deleted, so the next person in your place never sees it. When either of you reports the conversation, your reason, a copy of its latest messages (up to 400) and your place’s email address go to our team, never to the organisers when you report it and never to you when they do. A report stops our emails about the conversation to whoever reported it: to you, or to every organiser when one of them reports it.
• In a group, its owners and admins see its members’ names, email addresses and roles, when they joined, who has been invited and what became of each invitation email, and its log. In each of its exchanges, every owner and admin sees what the organiser sees. The log never names a pair. When a thread in one of its exchanges is reported, the log records which exchange and the minute, but only if at least five people were in the draw then, and never who reported it or which thread.

We use what we collect to run Secret Santa: to do the draw, show each person what they’re allowed to see, send the emails you or your organiser asked for, keep accounts secure, stop misuse, and answer you when you contact us.

We don’t sell your information, and Secret Santa has no ads.

Secret Santa emails are about your exchanges and your account: invitations, your match, reminders before the gift day, alerts when a message arrives, invitations to join a group, and the sign-in codes you ask for.

You can stop them all with the link at the bottom of any of them, or your mail app’s unsubscribe button. Sign-in codes you ask for yourself still arrive. But if an email can’t be delivered at all, or your email service tells us you marked one as spam, we stop sending anything to that address, sign-in codes included. If the one you marked was a sign-in email, we stop everything else, but not sign-in codes.

• Vercel runs the app, in its Sydney region.
• Neon holds the database, in Sydney.
• Resend sends our emails.
• Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a sign-in comes from a person.
• Google and Shop, if you choose to sign in with them.
• CookieYes shows the cookie banner, the same one giftnote.com uses, and keeps your answer (see below).
• Google Analytics, only if you say yes (see below).
• Sanity holds the gift directory, and the Giftnote logo in our emails. We read gift details from it and send it only the words you search for, never who you are; if your email app shows pictures, it asks Sanity for that logo.
• Shopify's product catalog, for gifts from other shops: we send it only the words you search for and your price range, never who you are.

Some of these companies are based outside Australia, so your information can be handled overseas: an email, for example, passes through Resend on its way to you. They handle it only to provide their service to us.

Secret Santa sets only the cookies it needs to work: your session (30 days), a sign-in in progress (10 minutes), a Google sign-in in progress (5 minutes), an invitation you opened as a guest (30 days), a Shop sign-in in progress (10 minutes), and one for each exchange that remembers on this device whether you opened or hid your match (1 year). Your browser also remembers the last email address you signed in with, to fill it in next time, and, until you close the tab, an exchange you’re setting up and your name; those stay on your device. There are no advertising cookies.

A banner from CookieYes, the same one giftnote.com uses, asks which cookies you’re happy with. It lists kinds of cookie Secret Santa doesn’t use: here only Analytics turns anything on, and nothing for advertising is turned on whatever you choose. CookieYes keeps your answer in a cookie called cookieyes-consent for a year, so it asks only once on this site; giftnote.com asks separately. That cookie is set the first time the banner shows, before you answer, to say you haven’t answered yet. Once you’ve answered, the “Cookie settings” link at the bottom of this page lets you change your answer.

CookieYes may also keep a record of your answer: what you chose, an id and a key for it, which version of the cookie list you saw, your language and country, and your IP address with its last part removed. It records that you were on Secret Santa, never which page. The banner never runs on a page whose address holds a code, such as an invitation or a sign-in link.

We may use Google Analytics to count visits. It runs only if you say yes to Analytics: until then its script isn’t even loaded, so nothing reaches Google. If you say yes, Google sees the kind of page you’re on (such as “an exchange page”), never its address, so no names, codes or links reach it, and only the website you came from, never the page. It also hears about a few actions: signing up, creating an exchange, doing the draw, adding a gift, and which shop’s website you clicked through to. It gets no user id, and its advertising features are off. Google Analytics sets its own cookies to tell visits apart. If you change your answer to no, nothing more reaches Google.

When you open a gift or choose to buy one, you go to the shop’s own website. The link tells the shop you came from Giftnote Secret Santa, and nothing about you. A gift someone added themselves links to the web address they typed, unchanged. What happens there is covered by the shop’s own privacy policy, not this one.

We keep what you give us until you delete it, or until the organiser deletes the exchange it belongs to. Nothing is deleted automatically on a timer.

Some things stop working sooner: a sign-in session 30 days after you last use it, and a sign-in code or link after 10 minutes. We delete the request counts we use to stop misuse after about a day.

Everything in it goes: the people, the draw, its gift threads, and the wishlists of people who joined it without an account. The record of each email we sent for it stays; for gift-thread emails, that record still links the two people in the thread. In a group, its log keeps the exchange’s name and when it was deleted. Messages between its people and its organisers are deleted with it, and so is any report of them.

• To delete your account, email hello@giftnote.com from that account’s email address and we’ll delete it for you.
• Deleted outright: your account, your sign-in sessions and codes, your guest links, and your own wishlists (gifts other people reserved on them go too).
• In exchanges you joined: before the draw, your place is removed. After the draw and before the gift day, it is removed and the exchange is drawn again. After the gift day, it is removed with no new draw. Your place stays in the exchange marked “Removed”, with your name and email address, which the organiser can still see.
• Messages you sent stay with the person you sent them to, without your name, unless the exchange is drawn again: a new draw starts every gift thread in it afresh, and nobody can read the old ones.
• Messages between you and the organisers of an exchange you joined stay until that exchange is deleted, but once your place is removed nobody can read them. Replies you wrote as an organiser stay with the person you wrote to, shown as from “An organiser”. In a report of one of those conversations, the email address we kept with it is replaced by the same scrambled form.
• Our email log keeps a record of each email we sent you (its kind, which exchange it was for, when it went and whether it arrived), with your address replaced by a scrambled form of it. That form doesn’t show your address, but if we’re given your address again, we can tell it’s the same one.
• If someone already bought your gift, or bought for the person you were buying for, deleting your account never moves their purchase to someone else. The organiser is told, unless so few people are left that it could show who had bought.
• A group’s exchanges you organise pass automatically to another owner of that group. Personal exchanges you organise must be deleted first.
• If you unsubscribed, your email service told us you marked our email as spam, or our email to you bounced, your address stays on our list of addresses we don’t email, so we still won’t email it after your account is gone. After an unsubscribe, we only ever send you a sign-in code you ask for. If we stopped your account sending emails because of misuse, that block stays tied to your email address too.

Accounts are for people 16 and over. A child can take part in an exchange through a parent’s email address.

You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, under the Australian Privacy Principles: email hello@giftnote.com from the address you use with Secret Santa.

If you have a complaint about how we’ve handled your information, contact us first. We’ll look into it and reply. If you’re not satisfied with the outcome, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

We may change this policy. The current version is always on this page, with the date it last changed at the top. Our terms of use cover how Secret Santa may be used.

• Email: hello@giftnote.com
• Post: '02' Suite 4, 76B Edinburgh Road, Marrickville NSW 2204