Privacy Policy

Effective 30 August 2026. GiftBanana is a wishlist service. This page explains, in plain English, what we store and why.

What we collect

• Account details - your name, email address, a securely hashed version of your password (we can never see the password itself), and the country you choose (used only to show prices in your currency).
• Your lists - the boards, wishes, links, notes and images you add.
• Your "About you" write-up - if you add one, it's used only to personalise suggestions. The text itself is never shown to anyone else; visitors to your list only ever see the general interests derived from it (e.g. "books").
• Guest reservations - when someone reserves a gift on a shared list, we store a random anonymous token in their browser so they can release it later. The list owner never learns who reserved what: reservations are deliberately hidden from the owner ("double-blind"). A guest can also choose to leave an email address to get a note of what they claimed and, if the list has a date, one reminder before it; that address is used for exactly those emails, is never shown to the list owner, and is removed when the reservation, the list or the owner's account goes.
• Secret Santa draws - if you join a draw, we store the name you typed, the email you optionally gave, your "no-thanks" list and gift ideas, who you asked not to be matched with, and - once the names are drawn - who you are buying for. Your no-thanks list and ideas are shown to exactly one person: whoever drew you. Who-drew-whom is shown only to the giver, never to the organiser or the group. A group and everything in it is deleted 60 days after its exchange date (or a year after it was created, if it never had one). Every non-essential Secret Santa email carries a one-click stop link, and every first email to an address carries a "not you?" link that removes the address and stops us ever writing to it again.
• Sign in with Google - if you choose to sign in with Google, Google confirms who you are and we receive your name, your email address and a Google account number (so we can recognise you next time). That is everything we receive from Google, and we send Google nothing about you or your lists. Google's sign-in button is served by Google and appears only on the sign-in and signup windows - it is not loaded anywhere else on the site - and using it is always optional: email signup does exactly the same job.
• Sign in with Apple - works the same way: Apple confirms who you are and we receive your name, the email address you choose to share (which may be Apple's private relay address) and an Apple account number. We send Apple nothing about you or your lists.
• Reminder notifications - if you switch on "Reminders on this device", we store the token your browser or phone gives us for that device so we can send the reminder to it. Switching the toggle off, or deleting your account, removes it; a device that stops accepting notifications is forgotten automatically.
• The Pro waiting list - if you ask to be told when Pro launches, we keep the email address you gave for that one message.
• Reports - if you report a shared list or a Secret Santa page, we keep the reason and anything you wrote, plus your account if you were signed in, so we can deal with it.
• When something breaks - if the app hits an error on your device, it sends us the error message (no name, no email, no device identifier) so we can fix it.

What we don't collect

No postal addresses, no payment details, no device location (the country in your profile is one you pick, for prices), and no advertising trackers. We never sell your data, and we share it only with the service providers below who process it for us. We use no third-party analytics of any kind - no Google Analytics, no advertising pixels, nothing that follows you to other websites.

Who helps us run it

A small number of companies process data on our behalf, each for one job and under their own data-protection terms. None of them may use your data for anything else.

• Vercel hosts the website and the app, and Neon hosts the database - both in the United Kingdom.
• Resend delivers our emails: it receives the address and the message each time we email you.
• ScraperAPI fetches a shop's product page for us when a shop blocks our own reader. It receives the product link you pasted - never anything about you.
• Google and Apple, only if you choose their sign-in buttons, as described above.
• Push services (your browser's, or Apple's for the iPhone app) carry reminder notifications you switched on. They see only an encrypted message and the device token.

Cookies and browser storage

We set a small number of first-party cookies, each essential to something you asked for: keeping you signed in; a random anonymous token (kept for up to about 13 months) so a guest can come back and release a gift they reserved; a note that you entered the passcode while the site is in private preview; a signed token (kept for up to about 13 months) that remembers which Secret Santa seat is yours so your match opens on this device; and, if you arrived from someone's shared list or a Secret Santa invite, a value-free flag that lasts only until you close your browser and tells us the sharing loop is working. Your light or dark choice, your region, and any list you start before signing up are kept in your browser and never sent to us. We set no advertising cookies and no third-party cookies. The one third-party exception is opt-in: if you use Sign in with Google, the button itself is served by Google and Google may use its own cookies to sign you in, under Google's privacy policy - it loads only on the sign-in and signup windows, never anywhere else.

What we count

To see whether the service actually works, we count a few things that are not linked to you: how many times a shared list was opened and on what date - never by whom, as no visitor identifier is stored against a view - and which shop domains people click through to. These records hold no name, no email and no device identifier, so they cannot be traced back to an individual. The same goes for Secret Santa: we count, per day, how many groups were started, how many people joined, how many filled in a no-thanks list and how many opened their match - counts only, never who.

Affiliate links

Outbound links to shops may be converted to affiliate links (see our affiliate disclosure). The shop may know the click came from GiftBanana; we don't send them anything about you.

Where your data lives

Data is stored in a managed Postgres database hosted in the United Kingdom (Neon, via Vercel) and served from UK infrastructure. Everything travels over HTTPS; passwords are stored only as salted hashes; sign-in sessions are signed, HTTP-only cookies.

How long we keep things

• Your account and lists - for as long as you keep the account. Deleting it removes your profile, lists, wishes, notes, reservations on them, and any notification tokens straight away and permanently.
• Guest reservations and any email a guest left with one - until the guest releases the gift, or the list or its owner's account is deleted, whichever comes first.
• Secret Santa groups - deleted 60 days after the exchange date (or a year after they were created if no date was set).
• Reports, the Pro waiting list and error messages - until they have been dealt with, or you ask us to remove them.
• Anonymous counts (list opens by date, shop domains clicked) - kept, because they identify nobody.

Who this is for

GiftBanana is for people aged 13 and over. A list for a younger child is made and shared by a parent or carer from their own account; we never knowingly collect information from a child.

Your rights

You can change your details any time from your profile, and delete your account (and everything in it, permanently) from the profile panel - see how to delete your account, including without the app. For anything else - access requests, corrections, questions - email hello@giftbanana.co.

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