Privacy Policy
bow (“bow,” “we,” “us”) is a gift-planning app run by Brian Howell, doing business as bow. This policy explains what information bow collects, how it is used, and the choices you have. The short version: your data exists to power your gift-giving — we don’t sell it, we don’t run ads, and the people you create profiles for are your private records.
What we collect
Account information. Your email address and how you sign in (email and password, or your Apple or Google account). If you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive the name and email address they share with us (and, from Google, a link to your profile picture, which bow doesn’t use). We also store your phone’s time zone so reminders arrive at the right local time.
Recipient profiles you create. bow is built around profiles of the people you give gifts to. You choose what to enter: names or nicknames, birthdays, relationship, sizes, interests, notes and gift budgets. These profiles are your private address-book-style records; other users can never see them.
Everything in a profile is optional and typed or chosen by you. Some optional fields can be sensitive — for example dietary needs or allergies, accessibility needs, gender identity, or cultural and religious celebrations. Only add what you’re comfortable storing; you can edit or clear any field at any time.
Adding people from your Contacts. When you tap “Choose from Contacts”, you pick who to add, and bow receives only their name, nickname, birthday and contact photo — not their phone numbers, email or home addresses. What you keep becomes that person’s profile in bow.
Photos. You can add a photo to a person’s profile (from your photo library, your camera, or their contact photo) and to a gift. bow only receives the one picture you choose. Before uploading we make a smaller copy, which normally removes hidden details such as where the photo was taken. Photos are stored privately in your own folder and shown through links that expire after an hour. Deleting a photo, a gift, a person or your account removes the photo.
Gifts and occasions. Gift ideas you save, gifts you log (including photos you choose to upload and product links you paste), occasions and reminder settings.
Usage analytics. We use PostHog to understand how bow is used — for example “an idea was saved” or “a reminder was opened”, with counts and categories. These events never include the names, notes or other details you type about people. To connect events to your account, PostHog receives your bow account ID. PostHog also receives basic device details (phone model, iOS version, app version) and may estimate your rough location (city/country) from your internet address. We don’t record your screen and don’t track taps automatically.
Crash reports. If bow crashes or hits an error, it sends a report to Sentry so we can fix it. A report includes technical details — the error, the app version, your phone model and iOS version, and a short log of what the app was doing just before. bow’s reminder server also reports reminder send failures to Sentry, with no personal data. Crash reports don’t include your name or email. Their technical log can include bow’s internal ID numbers (such as your account ID), which we use only to fix problems. Sentry keeps them for 30 days.
Reminders (push notifications). If you allow notifications, your phone gives bow a notification address (a “push token”), which we store with your account and delete when you sign out. Reminder messages include the occasion and the names of the people involved, and they pass through Expo’s notification service and Apple to reach your phone. Reminders are off until you turn them on, and you can turn them off in Settings or in iPhone Settings.
Product links. If you paste a product link, bow’s server visits that page once to fill in the title, picture and price; we don’t log the link — it’s saved only if you save the gift. The product picture is then loaded from the store’s website. “Find it on Amazon / Search on Google” buttons pass the gift’s search words through bow’s server to the store; bow’s server doesn’t store the search words. Tapping one saves the idea to your gifts, and our usage analytics note that a store button was tapped and which store.
Sign-in emails. When you sign up with email, reset your password or change your email address, we send you a code. Resend delivers those emails for us, so it receives your email address and the message, including the code. Resend stores emails in the United States and keeps them for 30 days.
This website. bow puts no cookies, analytics or ads on getbowapp.com. Cloudflare, which hosts it, processes the standard technical details of each visit (such as your internet address and browser type) to deliver the page and protect the site.
How AI suggestions work
When you ask bow for gift ideas, bow’s server (not your phone) sends the relevant profile to Anthropic, the company whose AI writes the ideas. That can include the person’s name, age and birthday (or an age range), relationship to you, their group (such as Family), whether the profile is your own, interests, tastes, favorite brands and style, values, love language, the kinds of gifts they prefer, life stage and milestones, sizes, dietary needs or allergies, accessibility needs, things not to give or that they already have too much of, their wish list, gifts you’ve saved or already given them (and how they liked them), ideas you’ve hidden and why, your budget, the occasion, and anything you type into the search box. We don’t send their photo, your email address, their gender identity or their city.
We keep a history of each request and the ideas that came back, so you can see past ideas and so we can run the feature responsibly (model, token counts and cost). Anthropic processes this data to produce the ideas. Anthropic doesn’t use it to train its AI models, and deletes it within 30 days — unless a request is flagged as breaking Anthropic’s usage policy (then it can be kept for up to 2 years) or the law requires keeping it longer.
Who your data is shared with
We share data only with the service providers that run bow:
- Supabase — database, sign-in, and private photo storage. Your data is stored in the United States (Supabase’s East US region, in North Virginia). Supabase handles it only on bow’s behalf, under its data processing agreement; the companies Supabase itself relies on (for example Amazon Web Services for hosting) are listed on Supabase’s website. Supabase also keeps technical logs of sign-ins and requests, including your internet address.
- Anthropic — writes the AI gift ideas (server-to-server, as described above).
- PostHog — usage analytics.
- Sentry — crash and error reports.
- Expo — app updates and delivering notifications (with Apple).
- Resend — delivering bow’s sign-up, password-reset and email-change code emails.
- Cloudflare — hosting this website.
- Apple / Google — if you sign in with them. Google also hosts bow’s Gmail inbox, if you email us.
When you tap a store button you leave bow and land on the store’s site (for example Amazon, or Google’s search results); their privacy policy applies there. We never sell your personal information, and we don’t share it with advertisers.
Your choices and rights
- Export. Settings → Export my data gives you a copy of your account’s data as a file (photos are listed, not included).
- Delete. Settings → Account → Delete account permanently erases your account and everything listed under “Security and retention” below.
- Edit. Every profile, gift, and occasion can be edited or deleted in the app.
- Notifications. Reminders are off until you turn them on, and can be turned off any time in Settings or iPhone Settings.
- Analytics. Email bow.gifts.app@gmail.com to have your usage analytics deleted.
If you’re in a region with statutory privacy rights (for example GDPR or state privacy laws), the export and deletion tools above are how we honor access and erasure requests; for anything else, contact us at bow.gifts.app@gmail.com.
Children
bow accounts are for people 13 or older. We do not knowingly let children create accounts. Recipient profiles may describe children (for example your kids or nieces and nephews) — those records are created and controlled by you, the account holder, are used only to generate gift ideas at your request, and are never used to contact or profile the child. Photos and birthdays you add for a child are stored privately in your account like any other profile. Their details (never their photo) are sent to Anthropic only as described above, when you ask for ideas for them.
Security and retention
Your data is stored with Supabase, with access rules that let only your account read or change your records. Photos are stored privately and shown through links that expire after an hour. We keep your data — including your history of AI ideas — for as long as your account exists. When you delete your account (Settings → Account → Delete account) we permanently erase your account, profiles, gifts, occasions, photos, AI history and notification tokens from bow’s database and storage. Crash reports are kept by Sentry for 30 days. Usage analytics are kept by PostHog for 1 year. Deleting your account does not remove usage analytics automatically; if you’d like yours deleted, email us at bow.gifts.app@gmail.com and we will delete them.
Changes
If this policy changes materially, we’ll update the effective date and note the change in the app or by email.
Who we are
bow is run by Brian Howell, doing business as bow. Questions or requests: bow.gifts.app@gmail.com. If you email us (including from Settings → Send feedback), your message is kept in that Gmail inbox, which Google hosts.