What CircleHouse knows about you
Short version: your email, the name and place you type, whatever you post, and — only if you say yes — a location we use once and never share. There is no advertising here and nothing about you is sold. We do count which parts of the app get used — in our own database, and in PostHog, a product analytics service — and you can turn that off in one tap, at which point both stop.
What we collect, and why
Your email address and password, so you can sign in. The password is stored only as a hash; nobody at CircleHouse can read it.
The name and place you type when you sign up. Both are shown to other people on every post and reply you write — that is the point of them. CircleHouse has no usernames: people are people here. Place is free text, so it can be as vague as you like.
A short bio and a profile photo, if you add them. Both are optional and both are public to anyone signed in.
What you post: the words, the photos, your replies, and which reactions you have given. Which circles you belong to, and when you last read each one, so the app can show you what is new.
Your coordinates, but only if you grant location permission. They are used to work out how far away a circle is and nothing else.
If you turn notifications on, a push token for that phone, so we can send them. It identifies the app on the device and nothing about you. Signing out gives it back.
A count of things you do in the app: that a post was made, that a circle was joined, that a screen was opened. Never what you wrote, never who you wrote to, never anything you typed — and you can turn it off under your profile.
What the counting is, exactly
Each record is a short name from a fixed list — post_created, circle_joined, app_open — with the platform, the app version, and your account id. No advertising identifier, no device fingerprint, no location, no text.
It is stored in the same database as everything else, and the same named actions are also sent to PostHog, a product analytics service, under your account id and nothing else. Neither copy carries anything you wrote. Ours is deleted after ninety days.
Before you have an account there is no account id to attach, so a few of these — the app was opened, a sign-up screen was reached, a shared link was followed — go to PostHog under a random identifier for this app on this device. Not your advertising identifier, and not linked to anything outside this app.
Turning the counting off under your profile stops both: nothing is written here and nothing is sent there.
Crash reports are the one thing that may leave: if the app breaks we send the error and where in the code it happened, with your account id and no other detail about you, so it can be fixed. Turning the counting off under your profile does not stop crash reports, because a crash is the app failing rather than something you did.
The switch is in your profile, under “helping us improve circlehouse”. Turning it off means nothing is recorded at all — it is enforced by the database, not by the app choosing to be polite.
Your location is not visible to anyone else
Coordinates are kept in a separate table from the rest of your profile, with a database rule that returns them only to you. Other people cannot read them — not through the app, and not by asking the database directly. The only thing anyone else sees is the place you typed, and you choose how precise that is.
The app asks for your location once, when you first set up your account. It does not track you in the background, and it never asks again on its own.
Who else sees your information
Anyone signed in to CircleHouse can see your name, place, bio, photo, and anything you post in a circle they can see. Posts in an invite-only circle are visible only to that circle.
A circle’s moderators can see who belongs to it, and can remove or ban people and take down posts. Those actions are recorded in a log that only that circle’s moderators can read.
If you report something, the moderators of that circle see the report and your name.
Where it is kept
On Supabase, which hosts the database and the photo storage. Supabase processes this data on our behalf and does not use it for anything else.
Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared with advertisers or data brokers. The app contains no advertising SDK and no advertising identifier. Two outside services receive anything at all: Sentry, which receives crash reports, and PostHog, which receives the usage counts described above.
Neither is sent your name, your email, or anything you wrote. Alongside each event PostHog does receive the ordinary technical details its software collects — the phone model, the operating system and app version, the language and time zone, and the network address the request came from. You can check all of it: the dependency list is in package.json.
Deleting your account
Your profile has a delete button, and it does what it says. Your account, your profile, your location, your memberships, your reactions and your uploaded photos are removed.
Your posts and replies stay where they are, with your name taken off them. A conversation full of holes is worse for the people still in it than a byline that reads “someone who left”. If you want a particular post gone as well, delete it before you delete your account — or write to us and we will remove it.
If you run a circle, it is handed to its longest-serving moderator so the people in it are not left stranded. If nobody else is in it, it is deleted with your account.
Children
CircleHouse is not for people under 13, and we do not knowingly keep accounts for them. If you believe a child has an account, write to us and we will remove it.
Asking us things
You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to hello@circles.app and we will answer within 30 days.
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the app will tell you before the change takes effect.