Privacy policy

Occasionry and My Pollyanna use the same accounts and the same database. Signing up on one creates an account you can use on both. Christmas gift exchanges are shown on My Pollyanna and every other group on Occasionry, but they are kept in the same place.

Your account. Your name and email address. If you use a password, we store it scrambled one way so that nobody, including us, can read it. If you sign in with Google, we keep the ID Google gives us so we can recognize you next time.

What you add to a group. Wishes and their links, questions you ask about wishes, chat posts, poll answers and the choices you add to polls, food you sign up to bring, books you suggest, and your avatar.

Book clubs. Each month's book, meeting date and vote, so the group has a record of what it has read.

Gift exchanges. Who drew whom, so each person can see their own name. Organizers can unlock the full list to fix a problem, and every unlock is recorded with their name and the time.

Things that help us run the site. Your notifications. Questions you ask the help desk, so a person can follow up. The quick "how is it going" answers you give. When you press a store link: which link, when, and from which group, so we can match commissions and suggest books your group might like. How many times each person opens each page per day, as a count, not a record of every click. Password reset links, which expire after an hour.

Questions about a wish are never shown with your name, to anyone in the group. Chat posts marked anonymous are hidden from other members, but they are still linked to your account, and an organizer can reveal who wrote one if it breaks the group's rules. That reveal is recorded.

Children can be added to a gift exchange by a parent or organizer, by first name only. They have no email address, no password, and no way to sign in. Accounts are for adults.

Members of your group see your name, avatar, wishes, food sign-ups, poll answers and suggestions, and non-anonymous chat posts. Organizers also see the email addresses of people on the group's invitation list.

Lists organizers upload. An organizer can add several people at once by uploading a photo, screenshot, spreadsheet, or CSV of names and email addresses. The file is read and then thrown away; we do not store it. Only the invitations the organizer chooses to send are kept, along with a note of who sent them and when. Nobody is put in a group until they accept their invitation.

Companies that run parts of the site for us:

• Microsoft Azure hosts the site and the database and sends our emails.
• Google handles "Sign in with Google" if you choose it.
• Google Analytics counts visits to the site: which pages are opened, roughly where from (country or city), what kind of device and browser, and the website or search that sent you here. It sets its own cookies to tell a new visit from a returning one. It does not receive your name, your email address, or anything you add to a group.
• Anthropic's AI writes book suggestions, gift ideas and the help desk's answers. For book suggestions it receives the group's reading list, the books in the vote, recent chat messages, and the words members searched for in stores, without anyone's name. For gift ideas it receives the wishes on that person's list and the group budget. For the help desk it receives your question and a summary of your group.
• SerpApi finds products when you press "Search" under "Find it online." It receives the words you searched for.
• Unsplash supplies photos for gift ideas. It receives the search words.
• Open Library supplies book covers. It receives the book's title and author, nothing about you or your group.

Stores. When you press a link to Amazon or another store, you leave Occasionry, and that store, along with any affiliate network in between, sees your visit under its own privacy policy.

We do not sell or rent your information, and we do not give it to advertisers.

Your sign-in, so you stay signed in; your "Larger text" and "Reduce motion" choices; and your help desk conversation until you close the tab. Google Analytics also keeps its cookies here, as described above. We do not use advertising trackers.

You can delete your own wishes, chat posts, food sign-ups and poll suggestions at any time. An organizer can remove someone from a group, which deletes that person's wishes, claims and food sign-ups in that group. The person who made a group can close it, which hides it from everyone. To delete your account entirely, email support@mypollyanna.com from the address you sign in with.

If we change what we collect or who we share it with, we will update this page and the date at the top before the change takes effect.