This Privacy Policy explains how SantaSecret collects, uses, shares, and retains personal information when you use santa-secret.com and the Secret Santa services available through the website.
SantaSecret is operated by Santa Secret LLC, a California limited liability company ("SantaSecret", "we", "us", or "our"). Santa Secret LLC is the controller of personal information processed through SantaSecret for purposes of applicable data protection laws. Our contact details are in section 16.
Depending on how you use SantaSecret, you may provide us with:
If you did not provide your personal information directly to SantaSecret, it may have been provided by the organizer of a Secret Santa game. An organizer typically provides your name or nickname, and may also provide your email address if they want SantaSecret to send you an invitation, draw result, or reminder.
By submitting another person's name, email address, or other personal information, an organizer confirms that they have informed that person and have that person's permission, or another lawful authority, to provide the information to SantaSecret for invitations, draw notifications, and participation in the relevant Secret Santa game. The organizer must be able to demonstrate this permission or authority upon request.
If you do not want SantaSecret to retain or process information provided about you by an organizer, contact us at postman@santa-secret.com.
When you use SantaSecret, our systems automatically process technical information such as:
We also collect limited information about how you interact with the website (such as pages visited and actions taken) through our SantaSecret-hosted analytics, as described in section 6.
We use personal information only to operate, secure, and improve SantaSecret.
We process information to:
Where the GDPR applies, we rely on the necessity of this processing to provide the service you requested or to perform our agreement with you.
Where an organizer provides a participant's name or email address, we process that information to conduct the Secret Santa game requested by the organizer, send the relevant invitation or draw notification, and make the service function for that group.
Where the GDPR applies, we rely on our legitimate interest in providing the requested Secret Santa service, subject to the rights and interests of the affected participant.
We use contact information to send messages necessary for the operation of SantaSecret, including invitations, draw results, reminders, account notifications, security and technical messages, and responses to support requests. We do not use participant information for unrelated mass marketing.
We process technical information as reasonably necessary to prevent abuse, diagnose errors, protect users, and keep the service operating. Where the GDPR applies, this processing is based on our legitimate interest in maintaining a secure and reliable service.
We use first-party website analytics to understand how SantaSecret is used and to improve the website and service. Where the GDPR applies, this processing is based on our legitimate interest in measuring and improving the service, subject to the rights and interests of visitors. Details are in section 6.
We may process or retain information where necessary to comply with applicable law, respond to lawful requests, or establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
SantaSecret is designed to allow people participating in the same Secret Santa game to exchange information needed for the game. What each role in a game can see depends on how the game is configured:
The game organizer needs enough information to run the game, so their view of each participant intentionally shows some fields and hides or masks others:
The organizer can also exchange messages one-to-one with each participant through a dedicated organizer chat. Those messages are not anonymous — the organizer sees who wrote them and the participant sees they are talking to the organizer.
Because the organizer administers the game, they have access to any card information through the SantaSecret administrative interfaces. If you do not want a particular organizer to see something, do not enter it in SantaSecret, or ask a different person to organize the game.
After the draw, your assigned Secret Santa can see your gift wish, delivery address, and other information you filled in for receiving a gift. You can also exchange messages with your assigned Secret Santa through an anonymous in-game chat that does not reveal their identity to you or your identity to them.
Other participants in the same game can see your name or nickname, avatar, and whether you have sent or received a gift — unless the organizer has chosen to hide names. Other participants cannot see your gift wish, delivery address, phone number, or private messages.
The anonymous chat between you and your assigned Secret Santa is not visible to the organizer or to other participants.
We use a small number of third-party service providers to operate SantaSecret. They process personal information as necessary to provide their services to us.
| Provider | Purpose | Data shared | Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| Postmark | Transactional email delivery (invitations, draw results, reminders, account and security messages, notifications) | Recipient email address, name or nickname, magic-link URL, invitation and result content | United States |
| Cloudflare | Domain name resolution and inbound-mail forwarding for support email sent to postman@santa-secret.com | Support message headers and content | Global network |
| Google (Gmail) | Destination inbox for support mail forwarded by Cloudflare | Support message headers and content | Global (Google) |
| Amazon Web Services (S3) | Storage of user-uploaded files, such as participant-card avatars and messenger attachments | Uploaded image files | Frankfurt, Germany (EU) |
We do not use open-tracking or link-tracking pixels in the transactional emails we send through Postmark.
Sign-in through an external authentication provider is described in section 8.
Basic first-party website analytics are provided by a SantaSecret-hosted instance of Umami Analytics, described in section 6.
We do not sell, share, or rent personal information.
For basic website measurement we use a SantaSecret-hosted instance of Umami Analytics at analytics.santa-secret.com. That subdomain is operated by us on our own infrastructure — analytics data does not leave SantaSecret and is not shared with the Umami project or any third-party analytics vendor. Umami processes:
Umami derives a pseudonymous, day-scoped session identifier on our server from your IP address, user-agent, and the requested website. Your IP address is not stored as a separate identifier by Umami and is not shared with any third party.
Umami does not use cookies or other browser storage, and is not used by SantaSecret to track visitors across other websites. We configure Umami so that sensitive URL parameters (such as access tokens and email addresses) are redacted before analytics data is sent, and we do not intentionally send participant names, email addresses, mailing addresses, gift information, or messages to Umami.
Umami is loaded on all SantaSecret pages without prior consent. Where the GDPR applies, this limited processing is based on our legitimate interest in measuring, maintaining, and improving the service, subject to your right to object at any time using the contact details in section 16.
SantaSecret uses cookies, localStorage, and sessionStorage. The storage we use is strictly necessary to operate the website or to remember a functional preference you chose. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
| Name | Purpose | Category | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| jwt | Keeps you authenticated while using SantaSecret | Strictly necessary | Sign-in session (up to 90 days) |
| profile_wallet | Remembers the linked profiles you have opened in this browser so you can switch between them | Strictly necessary | Up to 90 days |
| notice_closed | Remembers that you dismissed an active service notice | Functional | Until overwritten or cleared |
| santa_organizer_view:{game} | Remembers whether you are viewing a game as organizer or as participant | Functional | Until cleared |
| santa_notification_access_token | Provides secure, temporary access from a service notification | Strictly necessary | Browser-tab session |
| santa_notification_access_reason | Remembers the status of a temporary notification-access link | Strictly necessary | Browser-tab session |
| santa_notification_access_email | Displays the masked email associated with a temporary notification-access link | Strictly necessary | Browser-tab session |
| santa_card_access_token:{card} | Provides secure, temporary access to the relevant participant card | Strictly necessary | Browser-tab session |
| santa_card_access_unavailable:{card} | Remembers that temporary card access is unavailable | Strictly necessary | Browser-tab session |
| qd_organizer_access:{game} | Remembers Quick Draw organizer access for the current browser tab | Strictly necessary | Browser-tab session |
Blocking this storage may prevent authentication or other parts of SantaSecret from working correctly. You can delete cookies and site storage at any time using your browser settings; clearing strictly necessary storage may sign you out or reset functional preferences.
You may choose to sign in to SantaSecret using an external authentication provider — currently Google or Telegram. If you do, that provider processes information and may use its own cookies and browser storage as part of the authentication flow. Those technologies are controlled by the relevant provider and are subject to that provider's privacy practices.
When you use external authentication, we receive only the information necessary to complete the authentication process and provide your SantaSecret account (typically an email address and a display name).
SantaSecret's application servers are located in the Netherlands (European Union). Some of the service providers listed in section 5 process personal information in other countries, including the United States.
Where applicable law (for example the GDPR) requires safeguards for international transfers of personal information, we and our service providers rely on appropriate legal transfer mechanisms — such as the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified under it, or Standard Contractual Clauses.
We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy.
When you delete your account, we replace your identifiers with a masked placeholder (email is set to a non-routable user_deleted_<id>@deleted.com value and your name is set to "Deleted User"), we overwrite your card's gift wish, phone number, and postal address with asterisks, and we update notification records referencing your email address so that your email is removed.
Database backups are rotated on a rolling window of approximately 3 days. Earlier information may remain in the most recent backups until they are overwritten within that window.
We may retain certain information for longer where required by law or reasonably necessary to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
Depending on where you live and the law that applies to you, you may have rights regarding your personal information, including the right to:
To exercise a privacy right, contact us at postman@santa-secret.com. We may need to verify your identity before completing a request. Where the GDPR applies, we will respond without undue delay and generally within one month; that period may be extended for particularly complex or numerous requests where permitted by law.
Residents of the European Economic Area may lodge a complaint with the data-protection authority in their country of residence. A list of authorities is maintained by the European Data Protection Board at edpb.europa.eu. Residents of the United Kingdom may lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
SantaSecret is a general-audience service intended only for people who are at least 13 years old. If you are under 13, do not use SantaSecret, create an account, participate in a game through the service, or submit any personal information to us. In parts of the European Economic Area where the age of digital consent is higher than 13, you must be at least that age to use SantaSecret.
An adult teacher, parent, legal guardian, or organizer may use SantaSecret to manage a game involving children under 13 only if all of the following apply:
We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13. If we learn that a child under 13 has accessed or used SantaSecret directly, or that a child's personal information has been submitted in circumstances where it should not have been collected, we will take reasonable steps to delete that information and disable the associated account or access.
If you believe that a child's personal information has been provided to us in these circumstances, contact us at postman@santa-secret.com so that we can review and, where appropriate, delete it.
We use reasonable technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal information, including:
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
SantaSecret does not make decisions about you using solely automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects. Secret Santa drawings assign each participant a giftee at random within the rules configured by the game organizer; the drawing is a matching procedure and is not an automated decision within the meaning of Article 22 of the GDPR.
We may update this Privacy Policy when our service, service providers, technologies, or legal obligations change. The current version will be available through the Privacy Policy link on santa-secret.com. If a change materially affects how we process personal information, we will provide additional notice where required by applicable law.
For questions about this Policy, privacy requests, or concerns about how your personal information is processed, contact:
Santa Secret LLC
2108 N ST STE N
Sacramento, CA 95816
United States
Email: postman@santa-secret.com