FamilyChaosFamilyChaos

Privacy Policy

Effective date: 2026-10-17 · Version 1.8

1. Who We Are

FamilyChaos is operated by Justin Robinson (“we”, “us”, “our”). For privacy questions, contact us at privacy@familychaos.ca.

2. What Data We Collect and Why

We collect the following personal data:

  • Account data: display name, email address, hashed password — needed to create and authenticate your account.
  • Family content: calendar events, lists, To Do lists (items, sub-tasks, assignees, and due dates), chore assignments and completions, bills and bill shares, notes, meal plans, recipes, contacts, and home inventory assets and their photos — the core service you signed up for.
  • Chore stats: from chore completion records we calculate how many chores each member finished, how often on time, and their streak. Each member sees only their own numbers and the family's totals; nothing ranks or compares members.
  • Vault entries: passwords and secure notes stored in the Vault are end-to-end encrypted on your device. We store only encrypted ciphertext and never have access to the contents. If you reset your vault after losing both your passphrase and your backup codes, your private entries and vault keys are permanently deleted; entries shared with the family are kept.
  • External calendar connections: if you choose to connect Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar, iCloud, or an ICS feed, we store encrypted OAuth credentials or the ICS URL and import event data (titles, descriptions, times, and locations) from those services. We do not access your external account beyond the calendar data you specifically grant access to.
  • Child member data: display name, date of birth, parental consent record — required to comply with COPPA, GDPR Article 8, and PIPEDA when a child joins the family. See our Children's Privacy Notice.
  • Billing data: payment information is processed by Stripe. We do not store your card number.
  • Technical data: IP address (used briefly at child invite time to determine applicable privacy law — not stored), device session metadata (user agent, shown to you as a device and browser name such as “iPhone · Safari” in Profile → Security, and last active time), and push notification tokens for the devices on which you turn on notifications.
  • Website analytics: when you visit our marketing website (familychaos.ca), our self-hosted Umami analytics collects page views, browser type, device type, and referring URL. Umami does not use cookies, does not collect personal data, and does not track you across websites. All analytics data is processed and stored on our own servers in Canada and is not linked to your account.
  • Spam protection: our website contact and registration forms use Google reCAPTCHA v3 to tell people from automated spam. reCAPTCHA loads when you open the contact or registration page and runs for the rest of that visit to the website, collecting device and browser data (such as your IP address, browser details, and how you interact with the page) and sending it to Google, which returns a score to our servers. We use the score only to accept or reject the submission and do not store it.

3. Legal Basis for Processing

  • Contract performance (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR — processing necessary to deliver the service you signed up for): account data, family content, external calendar connections, billing data.
  • Parental consent (Art. 6(1)(a) + Art. 8 GDPR / COPPA / PIPEDA — explicit consent from a parent or guardian): child member data.
  • Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — purposes we have a reasonable basis to pursue without overriding your rights): IP-based jurisdiction detection when a child is added (brief, in-flight, non-stored; see section 4); website analytics (aggregate, non-personal, cookieless page-view data collected by self-hosted Umami and used to improve the site); protecting our website forms from spam and abuse (Google reCAPTCHA on the contact and registration forms).

4. Who We Share Data With

  • Stripe — payment processing. Subject to a Data Processing Agreement.
  • Hosting provider — database and compute infrastructure. Subject to a Data Processing Agreement.
  • AWS SES — transactional email delivery (invites, consent emails). Subject to AWS's Data Processing Agreement.
  • Google LLC — if you connect Google Calendar, event data is retrieved via the Google Calendar API. Subject to Google's Data Processing Terms.
  • Google LLC (reCAPTCHA) — spam protection on our website contact and registration forms. reCAPTCHA sends device and browser data to Google, where it is processed in the United States. Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
  • Microsoft Corporation — if you connect Microsoft Calendar, event data is retrieved via Microsoft Graph. Subject to Microsoft's Data Processing Terms.
  • Apple Inc. — if you connect iCloud Calendar, calendar data is retrieved via Apple's CalDAV service.
  • IPinfo, Inc. (ipinfo.io) — when an adult adds a child and your family has no country set, we send that adult's IP address to IPinfo to look up the country, which decides which children's privacy rules apply (COPPA, GDPR, or PIPEDA). Only the IP address is sent. We keep which rules apply, not the country IPinfo returns. IPinfo processes the request in the United States.
  • Push notification services — when you turn on notifications, notifications are delivered through your device's push service. In a browser or installed web app, that is the push service run by your browser's maker (for example Google, Mozilla, Apple, or Microsoft); the notification content is encrypted so that only your device can read it. In the FamilyChaos mobile app, notifications are sent through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging and, on iPhone and iPad, Apple Push Notification service; these services receive the device token and the notification text (for example, a bill name or a To Do item title) and may process it outside Canada.
  • We do not sell your data. We do not share your data with advertisers. We do not share your in-app account or family data with any analytics provider.

5. International Transfers

All personal data is stored, processed, and backed up in Canada (OVHCloud, Quebec). Transactional emails are delivered via AWS SES in the ca-central-1 (Montreal) region. No personal data is transferred outside Canada for storage or processing purposes, except the device and browser data that Google reCAPTCHA collects on our website contact and registration forms, which Google processes in the United States, the IP address sent to IPinfo to look up a country when a child is added, which IPinfo processes in the United States, and push notifications, which pass through the push services described in section 4.

Canada has an EU adequacy decision under GDPR Article 45, meaning transfers of personal data from the European Economic Area (EEA) to FamilyChaos are permissible without additional safeguards.

6. How We Protect Your Data

We implement security procedures to protect the confidentiality and integrity of your personal data:

  • Encryption in transit: all communication between your device and our servers is encrypted using TLS (HTTPS).
  • Encryption at rest — OAuth credentials: Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar, and iCloud OAuth tokens are encrypted with AES-128 (Fernet) before being stored in our database. The encryption key is derived from a secret that is never stored in the database itself.
  • Vault — end-to-end encryption: passwords and secure notes stored in the Vault are encrypted on your device with AES-256-GCM before being sent to our servers. We store only ciphertext and are technically unable to read Vault contents.
  • Password hashing: account passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes. We never store your password in plaintext.
  • Access controls: all data is scoped to your family. Members cannot access data belonging to other families. Within a family, anything marked private — an event, list, To Do list, note, bill, or recipe — can only be seen by the member who created it (a private bill is also visible to members who have a share of it).
  • Security headers: all API responses include security headers (X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy) to defend against common web vulnerabilities.

No security measure is perfect. In the event of a data breach that poses a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify affected users and relevant authorities as required by applicable law.

7. How Long We Keep Your Data

  • Active account data: retained for the duration of your subscription.
  • After cancellation or trial expiry: data retained for 90 days, then permanently deleted. You may request immediate deletion at any time from Settings → Delete family.
  • Parental consent records: retained indefinitely with the child's name removed, as required by law.
  • When a child member reaches the age of majority (18 in most jurisdictions), their data transitions from parental oversight to their own independent rights. The family admin is prompted to review the child's member status. The now-adult member may contact us at privacy@familychaos.ca to exercise their independent rights of access, correction, deletion, or portability with respect to their own personal data.
  • Checked list items: kept for 30 days after being checked off so they can be restored, then permanently deleted.
  • Signed-in sessions: a device stays signed in for up to 30 days without use. You can sign out any device at any time from Profile → Security.
  • When a member leaves or deletes their account: their private To Do lists, To Do assignments, and To Do notifications are deleted. Content they added for the family that is kept stays, shown as added by a former member.
  • Backup copies: deleted within 7 days of the active data being deleted (automated backup expiry).

8. Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you have the right to:

  • Access the personal data we hold about you — Settings → Export and import (a child's data: Settings → Members → Export data)
  • Correct inaccurate data — Profile
  • Delete your account and data — Profile → Delete my account
  • Sign out devices you don't recognise — Profile → Security
  • Restrict or object to processing — contact us at privacy@familychaos.ca
  • Data portability — request an export at privacy@familychaos.ca
  • Withdraw consent (children only) — Settings → Members → Withdraw Consent
  • Lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority (GDPR: your national DPA; Canada: OPC; US: FTC)

9. Cookies and Tracking

In the app: we use a refresh token stored in localStorage to keep you signed in, and stores per-device preferences there (such as your sort and filter choices). The app does not set any tracking, advertising, or analytics cookies.

On this website (familychaos.ca): we use self-hosted Umami analytics, a privacy-preserving tool that does not set any cookies, does not collect personal data, does not fingerprint your device, and does not track you across websites. Analytics data consists solely of aggregate page-view counts, browser type, device type, and referring URL. It is processed and stored on our own servers in Canada and is not linked to your account.

reCAPTCHA on the contact and registration forms: our contact and registration forms use Google reCAPTCHA v3 to protect them from spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA loads when you open the contact or registration page and runs for the rest of that visit to the website; during that time Google may set cookies and collect device and browser data for this purpose. This is the only third-party script on this website that may set cookies; Umami itself sets none.

10. Contact Us

Privacy Officer: Justin Robinson
Email: privacy@familychaos.ca
We will respond within 30 days.