Privacy, plainly
secret.gift is built to know as little about you as possible: no accounts, no ad trackers, and no email unless you hand one over yourself. Here is everything we store, why, for how long — and what stays your responsibility.
What we store
Only what you type in or upload. Gift exchanges: the group name, description, budget, participants' first names and — if you add them — wishlists and delivery addresses. Wishlists: the items and links you add and who reserved them (shown to nobody until the event). Advent calendars: the title, the names you enter for whom and from whom, what you put behind the doors (text, photos, voice messages, links, gift-card codes, booking details, tasks), the recipient's reactions and short replies, co-authors' names and the calendar's time zone. None of this needs an email, a phone number or your real identity. The one exception is optional and yours to start: in the Telegram bot you can attach an email for the occasional round-up, and remove it there in one tap.
What you put behind a door is your responsibility
We do not read, check or approve what people write or upload. You decide what goes into a group, a wishlist or a calendar, and you are responsible for it. Please only upload photos and details you have the right to share — ask before you put someone else's face, name or personal information behind a door. Gift-card codes, booking details and promo codes work for anyone who has them: once a door with a code is open, everyone holding the calendar link can read it, so share them only in a calendar you send to the right person, and only codes you are prepared to give away.
Who sees what
Your wishlist and delivery address in a gift exchange are visible only to you and, after the draw, the person gifting to you; everyone else sees only whether they are filled in. In secret mode, draw results are hidden from everyone, including the organizer. An advent calendar is private by link: whoever holds the link sees the doors whose date has come. What is behind a closed door never leaves our servers before its day — it cannot be read in the browser or by changing the clock. Photos are delivered through links that expire after a few hours. The calendar's owner and its co-authors see every door; the owner sees reactions and replies.
How long we keep it
Uploaded files — photos and voice messages, and video when it arrives — and gift-card codes are kept on the free plan for 30 days after the calendar's last door, then deleted from our servers automatically and permanently. If you want to keep a photo, save it before then. We plan to let Premium calendars keep their files for up to a year; until then the same 30 days apply. The text of a calendar and its reactions stay until the owner deletes the calendar; a gift exchange stays until the organizer deletes the group. Telegram reminders last until you send /stop. Data deleted from the live database can remain in routine encrypted backups for a short time until they are overwritten.
Why we use it
To run the service you asked for: drawing names, showing a wishlist, opening a door on its day, sending the reminders you switched on (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)). With your consent for Telegram messages and the optional email — withdraw it any time with /stop or by removing the email (Art. 6(1)(a)). And for our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe, stopping abuse and counting visits anonymously (Art. 6(1)(f)). We do not use what you write or upload for advertising, profiling or training AI, and we never sell it.
Passwords, cookies and your device
Every participant gets a random password, and a calendar owner gets a secret edit link. Logging in sets one signed, httpOnly cookie per group or calendar so you stay signed in on your device. Your browser's local storage keeps your own list of groups, wishlists and calendars, their edit links and small settings such as sound on or off — it never leaves your device. To keep within a calendar's plan we count the devices that open it, using a random anonymous identifier stored on your device (we keep only its hash); a calendar password is stored only as a hash. We use Google Analytics and Vercel Analytics for anonymous visit counts — no cross-site ad tracking.
Players and services inside doors
A door with a Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Apple Music, SoundCloud or Vimeo link shows that service's own player, loaded only when the door is opened. From that moment the service receives your IP address and may set its own cookies, under its own privacy policy; YouTube is embedded in its privacy-enhanced mode. If you use our Telegram bot, Telegram processes the messages under its own terms; we store only your chat id, language and what you subscribed to.
Where your data lives
The database and uploaded files are in the EU (Supabase, Frankfurt region) in private storage that is not publicly accessible — only the application server can read it, and every request is checked against your link, password or cookie. The site is served by Vercel, which may handle requests outside the EU under the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
Payments
Paid extras (advent calendar Premium, Group PRO) are paid through Stripe Checkout. Your card details and the email you give there go to Stripe, never to us; Stripe handles them under its own privacy policy. We get back only the payment id, the amount, the currency and which calendar or group it was for, count the purchase in our anonymous statistics without your name or email, and keep the payment record as long as accounting and tax law require.
Security
Links are long and random, cookies are signed, pages are served over HTTPS, and the date of every door is checked on the server. Still, a link is a key: anyone you forward it to can open what it opens, so treat it like the gift itself. No system is perfectly secure — if you spot a problem, tell us and we will look at it the same day.
Your rights
You have the right to see the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to its use, and take it with you, and to complain to your data protection authority. As there are no accounts, we recognise you by what proves the data is yours — a group password, a calendar's edit link or your Telegram chat. Write to us and we will answer within 30 days.
Children
Groups, wishlists and calendars are made by adults (16 or older). A calendar for a child is made and controlled by a parent or another adult; please do not put a child's full name, school, address or photos you would not show outside the family behind a door.
Our responsibility
secret.gift's core tools are free; optional paid extras are covered by our Terms. Everything is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for what users write or upload, for gift-card codes, booking details or promo codes shared through the service, for links that were forwarded, for content of third-party services shown in a door, or for files removed after their storage period. We remove content that is unlawful or infringes someone's rights as soon as we are told about it.
One more thing we count
When a group, wishlist or calendar is created we store a two-letter country code taken from the request itself (no geolocation permission involved). It only tells us which language to translate next.
Affiliate links
Some shop links on this site carry an affiliate tag, so if you buy something after following one, the shop may pay us a small commission. It never changes your price. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. The link is an ordinary link — we do not track you across the web, and the shop learns nothing from us beyond the click itself. Pages that use these links say so on the page.
Deleting your data
The organizer can remove any participant, which deletes their wishlist and address, or delete the whole group from its page. A calendar's owner can remove co-authors and delete the whole calendar from its editing page (“Delete this calendar”): every door, photo and reaction is erased at once and cannot be restored. /stop in our Telegram bot removes every subscription. For anything else, write to us.
Changes
If we change what we collect or how long we keep it, we update this page and the date at the bottom first.
secret.gift is run by FOP Lebid Mariia (individual entrepreneur, Ukraine), who decides how this data is used. Questions or a request about your data? Write to partner@secret.gift, use the form on the About page or send /feedback to our Telegram bot — a person reads every message.
Last updated: November 10, 2026