Effective 27 August 2026 · Version 1.0
Carinly is for two people, and nobody else. This page explains exactly what we hold, why we hold it, and who else ever sees it.
We have tried to write it so it can actually be read. Every section starts with a plain answer in a pink box; the paragraphs underneath are the detail. If the two ever disagree, tell us, because that means we have written it badly.
Carinly is run by one person, as a sole proprietorship. That person is the data controller for everything described here.
Carinly is an app for couples living apart. It is operated as a sole proprietorship — not a company, just an individual — based in Canada. When this policy says we, it means that person; when it says you, it means the person using the app.
Jeremy Reid
446 Uxbridge-Pickering Townline
Uxbridge, Ontario L9P 1R4
Canada
Contact details are in section 14. There is a real person at the other end of that address, and on a project this size it is the same person who built the app.
Your email and password, your first name, your date of birth, the city you type in, the language you choose, and whatever you put into the app.
We do not read your device location, your contacts, your other apps, or anything about you from anywhere else.
We also do not sell your data, share it for advertising, or use it to train any machine-learning model of our own.
Messages, photos, videos, voice notes, plans, games and memories. They are stored so your partner can see them, and for no other purpose.
Carinly holds the content the two of you make together:
All of it is stored so that it can be shown to you and to the partner you are connected with. Nobody else has access to it in the ordinary running of the app. We do not read it, and there is no feature anywhere in Carinly that shows one couple's content to another.
The one exception is the strictly limited access our engineers have to the systems the data sits on, which is necessary to keep the service running, fix faults and meet a legal obligation if one ever arises.
If the two of you read in different languages, the words you type are sent to Google Cloud Translation so the other person can read them. This is the one place your messages leave our systems.
Translating what one of you writes into the other's language is the central promise of Carinly, and it cannot be done on the phone. When you and your partner have chosen different languages, the text of what you write is sent to Google Cloud Translation and the translation is sent back.
There are two different kinds of text, and they behave differently.
Messages, notes and anything else you type is sent for translation only when the two of you read in different languages. If you have both chosen the same language, nothing you write to each other is ever sent anywhere.
Some of what you see does not come from either of you — recipe names, the descriptions attached to them, and similar text from the outside sources Carinly draws on. That material arrives in English, so if you read Carinly in any other language it is sent for translation, whichever language your partner uses.
In short: two people who both read English never have anything sent at all. Two people who share a language other than English still have their own words kept between them, while the app's own content is translated so they can read it.
A small number of companies we pay to run parts of the service. Each one gets only what it needs to do its job.
| Company | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Google Firebase | Accounts, database, file storage and the servers behind the app | Everything described in sections 2 and 4 |
| Google Cloud Translation | Translating what you write | The text only, with nothing identifying attached. See section 5 |
| Expo | Delivering push notifications to your phone | Your notification token and the words on the notification |
| Resend | Sending the emails Carinly sends you | Your email address and your first name |
| Open-Meteo | Finding your city, and its weather | The city name you typed, and its coordinates |
| Cloudflare | Our domain, and forwarding email sent to us | Anything you put in an email you send us |
Apple and Google also handle your subscription payment if you subscribe. We never see your card details — the payment happens entirely inside the App Store or Google Play, and all we are told is whether a subscription is active.
The app also links out to other services — a video call, a streaming service, a florist. Following one of those links takes you to that company, and what happens there is covered by their privacy policy, not this one.
In Canada, in Google's Montréal region.
Carinly's database, files and servers are all in Google's northamerica-northeast1 region, which is Montréal, Canada.
If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, your data is therefore transferred outside it. Canada holds an adequacy decision from the European Commission for commercial organisations, which is the legal basis for that transfer. Where a supplier named in section 6 operates elsewhere, the transfer is covered by Standard Contractual Clauses.
While your account exists. When you delete it, we delete your side.
We keep what you have given us for as long as you have an account, because the app is a record of a relationship and deleting last month's messages would be the opposite of what it is for.
We do not have a scheduled purge that removes old content behind your back. What you put in stays until you or your partner take it out, or until an account is deleted.
Delete your account from inside the app. Your side goes; things that belong to your partner stay with them.
Account deletion is in Profile, inside the app, and does not require emailing anyone.
When you delete your account we remove your account record, your profile, your settings, the files you uploaded, and the shared parts of your relationship: your messages, your plans, your games. Anything that belongs to your partner alone stays with them until they choose to remove it, which is deliberate — your leaving should not delete their memories.
Deletion from live systems is immediate. Encrypted backups roll off on their own cycle within 90 days.
You can get a copy of everything, correct it, or delete it. Two of those are buttons in the app.
The export is your side of the relationship, not both sides:
What it does not contain is anything private that belongs to your partner alone. Their sealed notes, their entries and their uploads are theirs, and an export of your account is not a way to obtain them.
Photos and videos appear as links rather than as files, because a single file with every image inside it would be too large to open. The links keep working for as long as the account does.
Where UK or EU data protection law applies, our lawful basis is performance of a contract for everything that makes the app work, and consent for push notifications. You have the right to complain to your data protection authority; in the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office.
Carinly is for adults. You must be 18 or over.
The app asks for your date of birth during sign-up and will not create an account for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly hold data belonging to a child. If you believe a child has an account, write to us and we will remove it.
Everything travels encrypted, passwords are never visible to us, and only your partner can reach your content.
No service can promise perfect security. If a breach ever affects your data, we will tell you and the relevant regulator within the time the law requires.
If we change something that matters, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
The date at the top is when this version took effect. Small corrections happen quietly; anything that changes what we collect, why, or who receives it will be shown to you in the app first.
Email us. A person reads it.
Email
hello@carinly.com
Post
Jeremy Reid
446 Uxbridge-Pickering Townline
Uxbridge, Ontario L9P 1R4
Canada
Write to us about anything in this policy, including any of the rights in section 10. We answer.