Privacy Policy
Last updated: 10 September 2026
Recess is made by Quirktastic Inc. (“we”, “us”). This policy explains what we collect, why, who else sees it, and what you can make us do about it.
The short version: Recess exists so a small group of people you already know can see how your week went. We do not sell your personal information. We do not build a profile of you to sell to anyone else. Most of what we store is what you typed in yourself.
What we collect
What you give us when you sign up. Your first and last name, a display name, a username, and your date of birth. You must be 13 or older to use Recess; the app asks your date of birth and refuses accounts below that age. Your birth year is never shown to anyone else. Other people can see the month and day, and only if you leave birthday celebrations switched on.
Your account identity. You sign in with Apple or Google. We receive the email address associated with that account and an identifier for it. We never see your password, because you never give us one.
What you put in the app. Life Update entries, including photos, videos and text you write; Recesses you plan and the notes on them; comments, reactions, and the messages and stickers you leave on a friend’s birthday card. Photos and videos are stored on our servers so your friends can load them.
Your social graph. Who you are friends with, who has requested you, who you have blocked, and the contact groups you sort people into.
Location, if you allow it. With permission, Recess reads your device location to show things happening near you and, if you switch location sharing on, to show friends the city you are in. We store an approximate point and a city name. You can turn location sharing off in the app, and you can refuse the permission outright: the app works without it, and simply shows less.
Contacts, if you allow it. With permission, Recess reads your contacts to find which of them already use the app. Turning this down does not stop you using Recess; you can still add people by username.
Camera, microphone, photo library and calendar. Only used when you take a photo or video for an update, save an image, or tap Add to Calendar. Recess does not record in the background.
Device tokens for notifications. If you allow notifications, we store a push token for your device so we can tell you it is Friday, or that a friend invited you somewhere.
Subscription status. If you buy Recess Plus, our payments provider tells us that your subscription is active and when it expires. Your card details go to Apple, Google or the payment processor. We never see them.
Basic technical data. Timestamps on the records above, your timezone, and ordinary server logs.
What we do not collect
We do not track you across other apps and websites. We have no analytics SDK and no advertising tracker in the app. There is no algorithmic feed, so we do not build an interest profile to rank one.
Why we hold it
To run your account and show your updates to the friends you chose. To deliver the notifications you asked for. To take payment for Recess Plus. To keep the service safe, which includes acting on reports and blocks. To meet our legal obligations.
Who else sees it
Your friends. This is the point of the app. Released Life Updates go to your accepted friends. People you have not accepted see nothing.
Companies that run parts of the service for us. Supabase hosts our database, authentication and file storage. RevenueCat processes subscription status. Expo delivers push notifications. Apple and Google handle sign-in and payment. They act on our instructions and may store data in the United States.
Advertising. Recess shows a small number of ads through Google AdMob to people who are not subscribers. AdMob may use a device advertising identifier. You can limit this in your device settings, under Tracking on iOS and Ads on Android, and subscribers see no ads at all. AdMob’s own notice is at https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads.
Nobody who is buying it. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
We may disclose information if the law actually requires it, or to protect someone’s safety. If we are ever bought or merged, your information moves with the service, and this policy continues to apply until we tell you otherwise.
How long we keep it
For as long as your account exists. Deleting your account deletes it: we remove the account itself and, with it, your profile, your Life Updates and their photos and videos, your Recesses, your comments and reactions, your friendships and requests, your contact groups, your birthday card and the signatures you left on other people’s, and your notification tokens. It is not a deactivation and there is no waiting period.
Two things outlive it, deliberately. If you reported someone, the report stays but stops naming you: otherwise anyone could erase a complaint against them by closing the account that raised it. And if you were the sole administrator of an organizer page it is removed with you, while a page you shared with others survives under one of them.
Beyond that, records we must keep for tax or legal reasons stay for as long as the law says, and backups age out on their own schedule.
Your choices
You can edit or delete any update, leave or delete a Recess, unfriend or block anyone, and switch off location sharing, birthday celebrations and notifications from inside the app. Every device permission can be revoked in your device settings.
Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to what we do with it, and to complain to your data protection regulator. Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and other US states with comparable laws have equivalent rights, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them. Write to founders@recesstoday.com and we will action it. We will not charge you and we will not make it difficult.
Children
Recess is not for children under 13, and the app blocks accounts below that age. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, write to founders@recesstoday.com and we will delete it.
Where your data lives
We are a Delaware corporation based in the United States, and our providers store data there too. If you are in the UK, EU or EEA, that means your information leaves your home jurisdiction, transferred under the standard contractual clauses our providers offer.
Security
Access to your data is enforced in the database itself: every table carries row level policies, so a request that is not yours returns nothing rather than relying on the app to ask nicely. Traffic is encrypted in transit and files are stored privately. No system is perfect, and we will not pretend otherwise, but we treat this seriously.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date above, and if the change is significant we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
Email us at founders@recesstoday.com, or write to:
Quirktastic Inc.
2140 S Dupont Hwy
Camden, Delaware 19934 United States