SortMyFamily

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 6 October 2026

SortMyFamily helps a household keep track of its commitments — you forward a message, photo or note, and it’s read, organised and given back to you as a reminder at the right time. To do that we handle personal data about you and about the people in your household. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have.

1. Who we are

SortMyFamily is an independent business based in the United Kingdom. SortMyFamily is the “controller” of your personal data for the purposes of the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

You can contact us about privacy at admin@sortmyfamily.com.

2. What personal data we collect

Data you give us when you set up and use SortMyFamily

• Account and identity details — your name, email address, mobile number, and the sign-in identity you use (for example a Google or Apple account you choose to sign in with).
• Household details — the names of the people in your household, their role (adult or child), and how you’ve chosen to organise responsibilities between them. Some of this is data about other people; see section 6.
• Your settings — notification preferences, quiet hours, which channels you want to be contacted on, and similar choices.

Content you send us

• Messages, photos, documents and notes that you forward or send to SortMyFamily — for example a forwarded WhatsApp message, a photo of a letter, a forwarded email, or something you type into the app. This content frequently contains personal data about other members of your household and about third parties mentioned in it (for example a teacher, a coach or a health professional). It may include information that is sensitive by its nature, such as health appointments.
• Structured commitments that we create from that content — the event, task or question we extract, who it’s for, when it’s due, and where it came from.
• Your replies to reminders and questions.

Data from Google Calendar (only if you connect it)

• The list of calendars in your Google account, and the events on the calendars you choose to sync — including titles, times, locations, descriptions and attendees.
• We create one or more calendars inside your Google account for SortMyFamily to write to. We only write to calendars we created; every other calendar is read-only to us.

Technical data

• Device and browser information, push-notification subscription details, and approximate location only where you have explicitly turned on arrival-time checking for a journey.
• Security and operational logs. These record identifiers and outcomes (which account, what happened, when) — not the content of your messages.

3. How and why we use it, and our lawful bases

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered the impact on you and do not use your data in ways you would not reasonably expect. You can object — see section 11.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for advertising or to build advertising profiles.

4. Google user data — limited use

SortMyFamily’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. Specifically:

• We only use Google Calendar data to provide and improve the features of SortMyFamily that you can see and use — turning your calendar events into commitments and reminders, and keeping a SortMyFamily calendar in sync.
• We do not transfer Google Calendar data to anyone else except: as necessary to provide or improve those features (for example our hosting and infrastructure provider, acting on our instructions); to comply with applicable law; or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, with notice to you.
• We do not use Google Calendar data for serving advertisements.
• We do not allow humans to read Google Calendar data unless: you have given us specific consent to view specific content; it is necessary for security purposes (such as investigating abuse); it is necessary to comply with applicable law; or the data has been aggregated and anonymised and is used only for internal operations.
• We do not use Google Calendar data to develop, improve or train generalised or non-personalised artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models.

You can disconnect SortMyFamily from your Google account at any time in the app, or at Google’s account permissions page. Disconnecting stops all future access; it does not delete data we have already stored — see section 9.

5. Automated processing and AI

SortMyFamily uses large language models, run by our infrastructure provider on our behalf, to read the messages and documents you send and turn them into structured commitments, and to help draft the wording of reminders. Deterministic (non-AI) code handles calendar files and the routing of commitments.

• A person stays in the loop. The service proposes; you confirm. We do not make decisions that produce legal effects concerning you, or similarly significant effects, on the basis of automated processing alone.
• Your content is not used to train models. The models we use are not trained or fine-tuned on your data, and your data is not used to improve generalised AI models — ours or anyone else’s.
• AI output can be wrong or incomplete. You are responsible for checking and acting on your own commitments; see our Terms of Service.

6. Children’s data, and data about other people

You must be 18 or over to hold a SortMyFamily account. A household will usually include children and other adults, and the content you send will contain personal data about them and about people outside your household.

• By adding a person to your household or sending content about them, you confirm you have the authority and, where needed, the consent to provide their information to us for this purpose. If you are the parent or legal guardian of a child in your household, you are responsible for that child’s information in the service.
• We apply the same protections to data about children as to any other personal data, and we design the service so that a child’s access is limited and never a route to another member’s private information.
• If you believe a child’s data has been provided to us without the right authority, contact us at admin@sortmyfamily.com and we will investigate and, where appropriate, delete it.

7. Who we share data with

We share personal data with the following categories of service provider, who act as our processors under contract and only on our instructions:

We may also disclose personal data where we are legally required to (for example in response to a valid court order or request from a public authority), or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. If SortMyFamily is ever sold or transferred, personal data would transfer with it, and we would tell you first.

8. Where your data is stored, and international transfers

Your account data and the content you send are stored in the United Kingdom. Some of our providers (notably Google and Meta, for the features that depend on them) process data outside the UK. Where that happens, the transfer is protected by an adequacy decision, by the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or by another safeguard permitted under UK data protection law. You can ask us for details of the safeguard in place for a particular transfer.

9. How long we keep your data

• While your account is active, we keep your household’s content and commitments for as long as they are useful to you, and in any event no longer than [RETENTION – ACTIVE] from when they were last relevant.
• If you close your account, we delete your personal data within [RETENTION – CLOSED], except where we must keep something to meet a legal obligation or to defend a legal claim.
• Security and audit logs are kept for [RETENTION – AUDIT] and then deleted.
• Backups are cycled on a rolling basis and overwritten in the ordinary course.

You can ask us to delete specific content at any time without closing your account — see section 11.

10. How we protect your data

• Data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Each household’s data is isolated from every other household’s at the database level, not just in application code.
• Access to production systems is restricted, authenticated with multi-factor authentication, and logged.
• Operational logs record identifiers and outcomes, not the content of your messages.
• We keep dependencies patched and monitor for security-relevant events.

No service can be completely secure. If we become aware of a personal data breach that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the ICO, and you, as required by law.

11. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you (access);
• ask us to correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete (rectification);
• ask us to delete your data (erasure), where there is no overriding reason for us to keep it;
• ask us to restrict how we use your data while a concern is resolved;
• ask us to provide certain data to you, or to another provider, in a portable format;
• object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests;
• withdraw any consent you have given, at any time, without affecting processing that has already happened.

To exercise any of these, email admin@sortmyfamily.com. We will respond within one month. We do not charge for this unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

Because a household’s content is shared between its members, a request from one member may affect information about another. We will handle those situations carefully and tell you if we cannot fully action a request for that reason.

12. Cookies and local storage

The SortMyFamily web app uses your browser’s local storage to keep you signed in and to remember display preferences. It does not use advertising or tracking cookies, and it does not share analytics with third-party advertising networks. Our public website uses no cookies and loads no third-party scripts or fonts.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service develops or the law changes. If we make a material change we will tell you before it takes effect — by email or in the app. The “last updated” date at the top always reflects the current version.

14. Contact and complaints

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your data or a request, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office:

We’d appreciate the chance to put things right first, so please do contact us before going to the ICO if you can.