Legal
This policy explains what pick-a-time.com does with your data. Short version: we collect little, we delete it on the schedule below, and we never sell it.
When your browser calls our API, the request is logged: your IP address, the time, the address requested, and your browser's user-agent string. We keep those logs to see what breaks. We don't record which pages you view — the website itself keeps no access log.
When you join a poll, we set a small cookie in your browser that remembers which participant you are on that poll. It only works for that one poll, and it lasts 14 days — the same time the poll itself stays alive.
Your browser also holds two things of its own: a note of whether you've seen the introduction, and — if you start connecting a calendar — the poll you were on, so we can return you there afterwards. The first stays until you clear your browser data; the second disappears when you close the tab.
If you sign in with Google, we store your name, your email address, and the Google account identifier that links you across devices, so we can recognize you the next time you sign in.
If you connect Google Calendar, we ask Google only for your busy and free times. That permission makes it impossible for us to see event titles, guests, or locations. We store an encrypted token so we can check again without asking you every time, and we cache the busy time ranges themselves.
When you create a poll, we run Google's reCAPTCHA to check that you're not a bot. Google receives the signals it needs to make that judgement and handles them under its own privacy policy, which permits it to use them to improve reCAPTCHA and general security.
We keep server logs to run a secure, working website. We don't collect any of this to advertise to you or to build a profile of you, and we don't ask for your consent to skip that — we simply don't do it.
We don't sell your data. We don't share it with advertisers. We don't build profiles of you. We don't use anything we collect for marketing.
Everybody else on a poll can see your name and the hours you've marked as free — that's how the tool works. Anybody who has the poll's link or QR code can open it and join, since a poll isn't locked to specific people, only to that link.
If you connect your calendar, the hours it marks busy look exactly like the hours you marked by hand. Other people on the poll see which hours you're free and can't tell which of them came from your calendar.
Signing in with Google sends a small piece of data to Google, which verifies who you are as its own independent service. Google's privacy policy governs what Google does with that data.
Checking your calendar sends Google the dates we're asking about and the token you gave us when you connected. Nothing about the poll or the other people on it goes to Google.
Creating a poll sends data to Google's reCAPTCHA to screen out bots. Google handles those signals under its own privacy policy, which permits it to use them to improve reCAPTCHA and general security.
Amazon Web Services hosts the site and stores everything described here, and Amazon Cognito manages Google sign-in. Log lines recording an error are copied to a separate error-reporting function we run in the same AWS account. We share data beyond this only when the law requires it — for example, a valid court order.
Depending on where you live, you may have legal rights over your personal data — such as the right to access, correct, or delete it. To exercise any such rights, contact us at privacy@dbowland.com.
We keep server logs for 30 days, then delete them.
We delete everything tied to a poll — its schedule, its participants, their names, and everybody's marked availability — 14 days after the poll is created, with one exception noted below. This happens automatically, whether or not everybody has finished entering their availability, and no matter how far out the poll's dates are.
Calendar data is the exception to that 14-day rule. It's tied to your Google account rather than to any one poll, so it outlives the poll: we keep it for 90 days after the last time we checked your calendar, and that clock restarts every time we check. The busy times we cache cover the combined date range of every poll you're in, not just one.
Disconnect your calendar and we delete the token and the cached busy times right away. The hours we already marked busy stay busy on your polls — they're part of your availability now, and you can mark yourself free again at any time.
If you sign in with Google, we keep the record that lets us recognize you until you ask us to delete it — that's separate from any individual poll and doesn't expire with it.
This site is meant for people 13 and older.
If we change how we handle data in a meaningful way, we'll update this page. The date at the bottom reflects the last revision.
Questions about this policy? Email privacy@dbowland.com.