CardDrop Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 October 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Golden Road Games LLC ("CardDrop," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, and shares information when you use the CardDrop mobile app and website (the "Service").

1. Information We Collect

Account information. When you create an account, we collect your email address and, if you use Sign in with Apple, the identifier and (optionally) name Apple provides.

Content you create. Photos and images you upload, card designs, message text, greeting selections, and recipient names.

Contacts and addresses. If you use the contact picker to select a recipient, we collect the name, and any address, phone number, or email you choose to attach to a card. If you save a mailing address to your address book within the app, we store it for reuse in future orders. As of September 2026, mailing addresses used for physical postcard orders are stored on our servers (not only on your device) so that orders can be processed and reprinted if needed.

Payment information. Purchases made in the app are processed by Apple (App Store) or Stripe. We do not receive or store your full payment card number; Stripe and Apple process payment details under their own privacy policies.

Usage and device information. We may collect standard technical information such as device type, operating system version, app version, and crash/diagnostic data to help us maintain and improve the Service.

Safety and abuse-prevention records. To prevent abuse we keep: an identifier for your device (stored in your device's secure storage, where it can survive deleting and reinstalling the app); a record of each card you send (which card, when, and how — text, email, link, or mail; for digital cards we do not know who the recipient is, because they are sent from your own device's messaging and email apps); how many cards you have sent; any report made about a card you sent, including the text of the report; and a record each time our automated check blocks something you submit (your account and device, whether it was a photo or text, the category, and the time, but not the content itself); and, if you appeal a suspension, your appeal message and our decision. People who report a card are not asked for their name. If a reporter says a card may involve a child, they can choose to leave an email address or phone number so we can contact them; it is optional.

Replies and reactions. People who open one of your card links can reply with text or an emoji reaction. Replies cannot include photos. We collect what they send and the time. We do not ask for their name or contact details. We do not keep who sent a reply.

2. How We Use Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and maintain your account;
• Generate, store, and render your card designs;
• Process orders and send your design and recipient address to our print-and-mail partner for physical fulfillment;
• Process payments and subscriptions;
• Send you service-related communications (e.g., order confirmations, delivery status);
• Maintain and improve the Service, including diagnosing technical issues;
• Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service, including preventing abuse by warning, suspending, or banning accounts and devices after reports from recipients;
• With your consent as described in Section 5 below, feature the visual design of cards you create, and the original photos they started from, in our own marketing and promotional materials.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for third-party advertising or profiling.

3. How We Share Information

We share information only as necessary to operate the Service:

• Print Partner — for physical postcard orders, we share the card design and the recipient's mailing address (and your return address, if applicable) with our third-party print-and-mail fulfillment provider solely to print and mail the order. Per our partner's data retention practices, mailpiece data is automatically deleted from their systems after a limited period.
• Payment processors — Stripe and Apple process payment information to complete purchases.
• Infrastructure providers — we use third-party cloud database, authentication, file storage, email delivery, and hosting providers to run the Service.
• Content-safety check — text and photos are sent to OpenAI's moderation service to check for harmful content, under OpenAI's own privacy terms. This covers text and photos you enter or upload in the app when you create a card, and the text of replies sent to your cards from the web. A reply that fails the check is not stored.
• Legal reasons — we may disclose information if required by law, subpoena, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of CardDrop, our users, or others.

We do not share your data with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

4. Shareable Card Links

When you share a digital card via text message, email, or a direct link, the Service generates a unique web page (a "card link") where the recipient can view the card. Anyone who has or obtains that link can view the card, including its photo, message, and design, without needing to log in or verify their identity. Card links are not indexed by search engines, but they are not private or access-restricted beyond the link itself — treat a card link like you would any other shared link, and only send cards to recipients you're comfortable having potentially forward or share that link further.

Reporting a card. Every card page has a "Report abuse" link. Anyone can make a report without an account and without giving their name. If a report says a card may involve a child, the reporter may optionally leave an email address or phone number. We record the report against the card and its sender. If the card was mailed, we use the report to stop that sender from mailing the same address again, and, if the person reporting chooses, to stop all CardDrop senders from mailing that address. If a sender is reported repeatedly, we suspend their account and device. To limit repeated or abusive reports, we limit how many reports a single internet connection can make per hour. We cannot stop someone from contacting a recipient directly outside CardDrop. A card that has been reported is hidden: its link stops working, it disappears from the sender's lists, and the sender can no longer delete, resend or copy it. We keep that card, including its images and message, for about 365 days as evidence, then delete it. This is true even if the sender deletes their account.

Replies and reactions. Anyone who has a card link can send a text reply or emoji reactions to the sender. Replies are shown to you in the app. To limit spam, we check each reply automatically (see Section 3) and limit how many a single internet connection can send per hour. For that limit we keep a scrambled (hashed) form of the sender's IP address and the time, with no reply content and no card, and we delete these records periodically. You can turn replies and reactions off for a single card or for all your cards, and you can delete an individual reply. When you turn them off you choose whether to hide the ones already received (they come back if you turn replies on again) or delete them for good.

5. Marketing Use of Card Designs

We may select certain cards created through the Service — their photos (including the original photo you uploaded before editing it), artwork, message text, and layout — to feature in our own marketing and promotional materials, such as our website, app store listings, social media, advertising, and example galleries shown inside the app (including side-by-side "before and after" comparisons of your original photo and your finished card). We do not include recipient mailing addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses in any marketing material, and we do not use this feature to sell your data to third parties.

• Registered users can opt out at any time in Settings. When you opt out, we will not select cards from your account from that date forward; we may continue to feature cards we featured before that date.
• If you delete a card or your account, we will remove it from our servers, but any copy already featured in our marketing and promotional materials, including example galleries shown inside the app, may remain.
• Selecting a card for this purpose is a separate step from actually publishing it — a selected card may sit in an internal pool before (or without ever) appearing in a specific campaign.

6. Data Retention

We retain your account information and content for as long as your account is active. You may delete your account or specific content (such as saved addresses or drafts) at any time within the app. Mailing address and order data sent to our Print Partner is subject to their own retention limits, described above, and is not something we can delete early on their systems. Copies of cards already featured in our marketing and promotional materials are not removed when you delete a card or your account (see Section 5).

Copies of your cards. We keep a copy of each card you send, including its images, message, and any replies and reactions, for at least 90 days, and longer while people keep opening its link. If a card's link goes unopened for that long, the copy expires and we delete it, even if your account is still active, except for the cards and records described below, such as reported cards, and copies already featured in our marketing. This applies to cards you shared as a link and to cards you mailed. Your device keeps its own copy of cards you have sent until you delete them. If you send a card again after its copy was deleted, we store it again as a new copy, but its old replies and reactions are not restored.

Some records are kept for a set period, even if you delete a card or your account, so that recipients can report a card and stop further mail, and so that we can handle disputes and prevent abuse:

• Send history. The record of each card you send (which card, when, and how it was sent) is kept for about 365 days after it was sent.
• Mailed postcard orders. The recipient's name and mailing address on a physical order are kept for about 365 days after the order, then erased. Your own return address on the order is erased when you delete your account, or after about 365 days, whichever comes first. We keep the payment and order record itself (amount, date, status, and the payment and print-partner reference numbers, without names or addresses) for 7 years for accounting and dispute purposes.
• Reports. The text of a report about a card, and any contact details the reporter chose to leave, are kept for about 365 days, together with the reported card itself and the email address of the account that sent it, even if that account is deleted in the meantime. The record of the report itself (which card, which account sent it, and our decision), and our log of the reviews and actions on that card, are kept for about 730 days, and longer while the card or the sender's account is on legal hold or the sender is still suspended. If a report says that a child may be involved, we keep the card, the report (including any contact details the reporter chose to leave), the sender's email address and our records of what we did about it for as long as we need them for child-safety and legal reasons, with no fixed end date, even if we later conclude the report was mistaken. Such a card is taken offline and its pictures are kept in restricted storage. A record that a sender, or all senders, may not mail a particular address is kept permanently; it is stored as a one-way scrambled (hashed) form, not as the readable address.
• Suspended accounts. If a suspended account is not appealed, we delete its data after about 180 days. If a suspension is final, we delete it after about 30 days. We keep the records described in this section.
• Suspensions. If an account or device is suspended, we keep the record of the suspension, including the account's verified email address if it has one, even after the account is deleted, so that a suspended person cannot simply create a new account. We keep any appeal you make, with our decision, with that record. A suspension that is still in force, or on legal hold, is kept for as long as it applies. Once an account has been reinstated, we delete the record of that suspension, and its appeals, about 730 days after the reinstatement.
• Blocked-content records. The records of content our automated check blocked (see Section 1) are kept for about 365 days, even if you delete your account, so that repeated misuse can be handled.
• Replies and reactions. Kept until you delete a reply, delete the card, the card expires, or you delete your account, or choose "Delete existing replies" when turning replies off. Replies you have only hidden are kept until you delete them by one of those routes. The scrambled address records used to limit reply spam are deleted periodically.

7. Your Choices and Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or export your personal information. You can manage most of this directly in the app (editing or deleting saved addresses, drafts, your account, or your marketing-use preference described in Section 5). You can delete your account at any time in the app (Profile, then Delete Account). This deletes your account, your cards and their shared links, your saved addresses, and your files, except for the records described in Section 6 and any copies already featured in our marketing (Section 5). This policy describes what we collect and keep. If you have questions about your data, or want a change we can't make in the app, contact us at support@carddropapp.com and we'll try to help.

8. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so we can delete it.

9. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encrypted storage and transmission where applicable. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. International Users

The Service is intended for use in the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may have different data protection laws than your country of residence.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you through the app or by other reasonable means. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

12. Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy or your data can be sent to support@carddropapp.com.