A note from us
Some of what you tell Kinship is about your health: that you're pregnant, when your baby is due, your children's birth dates, or that your child has special needs. Washington and Nevada have laws about this kind of information, called consumer health data, and they ask every company that collects it to publish a policy like this one. We follow it for every member, wherever she lives.
This page covers health data only. Our Privacy Policy covers everything else.
The short version: we use your health data to run Kinship and for nothing else. We do not sell it, and we do not give it to advertisers or data brokers.
What Counts as Health Data
When we say health data on this page, we mean:
- Your stage: whether you're pregnant, have had a baby, or have adopted
- Your due date, or your children's birth dates
- Whether you're expecting, or had, one baby or more than one
- Whether this is your first child
- Whether your child has special needs
- Which communities you join when the community is about a health topic, such as Fertility, Pregnancy & Birth, Miscarriage, PPD/PPA or NICU Moms
- Anything about your health or your children's health that you write in posts, messages or your bio, or show in photos you share
Where It Comes From
Most of it comes from you: the questions you answer when you sign up, changes you make to your profile, the communities you join and what you post.
Some of it our system works out from your answers. For example, it works out how old your child is from the birth date you gave us, and which group of moms you can be matched with from your stage.
Why We Use It
We use your health data only to run Kinship:
- to match you with a kinship of moms at the same stage
- to show your profile to other members, in the way you choose
- to run communities and send you notifications about them
- to keep members safe, for example when we look into a report
- to count, in totals only, how moms at each stage use Kinship, so we can improve it
We do not use your health data for advertising. If we ever want to use it for anything not listed here, we will ask you first.
Who Can See It
Other members see what your profile shows them and what you post. You choose whether your children's names and birth dates are hidden, shown to your kinship only, or shown to all members: open Settings and tap Edit profile. The number of children you have is shown on your profile either way. Posts in a community can be read by any Kinship member who opens that community, whether or not she has joined it.
Kinship staff. A small number of people on our team can see your answers in our admin tools, so they can run matching, answer your questions and look into reports.
Companies That Handle It for Us
We do not sell your health data, and we do not give it to advertisers or data brokers. These companies store or carry it so the app can work:
- MongoDB (Atlas), which stores our database
- Render, which runs our servers
- Cloudflare, which stores the photos you upload
- Google (Firebase) and Apple, which deliver notifications to your phone. A notification can include a member's name and a link to her profile photo, the name of a community or event, and the text of a chat message, with a link to any photo sent in it.
- Sentry, which collects error reports from the app and our servers so we can fix problems. A report can include details of what the app or server was doing at the time.
- Twilio, which sends your sign-in codes by text. It receives your phone number, not your health data.
- Vercel, which hosts our website and the tools our staff use. What our staff see about you in those tools passes through it.
Our website does not ask for any health information, and it does not load advertising pixels. Vercel may count visits to the site so we can see how it is used. No company other than those named on this page collects information about what you do on Kinship or on our website over time or across other websites.
Meta
To learn whether our ads work, our server tells Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) two things: that a new account was created, and that someone finished signing up. These messages do not include your name, phone number, email, ZIP code, or any of your answers about pregnancy, your children or your health.
Each message carries a random code that is not connected to your Kinship account.
Deleting Your Data
You can delete your account yourself in the app: open Settings and tap Delete account.
Right away, you leave your kinship and your communities, you are signed out on every device, and other members stop seeing you in member lists.
About 90 days after you delete your account, we erase your name, birth date, phone number, ZIP code, photo, bio and email from your profile, along with the health data on it: your due date, your children's birth dates and names, and your answers about first child, more than one baby and special needs. We also erase the copies our matching system kept.
Some things stay. Your posts and comments stay in the communities where you posted them, where any member can still read them, and your messages stay in the chats where you sent them, all shown as from “Deleted User”. Your name can also still appear in other members' notifications about things you did, such as liking their post or posting in a community. We also keep the messages and screenshots you sent us through Help & feedback, the reports you made, a record of which communities the account was in, the account's broad stage (pregnant, had a baby or adopted), the log of internet (IP) addresses it signed in from, and a coded form of your phone number, which we use only to recognize it if it signs up again. This is not a full list of what stays.
Your Rights
You can ask us to:
- Confirm whether we have your health data, and see it, together with a list of every company that has received it and how to reach them
- Delete it
- Withdraw consent. We do not rely on your consent for anything this policy describes. If we ever ask for it, you can withdraw it at any time, the same way you make any other request.
You can change your children's names and birth dates on your profile, and choose who sees them: open Settings and tap Edit profile. While you are waiting to be matched, you can also change the answers we match you on: open Settings and tap Edit your matching info. To see any other answer, email us (see How to Make a Request).
Washington and Nevada law give residents these rights. We answer the same requests from members anywhere, and we will not treat you differently for making one.
How to Make a Request
Email privacy@findkinship.com. Tell us the phone number on your Kinship account and what you would like us to do. You can write from any email address.
Before we share or delete anything, we will contact you to make sure the request is really yours.
We answer every request within 45 days.
Appeals
If we turn down your request, you can appeal: reply to our answer, or email privacy@findkinship.com with “Appeal” in the subject line. We will answer within 45 days and explain our decision. If you still disagree, you can contact the Washington State Attorney General (atg.wa.gov) or the Nevada Attorney General (ag.nv.gov).
Changes to This Policy
When we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new date at the top. Before we use your health data in a new way, we will ask you first.
Contact Us
Kinship App, Inc.
Email: privacy@findkinship.com