Privacy policy.

The short version

We collect what is needed to print your cards, post them, and keep the page they open working. We do not sell your data, and we do not use your photographs or video in our own marketing. In the United States and most other countries our shop uses Google Analytics and Google Ads to measure and advertise itself, which you can turn off with "Your Privacy Choices" at the foot of every shop page. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland analytics stays off unless you opt in through "Your Privacy Choices", and it is never used there for advertising. The page a card opens has no trackers at all.

What we collect

When you order — your name, shipping address, email address, what you are making, and the date you need it by. Your card number is not among it: payment details go straight from your browser to Stripe and never touch our server.

When you make an account — your email address and a password, which is stored only as a hash. You can sign in with a one-time link instead and never set one.

What you put on the card — the photographs you upload, the words you choose, and the video or link the card opens. This is the material the whole product exists to handle, and it is treated accordingly.

What you type to the design assistant — see the section below, because it leaves our servers.

When somebody taps a card — the date, the country, and a broad device family such as "iPhone". That is the entire record. No IP address, no identifier, and nothing that can be traced to the person who tapped. It is what makes the owner's "tapped 47 times this month" box possible, and it cannot tell you or us who did the tapping.

Your IP address, briefly — used as a counter key to stop a script hammering the upload, design and payment endpoints. The counters expire on a timer measured in hours and are never joined to your account, your order, or anything else.

Optional feedback — if you tell us how you found Dote, we save your answer with your order to understand how customers discover us. This is separate from anonymous site analytics. If you leave a review, we link it to your purchase to verify it. Your rating, review, and chosen public name may be published; your email address and order details are not part of the public review. You can stop review-request emails using the link in those messages without stopping essential order emails.

Calls and text messages

Dote Cards LLC uses Talkroute to handle business calls, voicemail and, once carrier registration is approved, text messages. When you contact us, Talkroute processes your phone number, message or voicemail and related communication records so our team can help you. Our shared support inbox is accessible to the Dote team.

Support texts respond to conversations you start about your card or order. Order, shipping and delivery texts and recurring promotional texts about Dote products and offers have separate optional choices. Providing a phone number at checkout, buying a card, joining our email list or contacting support does not by itself subscribe you to promotional texts. Consent to texts is not a condition of purchase.

Texting is awaiting activation. If you select a text option at checkout, we save your phone number, separate choices, checkout reference, the exact disclosure and its version, and a server-recorded date. These are pending requests, not active subscriptions. We will confirm your number before sending order notifications or offers. Email order updates continue. We do not import email subscribers or past buyers into a text list.

We do not sell or share your mobile number, SMS opt-in information or consent with third parties for marketing or promotional purposes. Talkroute and its messaging providers process this information only to deliver and operate the support service, or as required by law.

Message frequency varies with your conversation. Message and data rates may apply. Consent is not a condition of purchase. Reply STOP to stop texts or HELP for assistance; you can also email [email protected]. You may ask us to withdraw or delete a pending request at that address. Pending requests from an uncompleted checkout are removed after 30 days; other unconfirmed requests expire after 180 days. Account deletion removes pending requests linked to that account's orders. This texting disclosure was updated October 31, 2026.

The design assistant sends what you write to Anthropic

When you use an AI assistant to describe a card or page, your words, the current draft’s editable text and styling, and reference images you attach are sent to Anthropic's API to generate the suggestions you see. If you write "for my father's funeral in March", that sentence goes to Anthropic. We are telling you because you would reasonably want to know.

Anthropic processes it to return the designs and, under its commercial terms, does not use it to train its models. Images attached as AI references are sent as smaller previews. If you provide a reference website, its public content, available brand images and styling may also be included. Existing private page media is not automatically sent to the page assistant. AI suggestions remain editable and do not publish your page.

Photographs and videos your guests upload

If you switch on guest uploads for an occasion page, we store the photographs and videos your guests submit so you, the card owner, can approve them before anyone else sees them. You can instead choose to let uploads appear on the page as they arrive, without waiting for you — if you do, know that a video cannot be automatically screened before it is shown, only after, the way a photograph can. Guests are not asked for a name, an email address or an account, and we do not collect one.

You can reject or delete any of it, and deleting removes it from storage. If you are a guest who wants something taken down, write to [email protected] and we will remove it without asking you to prove anything.

Who else touches it

These service providers help operate Dote, and are not permitted to use your data for their own purposes:

• Stripe — takes the payment. Card details go to Stripe directly, not through us.
• Supabase — the database holding accounts, orders and designs.
• Cloudflare — serves the site and stores the uploaded photographs and video.
• Anthropic — suggests card and page designs using the text and references you provide, as described above.
• Resend — sends your receipt and your shipping notice.
• Talkroute and its messaging providers — handle business calls, voicemail and customer-support texts as described above.

Beyond those, we share personal information only where the law requires it, with one exception described below. We have never sold personal information for money. Outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland we do share shop activity with Google for advertising — which pages you visited, what you added to your cart, and, when you buy, a one-way hashed copy of your email address — so Google can tell us which ads led to an order and show our ads to people who visited. California law calls that "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising. You can opt out at any time with "Your Privacy Choices" at the foot of every shop page, and a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser opts you out automatically.

Cookies and your analytics choice

Signing in does not set a cookie; your session is kept in your own browser's local storage. We use these necessary cookies:

• A session cookie for the operator console, which only we can log into.
• On a password-protected card page, a cookie remembering that the correct password was entered, so a re-tap within twelve hours does not ask again.

Both are strictly necessary, which is why you are not being asked to consent to them. When Google Analytics is on for our shop, Google also sets analytics cookies to measure visits and purchases and, outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, advertising cookies to measure and personalise our Google ads. You can turn them off and still use every shopping and design feature. There are no third-party scripts on the page your card opens — that page runs no JavaScript at all.

What we count

We do count how the shop is used, because otherwise we are guessing. It is our own counting, on our own servers, and it is deliberately built so that it cannot identify you:

• Which page was opened, and which step you reached — the designer, the cart, checkout, an order.
• Which site sent you here, if any, and the campaign label on the link you clicked.
• A random number that lasts until you close the tab, so those steps can be counted as one visit rather than six unrelated ones. It is not a cookie, it is gone when the tab is, and it is not connected to you, your account, or any earlier visit.

We do not record your IP address, your device, your browser, what you typed, or anything that would let us pick you out. There is no third-party sharing from this first-party counter. None of this happens on the page a card opens — that page still runs no JavaScript at all. Counts older than six months are deleted automatically.

Free pages and product measurement

You can create and share a free profile, occasion page, or keepsake without buying a card. Saved pages and uploaded media belong to your account. A shared page can be opened and forwarded by anyone with its link; you can unpublish it or use the password controls in its settings. Text and appearance edits stay private until you publish. Uploaded media updates the shared library immediately.

When analytics is allowed, we record a small set of product actions—such as starting a page, previewing, publishing, sharing, adding a card, upload outcomes, and error categories—to understand where the experience needs work. These records use a random per-tab visit ID and a mobile, tablet, or desktop category. They do not contain page names, contact details, typed messages, files, page addresses, passwords, or AI prompts. Raw product-action records are kept for up to 180 days, and the operator console shows aggregates. These product events respect your analytics choice, Global Privacy Control, and Do Not Track.

Google Analytics and Google Ads

When analytics is on, we share shop page views, campaign labels and shopping steps with Google Analytics. Purchase events include a transaction identifier, the amount actually received, currency and card count. Google processes technical information about the visit, including browser and device information. We never send Google your name, shipping address, card wording, uploaded media or payment secrets.

Outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland the same tag also measures our Google Ads: Google signals, advertising cookies and ad personalisation are on, so Google can connect a visit to an ad you saw or clicked, including on another device where you are signed in to Google, and can show our ads to people who visited the shop. When you buy, your email address goes with the purchase as a SHA-256 hash, a one-way code Google matches against its own accounts; the address itself is never sent. Turning this off with "Your Privacy Choices" stops all of it.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the Google tag loads only after you allow analytics, and even then advertising cookies, Google signals and ad personalisation stay off. Elsewhere it is on by default and you can turn it off at any time with "Your Privacy Choices" at the foot of every shop page or the button below. We work out which applies from the country Cloudflare reports for your connection; if that cannot be determined, analytics stays off unless you opt in. We do not interrupt browsing with an automatic consent popup; you can open "Your Privacy Choices" whenever you want to allow or turn off analytics. Your choice is remembered in your browser for six months. Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track are treated as opting out of both analytics and advertising. Google Analytics keeps event and user-level data for 14 months, the longest its standard setting allows, with the period resetting on new activity; aggregated reporting can remain available longer. Our own six-month counters are separate.

How Google uses information from sites using its services.

Microsoft Clarity

When analytics is allowed, Microsoft Clarity helps us understand clicks, scrolling and navigation on our shop, card designer, page builder, cart, checkout and guide pages through heatmaps and session recordings. Text and images are masked before recording. Clarity receives technical visit information, including the page address, browser and device details, and uses first-party cookies. We do not send it custom customer identifiers or enable its advertising storage.

Customer text, images and form inputs remain masked. Payment and address fields are handled inside Stripe's separate frames and are not recorded. We measure fixed actions such as starting a design, adding a card to the cart, opening the payment form and encountering an error, without sending the contents of your design or error messages. Clarity does not run on account, post-purchase or upload-management pages, the operator console, or the personal pages opened by tapping a card. Visits with credentials in URL parameters or unsafe referrers are excluded. Your analytics choice, Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track apply to Clarity too. Turning analytics off stops recording and clears its first-party cookies. See Microsoft's privacy statement.

Your Privacy Choices

How long we keep things

Your designs, video and card pages stay for as long as your account does — that is the point of the product. Order records are kept for as long as tax and accounting rules require, which is generally seven years. Rate-limit counters expire within hours. Tap records are anonymous from the moment they are written.

Deleting it

Do it yourself, at the bottom of your account, or under Account in the Dote app. You do not have to ask us and you do not have to explain.

It deletes your account, your designs, and every photograph, video and voice message on it. The cards stop working — a tap finds nothing — so if a card is in somebody else's hands, tell them first. The files themselves become unreferenced and are erased from storage by the nightly clean-up within thirty days.

Your order history stays, because we have to keep a record of what was paid. Your name and shipping address come off it. Stripe keeps its own record of the payment, which is theirs and not ours to delete.

One thing it cannot reach: a card bought before you had an account and never claimed onto it is not attached to you as far as our database is concerned, so it keeps working. The deletion screen counts those and says so — claim them first if you want them gone too.

If an order is still on its way, deletion waits until it arrives. We need the address to post it.

Deletion is permanent and we cannot undo it, so save anything you want to keep first. You are welcome to write to [email protected] instead if you would rather a person did it.

Your rights

If you are in California, you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it. You may not be treated differently for asking, and we will not make you create an account to do it.

The same requests are honored for everyone, wherever you are, because running two standards would be more work than running the better one. Write to [email protected] — we answer within 45 days and usually the same week. If you want to appeal a decision we made, say so in the same email and a person will look at it again.

Security

Everything moves over HTTPS. Passwords are hashed, never stored in a readable form. Access to a design or an order is decided by the database against your signed-in identity, not by the page asking nicely. Nobody can browse to someone else's card page and edit it.

No system is perfect. If you find a way in, write to [email protected] — we would rather hear it from you than from a customer.

Children

Dote is sold to adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. Children obviously appear in the photographs customers upload — a birthday card is usually a child's — and those images belong to the adult who uploaded them, under that adult's account.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and we will email account holders when the change is significant. We will not quietly widen what we do with your photographs.

Reaching us

Dote Cards LLC, San Diego, California — [email protected]. By mail: 13910 Lyons Valley Rd, Ste R5, Jamul, CA 91935.