Privacy

DearSomeone was built for something quiet and rare: a real letter, written slowly, delivered on paper. Correspondence like that deserves respect, and privacy is one of the principles the product is designed around — not something bolted on afterward.

We only ask for the information we actually need to write, deliver, and safeguard your letters. We do not sell personal information. We do not build advertising profiles from what you write. And where the product can be designed to reveal less about you, that is the choice we make.

We collect only what the service needs to function. Broadly, this falls into a few categories:

• Your name and username — so recipients know who a letter is from, and so your mailbox has an address on DearSomeone.
• Email address — to create your account, sign you in, and send you notifications about your letters.
• Phone number — optional, used only when you enable it for discovery, account recovery, or delivery courier handoff.
• Postal addresses — kept in your private Address Vault so letters can reach you. Senders never see them.
• Account information — your preferences, theme, discoverability settings, and consent history.
• Letters and drafts — the content you write, including autosaved drafts and letters awaiting delivery.
• Future Me letters — letters you write to yourself, held until the date you chose.
• Recipient information — the name, handle, or contact you give us so we can attempt delivery and seek consent.
• Payment records — credit purchases, order history, and receipts. We do not store full card numbers.
• Device and log information — basic technical data such as browser, operating system, and timestamps, used to keep the service reliable and secure.
• Cookies and analytics — essential cookies for sign-in and preferences, and anonymous analytics to understand how the product is used.

We use the information above to:

• create and secure your account;
• authenticate you when you sign in;
• write, print, and deliver your letters;
• schedule and deliver Future Me letters at the right time;
• ask recipients for consent before a letter reaches them;
• process credits, payments, and refunds;
• keep the service reliable and diagnose problems;
• provide customer support when you ask for it;
• detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and misuse; and
• comply with legal obligations that apply to us.

We do not use your information to serve advertising, and we do not sell it to third parties.

The letters you write are the heart of DearSomeone, and they are treated accordingly.

• Letters are encrypted at rest in our systems.
• The product is designed so that reading private correspondence is not part of any normal employee workflow.
• Access to letter content is not granted for support, marketing, product analytics, or advertising purposes.
• Access may occur only where strictly required by applicable law, or in response to a lawful order from a competent authority.

We prefer honest limits over marketing promises. No online service can truthfully claim absolute secrecy, but we can commit to designing the product so that respecting your correspondence is the default, not the exception.

DearSomeone is consent-first. Before a letter reaches someone new, the recipient chooses whether they want to receive it.

• If a recipient declines, the letter is not delivered and is not retained for later attempts.
• The sender is told only that delivery was not accepted — never why, and never anything the recipient did not choose to share.
• Recipients can block a sender, accept letters once, or always allow letters from someone they trust.

Before a letter is printed and shipped, automated systems may review its content for a narrow, specific purpose: to catch material that would cause real harm if delivered.

• The review looks for threats, harassment, illegal content, scams, abuse, and clear violations of our community guidelines.
• The review is automated. Letters are not read for any other reason.
• The results are not used for advertising, not used to build profiles about you, and not shared with third parties beyond what is required to operate the service safely.

This exists to protect the person on the other end of the envelope. Nothing more.

Your saved addresses live in the Address Vault, visible only to you. You can add, update, or delete an address at any time from the Privacy Center.

Address information is used only to deliver letters and, where necessary, to coordinate with couriers. Senders never see your address, even when they successfully send you a letter.

A Future Me letter is a letter you write to yourself, held safely inside your account until the date you chose. Until then, it stays with you: you can edit it, reschedule it, or delete it.

On the scheduled date, the letter is delivered to your mailbox — or, if you asked us to print it, dispatched like any other physical letter.

DearSomeone runs on credits — you top up your mailbox, then spend credits when you send letters. Payments are processed by authorised payment providers on their own secure infrastructure.

We keep the record of your purchase (order number, amount, credits, status) so we can support you and issue refunds where appropriate. We do not store complete payment card numbers.

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies to:

• keep you signed in and secure;
• remember your preferences, such as your theme;
• understand how the service performs.

Where we use analytics, we prefer anonymous or aggregated data. We do not use cookies to sell personal information, and we do not run third-party advertising trackers inside DearSomeone.

You are in control of what stays and what goes.

• You can delete individual letters and drafts at any time.
• You can remove saved addresses from your Address Vault.
• You can delete your account. When you do, we begin a 30-day recovery window in case you change your mind.
• After that window, personal information is permanently removed from our active systems, except where we are required by law to retain specific records (for example, tax or payment records).
• Print-ready copies of letters generated for fulfilment are securely destroyed after successful delivery.

You can, at any time:

• access the information you have in your account;
• update your profile and preferences;
• delete letters, drafts, and Future Me letters;
• delete addresses from your Address Vault;
• request an export of your information, where supported;
• delete your account.

If you would like help exercising any of these rights, write to us at support@dearsomeone.cc.

We use appropriate technical and organisational safeguards to protect your information, including encryption in transit and at rest, strict access controls for our systems, and continuous monitoring.

No online service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can promise is that we take these responsibilities seriously and treat them as ongoing work.

DearSomeone is intended for people aged 16 or older. If you are between 16 and 17, you may only use DearSomeone with the consent of a parent or legal guardian.

We do not knowingly collect information from children under 16. If you believe a child has created an account, please contact us and we will take appropriate action.

To operate DearSomeone we rely on a small number of trusted providers, including:

• payment providers, to process credit purchases;
• cloud infrastructure, to host the service and store data;
• authentication providers, for secure sign-in;
• communication providers, for transactional email and delivery notifications.

Each provider receives only the information needed to do its job, and is bound by contract to keep that information secure and use it only for the purpose we ask them to.

DearSomeone is operated from India. We may disclose information where we believe in good faith that we are required to do so under applicable Indian law, a lawful court order, or a valid request from a competent government authority.

Where we can, we will tell you about such requests. Where we are legally prohibited from doing so, we will not.

As DearSomeone grows, our privacy practices may evolve. If we make material changes, we will let you know through the website or your account before those changes take effect, and update the "Last Updated" date at the top of this page.

If you have questions about this policy or about how DearSomeone handles your information, please write to us. A real person will reply.