Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 20, 2026

Spot lets you send a friend a treat right inside your iMessage thread — “I’ll spot you a matcha.” They open it, confirm their phone number, and use the gift at a participating shop, on the web or in Apple Wallet. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

1. Who we are

Spot is operated by Tristan Shin (“Spot,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). This policy covers the Spot iOS app, the Spot iMessage extension, and the web pages you use to claim a gift. You can reach us at support@usespot.me or by mail at 130 Stockton Avenue, Apt. 724, San Jose, CA 95126.

2. Information we collect

Phone number

Your phone number is your Spot account. We use it to create your account, to text you a one-time code that verifies it’s really you, to bind a gift to its sender and recipient, and to protect the service against fraud and abuse. Sign-in and account recovery work through that text code.

Account and device identifiers

  • A server-side account ID that represents your account.
  • A salted, one-way hash of your phone number that keys our own first-party usage metrics. It is not reversible back to your number and is never shared with anyone else.
  • An anonymous device identifier the app generates to stage a draft gift before it’s claimed and to prevent duplicate sends. It stays anonymous unless and until a gift is bound to a verified phone number.

Gifts you send

When you send a gift we store the item you chose, an optional short note you type, an optional occasion or stamp (such as Birthday or Thanks), and the recipient you send it to, so we can deliver the gift to the right person. If you set a birthday for someone in Your People, we keep only the month and day, never the year.

Recipient details you provide

To send a gift you provide the recipient’s phone number, which becomes part of that gift. If you granted Contacts access, names from your address book are used on your device to help you pick and label people — see “Contacts” below. If you save someone to Your People, we store their phone number and the private display name you chose for them so your roster survives a reinstall.

Purchases and redemption

We keep one record per gift — which item was sent, and whether it has been claimed and redeemed — so we can show you your sent and received gifts, fulfill each gift, and reconcile it with the merchant. Every charge maps to exactly one gift.

Usage analytics

We record first-party product events — for example when a gift is paid for, opened, claimed, or delivered — along with basic details like the payment rail and the item price in cents. These events carry the salted-hash identifier above. They are used only for our own analytics and to run the service; they are never used to track you across other apps or companies.

What we do not collect

  • Your card number. Payment runs through Apple Pay, which is tokenized by our payments processor. Spot only ever receives a payment token — never your card number, security code, or expiration date.
  • Your address book. We do not upload or harvest your contacts.
  • Location, browsing history, health data, photos, or media.
  • Advertising identifiers or diagnostics. We use no third-party advertising or crash/diagnostics SDKs, and we do not track you across other apps or websites. The App Tracking Transparency prompt does not apply to Spot.

3. How we use your information

  • To create and secure your account and verify it by text code.
  • To send gifts, deliver them, and let recipients claim and redeem them.
  • To show you your sent and received gifts and their status.
  • To prevent fraud, abuse, and misuse, and to enforce our Terms.
  • To provide support when you contact us.
  • To measure and improve the service with our own first-party analytics.
  • To comply with law and respond to lawful requests.

4. Payments and gift cards

You pay with Apple Pay. The payment is tokenized before it reaches us, and the app forwards only a token to our server — Spot never sees or stores your card number, security code, or expiration date. Payments are processed by Stripe.

Spot is not the issuer of the gift card. Each gift is a merchant gift card issued, fulfilled, and redeemed by the participating merchant or its gift-card provider, such as Square. The code needed to redeem a gift is delivered only through the signed Apple Wallet pass or the verified claim flow and is shown only to the verified recipient; it is not stored in the app as plain text.

5. How we share your information

We share information only as needed to run Spot:

  • Service providers that operate the service on our behalf: Apple (Apple Pay, Wallet, Messages), Stripe (payment processing), Square and participating merchants (issuing and redeeming gift cards), our text message provider (sending one-time codes), and our cloud hosting provider.
  • Participating merchants, to the extent needed to issue and redeem the specific gift.
  • Legal and safety: to comply with law, enforce our Terms, or protect the rights, safety, and property of Spot, our users, or the public.
  • Business transfer: if Spot is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, information may transfer as part of that transaction.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-app advertising or tracking.

6. Contacts

Contacts access is optional. If you grant it, Spot reads your address book on your device to help you find and label the person you’re sending to. Contact names and photos stay on your device — we do not upload your address book as a collected dataset. A recipient’s phone number that you type or select becomes part of the gift, as described above.

7. How long we keep information

We keep your account information for as long as your account is active, and gift records for as long as needed to deliver, support, and reconcile the gift and to meet legal, tax, fraud-prevention, and accounting obligations. When you delete your account we remove your personal data, except where we are required or permitted by law to retain it. Deleting your account does not invalidate gifts already delivered to recipients.

8. Your choices and rights

You can delete your account and personal data at any time in the app — open your account settings and choose to delete your account. We confirm the request with a one-time code texted to you. You can also email support@usespot.me to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your information.

Depending on where you live, including under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you may have the right to know what personal information we hold, to request its deletion or correction, and to not be discriminated against for exercising these rights. Because we do not sell your information or use it for cross-app tracking, there is nothing to opt out of on that front. To exercise a right, contact us at the email above; we may need to verify your request using your phone number.

The text messages we send are transactional (one-time codes and account notices), not marketing.

9. Children

Spot is not directed to children under 13, and you must be at least 13 to use it. If we learn that someone under 13 has used Spot, we may suspend the account and delete their personal information as required by law.

10. Security

We use technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including verifying sensitive actions with a one-time text code and keeping gift redeem codes behind the verified claim flow. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and to limit what we collect in the first place.

11. Where Spot operates

Spot is available only in the United States, and your information is processed in the United States.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes we will update the effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app. Your continued use of Spot after an update takes effect means you accept the updated policy.

13. Contact us

Questions or privacy requests? Email support@usespot.me or write to us at 130 Stockton Avenue, Apt. 724, San Jose, CA 95126. See also our Terms of Service.

Spot collects a phone number (account and text verification), the gift you send (item, optional note, occasion, recipient), and first-party usage analytics keyed by a salted hash of your phone. It does not track you across other apps or companies, does not store your card number, does not upload your address book, and does not collect diagnostics.