✧ epistle ✧

The short version

Epistle does not store your data. Your content goes from your browser to your Gmail drafts and nowhere else.

Who we are

Epistle is an independent app created and maintained by a single developer. You can reach us at epistleemail@gmail.com.

What we collect and why

Google account information
When you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address. This is used only to authenticate you and is never saved to a database.

Your epistle content
The questions you answer, your child's name, and any photos you upload are processed in your browser and sent to our server solely to assemble your email. They are not stored, logged, or retained after your Gmail draft is created.

Photos
Photos are compressed in your browser before being sent to our server. They exist in memory only for the duration of the request and are deleted immediately after your draft is created.

Gmail access
With your permission, Epistle uses the Gmail API to save a draft to your Gmail account. Epistle can only create drafts — it cannot read, send, delete, or modify any existing emails. We never see the contents of your inbox.

What we do not do

• We do not have a database. Nothing you submit is persisted on our servers.
• We do not sell, share, or transfer your data to third parties.
• We do not use your content to train any AI or machine learning models.
• We do not send you marketing emails.
• We do not use analytics or tracking tools.
• We do not use cookies beyond what is strictly necessary for your login session.

Session data

When you sign in, NextAuth stores a short-lived encrypted session token in a cookie in your browser. This token contains your Google OAuth credentials and expires automatically. It is never written to a database.

Third-party services

Google OAuth & Gmail API — for authentication and draft creation. Google's privacy policy applies to their handling of your data.

Vercel — for hosting. Vercel may collect standard server request logs (IP address, timestamp, request path). We do not control or access these logs beyond what Vercel provides by default.

Children's information

Epistle is designed to help adults share updates about their children with family and friends. We do not knowingly collect any personal information directly from children. All content about children is submitted by the adult user and is processed and immediately discarded after your draft is created.

Your rights

Because we don't store your data, there is nothing for us to retrieve, correct, or delete on your behalf. If you want to revoke Epistle's access to your Google account, you can do so at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we will update the date at the top of this page. Continued use of Epistle after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

Questions? Email us at epistleemail@gmail.com.