Privacy Policy

What we collect and why

To build and deliver your schedule

This is the core of what we do. When you use Switchdays, we collect:

• Your childcare pattern (the rotation you set up — which parent has the children on which days)
• The details you add to your schedule — the titles and notes you type for activities, clubs, appointments, school runs, and holiday periods, plus any day-specific notes (which you can keep private to you or share with your co-parent). These fields are free text, so they contain whatever you choose to put in them.
• Your email address, if you choose to receive calendar invites by email
• Your co-parent's email address, if you choose to invite them to the schedule or have their calendar invites sent to that address
• Your settings and preferences — the title you give your calendar events, your time zone, and your feed and delivery options

We need this information to provide the service. Without it, there's no schedule to sync. Our lawful basis for processing this data is contract performance — you've asked us to do something, and we need this information to do it.

To run your account

We use a third-party authentication provider, Auth0, to manage signing in. When you create an account, we store your email address and an identifier from Auth0 that links your login to your account. We never see or store your password — Auth0 handles that. If you choose to sign in with Google instead, Google verifies your identity and tells us your email address. Your account lets you log in, manage your schedule, and receive transactional emails like password resets.

Our lawful basis is contract performance.

To understand how the site is used

We use Plausible Analytics to understand how people use our website. Plausible is a privacy-focused analytics tool that:

• Does not use cookies
• Does not collect personal data
• Does not track you across sites
• Stores data in the EU
• Is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR without requiring a cookie banner

We see aggregate numbers — how many people visited a page, which countries they're in, what devices they use. We don't see you. We chose Plausible specifically because it gives us what we need without compromising your privacy.

Our lawful basis is legitimate interest. We have a genuine need to understand whether the site is working and where people get stuck, and this processing is minimal and privacy-respecting.

To measure whether our advertising works

We run ads on platforms like Google and Meta to help other co-parents find Switchdays. To understand whether those ads are working, we need to know when an ad click turns into a sign-up — but we do it without tracking you around the web and without storing anything on your device.

What that means concretely:

• We do not place advertising or tracking pixels in your browser.
• We do not store anything on your device to measure ads — which is why this site has no advertising cookies and no cookie banner.
• When you arrive from an ad, the platform's own click identifier (and any campaign labels) appear in the address-bar link you clicked. If you go on to sign up, we store that identifier from the arrival link against your account, and use it only to report that conversion back to the platform.
• We send the platform only its own click identifier and the fact that a sign-up happened — never your email address, your co-parent's name, your childcare schedule, or any other personal detail.

Our lawful basis is legitimate interest. We need to know whether our advertising spend is effective, and we've chosen the most minimal implementation we could: no browser tracking, no device storage, and nothing personal sent to the platform. We accept this means slightly less precise measurement, and we're comfortable with that trade-off.

To communicate with you

We send you emails that are necessary for the service to work — calendar invites, schedule update confirmations, password resets, and important service announcements. These are transactional and you'll receive them as long as you have an account.

We may also send occasional product updates or tips, but only if you've opted in to receive them. You can opt out at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any such email, or by updating your preferences in your account settings.

Our lawful basis is contract performance for transactional emails and consent for marketing emails.

What we don't do

• We don't sell your data. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone.
• We don't build advertising profiles from your childcare schedule. Your parenting arrangement is not a data point for ad targeting.
• We don't upload your email address or any customer list to ad platforms. We don't use "lookalike audiences," "custom audiences," or any feature that involves handing your details to an advertising platform to find "people like you."
• We don't share your schedule with anyone you haven't chosen to share it with. Not your co-parent's employer, not their solicitor, not a court, not anyone — unless we're compelled by law (see below).
• We don't retarget you. If you visit Switchdays and leave, we don't follow you around other websites with our ads. That kind of retargeting requires planting a tracker on your device — we don't do it, which is also why you never see a cookie banner here.
• We don't track you across the internet. We don't know what other websites you visit, and we don't want to.

Who we share data with

We share your personal data only with the following categories of third parties, and only to the extent necessary:

Calendar providers — When you subscribe to a calendar feed or receive invites, the event data (dates, times, event titles) is transmitted to your calendar provider (Google, Microsoft, Apple, or whichever service you use). This is inherent to how calendar subscriptions work — your calendar app fetches the feed directly. We don't control what your calendar provider does with that data, and their own privacy policies apply.

Hosting and infrastructure — Our service is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), in their UK (London) region. Your data is stored on their servers, and our transactional emails are sent through AWS's email service. They process data on our behalf under a data processing agreement and do not use it for their own purposes.

Authentication — We use Auth0 (an Okta company) to handle account sign-in and passwords. Your email address and login details are processed by Auth0 on our behalf so you can log in securely. If you choose to sign in with Google, Google also processes your login to confirm your identity. Their own privacy policies govern how they handle that data.

Plausible Analytics — Aggregated, non-personal usage data only. Plausible is hosted in the EU and does not receive any personal information.

Ad platforms — When you arrive from a Google or Meta ad and then sign up, our server tells that platform that a click it had tagged resulted in a sign-up. We send only the platform's own click identifier and the conversion event — no pixels, no cookies, and none of your personal data (no email, no schedule, no names). The platform may relate that click back to its own records; what it does on its side is governed by its own privacy policy.

Legal obligations — If we are compelled by law to disclose your data — for example, by a court order — we will do so. If we're legally permitted to notify you, we will.

Where your data is stored

Your account and schedule data is stored on servers in the United Kingdom (the AWS London region). We've deliberately chosen UK-based infrastructure.

However, some data will inevitably pass through servers outside the UK. If you use Google Calendar, your calendar feed is fetched by Google's infrastructure. If you use Outlook, it passes through Microsoft's servers. This is how calendar subscriptions work — your calendar provider pulls the feed from our server, and we can't control where their servers are located.

For any transfers of personal data outside the UK, we rely on adequacy decisions where available, or on standard contractual clauses approved by the UK Information Commissioner's Office.

If you're in the US or Canada: Your data may be processed and stored in the UK. By using Switchdays, you acknowledge that your data will be transferred to and processed in the UK, which may have different data protection laws than your jurisdiction. We apply the same protections to all users regardless of location.

How long we keep it

Account data — We keep your email address, login credentials, and preferences for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we delete this data within 30 days, except where we're required by law to retain it.

Schedule data — Your childcare pattern and calendar feed data are kept for as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, we delete your schedule data within 30 days (with the one limited exception of the change and security log described below).

Change and security log — We keep an internal, access-restricted log of changes made to a schedule — for example, when a swap, note, or appointment was created, edited, or deleted, and by which account. This is what lets us support you, investigate problems, and resolve disputes about what was changed and when, so it's important that it's a faithful record. Because of that, a limited part of this log — including a snapshot of the affected content — is retained even after you delete your account, and for longer than your other data. We keep it only as long as it remains necessary for these purposes, we hold it in a minimal, access-restricted form, and we never use it for marketing or advertising. Our lawful basis is legitimate interest — keeping an accurate, tamper-evident record of what happened on the service. If you would like this log erased, contact us and we will consider your request in line with your rights below.

Analytics data — Plausible data is aggregated and non-personal. It is retained in aggregate form indefinitely to help us understand long-term usage trends.

Ad conversion data — When we report a sign-up to an ad platform, the conversion signal is held by that platform under its own retention policy. On our side, we keep the click identifier only as long as we need it to report and reconcile the conversion, and we never use it to build a profile of you.

Transactional emails — Logs of emails we've sent you (for troubleshooting delivery issues) are retained for up to 12 months.

Your rights

Your rights depend on where you live. We aim to honour all of the following regardless of your location, because it's the right thing to do.

If you're in the UK or EEA

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access your personal data — ask us what we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data
• Delete your data (right to erasure)
• Export your data in a portable format
• Object to processing based on legitimate interest
• Restrict processing in certain circumstances
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent (e.g. marketing emails)

To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@switchdays.com. We'll respond within 30 days.

If you're not satisfied with how we handle your request, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

If you're in the US

Depending on your state, you may have rights under laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or similar state legislation. These typically include the right to know what data we collect, the right to delete it, and the right to opt out of the sale of your data.

We don't sell your data, so the right to opt out of sale doesn't practically apply — but we'll still honour the request. To exercise any rights, email us at privacy@switchdays.com.

If you're in Canada

Under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), you have the right to access your personal information and request corrections. To exercise these rights, email us at privacy@switchdays.com.

Cookies and tracking

Switchdays uses almost no cookies, and none at all for advertising or analytics — which is exactly why you will never see a cookie consent banner on this site. Here's the full picture:

Plausible Analytics sets no cookies. It doesn't need them.

Session and authentication cookies are set when you log in to your account. These are strictly necessary for the service to work — they're what keep you logged in — and under UK PECR strictly-necessary cookies don't require consent. They expire when you log out or after a reasonable period of inactivity.

Advertising sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. We measure our ads server-side, using the click identifier the ad platform itself adds to the link you clicked (see "To measure whether our advertising works" above). Because nothing is stored on or read from your device for advertising — and nothing for analytics either — there is no non-essential cookie to consent to, and so no banner.

That's the whole picture. If that ever changes — if we ever adopt a technology that stores something on your device for a non-essential purpose — we'll tell you, and we'll ask for your consent before we do.

Children's data

Switchdays is a tool for parents. It is not directed at children, and children should not create accounts or use the service directly.

We recognise that the nature of the service means that the existence of children is implicit in every childcare schedule. We never ask for a child's name, age, or any other identifying detail: the schedule itself is structured around the parents — which parent has the children on which days — not the children. The one exception is the free-text fields you fill in yourself (event titles, activities, appointments, and notes). Those are yours to use as you wish, and if you type a child's name or other detail into them, we will hold that text so we can show it back to you in your calendar. We'd encourage you to include only what you're comfortable storing, but the choice is yours.

We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under the age of 18. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us at privacy@switchdays.com and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy — for example, if we start collecting new types of data or sharing data with new categories of third parties — we'll notify you by email before the changes take effect.

Minor updates (clarifications, formatting, updated provider names) may be made without individual notification, but we'll always update the "last updated" date at the top of this page.

Contact us

If you have any questions about this policy, or if you'd like to exercise any of your rights, you can reach us at:

Email: privacy@switchdays.com

(Our registered postal address is in the company details at the top of this policy.)

If you're in the UK and you're not happy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office:

ICO: ico.org.uk | 0303 123 1113