Privacy, in plain words

What Dottie collects

• You: your phone number, name and email address.
• Your family: the family name, the people in it (including kids, by first name only), notes and facts you ask Dottie to remember, and your family’s timezone and home address if you give them.
• Your conversation with Dottie: the texts you send and Dottie’s replies, and photos you send it. In a family group chat, only the messages meant for Dottie (see below).
• Google, once you connect it: an access key to your account, the list of your calendars and which ones you chose, and whose each one is.
• iCloud or Outlook, if you connect them: your Apple ID and an app-specific password (iCloud) or an access key (Outlook), and the list of your calendars.
• From your email: the dates, events and to-dos Dottie finds in school, team and activity email, not the emails themselves.
• Reminders you ask Dottie to set, and your family’s shared lists.

What Dottie reads but doesn’t keep

Email is read from Gmail, iCloud Mail or Outlook when Dottie needs it: you asked about something, it is checking for urgent messages to alert you about, or it is looking through school and activity email for dates and to-dos. The email itself, its pictures and its attachments are read and then let go, not stored. Dottie keeps the dates and to-dos it found, and a note that it already read (or alerted you about) an email, so it doesn’t do it twice. Calendar events are read from your calendars when needed, too.

Who can see what

• Only you: your email (Gmail, iCloud or Outlook), any calendar you mark “Private to me”, your reminders, things you asked it to remember just for you, your own “my list”, and your own conversation with Dottie.
• Your family: calendars you share with the family, family notes, what it remembers for the family, shared lists, the family group chat, and who is in the family.
• Being invited shares nothing. Someone who adds you to their family learns nothing about you until you join and choose what to connect.

iCloud and Outlook

• Read-only. Dottie reads your iCloud or Outlook calendars and your inbox. It never adds, changes, deletes or sends anything there, and it doesn’t even mark an email as read.
• What it reads: the calendars you connect and their events, and the email in your inbox (who it’s from, the subject, the date and the message), for the same reasons it reads Gmail. For Outlook, it also reads your basic profile so it knows which account you connected.
• iCloud uses an app-specific password, a separate password Apple lets you make just for Dottie, never your Apple ID password. It is stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM), is used only to read your calendars and mail, and is never shown again, logged or put in a text. Outlook’s access keys are stored encrypted the same way.
• Disconnecting deletes it. When you disconnect on the Calendars page, the stored password or keys are deleted, along with that account’s calendars and the private dates and to-dos found in its email. To be thorough, you can also delete the app-specific password at appleid.apple.com, or remove Dottie’s access in your Microsoft account.
• Your iCloud or Outlook email is yours alone, just like Gmail. A calendar you share with the family is the one exception: family members can see its events.

Family group chats

• You can add Dottie to your family’s group text. It only answers people in your family on Dottie, and only when they start with its name (“Dottie, …”), reply to it, or answer a question it asked.
• What’s stored: only the messages meant for Dottie (addressed to it, or answering its question) and its replies. The family’s everyday chatter is never stored. These messages are deleted after 90 days, like the rest of your conversation.
• Dottie also keeps a record of the group itself: its name, the phone numbers of the people in it who use Dottie, and who said yes to something. The phone numbers of anyone else in the group are stored only encrypted, and are used only to make sure Dottie never texts someone who opted out.
• In the group it shares only what the whole family can see. It never brings up anyone’s email, private calendars, reminders or private things it remembers, and with people from outside your family in the group it doesn’t share your home address or family notes either.
• Say “Dottie, stop” in the group and it stays quiet there until someone in your family says START.

Family memory

• When you ask, Dottie remembers things for your family: sizes, allergies, favourites, gift ideas, birthdays, the dentist’s name, the Wi-Fi password. You can see them under “Remembered” on your Family page.
• Encrypted: everything a remembered fact says is stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM).
• Private facts stay private. Passwords, codes and medical details are yours alone unless you say they’re for the family. Allergies, medical details, passwords and codes are hidden on the web until you tap to show them, and never come up in the group chat.
• It only remembers what you tell it in your own words. If it reads something worth remembering (on a school page, say), it asks you first, and it never picks up passwords, codes or medical details from something it read.
• Forget anytime: text “forget Leo’s shoe size” or tap Remove on the Family page, and it’s deleted. Your private facts are deleted with your account.

Shared lists

• Your family’s grocery list and any other list you start (“Target”, “gift ideas”) are shared with your family, and can be added to by text, in the family group chat, or on the Lists page.
• Encrypted: each list’s name and every item, quantity and note are stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM). Dottie also keeps who added or checked off an item, by first name.
• “My list” is just yours: it never shows up for your family or in the group chat, and it’s deleted with your account.
• Your list goes to Kroger only when you ask Dottie to fill your Kroger cart: it looks the items up at your store, shows you a preview, and adds them only when you say yes. Nothing is ever ordered.

“Where did you get that?”

Dottie’s replies don’t list their sources, but you can always ask. To answer, it keeps a short note on each reply of what it looked at: an email’s sender, subject and date, a calendar or page name, a link. Never the email itself. The note is stored encrypted, only ever read back in the same conversation, and deleted along with the message (after 90 days, or sooner when you clear your history). If a reply used something private to another family member, Dottie says only that it came from a private source.

Tips

In your first weeks, Dottie sends a short tip every few days (then weekly) about something it can do that you haven’t tried yet. It notes which tips it has sent, so none repeats, and for 90 days whether you tried that feature afterwards, to pick better tips. Text stop tips anytime, or turn Tips off in Settings, and they stop.

How it’s protected

• Your Google, iCloud and Outlook access keys and passwords are encrypted (AES-256-GCM) before they are stored. So are what Dottie remembers for your family, your shared lists, and the source notes on its replies.
• Sign-in codes and the links Dottie texts are single-use, expire quickly, and are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form.
• Every request is checked against your family on our servers; nobody can reach another family’s data by changing a link.
• Text in emails, events and web pages is treated as information, never as instructions. Dottie asks you before it adds or changes anything.
• Our logs record that something happened, not what your messages, emails or codes said.

How long we keep it

• Conversation messages are deleted after 90 days.
• Everything else stays until you remove it or delete your account. Deleting your account deletes your profile, conversation, reminders, private facts, your own list, and your Google, iCloud and Outlook connections, and revokes Dottie’s access at Google. If you are the last adult in your family, the family is deleted too, with everything it shared.

Services Dottie uses

These companies process data on Dottie’s behalf, only to run the service:

• Supabase — our database and sign-in.
• Sendblue — delivers texts between you and Dottie over iMessage and SMS.
• Anthropic (Claude) — the AI that reads your message, and the calendar or email details Dottie fetched to answer it, and writes the reply. Anthropic does not train on this data.
• Google — your Calendar and Gmail, and Google Maps for drive times and places you ask about.
• Apple and Microsoft — only if you connect iCloud or Outlook, to read your calendars and email there.
• Kroger — only if you connect it, to find products and fill your cart when you say yes.

Google user data

Dottie asks Google for: your basic profile and email address (to know which account you connected), your calendars (to read them) and their events (to add or update events, including invites, when you say yes), and Gmail read access (to find things you ask about and spot urgent messages) plus permission to create drafts. Dottie only ever saves drafts in your Drafts folder for you to review; it never sends, deletes or changes your email.

Dottie’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Google data is used only to provide Dottie’s features to you; it is not used for advertising, not sold, and not used to train AI models, and no person reads it unless you ask us to for support, it is needed for security, or the law requires it.

Your controls

• Text STOP and Dottie sends nothing more until you text START.
• Text stop tips to end the getting-started tips. In a family group chat, say “Dottie, stop”.
• Disconnect Google, iCloud or Outlook, or delete your account, on your Dottie home page. You can also remove Dottie’s access from your Google or Microsoft account settings, or delete its iCloud app-specific password, at any time.
• Ask Dottie to forget something, or remove it under “Remembered” on your Family page.
• Change which calendars Dottie uses, and whether each is private, whenever you like.

Kids

Dottie accounts are for adults. Kids appear in Dottie only as a first name a parent adds, so Dottie knows whose soccer practice is whose. Dottie does not collect anything from children.

Changes and questions

If this policy changes in a way that matters, Dottie will tell you by text before it takes effect. Questions? Text Dottie “help”.