Privacy Policy

What we collect

We collect only what is needed to carry messages between a group’s members.

• Your phone number. This is how we identify you. There are no usernames or passwords.
• A display name, if one is given. When someone adds you to a group they may include a name, which is shown beside your messages. If not, your number is shown instead.
• Phone numbers you add. When you add someone to a group, we store their number so we can deliver messages to them.
• Your group membership — which group you are in, whether you are an admin, and when you joined or left.
• The content of your messages, including text and any pictures, video or audio you send. We store these so the service can deliver them and so we can answer questions about what a group actually received.
• Delivery records. For each message we keep who it was sent to, whether it arrived, and any error the phone carrier reported.
• Basic call information when someone calls a group number: the time, length, and whether it connected. We do not record calls.
• Service logs used to run and debug the service. Phone numbers in these logs are partly hidden (for example +1555***4567).

We do not collect your location, your contacts, your other messages, or anything from your phone. We have no app and no website login, so there is nothing to track.

Why we use it

• To run the service — to deliver your messages to your group and theirs to you.
• To protect the service from spam and abuse, and to keep costs from running away. This is why we count how many messages are sent.
• To help when something goes wrong — for example to find out why a message did not arrive.
• To meet legal and phone-carrier requirements, including keeping a record that we honoured your request to stop.

We do not sell or rent your information. We do not advertise. We will never send you marketing messages — every message we send is either from your group or a direct reply to something you texted us.

Who sees your information

Your group

This is the point of the service: everything you text to your group’s number is delivered to every other member of that group, with your name or number attached. Members can also text WHO to see who is in the group. Treat a group message the way you would treat speaking in a room.

Companies that help us operate

We use a small number of service providers, who may process your information only to provide their service to us:

• Our phone carrier partner, which sends and receives the actual text messages and calls.
• Our hosting and database providers, which store the information described above.
• Mobile phone networks. Your own carrier and the recipient’s carrier necessarily handle every message, under their own privacy policies.

Legal requests

We may disclose information if we are legally required to, or where we believe it is necessary to protect someone’s safety or to investigate abuse of the service.

Pictures and other attachments

To send a picture on to your group, we have to place a copy somewhere the receiving phone networks can fetch it. Those networks fetch it without signing in, which means the copy is reachable by anyone who has the exact web address for it.

We protect it the only ways available: the address is long and random, so it cannot be guessed, and it is never published or linked anywhere. But it is not password protected. Please keep this in mind before sending anything sensitive as a picture.

Attachments that are too large for the phone networks to carry are not sent at all, and the group is told that an attachment did not go through.

How long we keep it

• Messages and delivery records are kept for up to one year, then deleted.
• Your account and group membership are kept while you are using the service. If your group closes, its message history is kept for the same period above and is not deleted immediately.
• Records that you asked us to stop are kept indefinitely. We have to keep these: they are how we make sure you are not messaged again, and how we can show that we honoured your request.

Your choices

• Stop all messages. Reply STOP to any message from us. We stop immediately and send one last message confirming it. Reply START if you change your mind.
• Leave your group. Text LEAVE to your group’s number.
• Ask us to delete your information. Write to us at the address below from, or referencing, your phone number. We will delete your record and your messages, except the record of any request to stop, which we must keep as explained above.
• Ask what we hold about you. Write to us and we will tell you.

Depending on where you live you may have additional rights over your information. We apply the choices above to everyone regardless of location.

How we protect it — and what we cannot protect

Access to our systems is restricted to the people who operate the service, and administrative actions are recorded. Information sent between us and our providers is encrypted in transit.

Text messages themselves are not encrypted end to end. That is true of all SMS and MMS, not just ours: your carrier, the recipient’s carrier and their partners can technically access messages in transit. If you need private, encrypted messaging, a text-message service — any text-message service — is not the right tool.

No service can promise perfect security, and we do not.

Children

GroupItUp is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child under 13 has been added to a group, contact us and we will remove them.

If you add someone else

When you add another person’s phone number to a group, you are telling us that you know that person and that they are willing to receive messages from the group. They are sent a message straight away explaining that they were added and how to stop. Please do not add people who have not agreed to it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the effective date at the top of this page. If the change is significant, we will tell group members by text message.