Privacy

We collect a small amount of personal information, because a personalized gift cannot be made without it: your email address, the child’s first name and age range, and the few details you choose to tell Santa. For a North Pole case: your email address, a random household code, your household’s saved progress, and the words written for the edition you bought. We collect nothing else about the child, we do not sell any of it, and you can ask us to delete it.

The free North Pole asks for none of that. It has no accounts and no email addresses: it recognises your household by a random code in a cookie, and remembers what your household does there and any first names you type in, for 150 days after you last play.

To make and deliver what you buy: the child’s first name and age range; for the Santa video, how to pronounce the name and the details you give Santa; for the North Pole Archive, the two sentences you write; for North Pole Rescue, the situation you choose and its one detail; for Elf Emergency, the elf’s name, the emergency, and what is to hand. All of it is written by you and appears in the finished video or document.

To take payment and send the result: your email address, which our payment processor collects at checkout and passes to us. Payment is handled entirely by Stripe. For the North Pole Archive, North Pole Rescue, Elf Emergency and a North Pole case, Stripe also asks for your billing address to work out any sales tax; Stripe keeps it and we do not store it. We never see or store your card number; we store Stripe’s reference for the payment and the amount.

To answer you: when you write to the Santa’s Notes Help Desk, your email address, what your message is about, any private link or order email you choose to give, and your message. Resend, our email delivery provider, delivers it to our support mailbox, which Google Workspace hosts, and sends you an acknowledgement with your reference number. We read and answer it in that mailbox. It is not stored on this site. A card number typed into the form is removed before it is sent. Resend keeps its own record of each email it delivers.

When you arrive through a partner’s link: if you open a link one of our partners (a photographer, creator or publisher) shared, we set a cookie on your device holding that partner’s code and nothing else. It lasts 30 days; opening another partner’s link replaces it. It is used only to credit that partner with a purchase made on that device: if you buy, the partner’s code is recorded with your order and with Stripe’s record of the payment, so we can pay the partner their commission. The partner is not told who you are or what you wrote. To remove it, clear this site’s cookies.

When you sign up as a partner: your name, your email address, whether you are a photographer or a creator or publisher, the website or Instagram handle you choose to give, and that you agreed to the partner terms. Resend delivers them to our support mailbox at Google Workspace, where they are the record of your partnership, and emails you your partner links. They are not stored on this site. We keep them in that mailbox while you are a partner and afterwards for as long as we need them to account for commission we paid you.

When you join the 2026 North Pole Nice List: your email address, the first names of your children if you choose to give them (no surnames, at most four), the statements you ticked and when (that you are 18 or older and the child’s parent or legal guardian, and whether you asked for the December 1 invitation), whether you confirmed from your inbox, and, if you arrived through a partner’s link, that partner’s code. We use them to send you the confirmation email, to send the December 1 invitation only if you asked for it, and to count confirmed families on the list. Children’s names are never put in an email and never shown to anyone outside Santa’s Notes; a partner sees only how many families joined through their link, never who. If you do not confirm, we delete your details within 7 days. Every Nice List email has a link to leave the list, which deletes your details at once. Otherwise we delete everything on the list after January 31, 2027.

To record that an adult agreed to the terms: when you order, we record the versions of the terms and this notice you accepted, the confirmations you ticked, the time, your IP address and your browser’s user-agent string. With it we keep when your order was produced and delivered and when its private link was first opened, so we can answer a payment dispute.

To let your household play a North Pole case: a random household code in a cookie on each device that has opened your household’s link (it lasts 150 days from the day that device joined; reopening the link joins again), when the household was last seen, the choices it makes at each checkpoint, and the words written for the edition you bought: for the Gift Reveal, the recipient’s and sender’s names, the gift, the hiding-place instruction and the dedication; for Christmas From Grandma, the grandparent’s and household’s names, the dedication, the letter and the household’s sealed reply; for Extended Family Christmas, the names of the host and the other households, whether each accepted and was marked present, each sealed line, and the joint family edition. These words are shown only to the households that edition is for. Invited households need no cookie and no account: their invitation link is their access.

When your household plays in the free North Pole: the first time someone on a device does something there, such as entering a defence at the North Pole Court, finishing the sleigh puzzle or adding someone on the family page, we set a cookie on that device holding a random household code. The cookie lasts 150 days and is not renewed. With it we keep what your household did there (defences, votes and verdicts, puzzles, roles and the like), so the North Pole can remember it, and any names you type in: the household’s name, the names on the family page and how each person is related to you, the first names given in a Court vote, and the names on a casting invitation or an elf-alibi guessing link. They are shown only on a device carrying your household’s cookie, and an invitation or guessing link only to whoever holds it. None of it is sent to analytics, used for advertising or used to build a profile. Please use first names or nicknames only, and leave out surnames, schools and anything else that would identify a child outside your home.

To keep scripts out: we count how many requests arrive from one connection in a few minutes, so a script cannot flood checkout or the North Pole. We record a scrambled form of the connection’s address that cannot be turned back into it, and delete it within a day.

To count visits without knowing who anyone is: when switched on, we count how many visits arrive each day from each campaign link or referring website (its name only, such as a search engine), and how many reach the free North Pole, a Court verdict, the Studio, a product page, a buy button, or the optional letter offer after joining the Nice List. We keep only those daily totals: no cookie, no IP address, nothing that identifies you, your child or your device, and nothing anyone types. Private pages are never counted.

To understand how the public site is used: when analytics is switched on, the storefront and guide pages use PostHog, which records page views, clicks and the source of a visit, using a cookie and browser storage. Analytics never runs on the private page where a video or document is delivered, on the checkout return page, or in our console, and the addresses of those pages are never sent to it.

A surname. A date of birth. A home address. A school. Medical information. A phone number. A photograph of the child. Any government identifier. We ask you not to send these; our checks refuse a submission that appears to contain them, before payment.

To make and deliver what you buy we use a small number of service providers, each of which may process your details only to provide that service to us:

• Stripe, for payment and for calculating sales tax from your billing address.
• Supabase, for the database that holds your order and your household’s free North Pole record, and the private storage that holds the finished file.
• Netlify, which hosts the site and, like any web host, keeps its own logs of the requests it serves, under its own terms.
• Resend, which sends the delivery email, delivers Help Desk messages to our support mailbox and their acknowledgements to you, delivers partner signups to that mailbox and partner links to the partner, and sends the Nice List confirmation and reveal emails.
• Google Workspace, which hosts our support mailbox, where Help Desk messages and partner signups are kept and answered.
• For the Santa video only: Anthropic, whose model writes and checks Santa’s script from the details you gave, and Google, whose model produces Santa’s speaking shots from that script. The child’s first name and your details are sent to them for that purpose. Under their commercial terms neither trains its models on what we send: Anthropic states it deletes API inputs and outputs within 30 days; Google states it logs prompts and responses “for a limited period of time” solely to detect misuse and does not use them to improve its products. The North Pole Archive, North Pole Rescue and Elf Emergency are written by our own software from fixed templates, and a North Pole case uses only Stripe, Supabase, Netlify and Resend; no AI provider sees those orders or anything written for a case.
• PostHog, for analytics on the public pages.

Our providers are based in the United States. Their handling of the data they process for us is governed by their own terms, which we have not summarised here.

The child’s details — the name, age range, pronunciation and the details you gave Santa, the finished video or document, Santa’s script and the private link — are kept for 90 days after delivery, so you can open and download your order again, and then erased automatically. Download anything you want to keep before then.

The record of the sale — your email address, the amount, Stripe’s payment reference, your acceptance of the terms (versions, time, IP address and browser, and a fingerprint of what you approved that cannot be turned back into it), and when the order was produced, delivered and first opened — is kept for 180 days after delivery, to answer a payment dispute, and then erased automatically. It holds none of the child’s details once they have been erased.

An order that was never paid for is erased 90 days after it was last touched. One you paid for that we have not yet delivered or refunded is kept until we have.

A North Pole case is kept separately from its order, so your household can return to it. Its progress and the words written for it are kept while the case is available to you (at least until 31 March 2027), and erased after it closes, or sooner if you ask. If a case is withdrawn after a refund or a card dispute, they are kept until it closes or you ask us to erase them.

To have an order erased sooner, write to the Santa’s Notes Help Desk from the address you ordered with, naming the child’s first name, or, for a case, quoting the private link from your access email; we erase the order, its details and the file, and the private link stops working. Erasure covers our database and our file storage; copies in our database provider’s backups expire on that provider’s own schedule. Your email address goes with your last order. We keep the payment record that Stripe holds, which contains your email and the amount but none of the child’s details.

The free North Pole. A household’s record, with every name typed into it, is erased automatically 150 days after it was last used, by which time no cookie can open it. To end it at once on a device, clear this site’s cookies (website data) there: from that moment the device can no longer open the record, and it is erased on the same schedule. Because there is no account, we cannot find a household from an email address or a name. If you still have a link your household made, such as a casting invitation or an alibi guessing link, send it to the Santa’s Notes Help Desk and we will erase that household’s record and everything in it. A household that holds a North Pole case keeps its record for as long as the case is available, and can ask for it to be erased in the same way.

Help Desk messages are sent by email, through Resend, to our support mailbox at Google Workspace, and are not stored on this site. A card number typed into the form is removed before it is sent. We keep a conversation in that mailbox for up to 180 days after its last message, longer only while a payment dispute or a legal obligation needs it, and then delete it. Resend keeps its own record of each email it sends for 30 days.

We act on a request only when we can match it to an order or a household: the address an order was placed from, or a private link that belongs to it. We never ask for a password, and we reply to say when it is done.

Everything sold here is bought by an adult. A personalized gift is given to a child, who does not use the site to receive it. When you order, you confirm you are 18 or older and have permission to make this gift for the child. A North Pole case is played by a household together, and children may make choices in it and help write a short reply or line; we ask that an adult writes or checks anything typed.

The free North Pole is played by a household together, and a child may choose a defence, cast a vote or type a first name there. Children do not create accounts or sign in. We ask that an adult sets up the household and checks anything typed, and that names are first names or nicknames only.

We do not ask a child for contact details, a surname, a photograph or anything else a game does not need. Nothing a child types is used for advertising or sent to analytics, and it is shown outside the household only through a link the household chooses to send. The household cookie is used only to keep that household’s record of play. A parent or guardian can have what was typed erased, in the way described above, or end it at once by clearing this site’s cookies.

Each video or document is delivered on a page with a long, random address that cannot be guessed, and the file behind it is fetched with a short-lived signed address that expires after fifteen minutes. There is no password: anyone who has the link can open it, so share it the way you would share a family photo. We ask search engines not to index those pages and tell browsers not to cache them. If a link has been shared too widely, write to the Santa’s Notes Help Desk and we will cancel it and send you a new one; the old page stops working at once, and any file address it had already handed out stops working within fifteen minutes.

Santa’s Notes is operated by Grosvenor Lane LLC, a Texas limited liability company, 5900 Balcones Drive, STE 100, Austin, TX 78731, US. Privacy questions and requests: the Santa’s Notes Help Desk.