Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

HotMessExpress (the “Service”) is a household-management app: chores, routines, shopping and pantry lists, schedules, family messages, bills, and tools for families with one or two households, including separated parents who share care of a child. It is operated by Michael Hebert, an individual based in Texas, United States (“we”, “us”).

Privacy questions and requests: michael@hotmessexpress.lol.

2. Information we collect

• Account information. When you sign in with Google or email, your name, email address and profile picture, plus your role in the household (parent/admin, child, or pet) and which household you belong to.
• Household content you add. Tasks and routines, shopping and pantry lists, meal plans, appointments, notes, messages between household members, activity and “quality time” entries, and similar items.
• Children’s information. A parent or administrator creates a profile for each child (name, role, and any details the parent enters). See section 9.
• Health-related information. Only what you choose to enter, such as medications, refill dates, and emotion or mood logs. This is sensitive, and it is visible only to the household members your role settings allow.
• Financial information. Bills and expenses you enter. If you connect a bank through SimpleFIN Bridge, we receive read-only account and transaction data for that member. We never see your bank login, and we do not store payment-card numbers (payments are handled by Stripe).
• Location and presence. If you use presence features, whether household members are home (from device signals or NFC tags you set up), and a home location you enter to show local weather. The Android app may request approximate location for this purpose.
• Camera images and voice. If you scan a receipt or chore with the camera, the photo is sent to an AI image-reading service to extract text. Voice features use your device’s speech recognition, and spoken replies use Google text-to-speech.
• Co-parenting information. Whether co-parenting mode is on, which household each parent belongs to, and each household’s address and phone number, which the other parent can see unless the household marks its address confidential.
• School information. If a family member links a Google Classroom account, course names, assignment titles and due dates, submission status, and the student’s own grades from that account. A parent or guardian administrator of the household can view a child’s linked-account grades; other members cannot.
• Smart-home information. If you connect Home Assistant or link Google Home, the connection details you provide, and device names and states so you can view and control your devices.
• Kids World, voice translator and room scanner. The voice translator uses your device’s microphone and speech recognition, and spoken replies use Google text-to-speech; we do not keep audio recordings. The room scanner sends a photo you take (which may be of a child’s room) to an AI image-reading service to suggest tidy-up tasks; we do not keep the photo after the result is returned. Arcade scores and leaderboards show a child’s chosen display name to their own household. Pet feeding and walk logs are stored with the household.
• Private kid journal. Journal entries are stored only in the child’s own browser or device storage. They are not uploaded to our servers, are not shared with the household or the AI assistant, and are lost if the device storage is cleared. They are not encrypted by us.
• Home Assistant camera snapshots. If you connect Home Assistant, you can view camera snapshots through the app. Snapshots are fetched on demand and passed to your screen; we do not store them.
• AI conversations. What you type to the built-in assistant, and the household context needed to answer (see section 6).
• Technical data. Device and browser type, app version, error and performance logs, push-notification tokens, and IP address in server logs.

The app stores household data in your browser or device storage so it works quickly and offline; signing out clears that stored copy. We use only the storage the app needs to function, with no advertising or tracking cookies.

3. How we use information

To run the features you use; to keep the Service secure and prevent abuse; to provide support; to bill your subscription; to send notifications you enable; and to improve reliability. We do not use household content for advertising, and we do not sell it.

4. Google user data

If you connect a Google account, we access only what you approve. You can revoke access at any time in the app’s Settings or at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

• No advertising. We never use Google user data to serve ads.
• No selling. We never sell Google user data.
• No model training. We do not use Google user data to train general AI or machine-learning models.
• Sending to our AI provider. To turn Gmail messages into suggestions, the sender, subject, date and preview snippet are sent to Anthropic (Claude), through the Vercel AI Gateway or OpenRouter, as our service providers, solely to produce the suggestion for you.
• No human reading. No person reads your Google data unless you ask us to for support, it is needed for security or to investigate abuse, or the law requires it.

5. Bank data

If a household member connects a bank through SimpleFIN Bridge, only that member and a household superadmin can see the connection and the transactions it syncs. You can disconnect it at any time in the Finance area.

6. AI features

The assistant, daily briefings and image reading send your prompt and the household context needed to answer to AI providers acting as our service providers: Vercel AI Gateway or OpenRouter (which route requests to Anthropic’s Claude) and Google (Gemini and text-to-speech). A household administrator may instead supply their own AI keys. AI output can be wrong; it is not medical, legal, financial or custody advice.

7. Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information. We share it only with the service providers below, and only as needed to run the Service.

Your Home Assistant, if you use one, is run by you, not by us. We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect safety or rights, or in a business transfer, and we would tell you first.

8. Households and co-parenting

What a person sees depends on their role. Children do not see bills, finances or other adult-only areas, and some data is private to the member who created it. In co-parenting mode, two households connected as one family share only what is described here and in the app’s settings: each household’s address and phone number (unless marked confidential), and any items a parent explicitly chooses to share, which are visible to adult members only. Information from HotMessExpress is provided for convenience. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a court order or a lawyer.

9. Children’s privacy

HotMessExpress is set up and controlled by parents. A child gets a profile that a parent creates, and can sign in with their own account only when a parent invites them. Before a child under 13 gets an account, the parent must confirm in the app that they are the child’s parent or legal guardian, consent to the collection described here, and verify with a payment card through Stripe (a temporary $0.50 authorization hold that is canceled and never charged). We record the confirmation with the date and notice version; we do not store the card number. We do not show advertising to anyone, and we do not sell or share children’s information for advertising.

What we collect from a child. The profile details a parent enters; chores, routines and points; arcade scores and display name; pet logs; voice input through the device’s speech recognition (audio is not stored by us); and photos only if a parent or child uses the room scanner (not stored by us after the result is returned). The private journal stays on the child’s device and is not sent to us.

Who processes it. Supabase and Vercel (storage and hosting), and, when AI features are used, Vercel AI Gateway or OpenRouter (routing to Anthropic) and Google (Gemini, text-to-speech). We send these providers only what is needed to answer the request.

Retention. Children’s information is kept only while the household account is active and is deleted within 30 days of an account or child-profile deletion request, except where the law requires us to keep a record.

Parent rights. A parent can review, correct or delete a child’s information, or refuse further collection, in the app (Settings), at hotmessexpress.lol/delete-account, or by emailing michael@hotmessexpress.lol.

10. Security

Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Household data is stored in a multi-tenant database in the United States. Direct browser reads are limited by database access rules so an account can read only its own household, and our server functions also check household and role permissions in code. Gmail and Classroom refresh tokens are encrypted at rest, and Google Home access tokens are stored only as hashes. No system is perfectly secure. If you find a problem, please tell us at michael@hotmessexpress.lol.

10a. Data breach notification

If we learn of a security breach that affects your personal information, we will notify affected account holders and, where the law requires, regulators, without unreasonable delay and within the time the law allows. For a breach involving a child’s information, we will notify the parent or guardian account.

11. Retention and deletion

We keep information while your account is active. You can request deletion in the app (Settings → Delete my account, which sends us a verified request), at hotmessexpress.lol/delete-account, or by email to michael@hotmessexpress.lol from the address on your account. We will delete or de-identify your information within 30 days, except where we must keep records for legal, tax or security reasons. Backups roll off on their normal schedule. You can also disconnect Gmail, Calendar and Classroom in Settings, disconnect a bank in the Finance area, and unlink Google Home in the Google Home app at any time.

11a. Sensitive data and consent

Health-related entries (such as medications and mood logs) and children’s information are sensitive. We process them only because you choose to enter them, only to provide the features you use, and never for advertising. By entering this information you consent to that processing; you can withdraw consent at any time by deleting the entries or your account. Texas and other state residents may also appeal a denied request by replying to our response email.

12. Your choices and rights

You can ask to access, correct, export or delete your information, and to disconnect any integration. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws, and we will honor these requests wherever you live. Email michael@hotmessexpress.lol. We may need to verify who you are, and we will respond within 45 days. We will not treat you differently for making a request.

13. Changes to this policy

We will post updates on this page and change the effective date above. If a change is significant, we will also tell you in the app.

14. Contact us

Michael Hebert
michael@hotmessexpress.lol