Privacy policy
Effie ยท effective 27 October 2026
Effie is a private family organiser, run by one household for the use of its own members. It is not a commercial service and is not available to the public. This policy explains what information Effie handles, including information it receives from Google, and what happens to it.
Who can use Effie
Only members of the household have accounts, and accounts are created by the household's adults. Children in the household use accounts their parents set up and manage.
Information Effie holds
Effie holds what household members put into it: their names and birthdays, calendar events, chores, reward points, meal plans, shopping lists and notes. It also keeps the minimum needed to run: sign-in details (passwords are stored only as secure hashes) and a session cookie that keeps a member signed in.
Google user data
If a household member connects the family's Google account, Effie asks Google for permission to use Google Calendar on that account. With that permission, Effie:
- reads the list of calendars (names, colours and access level) and the events in the calendars the household chooses to show, including each event's title, time, location, description, repeat pattern and any details stored in it;
- writes (adds, changes or removes) events only in calendars the household has chosen to sync to, and only when a household member makes that change in Effie.
Effie uses this data for one purpose: showing the household its own calendars inside Effie and keeping the two in step. It does not access Gmail, contacts, files or any other Google data.
Limited Use
Effie's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. In particular, Google user data is:
- used only to provide the calendar features described above;
- never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to build profiles;
- never transferred to anyone else, except where the law requires it;
- never used to develop, improve or train generalised artificial intelligence or machine learning models;
- read by people only when they are the household members it belongs to, or when it is needed for security or to comply with the law.
Where information is kept
Everything Effie holds, including calendar data from Google, is stored on equipment the household owns and controls. It is encrypted at rest, and Effie is reachable only from the household's own devices. No third-party hosting, analytics or advertising services are involved.
For disaster recovery, encrypted backups are also copied to a cloud storage provider. They are encrypted before they leave the household's equipment, and the provider has no means of reading them.
How long it is kept
Information is kept while the household uses Effie. Backups are kept for a limited rolling period and then deleted.
Disconnecting Google in Effie's settings removes Effie's access to the account, and the household can delete the calendar events Effie copied at the same time. Access can also be withdrawn at any time from the Google Account permissions page. Withdrawing it does not change anything stored in Google Calendar itself.
Your rights
Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, anyone can ask to see or correct personal information held about them. Information about someone outside the household (for example, a name in a shared calendar invite) is handled the same way as everything else described here.
Contact
Questions about this policy or about information Effie holds: privacy@speck.nz.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new effective date.