Privacy Policy

1. Scope

This Privacy Policy explains how ParkBench Families (“ParkBench,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, stores, and shares information through the ParkBench Families website and mobile application (together, the “Service”).

2. Information we collect

Account and family profile information

Depending on what you provide and the features you use, we may collect:

• Parent or caregiver names, email addresses, an optional phone number, display name, password credential, and email or phone verification information.
• ZIP code, school district, school name and school-visibility choice, family bio, household or family situation, solo-parent status, interests, connection preferences, and preferred matching radius.
• Children’s names and ages entered by a parent or caregiver.
• Profile photos uploaded by a user.

Community, activity, and communication information

• Messages between families, including sender, recipient, content, timestamps, and read status.
• Activities and community posts, including title, category, description, venue or location name, city, ZIP code, date, time, age range, visibility setting, and posting family.
• Going and Not Going responses, bookmarks, saved families, saved searches, category alerts, blocks, safety reports, community reports, feedback, and notification preferences.
• For official community events, public event details and source links obtained from official calendars. These records are not information submitted by a ParkBench family unless a family later interacts with the event.

Technical and usage information

• A session cookie used to keep you signed in. The standard session lasts up to 30 days; choosing “remember me” may extend it up to 90 days.
• Basic server records such as request path, request time, errors, and rate-limit information associated with a visitor’s network address. Sensitive authorization and cookie headers are redacted from application logs.
• Page path and referring page for limited internal page-view measurement. We do not currently use a third-party behavioral analytics service.
• Campaign or referral parameters provided when you arrive or create an account.
• Browser push subscription endpoint and encryption keys if you enable push notifications.
• On the website, local browser storage may retain your ParkBench family identifier, email address, campaign information, or whether you dismissed a push prompt so the site can support sign-in and preferences.

We do not collect advertising identifiers or continuous device GPS location through the current Service.

3. How we use information

We use information to:

• Create, verify, authenticate, moderate, and support family accounts.
• Recommend nearby or compatible families using child age ranges, ZIP-based distance, interests, connection preferences, family situations, school settings, and other profile information.
• Display profiles according to the Service’s profile, school, connection, visibility, and blocking controls.
• Provide messaging, community posts, activities, attendance responses, bookmarks, saved searches, alerts, and notifications.
• Send verification, service, safety, activity, message, reminder, and engagement emails or push notifications according to available preferences and opt-out settings.
• Investigate reports, prevent abuse, enforce safety controls, rate-limit sign-in attempts, and maintain administrative audit records.
• Operate, troubleshoot, measure, secure, and improve the Service.

4. Location information

ParkBench uses the ZIP code you provide to support local discovery and approximate distance-based matching. The Service sends the ZIP code to Zippopotam.us to obtain approximate latitude and longitude coordinates and stores those approximate coordinates for matching. ParkBench does not currently request or collect continuous GPS or precise device location.

If you post an activity, you may provide a public venue or location name, city, and ZIP code. The Service is designed to reject residential or home-address locations for activities. Information you type into a title or description is user-provided content, so please do not include a home address or other sensitive location information.

5. Family and child-related information

ParkBench is intended for parents and adult caregivers, not for use by children directly. A parent or caregiver may provide a child’s name and age to create a family profile and improve age-based matching. Child ages may be shown to other permitted families in profiles or activity attendee information. Child names are stored as part of the family profile and may appear within the family-profile experience; they are not included in general family search results or activity attendee lists.

Please provide only information you are authorized to provide about your family. Do not upload sensitive records about a child. If you believe a child has provided information directly or information was submitted without proper authorization, contact us so we can review and delete it as appropriate.

6. User-generated content and social features

Profile details, photos, messages, activities, attendance responses, reports, and feedback are user-generated content. Community activities are broadly visible to signed-in ParkBench families. Activities marked for matches or connections are limited using relationship rules, and blocking controls suppress interactions across major Service features.

Messages are shared with their intended recipient. Activity hosts may receive notice that a family joined, and permitted activity viewers may see attendee display names and child ages. Aggregate attendance counts may be visible without identifying every attendee. Safety reports and related content may be reviewed by ParkBench administrators.

Use care when deciding what to post or send. Other users may copy or capture content they are permitted to view.

7. How we share information

We share information only as needed to operate the Service, provide user-requested social features, protect users, or comply with law. We do not sell personal information.

• Other ParkBench families: Profile, school, family, activity, attendance, and message information is disclosed according to the applicable feature, visibility setting, relationship, and blocking controls described above.
• Replit and PostgreSQL infrastructure: Application data, sessions, photos, and logs are hosted and processed on infrastructure used to run ParkBench.
• Email delivery providers: Gmail/Google SMTP and, when configured, Polsia’s email delivery proxy process recipient addresses and email content to deliver ParkBench messages.
• Browser push services: If you enable push, your browser or operating-system push service processes the push subscription and notification content. Message notifications may include the sender name and a shortened message preview.
• Zippopotam.us: Receives a ZIP code to return approximate geographic coordinates used for local matching.
• Safety, legal, and business needs: We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to investigate abuse, protect users or the Service, comply with legal obligations, or address a business reorganization.

The current Service does not use an advertising network, third-party behavioral analytics SDK, AI service to process user content, or an active payment processor.

8. Data retention and deletion

Most account, profile, message, activity, safety, and usage records are retained while needed to provide and protect the Service. The current system does not apply one fixed automatic deletion period to all records. Activity owners can cancel activities, which removes them from active listings, and users can delete individual profile photos.

Match-notification records are generally scheduled for cleanup after 90 days. Old or repeatedly failing push subscriptions are generally removed after 90 days without a successful delivery or after repeated failures. Sessions normally expire after 30 days, or up to 90 days when “remember me” is used.

You may request account and personal-data deletion by contacting us. We will review the request, verify the requester, and delete or de-identify information as appropriate, subject to information we must retain for safety, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, legal compliance, or legitimate administrative records. Copies may remain temporarily in backups or caches until they are overwritten or expire.

9. Security

ParkBench uses measures designed to protect information, including encrypted transport in production, hashed and salted passwords, HTTP-only session cookies, sign-in rate limits and temporary lockouts, server-side access checks, content visibility controls, blocking tools, and redaction of sensitive headers from application logs. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. Children’s privacy

The Service is for parents and adult caregivers and is not directed to children under 13. Children may not create their own ParkBench account. Child-related information in a family profile must be submitted and managed by a parent or authorized caregiver. If we learn that personal information was collected directly from a child under 13 without appropriate authorization, we will take steps to delete it.

11. Your privacy choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information, or to object to or restrict certain processing. ParkBench also provides controls to update profile information, choose school visibility, manage notification preferences, unsubscribe from certain emails, block families, remove photos, and control activity visibility.

To make a privacy request, email us using the contact information below. We may need to verify your identity before completing a request. You may also contact us to ask questions or appeal a decision about a privacy request.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the Service changes. We will post the revised policy at this address and update the effective date above. If a change materially affects how we use personal information, we will provide additional notice when appropriate.

13. Contact us