Privacy policy

Last updated: 17 October 2026 · See also our terms of use

1. Our promises to families

Many gift and wish-list services make money from your information. SantaWho doesn't. We promise:

• No selling, renting or trading of anyone's information, ever, and no sharing it for advertising.
• No ads, and no advertising cookies, tracking pixels or ad networks.
• No profiles of your family. We don't use what your family wishes for to profile you, target you or make decisions about you.
• Nothing public. There are no public profiles, no searchable lists and no directory of families. Your office is seen only by the people you give its link to, and by the people you choose to share a page with.
• The least information we can. No accounts, no real names, no addresses, phone numbers or photos. An email address is optional.
• No personal details in the links we make. The links SantaWho makes for sharing don't contain your family's names or wishes.
• Emails only when a grown-up asks, never marketing, and never with tracking.
• You're in control. You can change or delete anything, or close your office for good, yourself and at any time.

2. Who we are

SantaWho (SantaWho.com) is operated by DoerHub, Inc., 2872 Ygnacio Valley Rd. #220, Walnut Creek, CA 94598-3534, USA. In this policy "we" and "us" mean DoerHub, Inc. We are the "controller" of the information described here, which means we decide how it's used and are responsible for looking after it.

Questions, requests or worries: [email protected].

3. For parents, not for children on their own

SantaWho is made for parents and other grown-ups. A parent or carer sets up the family's office, adds the players, runs the game and decides what to share. Children take part with that grown-up. SantaWho is not meant to be used by children on their own, and it isn't directed at children.

• The grown-up enters each player's details. We ask for nicknames, not real names, and we never ask for addresses, schools, phone numbers, photos or locations. Please don't type those into wishes or letters either.
• An age is optional. It's only used to make the game suit each player, such as reading questions aloud for little ones and suggesting age-appropriate ideas.
• Only a grown-up (18 or over) may give us an email address, and they confirm that when they do.
• We don't knowingly collect personal information from a child. If you think a child has used SantaWho on their own, or has given us personal information (for example, a full name in a wish), write to us and we'll delete it.
• Parents and carers can review, change or delete their family's information at any time (see your choices and rights).

4. What we collect

Information you give us

• Your family's office: the family name you choose; each player's nickname, character choices and optional age; game answers and results; Wish Maps, wishes in your own words and "good to know" notes (such as gift style, sizes and things you already have plenty of); letters to Santa; and the invites you send. We don't ask about health, allergies or anything similar.
• A grown-up's email address (optional): to send your office key, to send it again if you ask ("Lost your office?"), and to reply when you write to us.
• Invites: the nickname you give the person you're inviting and, if you ask us to email the invite, their email address. Please only give grown-ups' addresses, of people who'd expect to hear from you.
• Messages to us, such as support requests, and anything you include in them.

Information from other people

• If someone you invited plays and sends you their results, we deliver what they chose to send (their nickname, character, game result, Wish Map, notes and letter) to your family's office.
• If you were invited through our sister service DreamList, we receive who invited you and the nickname they suggested.

Information collected automatically

• Device and usage information: like most websites, our systems record technical information such as IP address, browser type, the time of a visit and the pages or features used. We use it to run SantaWho, keep it secure and fix problems.
• Security and abuse-prevention records: when something looks unusual or harmful (for example, too many attempts, attempts to reach offices or links that weren't shared with someone, or suspicious input), and for each email we send, we keep a record of what happened, when, and the IP address and email address involved.
• Analytics: we use a privacy-friendly analytics service that doesn't use cookies, to learn which parts of the game are used and where people get stuck. It receives the type of page you're on and general game events, never your office link, nicknames, wishes or letters. It respects your browser's "Do Not Track" and Global Privacy Control settings.

5. How we use it

We use information only to:

• run the game and keep your family's office available on your family's devices;
• show your family, and the people you choose to share with, what you've chosen to share;
• deliver invites, invite results and the emails a grown-up asks for;
• answer your questions and requests;
• keep SantaWho secure, prevent spam, abuse and fraud, and protect families and our service;
• understand, in general terms, how SantaWho is used, so we can fix problems and improve it;
• meet our legal obligations and enforce our terms.

We may also use information that has been combined or de-identified so it can't identify anyone (for example, how many families played this week). We never try to re-identify it.

We don't use your information for advertising, we don't sell it, and we don't use it to make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similar effects.

6. Legal bases (EEA, UK and similar laws)

• Providing the service you asked for (contract): keeping your office, delivering invites and invite results, hosting the pages you share, and sending emails you ask for.
• Legitimate interests: keeping the service secure and free of abuse, keeping backups, and cookieless analytics to improve the game. We've balanced these against your interests: they're limited, kept only as long as needed, and never used to profile you.
• Consent: where the law asks for it (for example, a parent's consent for a child's information), which the grown-up running the game gives when they set it up. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligations: where we must keep or disclose information by law.

7. Who we share it with

• Your family: anyone you give your office link or key card to can see and change everything in your office, except grown-up email addresses.
• People you share with: pages you choose to share (such as your family page or a letter to Santa) show only what you chose, until you stop sharing.
• People you invite, if you allow it: you can let someone you invite see your family page and Wish Maps (read-only) after they've sent their own.
• DreamList, when you choose: see section 8.
• Service providers who help us run SantaWho, such as hosting, email delivery, analytics and security. They may use information only on our instructions and under contracts that require them to protect it. To ask for the names of our current providers, email us.
• For legal reasons and safety: when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, or to protect the rights, property or safety of families, the public or us, including reporting content that may harm a child to the appropriate authorities.
• If our business changes: if DoerHub, Inc. is involved in a merger, acquisition, reorganisation or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of it. This policy, or one at least as protective, will continue to apply to it, and we'll give notice in the game before that happens.
• With your permission, in any other case.

We do not sell personal information, we do not "share" it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we don't show ads.

8. DreamList and other services

• DreamList (dreamlist.com) is our sister wish-list service, also operated by DoerHub, Inc. If you tap "Preview this Wish Map as a DreamList" or "Need more specific ideas?", we send that person's Wish Map (their nickname, wishes, notes and an age group such as "child", never an exact age) to DreamList so it can show it to you. Nothing is saved on DreamList until a grown-up signs up and saves it there. When it's saved, we keep a note of it, so your family can see it was saved and DreamList can check with you before saving it twice. Your office, Wish Maps and letters stay on SantaWho until you delete them. If someone asks for your Wish Map through DreamList and you choose to send it, we pass it to them through DreamList. DreamList's own privacy policy applies to what you do there.
• Buy Me a Coffee, if you choose to thank the elves. That service handles your payment under its own policy, and we receive only what it tells us about a donation.
• Other websites linked from SantaWho or DreamList, such as stores, have their own privacy policies. We aren't responsible for how they handle information.

9. How long we keep things

We may keep information longer only where the law requires it or to resolve a dispute, and only for as long as that lasts.

10. How we protect it

We protect your family's information with technical and organisational measures designed for a family service. They include encryption in transit, private links that are very hard to guess, monitoring and limits that block automated and abusive requests, strict control over who can access our systems, and collecting as little information as possible in the first place. We review these measures regularly. We don't publish every detail of how they work, because that would help people trying to get around them.

No service can be perfectly secure. If an incident puts your information at risk, we'll tell the people affected and the authorities as the law requires.

11. Your choices and rights

Things you can do yourself, any time

• Change or delete any wish, answer, letter or player in the game.
• Stop sharing a letter, or your family page.
• Close your office for good (Family settings on HQ). This deletes it from SantaWho, including any grown-up email, invites and shared pages.
• Remove the family from a device ("Remove this family from this phone").

Things you can ask us

Write to [email protected] to see a copy of your information, correct it, delete it (including an email address), restrict or object to how we use it, or receive it in a portable format. To protect your family, we'll ask you to show the request is yours, for example by sending it from the email address we hold. We'll reply within one month (or sooner where local law requires), and we won't charge for reasonable requests.

• EEA, UK and Switzerland: you also have the right to complain to your data protection authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office).
• United States: depending on where you live, you may have rights to know, access, correct and delete personal information, and to opt out of its sale, sharing or use for targeted advertising. We don't do any of those things, and we don't use sensitive information to infer things about you. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal as an opt-out request. You can use an authorised agent, and we won't treat you differently for using your rights. If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer.
• Parents and carers (including under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) can review, delete, or stop further use of information about their child at any time, using the in-game tools or by writing to us.
• Canada, Australia, Brazil and elsewhere: you have similar rights under local law, and you can use them in the same way.

12. California residents

In the last 12 months we have collected these categories of personal information, from the sources and for the purposes described above: identifiers (such as an email address and IP address); internet or other electronic network activity (such as how the service was used); approximate age, if a grown-up chose to enter it; and other information you provide (such as nicknames, wishes, letters and answers). We disclose these only to the service providers described in section 7, for the business purposes described in section 5. We don't sell or share personal information, and we don't collect sensitive personal information to infer characteristics. How long we keep each category is in section 9.

We don't share personal information with others for their own direct marketing (California's "Shine the Light" law).

13. Where your information is stored

Your information is stored and processed in the United States. If you're in the EEA, UK or Switzerland, this means your information is transferred to the United States. Where the law requires it, we protect those transfers with approved safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK Addendum).

14. Emails we send

We only send emails that a grown-up asked for: the office key when an email is added, keys again when someone uses "Lost your office?", invites a grown-up asked us to send, and a delivery receipt when someone who was invited adds their email. Every email says why you received it and how to ask us to remove your address. They contain no tracking pixels. We'll never add you to a mailing list without asking separately and clearly first.

15. Cookies and storage on your device

SantaWho doesn't use cookies. It keeps your family's game and your settings in your browser's storage on your device, which is needed for the game to work. You can clear it in your browser settings at any time. Clearing it removes the game from that device, but not from SantaWho.

16. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll also say so in the game before it applies, and we'll ask for permission first wherever the law requires.

17. Contact us

Email: [email protected]
Post: DoerHub, Inc., 2872 Ygnacio Valley Rd. #220, Walnut Creek, CA 94598-3534, USA

Lost your office? The elves can post you your key.