Privacy Policy — Homebase: Family Hub

01

Who we are

Homebase: Family Hub is developed and published by Rate the Refs, LLC. Throughout this policy, "homebase," "we," "us," and "our" refer to Rate the Refs, LLC and the homebase app and backend services. This policy applies to the iOS app and any web version we offer, together the "Service."

02

Information we collect

We collect only what's needed to run a shared family calendar, task list, and feed. Here's a full accounting:

Category	What it includes	Why
Account information	Email address, password (never stored in readable form — see below), display name	Creating and securing your account, signing you in
Family & household content	Family group name, member profiles, relationships, events, tasks, posts, comments, reactions, poll votes, shared resources	The core function of the app — this is your family's data, entered by you or people you invite
Photos & files	Profile photos, family photos, images or video attached to posts or events	Displaying the content you and your family members choose to upload
Push notification token	A device identifier issued by Apple when you enable notifications	Delivering alerts for assignments, invites, and activity
Technical & log data	IP address and request metadata captured by our infrastructure providers	Security, abuse prevention, and diagnosing service issues

We do not use third-party advertising networks, analytics trackers, or data brokers. There is no ad SDK in homebase, and we don't build behavioral profiles.

03

How we use your information

Operate the core features of homebase: your shared calendar, tasks, posts, and family directory.
Authenticate you and keep your account secure.
Send notifications you've opted into — task assignments, event invites, family activity — by push notification or email.
Respond to support requests you send us directly.
Maintain the security and reliability of the Service, including detecting abuse.

We do not use your family's content to train machine learning models, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone, for any purpose.

04

How we share information

We don't sell your data. We share it only with the infrastructure providers that make the Service work, each acting under contract to process data on our behalf:

Amazon Web Services — hosts our authentication (Cognito), database (DynamoDB), file storage (S3), backend logic (Lambda/API Gateway), and transactional email (SES), primarily in the US East (N. Virginia) region.
Apple, Inc. — delivers push notifications to your device via Apple Push Notification service (APNs). Apple's handling of this data is governed by Apple's own privacy policy.

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of homebase, our users, or others. If Rate the Refs, LLC is ever involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, family data may transfer as part of that transaction, subject to this policy or a successor policy you'll be notified of.

06

Storage & security

Your data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) between the app and our servers. Passwords are never stored by us in readable form — authentication is handled by Amazon Cognito, which stores only a salted, hashed credential we cannot reverse. Access to production data is limited to what's operationally necessary to run the Service.

No system is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security — but we design homebase's infrastructure to keep your family's information reasonably protected against unauthorized access.

07

Notifications & email

homebase sends two kinds of messages:

Push notifications for things like task assignments and family activity — controlled by your device's notification settings, and by individual notification-type toggles in the app's Settings.
Transactional email for account actions (verification codes, password resets) and, if you've opted in, activity notifications like assignments and invites.

You can turn off individual notification types at any time from the app's Settings, and disable push notifications entirely from your device's Settings app.

08

Children's privacy

homebase is intended for use by adults organizing their household — it is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13. A parent or guardian using homebase may add a profile entry for a child as part of the family roster (for example, to assign them a chore or track their event); that information is entered and controlled by the adult account holder, not by the child.

If you believe a child has provided us with personal information outside of this context, contact us at the address below and we'll remove it.

09

Your rights & choices

Access & correction — most of your account and family data is directly viewable and editable inside the app.
Deletion — email us at the address below to request deletion of your account and associated personal data. We'll complete verified requests within 30 days.
Export — you can request a copy of your account data by emailing us.
Notification preferences — manage push and email notifications as described in Section 7.

If you leave a shared family, content you contributed (posts, comments, completed tasks) may remain visible to the rest of that family, as it does in any shared household tool.

10

Data retention

We retain your account and family content for as long as your account is active, so your household's calendar and history stay intact. If you request deletion, we remove your personal data and account within 30 days, except where we're required to retain limited records for legal or security purposes.

11

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we'll update the effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

Privacy Policy for Homebase: Family Hub