Last updated: 8 October 2026
frends ("we", "the app") lets you share photos, messages and plans inside private groups with your friends. This policy explains what we collect and why.
Information we collect
- Account info — your email address and a display name/username, created when you sign up with email, Apple, or Google.
- Content you create — photos and videos you post, captions, the drink you select, comments, replies and emoji reactions.
- Messages in a group's chat — the text you send, photos you send, polls you create and vote in, and voice notes, which are audio recordings made when you hold the record button. Recording only ever happens while you are holding it.
- Shared expenses — what you say something cost, who you say was in on it, and the resulting balances between members of that group. These are amounts you type in. frends does not process payments, is not connected to your bank or card, and never moves money.
- Places your group keeps — the name, address and coordinates of a restaurant, bar or café somebody adds to a group's map, the star rating you give it, and comments left on it. If you import a shared Google Maps list, we fetch that list from Google using the link you paste and keep only what is described here.
- The daily quiz and top lists — your answers to each day's quiz, your score and how long you took, which the members of your groups see on that day's board; and the top lists you post or add to a post, which that group sees.
- Social graph — the groups you join and the friends you add.
- When your photos were taken — the date and time a photo or video was taken (from the camera, or from the photo's own details when you pick it from your library), so your group can find "the photos from the 12th".
- Location — only if you choose to share it.
Three separate things, each switched on by you:
- A place on a post. When you attach a place, we store that place's name and coordinates as part of the post, so your group can see where you were. Collected only at the moment you tap to add it.
- Where your photos were taken (iPhone and Android, the "Photo locations" switch in Profile, off unless you turn it on). With it on, a photo you share carries the place it was taken — from the camera at that moment, or from the photo's own details. Our server turns that into a neighbourhood and city ("Malasaña, Madrid") using Google's or OpenStreetMap's geocoding service, and that name is all your group sees; the coordinates are never shown. Turn it off and new photos carry no location at all.
- Checking in on a group's map. Only when you tap Check in, after the app has asked you and you've agreed: we take your location once, at that moment, and show it as a pin to the members of that one group for the time you choose — an hour, three hours, until 6am, or until you remove it, which still ends by itself after eight hours. It does not follow you or update in the background; to move your pin you check in again. It is deleted when you remove it, and deleted automatically when the time runs out. You can block anyone, and they no longer see your check-ins. It is never shared with your other groups, never kept as a history of where you have been, and never used for anything else.
- What you ask the group's AI frend — see below.
We do not collect your contacts, browsing history, or any advertising identifiers. We never track your location for advertising or analytics, never build a history of where you have been, and never collect it unless you have switched it on yourself. frends contains no ads and no third-party analytics or tracking SDKs.
How we use it
Solely to make the app work: to authenticate you, show your groups' photo feeds to their members, deliver invites, friend requests, reactions and comments, and keep your account.
Who can see your content
Inside the app, posts, chat, expenses and places are visible only to members of the group they belong to. Groups are private and invite-only, and we never make your content public, never show it in a discover feed, and never sell or licence it.
One detail worth stating plainly rather than burying: the photo and video files themselves are served from long, unguessable web addresses. The app only ever hands those addresses to members of the right group, but anyone you forward such a link to can open it without being in the group — the same way an attachment link works in most apps. If that matters for a particular photo, send it as view-once.
The AI frend
A group can switch on frend, an AI member of that group's chat. It is off until a member turns it on, and the chat says who did. It answers when somebody calls it — by writing @frend or replying to it. On its own it only does what the group set up: routines someone asked for ("every Thursday, ask who's in for Friday"), and — unless the group switches nudges off — at most one short heads-up a day, such as a vote about to close or a trip with nothing booked.
When called, it reads that group only: its recent chat, and what the group shares — expenses, places, events, questions, posts (captions, and when and roughly where photos were taken) and trips — plus the group's memory page, a short list of facts the group asked it to remember. Every member can see the memory page and delete any line of it. It never sees another group, your email address, or anything outside the group it was called in.
It doesn't look at photos or listen to voice notes, with one exception: a photo someone sends to it — writing @frend with the photo, or replying to a photo and asking — such as a receipt to split. Only that photo is sent, once, to read it.
In a post's comments. Called with @frend under a post — a link someone shared, say — it reads that post (its photo or a frame of its video, its link, its poll, list or plan) and that post's comments and their photos, may open the link or search the web to check something, and answers as a comment everyone in the group can see. Like in the chat, it may add to the group's memory page something lasting that a member said in that discussion — never anything from the link or the web — and it remembers the exchange, so it can refer to it later in the chat. It doesn't propose or change anything from there.
What frend remembers. Besides what someone asks it to remember, frend may note a lasting fact said in that group's chat — "Ana is vegetarian now" — on the same memory page everyone in the group can see and delete, marked with who it's about. It never carries anything from one group to another. A group can also give frend house rules (tone, habits); any member can change them, the chat says who did, and frend can only suggest changes. The same goes for playbooks — how the group does something ("how we plan a trip"), saved only when someone confirms and deletable by anyone in the group.
Your private note. In the frend screen you can write a short note about yourself ("vegetarian, hate early flights") and choose to let frend use it. Nobody in your groups can read it; frend uses it to tailor suggestions and never repeats it. Turn it off or delete it any time; it's deleted with your account.
Talking to frend privately. In a group where frend is on, you can start a private chat with it — the first time, the app says what it is and asks first. Only you can read it: nobody in the group, including whoever created it, and frend never repeats what you say there to anyone, nor tells you what others said to it. To answer, frend reads what you write there, the group's chat and its shared things (as any member can), and a short private note it keeps about you for that group; that is sent to Anthropic to write the reply, which doesn't train on it. Nothing reaches the group unless you tap Post on a message frend suggests, which is then posted as you, marked "via frend"; expenses or plans it suggests there wait for your ✓ like anywhere else. The chat and the note are deleted if you leave the group, and with your account.
Offering help unasked. Unless a group sets frend to Quiet (any member can, in frend's settings), up to twice a day, between 10:00 and 21:30, frend looks at the messages posted since its last look — only when there are a few — to see whether one short line would help: a reminder, an offer to organise a plan that's taking shape, or (when set to Chatty) a question nobody answered. Those messages are sent to Anthropic for that, as for an answer; mostly it says nothing. Two thumbs-down in a row on things it said unasked set the group to Quiet by itself.
Organising plans. When someone asks frend to organise something ("organise dinner this week"), frend asks each person invited, in their private chat with it, which of a few days work — chosen from the calendars people decided to share, if any. The days you pick, or that you can't come, show on the plan's card in the group; anything else you tell frend about it (a reason, a preference) stays private and is used only to help pick. Answering by tapping your days doesn't send anything to the AI provider. Once a day is decided and the organiser confirms, the event is created and the people who said that day works are marked as going (they can change it). frend reminds the group before it happens.
Longer jobs. Asked for something that takes a while — comparing many houses or flights — frend works on it in the background for a few minutes, showing its progress in the chat, and anyone in the group can stop it. While it works it reads public web pages (search results and listings) from our servers, exactly as for a normal answer; anything that would change the group's things still waits for a ✓.
Your calendar, only if you switch it on. In the frend screen you can choose "Share when I'm busy". Your phone then reads your calendar and uploads only the times you're busy over the next two months — never what an event is, where, or who's in it — so frend can say which night works for everyone. Nobody can open that list, not even the people in your groups: frend only ever says that someone is busy at a time, not why. It is refreshed when you open the app, and switching it off deletes it.
To write a reply, what it reads is sent to Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude model frend runs on, through Anthropic's API. Anthropic processes it to generate the reply and does not use it to train its models. When it needs to look something up — a restaurant, opening hours — it uses Anthropic's web search, which sends the search, not your group's data. To show real prices for a stay, it opens the public Airbnb search page for the place, dates and number of people asked about, from our servers, without signing in; it never books anything. Adding a place to your map looks the place up on Google Maps or OpenStreetMap.
Anything with consequences — an expense, an event, a trip, a note posted in your name — appears as a card that only the person who asked can confirm; nothing is written until they do. What it adds is marked as done through frend.
Service providers
We use Google Firebase — Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions and Cloud Messaging — to store data, run our backend and deliver push notifications on our behalf. Firebase processes data under Google's terms.
The AI frend uses Anthropic as described above, and place lookups and photo-location names use Google Maps Platform or OpenStreetMap (Nominatim); these receive only a place name or coordinates, never who you are.
Two more things leave the app on your instruction and nobody else's. Tapping Directions on a place hands its coordinates to whichever maps app you have installed, or to Google Maps in your browser if you have none. Importing a Google Maps list asks Google for the contents of the link you pasted; that request is made by our server, so your device's address is not sent to Google. Nothing else is shared with anyone, and your data is never sold.
Data retention & deletion
Disappearing photos are hidden after 24 hours. You can delete your own photos and comments at any time. In-app account deletion is provided in the app's Profile screen.
When you delete your account it is deactivated immediately and then permanently deleted after 30 days. During those 30 days you can restore it by signing back in; after that, your profile and associated personal data are erased and cannot be recovered. Photos you posted to a group remain with that group (they are shared with its members), attributed to “Deleted user”. We may, during the 30-day window, contact you once to ask why you left; you can ignore that message.
Children
frends is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country). We don't knowingly collect data from them.
Contact
Questions or deletion requests: hello@frends.app.