The Reindeer Post ("we", "us") is a publication of The Slow Mail Society. This policy explains what information we collect about you and your child, how we use it, and your rights to control it.
We take privacy seriously. Because our service is for children, we are particularly careful with information about your child, and we follow the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and similar laws.
Who can subscribe
The Reindeer Post is purchased and managed by parents, guardians, or other adults on behalf of a child. We do not knowingly let children under 13 create accounts, enter information directly, or interact with our service without a parent. All information we collect about a child comes from the parent who is the account holder.
What we collect
About you (the account holder):
- Your name, email address, and shipping address
- Billing information, processed by Stripe (we never see or store your card number)
- Service emails you opt into (signup confirmation, monthly update reminders, shipping notifications)
- Marketing emails, only if you opt in separately
About your child:
- Their name, age, and pronouns
- Personalization details you share at signup or in monthly updates: pet, best friend, sibling, things they love, things they're afraid of, family inside jokes, recent milestones, and similar facts that help Santa write a personal letter
- Mailing address (usually the same as yours)
About your visit:
- If we measure how the site is used, we use a privacy-friendly, cookieless tool that counts visits in aggregate only
- We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies, we do not track children, and we do not build advertising profiles
How we use it
- To write your child's personalized monthly letter
- To print, package, and mail letters and envelopes
- To send service emails you've opted into (the monthly update form, shipping notices, billing receipts)
- To send marketing emails to the account holder, only if you opt in
- To improve the site (anonymized, aggregate analytics only)
We do not use your child's information to sell them anything, build a profile for advertising, or share with anyone outside the service providers below.
Service providers
We share the minimum information needed with these providers to run the service:
- Stripe: payment processing
- Brevo: email delivery for newsletters and service messages
- Cloudflare: website hosting
- Google Workspace: business email
- USPS (or equivalent local postal service): physical letter delivery
Each provider has its own privacy policy and we share only what they need to do their job.
Your rights
You can, at any time:
- Request a copy of all the information we have about you and your child
- Correct any information that is inaccurate
- Delete your child's information from our records
- Cancel your subscription
- Opt out of marketing emails (service emails will continue while you're an active subscriber)
To make any of these requests, reach out through our contact form. We respond within seven days.
Data retention
While you are an active subscriber, we keep your information for as long as we need it to write and mail your child's letters. After your subscription ends, we keep it for 90 more days, to make resubscribing easy and to handle any billing or customer-service follow-up, then we permanently delete your child's information. You can request earlier deletion at any time, and we complete deletion requests within seven days. (Stripe keeps billing records as required for tax and accounting; those contain no information about your child.)
Cookies
The site uses only the minimal cookies needed for essential functionality, such as keeping you signed in during checkout. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies, and any usage measurement we do is cookieless.
How we keep your child's information safe
We treat your child's information with real care:
- We collect only what we need to write and mail the letters, nothing extra.
- Access is limited to the people who run the service, and every account is protected by two-factor authentication and a strong, unique password.
- We share the minimum with the trusted providers above, and your child's information is never loaded into advertising or third-party tracking tools.
- We delete the information on the schedule above, or sooner whenever you ask.
- If your child's information were ever exposed, we would move quickly to contain it and notify affected families.
Our COPPA commitment
The Reindeer Post is for children, and we treat their information with extra care:
- We do not knowingly collect information directly from children under 13. All child information comes from the parent.
- We do not market to children. Marketing emails go only to the account holder, who must opt in.
- Parents can review, correct, or delete their child's information at any time through our contact form.
- We do not share, sell, or rent child information to anyone outside the service providers listed above, who use it only to deliver our service.
- We do not show third-party advertising on the site.
Changes to this policy
If we make material changes to this policy, we will email account holders at least fourteen days before the changes take effect.
Contact
Questions about privacy? Reach out through our contact form. For COPPA-specific inquiries, please write the words "COPPA inquiry" in the subject of your message and we will route it appropriately.