SurroundMe

Privacy Policy

Last updated October 30, 2026

Who we are and what this policy covers

SurroundMe is a mobile app that helps anyone facing a serious illness or other health challenge, with special attention to children and teens, stay connected with their family and support circle. This policy explains what information SurroundMe collects, how it’s used, who it’s shared with, and the choices you have. It applies to everyone who uses the app: patients, parents, family and friends (supporters), siblings, and sibling supporters, whether adult or minor.

Information we collect

• Account and identity information: your name (a last name is optional), an avatar color and optional photo, your role in each circle you belong to (parent, organizer, family, friend, teacher, patient, or sibling), how you know the family (family, friend, or other) and, for parents, an optional Mom, Dad, or Guardian title, and whether you are a minor and which adult is responsible for you.
• Your age: the year you were born (and the month, if needed), to make sure everyone with an account is 13 or older. On an iPhone, Apple may also ask whether to share your age range with SurroundMe when you sign up. If you share it, we keep only the range (for example, 13 to 17, or 18 or older), never your birth date, and use it only for this age check. Sharing it is up to you.
• Backup email: if you add one, used only to help you get back into your account if you lose your phone number. It isn’t shown to anyone in your circle.
• Sign-in information: your mobile phone number (if you sign in with a texted code) and/or your email address and password (if you sign in with email). Passwords are stored only in encrypted form.
• The patient’s information: first name, age group (used only to show age-appropriate activities), photo, and any optional details a parent chooses to share.
• Messages and posts: direct messages, group chat messages, posts to a circle’s home feed, activity responses, health updates, support requests, comments, and reactions.
• Photos, videos, and audio you choose to upload for posts, activities, chat, or your profile.
• Call recordings: when a helper goes live on a video call to answer a child’s support request, that call is recorded so the family can watch it later. Everyone on the call is told before they answer. The recording is kept with the family’s circle until a parent (or the person who made the call) deletes it. Calls with anyone 13 to 17 are recorded only if a parent allows it.
• Invitation information: the name and mobile phone number of each person a parent or supporter invites (including minors, entered by their parent or guardian), and whether they are joining as an adult, a child, or a parent. A person invited by phone joins the circle when they sign in with that number.
• Requests to join: if a family lets people ask to join with their circle’s code, and you ask, we collect your name, how you know the patient (family, friend or other), an optional note, and the phone number you sign in with. Only the people who run that circle (and an adult patient about their own circle) see your request. A request that isn’t answered is removed from their list after 30 days. Teens 13 to 17 still need their own parent’s or guardian’s OK to join.
• Contacts you choose: if you invite people from your phone’s contacts, SurroundMe reads only the names and numbers on your device so you can pick from them. Only the people you choose are saved, as invitations. We don’t upload or keep the rest of your contacts.
• Storage and call time: for supporters, how much photo, video and audio storage they have used and how many call minutes they have used each month, so the free amounts can be applied. The surrounded family (the patient, their close family, and one organizer) has no limits.
• Purchases: if a supporter buys SurroundMe Plus, Apple handles the payment. We receive only Apple’s confirmation of the purchase (a transaction number, the plan, and when it renews or ends), never your card or bank details. SurroundMe Plus is sold by KM Compute, not by SurroundMe, Inc.; it is not a donation and is not tax-deductible.
• Donations and sponsor listings: if you donate to SurroundMe, Inc. on surroundme.org, Stripe handles the payment; we never see your card or bank details. We receive your name, email, the amount, the date, whether it’s monthly, any “in honor of” or “in memory of” dedication, and, if you choose to be listed as a sponsor, the name to list (or Anonymous) and, for a company, its website and logo. Your gifts in a year add up to a sponsor level. Listings show your name and level on our Sponsors page and in the app, never the amount.
• Gift notices: if you donate from inside the app and leave “Let the family know you gave” on, the people who run your circle get a notice with your name, never the amount. The link the app opens uses a random one-time code, not your name or the family’s.
• Family fundraiser links: a family can post a link to their own fundraiser (for example GoFundMe or Venmo). Adults in the circle see it; children and teens don’t. Money given there goes to that site and the family, not to SurroundMe, and that site’s own privacy policy applies.
• Badges: if a circle has badges on, we note what kind of thing a supporter or sibling 17 or under did and when (a post, a comment, a chat, a Deep Dive answer, a support request), never the words or photos, to work out their badges. Only people 17 and under in the circle see badges.
• Technical and usage information: device type, app version, a push-notification token if you allow notifications, your time zone (so notifications arrive during your daytime), and standard error logs.

How we use your information

• To run the app: your circles, home feed, activities, chats, and calls.
• To sign you in, including texting you a one-time sign-in code.
• To connect invited people to the right circle when they sign in with the invited phone number.
• To enforce who can see what. For example, health updates are seen only by people signed in to the family’s circle, and surprises stay hidden from the patient until a parent releases them.
• To help keep the community safe: automated screening flags potentially inappropriate text or images for review, and you can report content or people yourself.
• To send notifications you’ve allowed, such as new messages or calls.

We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Organizers

A relative or close friend can set up and run a circle on a family’s behalf as its organizer. An organizer can invite people, post health updates (shown as posted by them, for the family), and manage support requests. Some choices stay with the child’s parents only, including the child’s own sign-in, research sharing, and removing organizers. When a parent joins, they get full control of the circle, and can remove an organizer at any time.

Public updates pages

A family can choose to turn on a public updates page for their child. It is off unless a parent or organizer turns it on. It shows only the health updates the family chooses to add, with the child’s first name and the date, signed as from the child’s family, and the child’s profile photo only if the family turns that on. It never shows comments, the people in the circle, last names, or anything else from the app. Anyone with the page’s link can read it. The family and any adult in the circle can share the link, so please share it thoughtfully; the family is told this when they turn the page on. The page asks search engines not to list it, and its link can’t be guessed. The family can remove any update, replace the link, or turn the page off at any time, and it stops being available right away, though someone who already saw an update may have saved it.

Invitation texts

When a parent or supporter invites someone, the invitation text is sent from their own phone’s Messages app, not by SurroundMe. SurroundMe only sends texts that contain one-time sign-in codes, and only when someone asks for one by entering their number in the app.

Who we share information with

We use a small number of outside companies to run parts of the app, and share only what each one needs to do its job:

• Stream (getstream.io) powers chat, video and voice calling, activity feeds, and automated content moderation.
• Supabase hosts our database, file storage, sign-in, and core backend logic.
• Twilio delivers the one-time sign-in codes we text to your phone.
• Expo delivers push notifications to your device.
• Apple processes SurroundMe Plus purchases made in the app.
• Stripe processes donations made on surroundme.org.
• Cloudflare runs a quick “are you human” check on the donation page to stop fraud.

Your information is shared only with the members of your own circle, on a public updates page if your family turns one on (see “Public updates pages”), on our Sponsors page if you choose to be listed, and with these service providers. We do not share it with data brokers or advertisers, and we never sell it.

Children’s privacy

SurroundMe is built for families, and many of the patients and siblings in a circle are children. We take this seriously:

• You must be 13 or older to have your own SurroundMe account. Children under 13 don’t sign in or use the app themselves; their parents share updates about them with the circle. We don’t knowingly collect personal information directly from a child under 13, and if we learn we have, we delete it.
• Teens (13 to 17) join only with a parent’s or guardian’s OK. A family’s own teen is set up by their parent.
• A teen invited as a supporter (for example, a friend or cousin of the child) can’t see anything in the circle until their own parent or guardian confirms their phone number with a texted code and says yes. That parent also chooses whether adults in the circle can message their teen privately and whether calls with their teen can be recorded. Both are off unless the parent turns them on, and the parent can change them or remove their teen at any time.
• Calls with a teen are recorded only with a parent’s OK: the child’s parent for the family’s own teens, and the teen’s own parent for a teen supporter.
• We collect only what’s needed to run the app for a child: their name, age, phone number if they have their own account, and what is shared inside their own family’s private circle. We never share a child’s information outside their own circle, beyond the service providers described above.
• A parent or guardian can ask to see, export, or delete their child’s information at any time. See “Your rights” below.
• Read our Child Safety Standards to learn how we protect young people and how to report a concern.

Data retention

• Most account and circle content is kept for as long as your account or circle exists, so your family’s shared history stays intact.
• Call recordings are kept with the family’s circle until a parent (or the person who made the call) deletes them, or until the account or circle is deleted. Deleting a recording removes it everywhere it appears in the app. Our video provider, Stream, only processes the call: its copy of the recording is deleted as soon as the recording is saved to the family’s circle.
• Invitations that are never used can be removed by the parent at any time.

Your rights: access, export, deletion

• Delete your account any time in the app under Settings → Delete Account. The parent who created a circle can delete the whole circle, which permanently deletes everything in it.
• See or export your information: contact us and we’ll send it to you.
• If you are removed from a circle, your posts and messages either stay with your name removed (so a family’s shared conversations aren’t broken), or are fully deleted, at the family’s choice.

To make a request, contact us at info@surroundme.org.

Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections, database rules that keep each family’s information inside its own circle, an app lock that uses your phone's own Face ID or passcode (on by default, and you can turn it off), a new texted code before deleting your account or exporting your Journal or Care Notes, signing you out after 90 days without using the app, and regular internal security reviews. No system is completely secure, but we work hard to keep your family’s information safe.

Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to this policy, we’ll let you know inside the app before it takes effect.

Contact us

Questions about this policy or your information can be sent to info@surroundme.org.