Privacy policy

Here to Celebrate helps people run gift exchanges with family, friends and coworkers. This page explains what we collect, why, who can see it, and how you can see, change or delete it.

Last updated: November 3, 2026

What we collect

If you organize an exchange

• Your email address, used to sign in with a one-time code, and the name you want guests to see.
• The exchange details you enter: its name, date, time zone, budget, join deadline and message to guests.
• The names and email addresses of the people you invite, and any “don't draw” rules.

When you add other people, please only add people who would expect to hear from you about the exchange.

If you're invited to an exchange

• The name and email address the organizer entered for you.
• Whether you joined or declined, and whether you've looked at who you're buying for.
• Your wishlist (items, links and notes), any “surprise me” hint, the items you claim, and whether you've marked your gift as bought.
• Your About me gift profile, if you fill it in: interests, sizes, things you'd rather not get, whether you prefer things or experiences, and favourite stores. Everyone who can see your wishlist can see it.
• Gift ideas you save privately for the person you drew. Only you and your manager, if you have one, can see them.

Managed participants

A member can manage someone who doesn't have their own email, such as a child or an older relative. For a managed participant we keep only a display name, which member manages them, the wishlist their manager writes, and any About me gift profile their manager fills in. We don't ask for their age, birthday, photo, address or any other personal details. All email about them goes to their manager.

If you use the Gift Finder

• Your answers, including age, gender and interests if you choose to give them, stay in the page's web address, and we don't save them, apart from what analytics gets, below. If you email yourself your ideas, the link in that email holds them too.
• Analytics gets which pages and questions you reached, the interests matched from our fixed list, your budget range, your store, how many ideas matched, which ideas or searches you saved or clicked, and that you asked for the email. Analytics events never include your age, who the gift is for, your gender or anything you type. Screen recordings on public pages hide all text, but can show where you tapped; we don't record the gender question.
• The list of ideas you save, and the answers that produced them (but not gender), stay in your own browser and aren't sent to us. Analytics counts which idea was saved.
• We use the country your connection comes from to choose between Amazon.ca and Amazon.com. We don't save it, and you can switch stores, which keeps your choice in a cookie.
• If you ask us to email you your ideas, we use your email address once to send them, and we don't save it. Our email provider keeps its own delivery record of that email. To limit abuse we keep a scrambled count of how often an address asks, for about two days.

If you send us a question

The “Questions?” form at the bottom of the page collects your name, email address and message, and sends them to our support inbox so we can reply.

Collected automatically

• Email delivery results from our email provider: whether an email was delivered, couldn't be delivered, or was marked as spam. We don't track whether you open our emails or click their links.
• Your network (IP) address, used briefly to keep the site secure and to limit abuse. Where we keep a count against it, we store a scrambled version, not the address itself.
• A daily count of clicks to shops. From wishlists it records only the shop's website. From gift guides and the Gift Finder it also records which idea, link or search type was clicked. It never records who clicked.
• Analytics about how the site is used (see Cookies and analytics below).

Here to Celebrate is free. We don't collect payment details.

How we use it

• To run your exchange: send invitations, draw names, show each person their match and the wishlists.
• To send the emails an exchange needs, such as invitations, “names drawn” and your personal link.
• To email you your Gift Finder ideas, if you ask us to.
• To answer your questions.
• To keep the service secure and working, and to prevent abuse.
• To understand how people find and use the site so we can improve it.

We don't use your information for anything else without asking you first.

Who can see what in an exchange

• Who you're buying for is shown only to you (and to your manager, if you're managed). The organizer can't see who drew whom, except for the people they manage themselves.
• Wishlists can be seen by everyone who has joined the exchange, so they can avoid buying the same thing.
• Claims on a wishlist item are hidden from the person who wished for it and from their manager, so the surprise holds.
• Your personal link opens your place in the exchange without a password. Anyone who has it can use it, so please don't share it. If you think someone else has it, ask for a new link and the old one stops working.

Email

The emails we send are about an exchange you're part of, or are Gift Finder ideas you asked us to send once. You can turn off reminder (“nudge”) emails from the link in any reminder. Emails you need to take part, such as “names drawn” or a link you asked for, still arrive while you're in an exchange. We'll only send you news or marketing email if you separately sign up for it.

Cookies and analytics

We use these cookies. They can't be switched off:

• a sign-in cookie that keeps an organizer signed in;
• a cookie that remembers the personal links you've opened, so you can get back to your exchange;
• a cookie that remembers which Amazon store you chose on the Gift Finder or a gift guide;
• short-lived cookies that carry what you type in the start and sign-in forms between steps, kept for up to 24 hours;
• a campaign cookie, if you arrived through one of our campaign links, kept for 30 days; and
• analytics cookies and similar browser storage, on every visit, described below.

We use PostHog, an analytics service hosted in the United States, on every visit to understand how people find and use Here to Celebrate and to improve it. This includes how visitors arrive, which pages and steps they use, how the site performs, and errors it runs into. On some public pages we may record anonymized sessions with all text hidden. We never send names, email addresses, wishlist contents or who is buying for whom to analytics. If you arrived through one of our campaign links, we save that campaign with any exchange you create.

Analytics are part of how we run and improve the service, so there is no setting to turn them off on our site. Your browser's own settings or a content blocker can block cookies and analytics if you prefer, and clearing this site's data in your browser removes them.

Gift links and shops

Links on wishlists, in our gift guides and on the Gift Finder go through our site on their way to the shop. Where a shop is part of an affiliate program we belong to, we may earn a small commission if you buy something, at no cost to you. A shop we link to directly sees only that you came from heretocelebrate.com. We never give shops your name, email address or wishlist. Gift Finder searches on Amazon carry fixed search words, which can include a word like “women” or “boys” if you answered the gender question, a team's name if you typed one we recognize under “Anything else?”, and your budget as a price limit. Some gift guide links also pass through Sovrn Commerce, an affiliate service, on their way to the shop. Like any website you visit, Sovrn sees your connection and browser details and may set cookies, it may tell the shop you came through it, and its own privacy policy applies to that step. Once you're on a shop's website, that shop's own privacy policy and cookies apply, including any set by its affiliate partners.

Who we share it with

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for targeted advertising. We use these service providers to run Here to Celebrate. They handle information only on our behalf and under contract:

• Akamai (Linode): hosts our servers and database, in Toronto, Canada.
• Cloudflare: protects and delivers the website. Traffic passes through its worldwide network.
• Resend: sends our emails, from the United States.
• Google Workspace: our support inbox, and where our encrypted nightly backups are stored.
• PostHog: analytics, in the United States.

Because some of these providers are outside Canada, your information may be stored or processed in the United States or elsewhere, where the law may let local authorities access it. We may also disclose information when the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.

How long we keep it

• Exchanges, including their people and wishlists, are kept after the exchange date so the organizer can run it again next year. We delete an exchange when its organizer asks, and we delete exchanges that haven't been used for two years.
• Sign-in codes expire within minutes, and we store only a scrambled version of each.
• Questions sent through the form are deleted from the site after 30 days. Our email conversation with you stays in our support inbox.
• Gift Finder email counts, the scrambled counts that limit abuse, are deleted after about two days.
• Backups are encrypted and kept for 30 days, so deleted information is gone from backups within about 30 days.

How we protect it

The site uses encrypted connections, personal links and sign-in codes are stored only in scrambled form, backups are encrypted, and access to our systems is limited and protected with two-step sign-in. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach puts you at real risk of significant harm, we'll tell you and the regulators as the law requires.

Your choices and rights

You can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, have it corrected, or have it deleted. You can also withdraw your consent, for example by leaving an exchange. Email [email protected] from the address you use with us, so we know it's you. We'll answer within 30 days. Organizers can also change exchange details and remove people themselves while the exchange is open.

If you live in a US state with a privacy law, such as California, you have similar rights, and we'll honour them the same way. We won't treat you differently for using them.

If you're not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Children

Here to Celebrate is meant to be used by adults. Children can take part as managed participants, with a parent or another trusted adult adding them and writing their wishlist; we keep only the details described above. Please don't give a child under 13 their own email address in an exchange: keep managing them instead. If we learn that we've collected information directly from a child under 13, we'll delete it. If you think that's happened, email [email protected].

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information, we'll update this page and its date. If the change is significant, we'll also tell organizers by email before it takes effect.

Contact us

Questions about privacy, or a request about your information: [email protected].