Your family's privacy, handled with care.

What we collect.

We collect information in three categories. We've tried to be specific rather than vague, because "we may collect information" is the kind of sentence that makes privacy policies useless.

Category	What's in it
Account information	Your name, email, phone number, and password. If you sign in with Apple or Google, we get a unique identifier and the email you choose to share.
Family profile	For each child you add: first name (or nickname), age or grade, allergies, medical notes you choose to share, pickup authorizations, and emergency contacts.
Booking & payment	The classes you book, your booking history, and partial payment details (the last four digits and card type). Full card numbers go directly to Stripe, our payment processor — we never see or store them.
Communications	Messages you send to providers through Lantern, support tickets, feedback, and the contents of emails you send us.
Location	The ZIP code or neighborhood you give us when searching, plus — only if you grant permission — precise location to find nearby classes. We don't track location in the background.
Device & usage	Device type, operating system, app version, IP address, crash logs, and which screens you visit. This helps us debug and improve the app.

What we don't collect

We don't collect your contacts, your photos, your browsing history outside Lantern, your social media profiles, or — and this matters — biometric information about you or your children. We don't use the camera or microphone except when you actively tap to use them (for example, to scan a QR code at check-in).

How we use it.

Specifically, we use the information we collect to:

• Provide the service. Show you classes near you, process bookings, handle payments, send confirmations and reminders, and route messages between you and providers.
• Keep kids safe. Share allergy and pickup information with the right provider, at the right time, for the right class — and nothing more.
• Communicate with you. Send transactional messages (a class change, a payment receipt, a waitlist opening). You can't opt out of these because they're how the service works. Marketing emails — onboarding tips, occasional product updates — are separate, and you can turn them off any time.
• Improve the product. Look at aggregated, de-identified patterns to understand what features work, what's broken, and what to build next.
• Prevent fraud and abuse. Detect fake accounts, payment fraud, and behavior that puts other families or providers at risk.
• Meet our legal obligations. Respond to lawful requests, resolve disputes, and enforce our Terms of Service.

What we never do

We don't use children's information for advertising, ever. We don't build advertising profiles of any user. We don't sell behavioral data to third parties. We don't use your messages with providers to train machine-learning models.

Who we share with.

We share information with four kinds of parties — never more.

Activity providers

When you book a class, we share with the provider: your name and contact info, your child's first name and age, any allergy or medical notes you've added, and pickup authorizations. Providers are contractually required to use this only for delivering the class — they can't market to you, sell it, or use it for anything else.

Service providers

We use a small number of trusted vendors to operate Lantern. Each has access to only what they need for their specific job, under written contracts that require them to protect your information:

• Stripe — payment processing
• Amazon Web Services — secure hosting and storage
• Twilio — text-message and call delivery
• Postmark — transactional email delivery
• Sentry — crash and error reporting
• Plausible — privacy-preserving, cookie-free product analytics

Legal and safety

We may share information if we have a good-faith belief it's required to comply with a valid legal request, to protect the safety of a child or any person, to investigate fraud, or to enforce our Terms. If we receive a government request for your data, we'll review it carefully, push back where appropriate, and notify you unless legally prohibited.

In a business transition

If Lantern is acquired, merged, or part of a sale of assets, your information may transfer to the new owner. The new owner is bound by the same commitments in this policy unless and until you're notified of a change.

What we don't do

We don't sell personal information. We don't share data with advertisers or data brokers. We don't trade your information for marketing purposes. Under California law, the term "sell" is defined broadly — and even under that broader definition, we don't sell.

Children's privacy.

Lantern is designed for parents and guardians. Children under 18 don't create accounts or sign in. When you add a child to your family profile, you're acting as the parent or legal guardian, and you're providing the information yourself.

Our COPPA approach

The U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") protects children under 13. Because parents — not children — are our users, COPPA's parental-consent framework is built into how Lantern works by design. Specifically:

• Only an authenticated parent or guardian can add a child to a family profile.
• We collect the minimum information needed to deliver a class: first name, age, allergies, and pickup notes.
• Children's information is never used for advertising, profiling, or behavioral targeting.
• Children's information is never sold or shared with third parties for their independent use.
• You can review, edit, or delete any information about your child from your account at any time — or by emailing privacy@hellolantern.co.

Provider obligations

Every activity provider on Lantern signs a Provider Agreement that includes COPPA-aligned obligations: they may use child information only to deliver the booked class, must protect it appropriately, and must delete it within 90 days of the class ending (or when a child is removed from a program), unless a longer retention period is required by law.

Your choices and controls.

From Settings → Privacy in the Lantern app, you can:

• Review everything we have about you and your family.
• Edit your account or a child's profile.
• Download a portable copy of your data, in a structured format you can keep or send elsewhere.
• Delete a child profile, or your entire account. Account deletion takes effect immediately; backups are purged within 30 days.
• Manage notifications — toggle marketing emails, push notifications, and SMS independently.
• Control location access — revoke or re-grant precise-location permission any time.

If you'd rather email us, write to privacy@hellolantern.co. We aim to respond within five business days, and resolve most requests within 30 days.

Your legal rights.

If you're in California

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA"), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act ("CPRA"), you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect, use, disclose, and (if we did) sell — we don't.
• Access a copy of the specific pieces of personal information we have about you.
• Correct inaccurate personal information.
• Delete your personal information, subject to certain legal exceptions.
• Limit our use of sensitive personal information.
• Opt out of sale or sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising — though we don't do either.
• Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights.

To exercise these rights, use the in-app controls or email privacy@hellolantern.co. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling certain requests. You can also authorize an agent to act on your behalf, in writing.

If you're in the EU or UK

If you're in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") and equivalent laws — including the rights to access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection. Our legal bases for processing are: performance of a contract (delivering Lantern's service), legitimate interests (improving the product, preventing fraud), legal obligation, and consent (for marketing emails and precise location).

If you're in other U.S. states

Residents of Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, and other states with comprehensive privacy laws have rights similar to those in California. We apply them uniformly across our user base — the same controls work the same way, regardless of where you live.

How we keep it safe.

We use industry-standard technical and organizational measures to protect your information:

• Encryption. All data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2+. Data at rest is encrypted using AES-256.
• Access controls. Only a limited group of employees can access user data, and only when necessary for their role. Access is logged and audited.
• Authentication. We support strong passwords, biometric sign-in on mobile, and two-factor authentication. We never store your password in plain text.
• Vendor reviews. Every service provider goes through a security review before we share data with them, and is re-reviewed annually.
• Incident response. If we discover a breach affecting your information, we'll notify you and the appropriate authorities as required by law — typically within 72 hours of discovery.

Despite our best efforts, no system is completely secure. We can't guarantee absolute security, and we encourage you to use a strong, unique password and enable two-factor authentication.

How long we keep it.

We retain personal information for different periods depending on what it is and why we have it:

• Active account data — for as long as your account is active.
• Child profile information — until you delete the child profile, or 90 days after your account is closed, whichever comes first.
• Booking and transaction records — seven years, to satisfy tax, accounting, and audit requirements.
• Customer-support communications — three years from the date of last contact.
• Marketing preferences — until you change them.
• Crash logs and analytics — 90 days in identifiable form; aggregated and anonymized thereafter.

When you delete your account, we delete or anonymize your personal information within 30 days, except where we need to retain something to comply with the law, resolve a dispute, or enforce our agreements.

Cookies and tracking.

Our website and app use three kinds of cookies and similar technologies:

• Strictly necessary. These keep you signed in, remember your settings, and protect against fraud. They can't be turned off — without them, the service won't work.
• Functional. These remember preferences like your default ZIP code or whether you've dismissed a tip card.
• Analytics. We use Plausible Analytics, a privacy-first tool that uses no cookies and collects no personal information. It tells us things like "people use the search feature 3x more on Sundays" — never anything about you specifically.

We honor the Global Privacy Control ("GPC") signal. If your browser sends GPC, we treat it as a valid opt-out of sale or sharing — though, again, we don't sell or share for behavioral advertising.

Where it's stored.

Lantern is based in California, and our service providers are primarily based in the United States. Information we collect is stored and processed in the U.S. If you're accessing Lantern from outside the U.S., be aware that your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S., which may have data protection laws different from those of your country.

For users in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, we rely on appropriate safeguards for international data transfers, including Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission.

Changes to this policy.

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal obligations, or for other operational reasons. When we do, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.

For material changes — changes that meaningfully affect how we collect, use, or share your information — we'll give you notice at least 30 days before the change takes effect. We'll email the address associated with your account, post a notice in the app, and explain what's changing in plain English. Continued use of Lantern after the effective date means you accept the updated policy.

Older versions of this policy are archived and available on request.

Contact us.

You can reach our privacy team any time. We do our best to respond to every email within five business days.