Privacy
How Pointless handles your information
The short version
- You choose to connect Amazon. We read your order history. We never save your Amazon password.
- Brands see totals, not you. Counts across three or more shoppers. Never your name, email, address or phone number unless you ask to meet a brand.
- Sensitive categories start hidden, and you can hide anything else.
- You can leave any time. Download a copy, or delete everything with one button.
- We do not sell personal information.
What Pointless is
Pointless lets you share what you buy on Amazon with brands, on your terms. You connect your Amazon account, see what we found, and decide what to hide. Brands learn what people like you buy, and a brand can reach you only if you say yes. This page covers the Pointless app, the site at joinpointless.com, and any gift link a brand sends you.
Who you are to us
A shopper. You connect Amazon, and maybe a bank or card, in the Pointless app. Most of this page is about you.
A customer of a brand. A brand gave us your name, email, and purchase history from its own store or email tool (Shopify, Klaviyo, or a file it uploads) so it can send you a gift. If you open the gift link and claim a gift, you give us a delivery address, and we pass it to the company that ships the gift.
Someone who works at a brand. We keep your work email and a record of what you did in the console. Signing in sets one cookie that keeps you signed in.
A visitor to the homepage. We count page views and a few clicks so we know what people look at. We do not set a tracking cookie, and we do not sell or share visitor data for advertising.
What we keep when you connect Amazon
Never saved. Your Amazon password. You enter it on our page, and our server passes it to Amazon and holds it only in memory until the sign-in is done. It is never written to disk or sent anywhere else. The sign-in session closes as soon as the read is done, so we cannot go back into your account. To refresh your orders, you sign in again.
Stored for you.
- Your orders from the read: dates, products, brands, prices and categories, the ship-to name and the card brand and last four digits shown on each order, plus your subscriptions, Prime plan and renewal date, returns and refunds.
- Your choices: what you hid, who each item was for, your notes, and routines you dismissed.
- Your email address for signing in, and your mobile number if you turn on texts.
- Bank or card purchases (merchant, amount, date and category), if you connect a bank or card.
In our database your orders and choices are encrypted with a key unique to your account. Our servers hold that key, which is how the app reads them for you. Hiding something is a filter on top of the read. It never edits the read, so you can always unhide.
What brands see
Health, personal care, baby and similar categories start hidden. A brand never sees anything you hid, or a sensitive category you did not unhide.
| Brands see | Brands never see |
|---|---|
| Counts across many shoppers, in groups of three or more | Your name, email, address or phone number, unless you ask to meet that brand |
| Products and categories you left visible | Anything you hid |
| Which stores people buy through | The dates of your routines, your notes, or who you buy for |
A brand gets your first name, and the email or phone number you enter, only if you ask to meet it. The Privacy page in the app has a Brand view button that shows exactly what a brand sees. We do not sell personal information, and we never give one brand another brand's customers.
Bank and card connections
If you choose to, you can connect a bank or card through Plaid. Your bank sign-in happens in Plaid's window and goes to your bank, never to us. What we get back is each purchase: the merchant, amount, date and category, plus the account's name and last four digits so you can tell your cards apart. We refresh it about once a day while the connection is live.
You see your own purchases on your Where you spend page. Brands never see a purchase. A brand you buy from sees only totals across groups of three or more shoppers who also shared card data: which stores the group shops at, how much a typical month costs, and whether that is in store or online. Never a single purchase, a date, a card, or you. Health, pharmacy and personal care purchases start hidden, and you can hide any store or category.
Before you connect, we show you these words:
We see where you shop and how much, never your bank login. Brands only get totals across 3 or more shoppers.
Disconnect any time from Account, then Sources. Disconnecting removes the link at Plaid and stops new purchases. Start over on your Privacy page deletes what we saved, including your bank purchases, but it does not remove the link at Plaid, so disconnect first.
What we do with it
- Show you what we found, so you can hide what you want.
- Build the counts brands see, from shoppers who left an item visible.
- Send you the emails and texts you turned on, and sign-in links.
- Keep the app running, fix errors, and watch for abuse.
For gift links, every change to your gift (offered, opened, chosen, shipped) is written to a log we keep for reporting. That log carries record IDs, not names. The brand that sent your gift can see whether you opened the link and what you chose. It already knows who you are; it gave us your details.
Who else sees it
These companies process data for us. Each gets only what its job needs.
| Company | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle Cloud | Runs the Pointless app servers | Every request to the app, including IP addresses, in server logs. |
| Supabase | Database and backups | Your orders and choices, encrypted with a key unique to your account, plus account records such as your email address and nightly backups. |
| Decodo | Connection provider for the Amazon sign-in | The Amazon sign-in and read, and your US state, so the connection looks like it comes from near you. The traffic to Amazon is encrypted, so Decodo sees that a connection was made, not what is in it. |
| Resend | Sends email | Your email address and the message: sign-in links, codes, and the monthly recap if you turn it on. |
| Twilio | Sends text messages | Your mobile number and the text of each message, only if you turn on the weekly spending text. |
| Plaid | Connects a bank or card, if you choose to | Your bank sign-in, which goes to your bank through Plaid and never to us. We get back each purchase: merchant, amount, date and category, and the name and last four digits of the account. |
| PostHog | Product analytics | Which pages are opened and what is clicked, and recordings of visits to the app and console. Recordings hide what you type but can show your orders on screen. A cookie or local storage keeps a visit together. Visits are linked to your account ID, not your name or email, and in the brand console signed-in staff are named by their email. Events never carry your email, name or order contents. Gift pages send nothing and never name anyone. |
| Sentry and Logfire | Error reports and logs | What went wrong in the app. Emails, phone numbers, passwords and codes are removed before a report or log line leaves our servers. |
| WorkOS | Signs Pointless staff in | A staff member's email address. Shoppers never use it. |
| Vercel | Hosts joinpointless.com and the brand console | Every request to the site, including IP addresses and the pages opened, in server logs. |
| Goody | Ships gifts, for gift links only | The recipient's name, email, delivery address, and the gift they chose. Only after a gift is claimed. |
| Faraday | Audience enrichment, when a brand turns it on | Customer contact details, returned as three interest and income categories we use to pick gifts. Off by default and off for pilot campaigns. |
Most of these companies store data in the United States. We do not sell personal information.
Text messages
If you turn on the weekly spending text, Pointless sends you one text message a week. It says what you spent on Amazon last week, how many orders that was, your biggest item, how the week compares with your usual one, and a link to see more.
How you agree. You turn it on yourself, on the Privacy page in the app, by entering your mobile number and tapping Turn on. Next to the button you see these words:
By turning this on you agree to get one automated text a week from Pointless at this number. Msg and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop, HELP for help. Consent is not a condition of anything.
- How often. One message a week.
- Stop. Reply STOP to any message, or turn it off on the Privacy page, and the texts stop. Reply START to turn them back on.
- Help. Reply HELP, or write to hello@joinpointless.com.
- Cost. We do not charge for texts. Your carrier may charge message and data rates. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
- Your number. We use it only to send you this text. We do not sell it or share it, and we do not share text opt-in or consent with any third party or affiliate for marketing. Twilio carries the messages for us.
Cookies
Signing in to the app or the brand console sets one cookie that keeps you signed in. Analytics in the app and console may keep a visit together with a cookie or local storage. Gift links and the homepage set none, and analytics there run without cookies or local storage, so nothing follows you between visits.
How long we keep it
Your orders and choices stay until you delete them. For gift links, a job runs every day and deletes what has aged out, and your gift history stays while the brand's account is open, unless you ask us to delete it.
| What | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Your orders and choices from Amazon | Until you delete them |
| Your Amazon sign-in session | Closed when the read finishes |
| Your mobile number and text consent | Until you start over or ask us to delete them |
| Records of connect attempts | 7 days |
| Nightly backups of the database | About 14 days |
| Gift links: delivery address of a recipient who did not become a member | 30 days |
| Gift links: raw customer files a brand uploads | 30 days |
| Gift links: raw enrichment results | 7 days |
| Gift links: raw delivery updates from Goody | 30 days |
| Failed job payloads | 14 days |
| Records of money spent on gifts | 7 years |
When you turn texts off we keep a note that you did, so we never text you again by mistake. Nightly backups mean a deleted record can remain in a backup for about two weeks.
Your choices
- See it. Download my data on the Privacy page gives you a clean copy with everything you hid left out. Or ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you.
- Hide it. Hide any category, brand, order or item. Brands stop seeing it, and you can unhide it later.
- Delete it. Start over on the Privacy page deletes your reads, what you hid, and your answers, and your data leaves every brand's counts. It cannot be undone, and your account (your email address) stays until you ask us to erase it. Starting over does not disconnect a bank at Plaid, so write to us for that. We keep only what the law makes us keep, such as records of money spent.
- Stop messages. Reply STOP to a text, or turn off texts and emails on the Privacy page.
- Stop gifts. Ask to be left out of future campaigns from any brand on Pointless.
Write to hello@joinpointless.com from the email address you use with Pointless, or the one a gift went to, or ask the brand that sent your gift. We answer within 30 days.
Children
Pointless is for people 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you buy for a child, what you tell us about them, such as sizes, stays with you.
Changes
When this page changes, the date at the top changes with it. A change that affects what we share or how long we keep it also goes out by email to the shoppers and brands it affects.