Last updated: August 19, 2026
Near & Dear ("the app," "we," "us") is a personal app that helps you stay close to the friends and family who matter most to you. This policy explains what information the app collects, how it's used, and the choices you have.
Account information. To create an account, we collect your phone number, which is verified via a one-time text message code. Your phone number is used solely to identify your account and allow your data to be restored if you reinstall the app. If you purchase a subscription or one-time unlock, your account also records your subscription/purchase status so the app can unlock the relevant features. Payment itself is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store; we do not receive or store your payment card details.
Information about the people you add. Near & Dear lets you build a personal contact list of people you know. For each person you add, you may choose to store their name, phone number, email, address or general location, birthday, photo, family relationship, notes, and tags. This information is provided by you, the app's user, about people in your life — those individuals have not created accounts and have not directly provided this information to us themselves.
Content you create. This includes custom tags, custom conversation prompts and prompt packs, notes, and any other content you add within the app.
Usage information. We may collect basic technical information (such as app version and device type) to help us fix bugs and improve the app, provided to us if you contact us for support.
We use the information described above solely to operate and improve the app for you, including to:
We do not sell your data. We do not share the information in your contact list, your location, or any content you create with third parties for advertising or marketing purposes. We do not use your data to serve ads.
Because Near & Dear is designed to help you keep track of people in your life, much of the information in the app is about people who have not signed up for the app themselves and have not consented to us directly. You are responsible for having an appropriate personal basis for storing information about people you add to your contact list, consistent with your own relationship with them. We do not use this information for any purpose beyond providing the app's features to you, the account holder.
Your data is stored securely using Google Firebase, a widely-used cloud infrastructure provider. Data is encrypted in transit and access to your data is restricted to your own account. For certain features (such as Driving Mode's automatic Lock Screen banner), a small server-side component built on Google Cloud Functions — part of the same Firebase infrastructure — briefly processes a device-specific notification token in order to automatically clear the banner after a short time. This token isn't linked to your name or contact list contents, and is discarded after use.