Privacy Policy

Last updated: 10 October 2026

The short version

FarNote carries postcards between people. To do that it needs to know who you are sending to, what you wrote, and which two cities the card travels between. This policy covers the FarNote app and its website, farnote.babelo.io, including the page that shows a single postcard to the person it was sent to.

It does not need to know where you are standing, and it is built so that it cannot find out. Geography stops at the city, in the app and on the server.

What FarNote collects

Your account. When you sign in, FarNote keeps an account identifier and your email address. If you sign in with Apple or with Google, it receives the identifier they give it and the email address they pass on — with Apple, that can be a private relay address. There is no password, so there is nothing to leak and nothing to reset. Someone who is signed in and types your email address can tell whether it has a FarNote account, so that their card reaches you, and learns nothing else about you from it.

Your name. The name your postcards say they are from. It is on every card you send, and it is what someone sees when they look up your FarNote ID. You choose it and can change it at any time; it does not have to be your legal name. A card can also carry a signature, which belongs to that card alone.

Your FarNote ID. A short name, like @lisachen, that people use to send you postcards. You choose it after you sign up, starting from a suggestion made from your name. Anyone who types your whole ID sees the name on your account and, if you have set one, your home city, so that they know they have reached the right person; they see nothing else. An ID you have given up is never given to anyone else, and people who already have you in their address book see your new one.

Your home city. The city where postcards addressed to you arrive: city, region and country — never a street, a postcode or a building. It is how FarNote measures a card's journey, and it does not have to be where you live: you can choose any city, change it, or leave it unset. The people who have you in their address book see it, and so does anyone who types your whole FarNote ID; and it is printed on the cards people send you.

Where you post from. A postmark says where a card was posted, so the town comes from your phone rather than from a menu. When you get a card ready to post, and again as you post it, your phone's position is read and used to find the name of the town you are in, through Apple's location services. FarNote keeps the town and discards the position: its servers never receive where you were standing. Because every card carries a postmark, FarNote cannot post one without this.

The postcards. The photo, the message, the signature, the layout, the stamp and the postmark; the two cities; when a card was posted and when it arrives; and who it was sent to.

What your photo carries. A photo can have a location saved inside it. When you choose one, FarNote reads that location on your phone and asks Apple's location services for the name of the town, to suggest the place printed under the picture; the Show photo location switch decides whether the card prints it, and you can change the words. The photo is re-encoded before it leaves your phone, so the original file's location, camera and time data do not go with it. FarNote keeps the whole photo, not only the part you framed.

A photo is sent to FarNote as soon as you choose it, so that the card posts quickly. One you replace, or never post, is shown to nobody, and is deleted with your account.

Your address book. The people you write to: the name you gave each one, and the email address or FarNote ID you sent to, if there was one. FarNote keeps it so that you can write to them again, and adds the sender of a card the first time you open it. If you choose someone from your phone's contacts, FarNote receives only the name and email address of the person you chose. Their phone number stays on your phone, where it is used to address the card's link if you send it by message.

Who you have blocked. The people whose postcards should not reach you. The list is yours alone, and the people on it are never told they are on it.

Reports you make. When you report a postcard, FarNote receives which card it was, who sent it, what you said was wrong with it, anything you chose to add, and a copy of the card, so that it can still be reviewed if the sender deletes it. On the website, a report is an email to support@babelo.io with the card's link in it. A report is used to review that card and to act on the account that sent it, and for nothing else. The person you report is not told who reported them.

How FarNote is used. Which screens and pages are opened and which buttons are pressed, counted without your name on it — see Usage analytics below.

The connection itself. Like every service on the internet, FarNote's servers see the IP address your device connects from, and the app tells them its version and your phone's model and iOS version. They are recorded in the server's logs, which are used to keep FarNote running and to stop abuse, such as too many requests from one place. They are never used to place a postcard, never shown to anyone, and never stored with your cards.

Usage analytics

FarNote counts how its app and its website are used — which screens and pages are opened, which buttons are pressed, how far people get in writing or keeping a card — so that it can tell what works and what does not. It uses Google Analytics for this: Google Analytics for Firebase in the app, and the Google tag on the website, which sets cookies.

What is sent is about using FarNote, never about a postcard or a person: no photo, message, place, name, email address or FarNote ID, and nothing that ties it to your account. The app and the website each keep an identifier for it that is not linked to your account — on the website, in cookies that last up to two years — and Google works out a rough location, such as a country or a city, from the connection. FarNote collects no advertising identifier and does not let Google use this data for advertising: Google signals and sharing with Google's other products are turned off, and no advertising account is linked. Google keeps it for 14 months.

On the website you can block the Google tag with your browser's tracking protection or a content blocker; the site works the same without it.

Cookies on the website

Besides Google Analytics' cookies, above, the website sets a few of its own, only so that signing in works: one that keeps you signed in, for a year and renewed as you use the site; one that remembers how you signed in, for a year; one that remembers the email address a "Keep this card" link was sent to, for a day; and one that lasts the few minutes of signing in with Apple or Google.

What FarNote does not collect

• Street addresses. The app has no field for one and the server has no column for one.
• Your precise or continuous location. There is no background tracking and no location history. Your position is read when you post a card and discarded as soon as it has given up the name of a town.
• Your contacts. FarNote does not read them. If you pick someone from them, only that person is sent, as described above.
• Your photo library. FarNote shows you your photos so that you can choose one, and can sort them by where they were taken, all on your phone. Only a photo you choose for a card leaves it.
• Advertising identifiers. FarNote carries no advertising and builds no advertising profile.
• Crash reports. FarNote does not use a crash-reporting service.

What the people you write to can see

• Once you post a card, if they are on FarNote: that a card from you is on its way, where it was posted, and the day it will arrive.
• On the day it arrives: the card itself — the photo, the message, the signature, the stamp and the postmark.
• Your name and your FarNote ID.

Nothing finer than the city ever reaches them, and nothing about where you have been before or since. And FarNote never tells anyone whether a card they sent has been opened.

A card's link

A postcard to somebody who is not on FarNote has a private link, which you send them yourself; FarNote does not contact them. Anyone who has the link can read the card and keep it in their own FarNote account, so treat it as you would the card itself. When somebody keeps a card from its link, the sender's address book learns their FarNote ID, so that the next card reaches them directly.

Email and notifications

FarNote emails you only to let you sign in, and to confirm that you want to delete your account. It sends no newsletters and no marketing, and nobody is ever emailed because a postcard was sent to them. Its email carries no tracking: no pixel that reports you opened it, and no rewritten links that count what you clicked.

If you allow notifications, FarNote tells you when a postcard arrives for you, through Apple's notification service, and when one you sent has arrived, with a reminder your own phone keeps. A notification says who a card is from, never what it says. To deliver them, FarNote keeps the token Apple gives your phone, until you sign out. Each kind can be turned off in Me → Notifications, and all of them in iOS Settings.

Who else is involved

FarNote uses a few service providers to do what it cannot do alone. Each receives only what it needs for its part.

• Apple — Sign in with Apple; notifications; city search, and naming the town a card is posted from or a photo was taken in.
• Google — Sign in with Google, and Google Analytics, as described above.
• Amazon Web Services — FarNote's servers, database and storage, in the United States, and the network that delivers its pages and photos.
• Zoho — sends FarNote's email.

FarNote does not sell personal information and does not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Why FarNote is allowed to hold any of this

In Europe and the United Kingdom a service has to say what makes each use of your data lawful. For nearly all of FarNote the answer is the same one: you asked it to carry a postcard, and it cannot do that without knowing where to, what is on it, and between which two cities.

• Doing what you asked for covers your account, your name, your FarNote ID, your home city, the postcards and your address book.
• FarNote's legitimate interests cover keeping the service running and safe — the server's logs, blocking, and reviewing a card someone reported — and understanding how it is used, through the analytics above.
• A legal duty covers holding a reported card for as long as the law requires, and reporting content that sexualises a child.

FarNote does not rely on your consent for anything it needs in order to work, and it processes nothing for advertising. The permissions your phone controls — location, notifications, photos — you can withdraw in iOS Settings at any time.

Where your information is kept

FarNote is run from the United States, and its servers are there too. If you use FarNote from somewhere else, what you send is carried there to be kept — which is what sending a postcard abroad has always meant.

How long things are kept

• Postcards do not expire. A card stays as long as the accounts it belongs to do, so that a postcard remains a thing you keep rather than a message that disappears.
• Your address book stays until you delete your account.
• A reported card, the report about it, and a card taken down are kept for as long as the review and any legal duty attached to it require.
• Analytics are kept by Google for 14 months.
• When you delete your account, everything tied to it is deleted, except: postcards already delivered, which stay with the people who received them, under the name you sent them with; postcards you were sent, which stay with the people who sent them, as they sent them; your FarNote ID, kept retired so that nobody else can ever take it; and what is kept because of a report.
• Backups of FarNote's database are kept for seven days, so something deleted can remain in one for up to a week.

If FarNote ever has to close, it will tell you before it does, and give you a way to download your postcards first.

Your choices

• See and correct. Your name and your FarNote ID are in Me → Account, and your home city in Me → Home city. The first time you change your ID it changes at once; after that, it can change once every 30 days.
• Notifications. Each can be turned off in Me → Notifications, and all of them in iOS Settings.
• Location. Asked for when you post your first card, read when you post, and revocable in iOS Settings. Without it you can still read, write and keep cards, but you cannot post one: a card without a postmark is not one FarNote can send.
• Keep a copy. A card can be saved to your photo library from inside FarNote. What you save is yours, and leaves FarNote's hands entirely.
• Delete. Me → Account → Delete account in the app, or Account on the website. FarNote asks you to confirm it's you first, and this cannot be undone. Your cards still on their way never arrive; postcards already delivered stay with the people who received them.
• Everything else. Write to support@babelo.io for a copy of your postcards and your account, a correction, a deletion, or to object to how something is used. Depending on where you live you may have further rights, including a complaint to your data-protection authority; ask, and FarNote will honour them.

If you are not on FarNote

Your email address can be in FarNote only because somebody you know typed it, or chose it from their contacts, to send you a postcard. FarNote never writes to you because of it. If you would like it removed, write to support@babelo.io.

Children

You must be at least 13 to have a FarNote account — one age everywhere, rather than a different one in each country.

FarNote expects that some of the people writing postcards here are teenagers, and it is built so that being one costs you nothing. There is no advertising and no advertising profile. Analytics never names you, and nothing you do is used to guess what you will do next. Nobody learns more about where you are than the city a card was posted from, and nobody can find you without already knowing your FarNote ID or your email address. Every card you receive can be reported, and every sender blocked.

FarNote is not for children under 13, and an account is not knowingly kept for one. If you believe someone under 13 has an account here, write to support@babelo.io and it will be removed.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, FarNote will tell you before the change takes effect — in the app, or by email — and the date at the top of this page will change.

Contact

FarNote is made and run by Babelo, in California, United States. Under data-protection law, Babelo is the controller of everything described here.

Write to support@babelo.io for a copy of your data, a correction, a deletion, or a complaint.