Privacy Policy

When you create an account we store your display name, username, email address, a hashed password, your role, and timestamps for account creation and activity.

If you add a phone number — for two-factor authentication, or to verify a business — we store it and use a third-party messaging provider to send verification codes. We use your number for verification and security only, not for marketing.

Your “Me” profile and how you present yourself — name, photo and its framing, bio, social links, and visibility preferences such as whether your orbit is public.

The contacts, places, and businesses you add to your orbit, including how you arrange them (tiers, clusters, positions). Contacts who are not Orrery accounts exist only in your own orbit and are not shared with anyone else.

When you add a place or set an event location, we store that location as part of your orbit and event data. Location search is powered by a third-party places provider; the text you type into location search is sent to that provider to return suggestions. We do not track your device’s real-time location.

When you follow or join a business, we record your relationship (follower, member, or staff). Followers are audience-only and are not exposed to other followers or shown a business’s internal members.

Orrery lets you connect third-party accounts — including Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms — so your public posts from those services can appear in your orbit, and so business owners can link their Facebook Pages.

When you choose to connect an account, the third party asks you to authorize Orrery and then gives us an access token. We use that token only to retrieve the specific information you authorized — such as your basic profile, your public posts or media, and (for businesses) the Pages you manage. We do not post on your behalf, and we do not access private messages or data you did not grant.

Access and refresh tokens are stored encrypted at rest and are never sent to your browser or to other users. We use them solely to fetch the content you connected.

You can disconnect a third-party account at any time from your profile settings. Disconnecting deletes the stored token and stops further syncing. You can also revoke Orrery’s access directly from the third-party platform’s own app settings.

To request deletion of data we obtained from a connected platform, disconnect the account in settings or email us at [email protected]; see “How to contact us & data deletion” below.

Our use of information received from Meta platforms follows Meta’s Platform Terms and Developer Policies, and our use of information from any other connected platform follows that platform’s developer terms.

Your membership and role within clusters/communities, and which clusters you can see, are governed by each community’s visibility settings and your role.

Posts, comments, reactions, and bookmarks you create, and where they are shared (personal feed, a community feed, or both).

Direct and group messages, including in community and business inboxes. Messages are visible to the participants of a conversation; community and business chats are visible to their members and to authorized moderators for moderation purposes.

Profile photos and media you attach to posts or messages are stored so they can be displayed to the people permitted to see that content.

To keep accounts and communities safe we record security and administrative events (logins, role changes, moderation actions, ownership transfers) along with the actor, target, and time.

We take reasonable measures to protect your information. Passwords are stored using one-way hashing and are never stored in plain text. Third-party access tokens are encrypted at rest. Accounts can enable two-factor authentication. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and to limit who can access it.

Actions taken by community owners, moderators, or platform admins — such as removing a post, muting a member, or removing a member — are recorded for accountability.

We don’t sell your personal information. We share limited data with vendors who help us run Orrery, only as needed to provide the service:

• A hosting provider that stores our database and uploaded media.
• An email provider used to send verification, password-reset, and notification emails.
• An SMS provider used to send verification codes.
• A places/maps provider used for location search.
• A product-analytics provider used to understand how the app is used (page views and interactions, with text and inputs masked — we don't send the contents of your posts, messages, or fields).
• The third-party social platforms you choose to connect.

These providers are permitted to use your information only to perform services for us.

Visibility depends on roles and settings. For example:

• Your public orbit (if you enable it) shows a limited, PII-stripped view to anyone.
• Community content is visible per the community’s visibility tier (public / community / internal).
• Business followers see public content only; members and staff see more.
• Private contacts in your orbit are never shown to other viewers.

If you are a California resident, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, to request a copy of it, to request deletion, and to not be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We do not sell your personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected].

Orrery is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

You can delete your account from Settings. Deletion removes your account record and orbit data, hands off or orphans communities you own so they are not destroyed, and deletes messages you sent. Some records may persist where required for security or legal reasons (for example, audit logs of moderation actions).

For privacy questions or to request deletion of your data — including data obtained from a connected platform such as Facebook — email us at [email protected], or delete your account from Settings. We will respond within a reasonable time and in accordance with applicable law.

Orrery is operated by Orrery (Christopher Barber).