Clothesline

Privacy Policy

Clothesline App, LLC 30714 26th Ave SW, Federal Way, WA 98023, United States

Last updated: 3 August 2026

Effective: 3 August 2026

Clothesline helps a parent work out what their child already has to wear, what they are short of, and what to buy first. To do that it stores information about your children. This page says exactly what, why, who else sees it, and how to get it back or get rid of it.

If anything here is unclear, ask us: privacy@clothesline.app


1. Who this policy is for

You must be 18 or older to create a Clothesline account. The account is yours; the children you add are not account holders and cannot sign in.

We collect information about children from you, the parent or guardian — not from the children themselves. By adding a child, you confirm you are their parent or legal guardian and that you consent to us handling their information as described here.


2. What we collect

About you, the account holder

WhatWhy we need it
Email addressTo sign you in and to send password-reset emails
PasswordStored only as a scrypt hash with a random per-account salt — we never store or can read your actual password
Home postcode (5 digits)To work out your local climate, so coat and layer counts are right. Optional — you can pick a climate from a list instead, which deletes the postcode
Season budget and term-start dateTo tell you what is left to spend

About each child you add

WhatWhy we need it
First nameSo the app can say whose wardrobe it is
PronounsTo write about them correctly, and to search the right section when finding clothes
Age (4–14) and school yearTo size garments and judge what a school expects
Body measurements — height, chest, waist, hip, inseam, shoe size and widthTo judge whether a specific garment will fit
Fit notes and a brand + size that already fitsThe most reliable sizing signal there is
Colour preferences and colours to avoidTo recommend things they will actually wear
School nameTo match your school's dress code — see section 4, this is shared
Dress-code handbooks you upload (PDFs, photos, or text you paste)To read the rules and check clothes against them
Photos of garmentsTo identify what a piece is and judge it against the rules
Garment names, colours, sizes, brands, prices and purchase datesTo track coverage and spending
Rough counts of clothes you own but haven't photographedTo make the gap maths right
Parcel tracking numbers you pasteTo tell you where an order is

Collected automatically

WhatDetail
Session cookie (cl_session)Set at sign-in. HTTP-only, SameSite=Lax, Secure in production, expires after 30 days
Active-child cookie (cl_child)Remembers which child's wardrobe you were looking at. Expires after 1 year. Contains a numeric ID only
Browser storageOne localStorage key, holding your closet grid size (auto, large, small or list). Nothing else
Usage eventsServer-side counts of actions — a handbook was read, a garment was checked, a list item was added. Names, ages, schools and photos are never part of these events
IP addressUsed in memory only, to rate-limit sign-in and sign-up attempts. It is never written to our database

We do not use any advertising network, tracking pixel, browser-fingerprinting library, session-replay recording, or payment processor. There is no cookie consent banner because we set no advertising or tracking cookies.


3. Why we handle it, and on what legal basis

We handle this information to provide the service you asked for: judging clothes against your child's school rules, size and climate, and telling you what to buy.

If you are in the UK or EU, the legal bases we rely on are:

what you signed up for and cannot work without this data.

home postcode. You can withdraw it by deleting a child, clearing the postcode, or deleting your account.

basic usage counts to understand whether the product works.


4. What is shared with other Clothesline families

This is the one thing most likely to surprise you, so it is here rather than buried.

When you add a school by name and we read its dress code, the school's name and the rules we extracted become available to every other Clothesline family at that school. That is deliberate: it means the next parent at your school does not have to upload the handbook again.

What crosses that boundary is only the school's name and the extracted rules. It does not include your name, your email, your child's name, your child's measurements, the original file you uploaded, its filename, or any notes you typed. The handbook text you paste stays private to your account.

A school's rules are recorded once. A later upload for the same school links to the existing entry rather than replacing it, so nobody can overwrite what your school's rules say.

Searching for a school requires being signed in.


5. Companies that process data for us

We are a small operation and rely on other services. Each one below receives only what is listed.

CompanyWhat we send themWhat for
Anthropic (Claude API)Garment photos; handbook files and text; receipt text; and a profile line containing your child's first name, pronouns, height, waist, inseam, fit label, reference brand and size, climate and colour preferencesReading handbooks, identifying garments, judging them against the rules
Fly.ioEverything — they host the application and the databaseHosting, in San Jose, California, USA
ResendYour email address and the password-reset linkSending password-reset emails
SerpApiSearch text that includes the child's gender word and clothing size (e.g. "girls' navy cardigan size 10"). No name, no measurementsFinding real products and prices
OpenWeb NinjaThe same search textFinding real products and prices
Ship24Parcel tracking numbers you pasteTelling you where an order is
PostHogAn account identifier that is a salted SHA-256 hash — never your account number, name or email — plus event names and numeric countsUnderstanding whether features are used

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising or cross-context behavioural advertising. No advertising network receives anything from Clothesline.

Our code contains a dormant affiliate-link feature that would tag outbound retailer links for commission. It is switched off — no publisher account is configured, so links are passed through untouched and no affiliate network receives your clicks. If we ever turn it on, we will update this policy first.


6. How long we keep things

DataKept for
Your account, children, garments and handbooksUntil you delete them or delete your account
Session (staying signed in)30 days, then automatically deleted
Password-reset link1 hour, single use, then automatically deleted
Usage-limit counters7 days
Encrypted backups5 days. Deleted information can persist in backups for up to 5 days after you delete it

Accounts nobody has opened for 24 months are deleted, after two warning emails sent about two months and one month beforehand. Signing in at any point resets the clock and cancels the warnings. Deleting the account removes everything listed in section 7.

We measure this from your last activity, not from when you signed up — checking in once a season is normal use, not a dormant account.


7. Your rights and how to use them

You can do the first two yourself, from Settings, without asking us:

details, every child, their rule sets, every garment including outgrown ones, your buy list, wardrobe counts, size references, saved outfits, your shopping list, and links to download each handbook you uploaded. Limited to 5 downloads per hour.

garments, buy list, wardrobe counts, size references, saved outfits, shopping list, sessions, reset tokens and usage events — and deletes the handbook files from disk. This cannot be undone. See the note in section 6 about backups.

You can also delete an individual child, which removes that child's rule sets, garments and uploaded handbooks.

To correct information, edit it in Settings. For anything else — including objecting to how we handle something, or asking us to restrict it — contact us at privacy@clothesline.app. We aim to respond within 30 days.

If you are in the UK or EU you have the right to complain to your data protection authority. If you are in California you have rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the rights to know, delete, correct, and to opt out of sale or sharing — though as stated in section 5, we do not sell or share your information.


8. Security

Specifically, here is what is in place:

cannot read your password.

Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy and Permissions-Policy headers.

scripts and is not sent from other sites.

provider**. We do not add a second layer of encryption on top of that.

it belongs to your household before returning anything.

or sent anywhere. Phone photos normally carry GPS coordinates; we remove them.

daily ceiling on how much analysis it can run.

One honest limitation: if a password-reset email fails to send, the error recorded in our server logs may include your email address. Those logs are held by our hosting provider and are not shared.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise.


9. Cookies and tracking

We set two cookies, both strictly for making the app work:

CookiePurposeLifetime
cl_sessionKeeps you signed in30 days
cl_childRemembers which child you were viewing1 year

We use one localStorage entry to remember your preferred closet grid size.

We do not set advertising cookies, we do not track you across other websites, and we do not use fingerprinting. Session replay, autocapture, heatmaps and click tracking are all switched off in our analytics.


10. Children's data

Clothesline exists to hold information about children, so this deserves its own section.

no account of their own.

app is directed at a child or invites a child to enter anything.

date of birth, only an age.

judge whether a garment will fit, and they are never shared with other families.

judging a garment (section 5).


11. Where your data is

Clothesline is hosted in San Jose, California, United States. Our processors (section 5) are US-based.

If you use Clothesline from outside the United States, your information is transferred to and stored in the US, which may not offer the same legal protections as your own country.


12. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that materially affects how we handle your information, we will email the address on your account before the change takes effect. Smaller corrections will be reflected in the "Last updated" date above.

13. If something goes wrong

If we discover a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you by email without undue delay, and within 72 hours of confirming it, telling you what happened, what was affected, and what to do.

14. Contact

Clothesline App, LLC 30714 26th Ave SW, Federal Way, WA 98023, United States privacy@clothesline.app

This page is generated from our published policy. Last updated 3 August 2026.