Privacy Policy

The Overwhelmed Parent is a self-help tool for international and expat parents navigating maternity, baby admin and benefits in the United Kingdom. This page is maintained by The Overwhelmed Parent to explain what data we collect, why we collect it, and the choices you have. It is written in plain English and covers only UK GDPR.

Who we are

The Overwhelmed Parent (referred to as "we", "us", "our") operates the website at the-overwhelmed-parent.lovable.app and the dashboard available after sign-in. For UK data protection purposes, we act as the data controller for the personal data described below. For data protection enquiries you can email us at hello.theoverwhelmedparent@gmail.com.

What we collect

• Questionnaire answers you provide to generate your guide: country (UK), pregnancy stage, due date or birth date, employment situation, caregiver role, and your immigration / residency situation when you choose to share it. Stored in your browser's local storage until you sign up.
• Account data when you create an account: email address and a hashed password (we never see your plain password).
• Generated guides, reminders, calendar items and shopping-list preferences associated with your account.
• Payment metadata if you upgrade: order ID, subscription status and customer ID from our payments provider. We do not see or store your card details.
• Basic technical data: IP address, browser type and pages visited, used for security, abuse prevention and to keep the service running.

What we do not collect

• Health records, medical history, or test results.
• Your national identifier (NI number, passport number).
• Photographs or any biometric data.
• Behavioural advertising profiles — we do not run ad networks.

How we use your data

• To generate your personalised guide and reminders.
• To save your dashboard so you can come back to it.
• To send you account-related emails (sign-in confirmation, password reset, guide delivery, reminders you have opted into).
• To improve the service in aggregate (e.g. understanding which tools are most used).
• To detect and prevent abuse.

We do not sell your data, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not use it to train third-party AI models.

Lawful basis (UK GDPR)

• Contract — to provide the guide, dashboard and reminders you ask for.
• Consent — for any optional email communications and for storing your answers in local storage when you choose to start the questionnaire.
• Legitimate interests — for basic security logging and service improvement.
• Legal obligation — to retain records we are required to keep (e.g. payment records).

Who we share data with (processors)

We use a small number of trusted third-party providers ("processors") under written data processing agreements. They process data only on our instructions.

• Supabase — authentication, database and file storage (EU region).
• Anthropic (Claude) — used to draft your personalised guide text from the answers you provide. We do not send your email address to Anthropic.
• Resend — transactional email delivery (guide email, reminders, password reset).
• Lemon Squeezy — payment processing and subscription management (merchant of record).
• Lovable / Cloudflare — application hosting and content delivery.

Where your data is stored

Personal data is stored within the EU/EEA wherever possible. Some processors (e.g. Anthropic) may process data in the United States under appropriate safeguards such as the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and Standard Contractual Clauses.

How long we keep your data

• Questionnaire answers stored in local storage: until you clear your browser data or delete your account.
• Account, guides and dashboard data: for as long as your account exists, then deleted within 30 days of account closure.
• Payment records: kept for 7 years to comply with tax and accounting law.
• Anonymised aggregate analytics: indefinitely.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, and the right to data portability. You can exercise any of these rights by emailing hello.theoverwhelmedparent@gmail.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

Cookies and local storage

We use a small number of strictly necessary cookies (for sign-in and security) and local storage to remember your questionnaire answers between pages. We do not use third-party advertising cookies or cross-site tracking pixels.

Children

The service is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the new version on this page and update the "last updated" date.