Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information Weaponized Friendship collects, why we collect it, who we send it to, and how you can control it. Weaponized Friendship is a comedy site, but this page is not a joke: it describes real data practices in plain English.

Who is responsible for your data

Weaponized Friendship is the seller and the data controller for everything described on this page. Weaponized Friendship is operated by Bill Sambrone. If you have a question about this policy, or want to exercise any of the rights described below, email support@weaponizedfriendship.com.

Analytics — only if you agree

This site uses Google Analytics 4 to understand how it's used, but only after you accept the cookie banner. If you decline, or if you haven't made a choice yet, no analytics script loads and no analytics cookies are set. This is the default: nothing analytics-related runs until you say yes.

If you accept, Google Analytics sets the cookies _ga and _ga_* to distinguish visitors and sessions. IP addresses are anonymized before they are processed, and no advertising features are enabled — this site does not use Google Analytics for ad targeting or ad measurement.

You can withdraw consent at any time using the "Cookie settings" link in the site footer. Withdrawing consent stops future analytics collection immediately; it does not delete data Google has already processed on Google's own retention schedule.

Your cookie preference

Separately from analytics, this site sets its own first-party cookie, wf_consent, to remember the choice you make in the cookie banner (accept or decline). It lasts about 180 days and is set only once you make a choice. This cookie doesn't track you or feed analytics — it exists solely so the site remembers your preference and doesn't ask again on every visit.

Cookies that keep features working

Some features set their own first-party cookies. These are strictly necessary for those features to work, so — unlike analytics — they are not governed by the cookie banner and are set whether or not you accept analytics. None of them track you across other sites, and none carry advertising data.

• The cart. Adding something to a cart sets two cookies: wf_cart, which holds the identifier of your cart, and wf_cart_count, which holds the number of items in it so the header can show a count. Both are httpOnly, last up to 10 days, and are set only when you use the cart — never on ordinary browsing. They hold a cart identifier and an item count, nothing about who you are.
• Anonymous rate limiting. The free personalization tools can be used without an account, so to keep them from being abused we set wf_anon: a random identifier generated in your browser, used only as a key for counting requests against a fair-use limit. To enforce the same limit we also derive a one-way HMAC digest of your IP address — your raw IP address is never written to our database or logs; only the digest is stored, and only for rate limiting.
• Signing in. Signing in sets session cookies managed by our authentication library (Auth.js) so the site knows you are logged in as you move between pages. These are httpOnly and are cleared when you sign out. Sessions are stored in our database, which means we can revoke them server-side.

The "Cookie settings" link in the footer governs analytics only. The strictly-necessary cookies above keep working regardless of your analytics choice, because the features they support cannot function without them.

Your account

If you create an account, it stores your sign-in identity (your email address, or the identifier your sign-in provider gives us) and your active sessions. Everything else is whatever you choose to add:

• Friends.The profiles you create for the people you're planning around — whatever you type in them.
• Plans and assessments. The personalized results you save, including any PDF generated from them.
• Uploads. Photos you upload, and images generated for you, along with their metadata.
• Orders and downloads.A mirror of the orders you place, and the files you've unlocked and can re-download.
• Reviews and image credits. Reviews you submit, and the balance of image-generation credits attached to your account.

You can view, change, and delete this from your account at any time.

Who we send your data to

We use the following companies to run the site. Each one receives only what it needs for the job listed:

• Neon — our database. Holds accounts, friend profiles, saved plans, upload records, the order mirror, download records, reviews, incident submissions, newsletter subscribers, image credits, and the AI usage log.
• Vercel — hosting, and the private file storage (Vercel Blob) that holds uploaded photos, generated images, review videos, and the files behind your purchased downloads.
• OpenAI — personalization. Receives what you put into the tools: names, friend profiles, questionnaire answers, and uploaded photos when a photo is analyzed or used to generate an image.
• Shopify — checkout, payment, and order processing. Payment details go to Shopify and never touch our systems. Shopify sends us a copy of each paid order, which we mirror into our own database.
• Printify — our print supplier, and the one that matters most to know about: for a physical order they receive your name, your full shipping address, and the file to be printed, because they are the ones who physically make and mail it.
• Resend — transactional email. Sends sign-in links and review invitations. Receives your email address and the contents of those messages.
• Google— sign-in, only if you choose "Sign in with Google". If you sign in by email link instead, Google receives nothing.
• Buttondown — reserved for newsletter sending and currently unused. No subscriber data has been sent to it. If that changes, this page will be updated first.

We do not send your personal data to anyone else, and none of these companies are permitted to use it for their own purposes.

Personalization and AI

The personalization tools send what you give them to OpenAI to produce a result. This happens entirely on our servers — the keys that talk to OpenAI are never present in your browser, and your browser never contacts OpenAI directly.

We log every one of those calls: which tool was used, which model, what it cost, and either your account id or the hashed anonymous key described above — never a raw IP address. That log exists so we can enforce a daily spending cap and catch abuse. If you are not signed in, the tools will not generate images for you at all.

Photos you upload

Uploaded photos get extra protection. They are stored privately and served only through an authenticated proxy tied to your account — never at a public or guessable URL. A photo is analyzed at most once, passes automated moderation before it is used in any generated image, and is deleted 180 days after it was last used, or immediately whenever you ask, with the deletion cascading to anything derived from it. The full rules live on the photo upload policy page.

Checkout and your orders

Checkout is processed by Shopify. While you browse this site — including product and cart pages — your browser sends nothing to Shopify; your cart is managed through this site's own server, which stores the cart's contents (products and quantities, nothing about who you are) with Shopify on your behalf. When you proceed to checkout you navigate to checkout pages hosted by Shopify on our shop subdomain, where Shopify collects what it needs to process your order — including payment details, which never touch our systems — and sets its own cookies. That processing is covered by the Shopify privacy policy.

When an order is paid, Shopify notifies us and we keep our own copy: the order number, the email address on the order, the items and quantities, the totals and currency, the payment and fulfillment status, and Shopify's own record of the order, which includes the shipping address. We need this to fulfil the order, to answer questions about it later, and to keep proper accounts.

Reviews and incident submissions

If you submit a review, we store your rating, what you wrote, the display name you chose, any video you attach, how you got to the form, and — for a verified review — a link to the order it concerns. If you submit an incident report, we store what you wrote and, if you gave one, your email address.

Nothing you submit is published automatically. A person reviews it first, and only approved submissions appear on the site. A published review shows the display name you chose and nothing else about you. Videos are stored privately and served only through our own authenticated proxy.

Newsletter

If you sign up for the newsletter, we store your email address, the time you signed up, and the exact consent text you agreed to at the time — and nothing else. In particular, we do not store your IP address.

We use it only to send you the newsletter. We do not sell it, and we do not share it with anyone for their own use. We keep it until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it, at which point we remove it. Your newsletter subscription is separate from your account: deleting your account does not unsubscribe you, and unsubscribing does not delete your account.

How long we keep things

• Uploaded photos and generated images — deleted 180 days after the last time they were used, by an automated daily sweep, or immediately when you ask.
• Order records — kept for 7 years, because tax and accounting rules require it. See the deletion section below for what this means if you close your account.
• Sessions — expire on their own, and are removed when you sign out or delete your account.
• Newsletter subscription — until you unsubscribe.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account from your account settings. It takes effect immediately. Here is exactly what that does — including the parts that survive, because we would rather tell you than let you assume:

• Deleted outright: your account and its sign-in identities, all your sessions, your friend profiles, your uploads and generated images, your saved plans and their PDFs, your image credits, and the stored files behind your downloads. Files are removed from storage, not merely unlinked.
• Kept, with the link to you severed: order records (see the 7-year retention above) and AI usage log entries. These stop being associated with your account.
• Kept, with your email erased: any incident report you submitted stays on the site, with the submitter email address removed and the link to your account cleared.
• Not affected: reviews that were already approved and published, and your newsletter subscription — unsubscribe separately if you want that gone too.

You can also email support@weaponizedfriendship.com and ask us to do it, or to remove a published review.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Have inaccurate data corrected (rectification).
• Have your data deleted (erasure).
• Ask us to restrict how we use your data (restriction).
• Receive your data in a portable format (portability).
• Withdraw consent at any time.
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.

To exercise any of these rights, email support@weaponizedfriendship.com.

We do not sell or share your personal data

We do not sell your personal data, ever. We also do not "share" it in the sense some privacy laws use that word — that is, we do not disclose it for cross-context behavioural advertising. The companies listed above process data on our instructions to run the site; that is not selling or sharing.

Children

This site is not for children. No one under 13 may use it or hold an account, and you must be 18 or older to buy anything. If we learn that we hold data from a child under 13, we delete it. If you believe a child has given us data, email us and we will remove it.

Where your data goes geographically

The companies listed above are primarily based in the United States, and their systems process and store data there. If you are using this site from outside the US, your data is transferred to the US.

Security

Traffic to this site is encrypted in transit. Uploads are held in private storage and served only through authenticated proxies. Rate limiting uses one-way hashes rather than raw IP addresses. Sessions live in our database so they can be revoked. These are real measures and we take them seriously — and no system is perfectly secure, so we are not going to claim otherwise.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we update the "Last updated" date at the top of the page. If we ever introduce advertising, this policy will be updated first and consent will be requested again before any advertising cookies or trackers are used.