Privacy Policy

1. What information we collect

Your account. When you sign up, we collect your name, username and email address, and a hash of your password (never the password itself). You can also add a preferred name, a tagline, a bio and a profile photo, or use a generated avatar, and choose a colour theme.

Your diary. The things you record on First Night: your logs, with any rating, note, tags, date, venue and spoiler warning; your watchlist and any notes on it; your plans, with the date, time and any note you add, and whether you checked in or shared a check-in; the members and people you follow; the logs you like and the logs you mark as favourites; and the pins you earn.

Companions. The people you record as having seen a show with you, and any private notes you keep about them. Section 2 explains this in more detail.

Contributions and reports. Shows, venues, credits and corrections you add or suggest, with any notes or sources you include, and any report you make about another member's log.

Preferences and activity. Your email preferences, including your newsletter choice and when you made or withdrew it; which parts of the welcome and onboarding steps you have seen; the notifications we show you in the app; a record of the reminder emails we have sent you; and when you follow a link to buy tickets, which production and link it was.

Messages. If you email us, we keep the conversation so we can reply and follow up.

Analytics, if you allow them. With your consent, we use PostHog to understand how First Night is used, such as which pages are visited and how far new users get through key actions. It records the pages you view and a fixed set of named events. If you're signed in, we also send your account ID, preferred display name and public username so we can recognise your account in our analytics, plus a marker for known internal test accounts so we can exclude their activity from conversion reports. Your preferred display name starts as the name you gave at sign-up unless you change it. We do not send your email, your separate account name field, notes, review text or search terms, and we do not use autocapture or session recording. See our Cookie Policy for detail.

Technical information. We use Sentry for error monitoring, so that crashes and broken pages reach us. It runs whether or not you accept analytics cookies, because we need it to keep the service working. When something goes wrong it records technical information about the failure, such as your browser and the page you were on, and Sentry may also see your IP address. We do not use Sentry for product analytics, advertising or session recording. Our servers use your IP address briefly to limit repeated requests and, when you sign up, to check you are not a bot, and our hosting providers keep their own short-lived request logs, but we do not store IP addresses in our database.

2. Companions

You can record who you saw a show with. If they are a First Night member and you follow each other, we store the link between your log and their profile, their name appears on that log, and we let them know in the app. They can remove themselves from it at any time, from the log, from that notification or from their profile.

If they are not a member, we store the name you give us and, if you add one, their email address. Adding a companion does not contact them. We email them only if you choose the option to invite them to First Night, and only once. If they later join, they can accept the invitation to link your logs to their own diary; nothing is linked until they do. Please only add an email address for someone who would be happy to hear from us.

A companion's email address is never displayed to anyone. If they are not a member, their name is shown only to you; everyone else sees only how many people you went with. Any private note you keep about a companion is visible only to you.

If someone has recorded you as a companion and you would like the record removed, email hello@firstnight.io and we will delete it.

3. How we use your information, and why

Data protection law asks us to explain the legal basis for each use of your data. In plain terms:

• To provide the service you signed up for. Running your account, your diary, watchlist and plans, your profile, follows, likes and companions, notifications, and the emails that come with an account: verifying your address, resetting your password, and the reminders you can switch off in your settings.
• With your consent. Our newsletter, and PostHog analytics. You can withdraw either at any time.
• Where we have a legitimate interest. Keeping First Night secure and free of spam and abuse, handling reports, monitoring errors so we can fix them, counting how often ticket links are used, keeping the catalogue accurate using the contributions members make, and recording the companions a member names, which is part of what the diary is for. We only do these where they don't override your own interests, and you can object (see section 9).

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for advertising.

4. Newsletter and marketing email

We only send marketing email if you ask us to. You can opt in when you create your account or at any time from the Newsletter section of your settings, and you can withdraw by clearing the same checkbox. Withdrawing is as easy as opting in, takes effect immediately, and does not affect your account in any other way. We record when you opted in, where you did it, and when you withdrew, so that we can show what you agreed to. When we send a newsletter, we use Resend: while you're subscribed, your email address and preferred name are on its mailing list. If you withdraw, we mark you as unsubscribed there; if you change your email address or delete your account, we take the old address off the list. Emails such as email verification and password resets are not marketing and are sent regardless, because they are needed to run your account.

5. Who can see what

Once you have verified your email address, your profile (name, username, photo or avatar, tagline and bio), your logs with their ratings and notes, the logs you've been tagged on, and who you follow and who follows you are public on First Night. A spoiler warning hides a note behind a tap; it does not make the note private. The logs you like are shown alongside those logs. If you create a shareable recap, anyone with its link can see it until you revoke it.

When you first verify your email address, you and our official First Night account (@firstnight) automatically follow each other, so each of you appears in the other's followers and following lists. Either side can unfollow at any time, and we never restore it. This sends no notification and no email.

When you check in to a show, the check-in is private unless you choose “Check in & share” or share it afterwards. A shared check-in is shown only to members you follow who also follow you back, and never to our official account. They see your name, the show, the theatre and “tonight” or “today”, but not the time or anything else from your plan. It appears only in their feed's Following view and on their home page, never in the Everyone feed, on your profile or in notifications. It disappears at midnight UK time, and we delete it within a day after that. You can stop sharing at any time and stay checked in, and undoing your check-in stops sharing it too. Someone who has already seen it may still remember it, so share only when you are happy for those people to know where you are.

Your email address, watchlist, plans, companion list and notes, notifications and check-ins you have not shared are private to you. Watchlists appear only as an anonymous count on each show.

6. Who we share it with

We do not share your personal information with third parties for their own marketing. We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf, under their own data processing terms, to run the platform:

• Neon, which hosts our database
• Render, which runs our server
• Vercel, which serves the website
• Resend, which sends our email
• Sentry, for error monitoring
• PostHog, for analytics, only if you consent
• Cloudflare, whose Turnstile check can protect the sign-up form from bots

Zoho hosts our email inbox (hello@firstnight.io), so it holds any email you send us and our replies. Unlike the providers listed above, Zoho's data processing terms are not yet signed. We have asked Zoho for them and will update this page once they are in place.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it.

7. Where your information is stored

Our main database, which also holds uploaded profile photos, is hosted in the UK (London). We use PostHog's EU-hosted cloud for analytics. Some of our other providers, such as those that run our server, serve the website, send email, monitor errors and check sign-ups, are based outside the UK or may process data in other countries, including the United States. Where personal data leaves the UK, we rely on the safeguards for international transfers set out in each provider's data processing terms. This does not yet cover Zoho: until its terms are signed, we cannot rely on them for any transfer of data outside the UK (see section 6). You can ask us for more detail.

Passwords are hashed and never stored in plain text. We take reasonable measures to protect your information, but no system is completely secure.

8. How long we keep it, and deleting your account

We keep your account and everything in your diary for as long as your account exists, unless you delete something sooner. Links in our emails expire: email verification after 24 hours, password reset after an hour, and companion invitations after 30 days. Signing in lasts 30 days on each device. Things you start while signed out are held in your browser for 30 minutes.

If you never verify your email address, we delete the account, and its diary, about six months (180 days) after you signed up. From day 150, we warn you in the app and send a reminder to the address you gave, and we never delete an account less than a week after that reminder. Verifying at any point before then stops it. Once an account has been verified, changing its email address later never puts it at risk.

You can delete your account yourself from the Danger zone in your settings. That permanently deletes your profile and photo, your logs, ratings and notes, your watchlist and plans, your follows and likes, the companions you recorded (including any names and email addresses you entered) and your notes about them, your notifications, suggestions, pins and recap links, and your email preferences, and takes your address off our newsletter mailing list. It also removes you from logs where other members tagged you.

A few things are kept, without your name:

• Shows and venues you added to the catalogue stay, no longer linked to you. Any note you left with them, and any description you wrote for them, is deleted
• Reports you made about other logs stay as a moderation record, without the details you wrote
• Records of which ticket links were followed stay, no longer linked to you
• If another member recorded you as a companion, the name and email they entered stay in their diary. Email us if you would like that removed too

Deleted data may remain for a short time in our database provider's backups before it is overwritten. Our analytics, error-monitoring and email providers keep their own records, such as analytics events, error reports and logs of emails sent, for their own retention periods, and deleting your account does not immediately remove those. If you would like us to delete analytics data linked to your account, email hello@firstnight.io.

9. Your rights

Under UK data protection law (UK GDPR), you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it
• Have inaccurate data corrected
• Have your data deleted
• Ask us to restrict how we use your data
• Object to our use of your data where we rely on legitimate interests
• Receive data you have given us in a format you can take elsewhere, where we use it to provide the service or with your consent
• Withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it

Some of these rights apply only in certain circumstances, and the law allows some exceptions. We do not make decisions about you by purely automated means.

You can edit your profile and delete your account yourself from your settings. For anything else, or if you would rather we did it for you, email hello@firstnight.io. We will normally reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first so we can try to put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

10. Cookies

First Night uses a small number of cookies and browser storage to keep you signed in, to remember your preferences (such as your chosen theme), to hold things you start while signed out, and to record your cookie choice. With your consent, we also use PostHog analytics cookies to understand how the site is used. We do not use advertising or social media tracking cookies. For more detail, see our Cookie Policy.

11. Who we are and how to contact us

First Night is an independent project operated by James Price, who is the data controller for the service. If you have questions about this policy or how your data is handled, or want to exercise any of your rights, please email hello@firstnight.io.

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top of this page.