Recipient privacy
If you received a referral email
Someone you know used Refer Kindly to send you a personal recommendation. This page explains how that happened, what we keep and how to stop it.
How we got your address
The person who emailed you picked your address themselves, one person at a time, from the saved contacts in their own Google account. The business didn’t supply it and can’t see it. We don’t buy, rent or import lists. They reviewed the exact email before sending it from their own Gmail account, and replies go to them. Sending it doesn’t mean you agreed to receive it.
Why it mentions a business
The email recommends a business or organisation. If the sender may get a reward when you sign up, the email says so.
What we keep
- The email and your address: our copy is deleted within 24 hours after sending finishes.
- A one-way code made from your address, which lets us recognise it again without storing it:
- to stop repeat referrals from the same business: up to 90 days after the last referral to you;
- in our record of each referral email sent to you: until 30 days after the campaign ends. If the campaign has no end date, it’s kept until 12 months after the person who referred you last used that campaign.
- If you stop referrals from a business: a one-way code of your address, for as long as that business can send through us, so your request keeps working.
- The stop link in your email: it works for at least 12 months.
- If you sign up with the business: it can check with us whether your sign-up came from a referral. We match it using the one-way code and answer only yes or no. We keep the referral record until 30 days after the campaign ends. If the campaign has no end date, its link to your address is removed 30 days after the sign-up window for that referral closes.
- Reports you make: up to 90 days after they’re resolved.
- Security records, which contain no email addresses: up to 90 days. Backups: up to 30 days.
What the business sees
Campaign-level counts only. It can’t see your address, who referred you or whether you stopped referrals. We apply your stop request on its behalf.
Stop referrals
Use Stop referrals from [business name] at the bottom of the email. You don’t need to sign in, and it covers every campaign from that business through Refer Kindly. It doesn’t stop personal email sent outside this service. This page can’t stop referrals for you, because it doesn’t know your address.
No longer have the email? Email [email protected] with the business’s name and the address the email went to. We’ll use them only to stop referrals from that business, and we won’t keep your message. We stop the address both as you write it and in all lowercase letters, so capital letters don’t matter.