Privacy Policy

We collect only what's needed to run a real-life meetup app, we show other people as little about you as possible, we never sell your data, and you can delete everything at any time.

• Sign-in — your email. You can use Google, Apple, or an email + password; confirmations and password resets arrive as a one-time 6-digit code we email you.
• Google info (if you use it) — name, email, and profile photo to set up your profile. Nothing else from your Google account.
• Apple info (if you use it) — the name and email Apple shares with us to set up your account. If you choose “Hide My Email,” we get a private Apple relay address instead of your real one. Nothing else from your Apple account.
• Your profile — name, avatar, up to six photos of you, city, bio, Instagram handle (all optional except your name). From these we work out your verification score (see §6).
• Age & gender — your birth date and gender are stored privately. Others only ever see a derived age number and your gender — never your actual birth date.
• Location — required to participate (see §2). Stored as coordinates on our server; other users never see them — only a rough distance, and, while you're checked in, a map pin placed in your general area, never on your exact spot.
• Your activity — posts, responses, RSVPs, messages, ratings, vouches.
• Hangout photos (if you add them) — kept in a private store, shown only to the people you choose (see §6).
• A verification selfie (optional) — only if you opt into photo verification. Stored privately, shown only to a moderator, never to other users, deletable on request.
• Notifications (optional) — if you turn on push, we store a device subscription so we can notify you.
• A trusted contact's email (optional) — if you set a safety check-in, the email address you enter for someone you trust. We use it for one thing: sending that person a single alert if you don't tap “I'm safe” by your back-by time. It is never shown to anyone who opens your ETA link, every alert includes a link that lets them stop all future ones, and we clear it about 7 days after the check-in closes. For 30 days after an alert we keep a one-way fingerprint of the address (never the address itself) so we can limit how often anyone is alerted. Only add someone who's OK with hearing from us on your behalf.
• Basic technical data — what your browser sends (e.g. IP, device type) and error reports, to keep the app running.

Why we're allowed to (legal basis): we use this data to provide the service you signed up for (to perform our agreement with you), to keep it safe and prevent abuse (our legitimate interest), and — for location and push notifications — with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by turning them off. A trusted contact's email is processed for your safety (our legitimate interest); that person can object at any time with the stop link in any alert.

WhiMate runs on real proximity, so location is required to post, join, or respond to activities — browsing the feed doesn't need it. When you grant permission, we use your device location to power distances, the map, and discovery, and we refresh it quietly when you open the app so it stays current. We never show other users your exact coordinates — only an approximate “X km away.” A fix that goes stale stops counting after about a week. People Nearby is a separate opt-in (checking in); you only appear there if you switch it on, and even then others see only a rough distance range.

The map. While you're checked in, your open plans also show on the Nearby map — to other people who are checked in too — as a pin placed in your general area: shifted by up to about 2 km from where you really are, and never on your exact spot. Check out and your pins disappear. The map's background comes from OpenStreetMap (see §10).

• Phone number
• Government ID
• Payment info (the app is free)
• Your address book, camera roll, or device data beyond what your browser sends (a trusted-contact email is only what you type in yourself — see §1)
• No advertising profiles and no cross-site trackers

• Any signed-in user: your name, avatar, profile photos, city, bio, Instagram handle, age, gender, verification score, and your posts. People you've blocked, or who blocked you, can't see your profile.
• Only the people you match or crew up with: your chat messages and proposals.
• Only the people you pick: hangout photos you restrict.
• Only you: your email, your exact location coordinates, your birth date, your private review notes, and any trusted-contact email you enter.
• Nobody, ever: your password — if you set one it's stored only as a secure hash by our auth provider; we never see it.

Coordination chats clear automatically a short time (currently 24 hours) after sending — a feature, not a bug. Don't use them for anything you need to keep.

Profile photos. The photos of you that you add to your profile (up to six) live in a private store, never public. They're shown only to people signed in to WhiMate, and not to anyone in a block with you, through short-lived links that expire. We strip location data from each one when you upload it. Remove any photo from Edit profile at any time; all of them are deleted with your account.

Verification score. A 0–100 number worked out from what your profile shows (a verified selfie, your photos, Instagram, bio, birthday, gender, city). It's shown on your profile and decides how early your posts appear in the feed and how high you appear in People Nearby. Nothing in it is required, and it never uses your birth date itself, only whether you've added one.

Hangout photos. Photos you add to a hangout live in a private store, never public. Each is visible only to the audience you choose — the whole crew or specific people — and is delivered through short-lived links that expire. You can set a photo to auto-delete after a window you pick, and you (or the hangout host) can delete any photo at any time. Remember that anyone allowed to see a photo could still screenshot it.

Selfie verification is optional — you never have to do it. If you opt in, we collect one selfie photo for the sole purpose of confirming your profile belongs to a real person.

• A human moderator compares your selfie to your profile photo. We do not use facial recognition, face-matching algorithms, or any biometric processing, and we never derive faceprints, face geometry, or other biometric identifiers from it. The only face data we hold is the photograph itself.
• Your selfie is stored in a private, access-controlled storage bucket with our hosting provider (Supabase), reachable only by the moderator through short-lived signed links. It is never shown to other users and is never public.
• We do not share your selfie or any face data with third parties, use it for advertising, or use it to train AI models.
• Retention: your selfie is kept while your account exists (it's what keeps your verified badge valid). It is permanently deleted when you delete your account, and you can have it deleted at any time without deleting your account by emailing hello@whimate.com. An automated weekly cleanup additionally purges selfie files belonging to deleted accounts.

We keep your account data until you delete it. Messages clear on their own (§5); restricted/expiring photos clear on their schedule (§6); stale location stops being used after about a week. A trusted-contact email on a safety check-in is cleared about 7 days after that check-in closes. When we do send an alert, we keep a one-way fingerprint of the contact's address, linked to that check-in, for 30 days so we can enforce limits on how often anyone is alerted; a contact who asks us to stop is kept only as a one-way fingerprint too, so we can honour it without storing their address. Deleting your account removes your profile, posts, matches, messages, and check-ins. We may keep minimal records where the law requires.

You can, at any time:

• See your data — /profile.
• Edit it — /profile/edit.
• Download a copy — “Download my data” on /profile/edit exports your profile, posts, RSVPs, matches, reviews and more as a JSON file.
• Delete your account and data — bottom of the edit page.

Depending on where you live you have additional rights — to access, correct, export (port), restrict, or object to how we use your data under GDPR, or to know what we hold and have it deleted under CCPA/CPRA and PIPEDA. The controls above cover most of these directly; for anything else, email hello@whimate.com and we'll action it within 30 days. We won't treat you differently for exercising any of these rights. If you're in the EU/UK and believe we've mishandled your data, you also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.

WhiMate is strictly for adults. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18 — if we learn an account belongs to a minor, we remove it.

We use a small set of providers, only to make the app work:

• Supabase — database, sign-in, and private file storage.
• Resend — the emails we send you, and the one-off safety alert to a trusted contact you name.
• Google — only if you choose “Continue with Google.”
• Apple — only if you choose “Continue with Apple,” and to deliver notifications to the iPhone app if you turn them on.
• OpenStreetMap — the map tiles on the Nearby map. Your device loads them straight from OpenStreetMap, which sees your IP address and the area of the map you're viewing.
• Netlify — hosting; serves the app.
• Sentry — error monitoring, to catch crashes (configured to avoid collecting personal data; no session recording).
• PostHog — product analytics, to see which features get used (configured with an anonymous account ID only — no name, email, birthdate, or location; no session recording).

This list was last reviewed October 2026.

We don't sell or share your data for advertising — not now, not ever.

Some of these providers run on infrastructure outside your country (including the United States). Where your data is transferred internationally, we rely on the providers' standard contractual protections to keep it safeguarded.

One cookie keeps you signed in. We also use a little storage on your device for app preferences (for example, not re-asking for your location too often). No advertising cookies. For product analytics we use PostHog with an anonymous account ID only (see Section 10) — no session recording, and it honours your browser's Do Not Track setting.

Data access is locked down per-user at the database level, private files (selfies, profile photos, hangout photos) sit in private storage served only through short-lived signed links, and passwords are stored only as secure hashes by our auth provider. No system is perfectly secure, but we design for the least exposure.

If we change how we handle your data, we'll update this page and tell you in the app. If a change reduces your privacy, we'll ask before applying it to data we already hold.

hello@whimate.com for anything — questions, a data copy, or a deletion request.