Privacy Policy

1. Information you give us

• Account: email address and password.
• Profile: first name, confirmation that you are 18 or older, your age if you choose to add it (stored as birth year), profile photo, the places you grew up, have lived, live now, and are moving to (city, region, country), move status and timing, family roots, your About and "I'd love to" answers, the interests you choose, languages you speak, and app language.
• Activity: private messages, trips (destination and dates), event RSVPs, feedback after a conversation (such as whether you met in person), blocks and reports, notification preferences, and invites, including the email of anyone you invite.
• Waitlist: if you join our waitlist, your email address.
• Messages to us: whatever you include when you email us.

2. Information collected automatically

• Usage: events such as opening the app, viewing profiles, and the number of search results, used to understand how the Service is used.
• Diagnostics: error reports describing where in the Service a problem occurred.
• Device: if you turn on push notifications, a push token, your platform, and the device name you have set.
• Technical: IP address, browser or device type, request logs kept by our hosting providers, and bot-detection signals collected by Cloudflare on our sign-up and sign-in pages.

We do not use your device's GPS location. Places in the Service are ones you choose.

3. How we use information

• To create and run your account, including checking that a profile is complete before its owner can see other members.
• To show you members connected to your places, and show what you have in common.
• To provide messaging, trips, community notes, and events.
• To send email and push notifications you can turn off, plus essential account and safety messages.
• To play podcast episodes in the Listen section.
• To keep the community safe: reviewing reports, enforcing our rules, and preventing abuse and fake accounts.
• To fix problems and improve the Service using usage and diagnostic information.
• To meet legal obligations.

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

4. Legal bases (EEA and UK members)

We process your data to perform our contract with you (your account, discovery, messaging), for our legitimate interests (safety, preventing abuse, fixing problems, improving the Service), with your consent (push notifications and the waitlist, which you can withdraw at any time), and to meet legal obligations.

5. Who can see your profile

Only signed-in members with a complete profile can see profiles. Other members can see your first name, photo, age if you added it, places, About and "I'd love to" answers, interests, and languages, and trips you have chosen to make visible. If there are no members in your city, discovery may widen to your region or country. Photos are stored privately and shown through links that expire.

6. Private messages

Your messages are visible to you and the person you are writing to. We do not use message content for analytics or advertising. We may access messages only when needed to run the Service, investigate a report, protect someone's safety, or comply with the law.

7. Sensitive information

We do not ask for your race, religion, health, or sexual orientation. Some profile answers, such as where you grew up or your family roots, may reveal your national or ethnic origin. We use that information only to run the Service and help you find people with shared experiences.

8. Service providers

• Supabase: database, login, and photo storage (United States).
• Vercel: website hosting.
• Resend: sending email.
• Mapbox: place search when you type a city.
• Expo: delivering push notifications to the mobile app.
• Cloudflare: bot detection on sign-up, sign-in, and password reset.
• Kit: our waitlist email list.
• Our podcast host: streaming episodes in the Listen section.
• Apple: app distribution.

We share information only with providers who help us run the Service, and only for that purpose. We may also share information if required by law, to protect someone's safety, or as part of a sale or reorganization of our business.

9. Cookies

We use only cookies and similar storage needed to keep you signed in and to protect our sign-up and sign-in pages from bots. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies. If that changes, we will ask for consent where required.

10. How long we keep information

• While your account is active, we keep your information to run the Service.
• When you delete your account, we delete your profile, photo, places, trips, the messages you sent, your notifications and preferences, and the blocks and reports connected to your account.
• Usage and error logs are kept without being linked to you after you delete your account.
• Copies may remain in our hosting provider's backups for a limited time before they are overwritten.

11. Security

We encrypt data in transit and rely on our hosting provider's encryption at rest. Access rules limit each member to the information they are allowed to see, photos are stored privately, and administrative access is limited to the founder. No system is perfectly secure, so please tell us if you notice a problem.

12. Your choices

You can edit your profile, turn notification categories on or off, turn off push notifications in your device settings, remove trips, block or report members, unsubscribe from the waitlist, and delete your account in the app or on the website.

13. Your California privacy rights

If you live in California, you may ask to know, delete, or correct the personal information we hold about you, and you will not be treated differently for doing so. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Send requests to stories@somewhereunfamiliar.com. We will verify your request using your account email.

14. Your EEA and UK privacy rights

If you are in the EEA or UK, you may ask to access, correct, erase, restrict, or object to our use of your data, receive a copy in a portable format, and withdraw consent at any time. You may also complain to your local data protection authority. Send requests to stories@somewhereunfamiliar.com.

15. International transfers

We are based in the United States, and our providers store data in the United States. When we transfer data from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, we rely on safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.

16. Children

The Service is only for adults 18 and over. Everyone must confirm they are 18 or older when signing up, and we do not accept an age under 18 on a profile. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we will delete it and close the account. Contact us if you have concerns.

17. Changes to this policy

If we make significant changes, we will tell you by email or in the app before they take effect, and update the date above.

18. Contact

stories@somewhereunfamiliar.com