Privacy Policy
NearMatch · Effective 6 October 2026
1. Who we are
NearMatch is a dating app for adults (18+) who want to meet in person. You check in at a real place (a bar, a café, a gym, a park), you see the other people checked in there, and when two people like each other they have a short window, shown in the app, to meet and confirm the meeting with a 4-digit code.
The controller of your personal data is Mohamed said Raoudh, 37D avenue des Genottes, 95800 Cergy, France ("we", "us"). Privacy questions and requests: [email protected].
2. What we collect and why
| Data | Why | Legal basis (EU/UK) |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in identifiers from Apple or Google (a stable account ID; your email address if the provider shares and verifies it; for Apple, an encrypted token) | Create your account and let you sign in. The Apple token lets us disconnect NearMatch from your Apple ID when you delete your account. | Contract |
| Phone number | Verified once by SMS (sent through Twilio) when you sign up, to keep out fake and duplicate accounts; afterwards used only to help you recover your account by SMS, for example if you lose access to your Apple or Google account. It is never used to sign in and never shown to other users. | Contract; legitimate interests (safety, fraud prevention) |
| Profile: first name, date of birth (we show your age, not the date), 2 to 5 photos, bio, interests, lifestyle answers, zodiac signs | Show your profile to people at the same venue and to your matches; enforce the 18+ rule. | Contract; consent for optional fields |
| Verification selfie (optional) | Compared automatically with your profile photos to award the "verified" badge. Deleted right after the check; we keep only the result. | Your explicit consent |
| Precise location, only while the app is open | On your phone: find venues around you and notice when you leave the venue. At check-in: your coordinates, their accuracy and whether your phone reports a simulated location are sent once to our servers to confirm you are within about 100 m of the venue. We do not store your coordinates; we store the venue's identifier and name and your check-in and check-out times. | Consent (system permission); contract |
| Presence | While you are checked in, people at the same venue can see your profile, and everyone sees how many people are there. Presence ends when you leave, when you walk away, after 3 hours without any contact from your app, and after 12 hours at most. | Contract |
| Likes, passes, matches, meeting codes | Run matching and the meeting countdown. | Contract |
| Messages | Deliver your conversations with your matches. | Contract |
| Reports, blocks and conversation copies kept for safety | Review reports and protect users (see section 5). | Legitimate interests (safety); legal obligations |
| Consent records (which terms and which consent you accepted, and when) | Prove what you agreed to. | Legal obligation |
| Push notification token | Notify you of matches, messages and expiring matches. | Consent (system permission) |
| Technical data: IP address, device and app version, error reports | Keep the service secure and working, and fix crashes. | Legitimate interests (security) |
We do not sell your personal data, we do not share it for advertising, and the app contains no advertising or analytics SDKs.
3. Automated checks and AI processing
To keep NearMatch real and safe, and only with your consent, your profile photos and the optional verification selfie are checked by an automated AI service provided by Anthropic, PBC (United States), acting on our behalf. Photos are checked for prohibited content (for example nudity, people who appear to be minors, violence or hate) and to confirm that they are real photos of a person. The selfie is compared with your photos; no biometric template is kept, and the selfie is deleted immediately after the check. We ask for this consent in the app, together with your acceptance of our Terms and this policy, before your first photo upload.
Your first name, your bio and your chat messages are never sent to an AI service: our own servers check them against a list of prohibited terms (for example hate, content involving minors and, in names and bios, sexual content, contact details and scams), and refuse text that matches.
These are automated decisions about your content (a photo, a name, a bio or a message can be refused, a verification can fail). They do not affect your legal rights, and you can ask a person to review any of them at [email protected]. Depending on where you live, the selfie comparison may count as biometric processing; it only happens if you choose to verify and give your explicit consent.
You can withdraw your AI-processing consent at any time by writing to [email protected]. Because every photo on NearMatch is checked, you will then not be able to add new photos.
4. Who receives your data
Other users see your profile (first name, age, photos, bio, interests, lifestyle, zodiac, verified badge) while you are checked in at the same venue, and your matches see it afterwards. Your phone number, email, exact location and date of birth are never shown.
Service providers process data for us under contract:
| Provider | What for |
|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (servers in Paris, France) | Hosting the NearMatch service |
| Neon (database in Frankfurt, Germany) | Storing account, profile, match and message data |
| Cloudflare (Cloudflare R2 storage and network) | Storing and delivering photos; protecting the service |
| Twilio (United States) | Sending SMS verification codes, at sign-up and for account recovery |
| Anthropic (United States) | Automated checks on photos and the optional selfie, only with your consent (section 3) |
| Google Places (Google Maps Platform, United States) | Venue search: your phone sends its location directly to Google to list nearby places. Venue details are looked up by the venue's public identifier only. |
| Apple and Google | Sign in with Apple or Google; push delivery through Apple Push Notification service and Firebase Cloud Messaging |
| Expo (650 Industries, United States) | Relaying push notifications to Apple and Google |
| Sentry (United States) | Error reports, when enabled |
We may also disclose data when the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or to report child sexual abuse material to the competent authorities (see our Child Safety Standards).
5. How long we keep data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account, profile, photos, likes, matches, check-in history, blocks you made, consent records, phone number, email and sign-in identifiers | Until you delete your account. Deleting in the app is immediate and permanent: this data is erased, and we revoke NearMatch's access to your Apple ID if you used Sign in with Apple. We keep only an empty record with an internal ID and no personal details, so that reports about the account stay linked to their evidence. If you ask us to delete your account without the app (see getnearmatch.com/account/delete), we do it within 30 days. |
| Banned accounts | The phone number, email and Apple or Google identifiers of a banned account stay on its record, even if it is deleted, for as long as the ban lasts and at most 24 months, so that the same person cannot open a new account. Everything else is erased as above. |
| Verification selfie | Deleted immediately after the check |
| Messages | Deleted when the match ends: when the countdown runs out, when one of you ends the match or blocks the other, or when one of you leaves the venue before meeting. After a confirmed meeting, the conversation stays until one of you ends it, blocks the other or deletes their account, or until one of the two accounts is banned. |
| Conversation copies kept for safety | When you block someone, we keep a copy of your conversation for 30 days so that a later report can be reviewed. When a report is filed, we keep a copy for up to 24 months. If our team dismisses the report, the copy is deleted within 90 days of that decision. Only our moderators can see these copies. |
| Blocks | Until you unblock the person, or until one of you deletes their account |
| Reports filed by or about an account | Up to 24 months, including after that account is deleted: for safety, to stop banned users from coming back, and to defend legal claims |
| Live presence at a venue | Until you leave; it ends after 3 hours without any contact from your app, and after 12 hours at most |
| Server logs | A short period for security and debugging, then deleted |
| Backups | Deleted data can remain in encrypted backups until they are overwritten on a rolling basis |
6. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you can ask to access, correct, export or delete your data, to restrict or object to some processing, and to withdraw any consent (this does not affect processing done before). You can delete your account yourself in the app (Profile, Delete account). If you cannot use the app, ask us as explained at getnearmatch.com/account/delete; we handle deletion requests within 30 days. For anything else, write to [email protected]; we answer within one month.
In the EU, the EEA and the UK you can also complain to your data protection authority. California residents: we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you.
7. International transfers
NearMatch is available worldwide, and some of the providers above are in the United States. Where the law requires it, these transfers rely on an adequacy decision (such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, for certified providers) or on Standard Contractual Clauses.
8. Security
Traffic is encrypted (TLS). Sessions use short-lived tokens that are rotated and can be revoked. Photos are uploaded directly to storage through short-lived signed links. Access to production data is limited to the people who run the service.
9. Adults only
NearMatch is only for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18, and accounts that appear to belong to minors are removed. Report a suspected minor in the app (flag icon, Report, "Appears to be under 18") or at [email protected].
10. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we tell you in the app before the change applies. The date at the top shows the current version.
11. Contact
Mohamed said Raoudh, 37D avenue des Genottes, 95800 Cergy, France · [email protected]