Privacy policy

The short version

• We collect what you give us to build your profile and match you, plus what we need to run Minkee safely. Nothing more.
• We use your approximate location (about 1 km), rounded on your phone before it leaves the device. We never ask for precise GPS location.
• We don't sell your personal information, we don't show ads, and the app contains no advertising, analytics or tracking SDKs.
• Your data is stored with our hosting provider, Appwrite, in Frankfurt, Germany (EU).
• Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. They're stored on our servers so your matches can read them, and our moderators may review them when someone reports a conversation.
• Verification selfies are seen only by our review team and deleted after review. We don't use face-recognition software or create biometric templates.
• You can see, change, download and delete your information. Deleting your account removes your profile, photos, matches and messages within 30 days.

Who we are

This policy covers the Minkee dating app for Android (package com.minkeedating.android) and this website. Minkee is operated by [Company legal name], [registered address] ("Minkee", "we", "us"), which is the data controller responsible for your personal information.

For anything about privacy, email privacy@minkee.app. For safety concerns, email safety@minkee.app.

Minkee is only for adults aged 18 and over.

Information we collect

When you create an account

• With email — your email address and a password. Your password is stored by our authentication provider (Appwrite) only in hashed form; we can never see it. We email you a one-time code to confirm your address, and another if you reset your password.
• With "Continue with Google" — Google shares your name, email address and Google account identifier with us after you approve it on Google's sign-in page. We never receive your Google password, and we don't post anything to your Google account.

Your profile

• Required to use Minkee — first name, date of birth, gender, who you'd like to meet and at least two photos. We use your date of birth to confirm you're 18 or over and to show your age.
• Optional, if you choose to add them — pronouns, what you're looking for and relationship style, bio, interests, prompt answers, languages, height, job title, company, school and education level, lifestyle habits (drinking, smoking, cannabis, exercise, diet, sleep), pets, children and family plans, star signs, personality type, communication style, love language, hometown, nationality, marital status, marriage timeline, willingness to relocate, a match note and an opening move.
• Optional sensitive details — you can choose to add your sexual orientation, religion (including sect, how practising you are and how often you pray) and political views. These are never required. By adding them you give us your explicit consent to store them, show them where you've chosen to and use them in matching (for example, members who filter by religion). You can edit or remove them at any time in Profile, which withdraws that consent going forward.

Content you create

• Messages — text messages, voice messages, photos you send in chat with any caption, replies, edits, emoji reactions and answers to opening moves.
• Likes — who you like or super like, any comment you add, and the photo or prompt you liked.
• Message safety signals — if harmful-message warnings are on and you choose to send a message after an "Are you sure?" prompt, that choice is recorded with the message. The check itself runs on your phone; your typing isn't sent anywhere to be checked.

Verification

If you choose to verify your profile, you take a selfie copying a pose we show you, using your phone's camera app. We receive the selfie and which pose you were asked for. A member of our review team compares it with your profile photos by eye, records the result (verified or not, and why) and then deletes the selfie. Verification is optional.

Safety tools

• Reports — who you report, the reason, any details you write, and the message or match it relates to.
• Blocks — who you block and where you blocked them from.
• Hidden words — words you don't want to see in messages. Filtering happens on your phone.
• Date safety plans — the name of the person you're meeting, the date and time, the venue name and address, the activity, your notes, the names of people you shared the plan with, and whether you checked in afterwards.
• Chaperone (wali) links — the Minkee ID of the person you add as your chaperone, the name you give them, your relationship, and whether matches see the "chaperone present" badge. If someone adds you as their chaperone, we store your Minkee ID in their link.

Support requests and data requests

When you contact us from Help and support, we store the category, subject and message you write, and our reply. The app automatically adds your app version, Android version and device manufacturer and model so we don't have to ask. If you email us, we keep the email.

Settings and choices

Your discovery filters (such as age range, distance, and any filters you set on things like religion, education or family plans), notification, privacy and app preferences, marketing preference, snooze and travel mode settings, and — if you delete your account — the reason you chose and any feedback you write.

Location

If you allow it, the app uses Android's approximate location permission to show people near you. On your phone, the app rounds your coordinates to two decimal places (roughly 1 km) before anything is sent to us. We store those rounded coordinates, a short area code used to find people nearby (covering roughly 5 km), your city, country code and time zone. To turn coordinates into a city name, the app uses your phone's built-in geocoding service; on most Android phones that service is provided by Google, which receives the rounded coordinates to look up the place.

Location is only read when you set it up, tap to update it in Discover, or end travel mode — not continuously and never in the background. You can use Minkee without sharing location by turning on "Show people anywhere".

Travel mode: when you search for a place, the text you type is sent to your phone's geocoding service to find matching places. We don't keep your searches; we only store the place you pick, in the same rounded form.

Activity in the app

• Likes, super likes and passes, matches and unmatches, when you last opened each chat, and whether a chat is muted, pinned or archived.
• Profile visits — when you view someone's profile, we record a visit once per day so they can see who visited them. This is on by default; turn it off in Profile › Settings › Privacy › Profile visits.
• Whether you're online, when you were last active and when you're typing, so your matches can see it (each can be switched off — see your choices).

Technical information

When you sign in, our authentication provider creates a session and records, as standard, your IP address, the approximate country derived from it, and basic information about your device, operating system and app. Our servers also keep routine security logs. We use this to keep you signed in, to secure accounts and to investigate abuse.

Consent records

We record when you agreed to our terms and this privacy policy, when you confirmed you're 18 or over, and when you turn marketing on or off, together with the version of the document. These records can't be edited, so we can show we have your agreement.

Information from other people

Other members create information that relates to you — for example when they like you, message you, report or block you, or add you as their chaperone.

Information stored on your phone

The app keeps a small amount of information on your device so it works smoothly: your sign-in session, your user ID, email address and name (so you aren't signed out when you're offline), when you last read each chat, and copies of photos you've recently viewed. A verification selfie is held briefly in the app's private cache while it uploads. If Android device backup is turned on in your phone's settings, Android may include this app data in your Google account backup. Signing out clears your session from the device; uninstalling the app removes all of it.

What we don't collect

• Precise (GPS) location, or any location in the background.
• Your contacts, phone number, call logs, SMS or calendar.
• Your microphone in the background. Microphone access is used only while you hold the mic button to record a voice message, and only if you allow it.
• Your camera directly. The app has no camera permission; for verification it opens your phone's own camera app, and only the photo you take comes back to Minkee.
• Your photo library. You pick individual photos with Android's photo picker; we only receive the ones you choose.
• Payment information. Minkee is free and has no in-app purchases.
• Your advertising ID, or any data for advertising. There are no ad, analytics, attribution, crash-reporting or social-media SDKs in the app.

Before any photo is uploaded, the app re-saves it as a new image, which removes hidden metadata such as the GPS location and device details your camera may have stored in the file.

How we use your information

We only use your information for the purposes below. If you're in the EEA, UK or another place that requires it, the table also shows our legal basis.

How suggestions work. Discover shows members who are active and visible, who fit your filters (such as age, gender, distance and any others you set), and who are interested in someone like you. People you've blocked, been blocked by, already liked or recently passed are left out. Profiles that were active or updated most recently are shown first. We don't make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects using automated means alone.

What we never do: sell your information, use it for advertising, build advertising profiles, or use your photos, messages or profile to train artificial intelligence models.

What other members can see

Minkee is a dating app, so parts of your profile are shown to other members. Here's what the app shows, and to whom:

• Your profile — first name, age, photos, prompts, bio, interests and the optional details you've added — is shown to signed-in members according to your profile visibility setting: everyone, only people you've liked, or hidden from Discover. Your gender is shown unless you turn off Show my gender; your sexual orientation is shown only if you turn on Show my sexuality.
• Distance and city — members see a rounded distance (such as "3 km away") and your city, never your coordinates. You can hide distance, and you can hide your age.
• Your birthday — the app shows your age, not your date of birth.
• Likes — the person you like can see that you liked them, along with any comment.
• Profile visits — the person whose profile you view can see your visit, unless you turn off Profile visits.
• Matches see your messages and photos you send them, and — if you keep these on — your read receipts, typing indicator and online status. These settings work both ways: if you turn one off, you won't see it for others either.
• Badges — a verified badge if you're verified, and a "chaperone present" badge if you've linked a chaperone and chosen to show it. Your chaperone sees that you've linked them, but they don't get access to your chats.
• Snooze — if you snooze, your matches may see the reason you picked (for example, "Traveling").

Anything you send to another member — a message, a photo, your date plans — can be kept, screenshotted or shared by them. Please only share what you're comfortable with.

How we share information

We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We share it only in these situations:

• Service providers who run parts of Minkee for us, under contract, only on our instructions and not for their own purposes:
  • Appwrite (Appwrite Cloud) — hosting, database, file storage, authentication and account emails. All of the information in this policy is stored with Appwrite.
• Google — only in these specific cases: if you choose "Continue with Google", Google processes your sign-in under its own privacy policy; Google Play distributes the app and processes your download and install under its own terms; and your phone's built-in geocoding service (usually Google's) receives rounded coordinates or the place name you search for, as described in Location.
• Our team — a small number of authorised staff, on a need-to-know basis: moderators can see reports, report evidence and verification selfies; support staff can see support requests, deletion requests and consent records.
• For safety and legal reasons — to respond to valid legal requests, to protect someone from serious harm, to prevent fraud or abuse, or to enforce our terms. If we find child sexual abuse material we report it to the relevant authorities, as described in our child safety standards.
• Business transfers — if Minkee is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, your information may transfer as part of it. We'll tell you before it becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
• When you choose to — for example, when you share a date safety plan or your Minkee ID through your phone's share sheet, it goes only to the app and person you pick.

Where your information is stored

The app stores your information with Appwrite Cloud in its Frankfurt, Germany (EU) region. Our service providers and team members may access it from other countries. Where personal information is transferred out of the EEA or UK, we rely on an adequacy decision or put appropriate safeguards in place, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses (and the UK addendum). You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards.

How long we keep information

We keep information longer only when we're legally required to, for example to respond to a valid legal request.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in Profile › Settings › Account › Delete account, or by requesting deletion on the web if you can't get into the app.

When you confirm in the app, your profile is hidden from everyone straight away, your photos, prompt answers, likes, passes, profile visits, date plans and chaperone links are deleted, and you're signed out and can no longer sign in. We then delete everything else linked to your account — your sign-in details, profile record, settings, matches, messages and photos you sent in chat — within 30 days. The records we keep after that, and for how long, are listed above and on the delete account page.

Uninstalling the app does not delete your account.

Your rights and choices

Controls in the app

• Edit or remove profile details, including sensitive details, in Profile.
• Who sees you — profile visibility ("Who can see me"), Show my gender, Show my sexuality, Hide my age and Hide my distance: Profile. Snooze: Profile › Settings › Snooze.
• Activity signals — read receipts, typing indicator, online status and profile visits: Profile › Settings › Privacy.
• Location — turn on "Show people anywhere" in Discover filters, or remove Minkee's location permission in your phone's settings.
• Marketing — Profile › Settings › App preferences. It's off unless you turn it on.
• Get a copy of your data — Profile › Settings › Legal › Request a copy of your data, or email privacy@minkee.app. We'll send it in a commonly used, machine-readable format.
• Delete your account — Profile › Settings › Account › Delete account, or on the web.

Your legal rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access your personal information, correct it, delete it, receive a copy to take elsewhere (portability), restrict or object to how we use it, and withdraw consent at any time (this doesn't affect anything we did before you withdrew). To use any of these rights, contact privacy@minkee.app from the email on your account. We'll respond within one month, or sooner if your local law requires, and may need to confirm the account is yours first. We won't treat you differently for using your rights.

EEA and UK: you can also complain to your local data protection authority. We'd appreciate the chance to help first.

California and other US states: you have the right to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose; to delete and correct it; and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. In the past 12 months we've collected the categories described in this policy — identifiers, personal characteristics (including sensitive ones you choose to provide), approximate geolocation, photos, messages and other content, app activity, and inferences from your filters and activity used for matching — from you, your device and other members, for the purposes described above. We disclose them only to the service providers and in the situations described above. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in California law, and we use sensitive personal information only to provide the service you request, so the right to limit its use doesn't apply. You can use an authorised agent to make a request; we'll verify both of you.

Security

• All information travels between the app and our servers over encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS).
• Files you upload are stored encrypted and scanned for malware.
• Passwords are stored only in hashed form.
• Verification selfies and report evidence are kept apart from profile photos, and only our moderators can open them.
• Staff access is limited to the people who need it for their role.
• Hidden photo metadata, including GPS location, is removed on your phone before upload.

Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. No service is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password and never share sign-in codes. If you think your account has been accessed by someone else, email support@minkee.app straight away. If a data breach is likely to put you at risk, we'll tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Children

Minkee is not for anyone under 18. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up and don't let anyone younger than 18 continue. We don't knowingly collect information from minors. If we learn that someone under 18 is using Minkee, we remove the account. If you believe a minor is using Minkee, report the profile in the app or email safety@minkee.app. Read our child safety standards.

Changes to this policy

We'll update this policy when Minkee or the law changes. If a change is significant, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect and, where the law requires, ask for your consent again. The date at the top shows when it was last updated.

Contact us

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@minkee.app.
Postal address: [Company legal name], [registered address].