Welcome to SoulSinq. We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our mobile application and related services (the “Service”). If you disagree with its terms, please discontinue use of the Service.
1. Who is responsible for your data
The data controller for the Service is the person who operates it:
[OPERATOR: FULL LEGAL NAME]
[POSTAL ADDRESS, COUNTRY]
Email: soulsinq@gmail.com
Because the operator is established in Switzerland, outside the European Union, the following represent SoulSinq in the Union. You can write to them about anything in this policy:
- Representative under Article 27 GDPR: [EU REPRESENTATIVE: NAME, ADDRESS, EMAIL]
- Legal representative under Article 13 of the Digital Services Act: [DSA LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE: NAME, ADDRESS, EMAIL]
2. Information we collect
2.1 Information you provide directly
- Identity: first name, optional last name, date of birth, gender identity (with an optional self-description) and the gender(s) you are interested in meeting. Who you want to meet can reveal your sexual orientation, a special category of data: we ask for your explicit consent before storing it, and it is never shown on your profile.
- Contact: email address.
- Location: the city you choose from our city list during sign-up. We do not collect GPS positions and we do not derive your location from your IP address; matching distance is computed from your chosen city.
- Profile & questionnaire: your interests, values, relationship goals, lifestyle answers and the compatibility questionnaire - the substance of how SoulSinq matches you.
- Special-category data (only with your explicit consent): answers about religion/spirituality, politics/worldview and physical intimacy, including choosing “faith” among your top values. For each of these topics the app asks before showing its questions: without a yes, they are neither asked nor stored. If you withdraw that consent later (Settings → Privacy choices), the answers are erased. They are never shown to other users.
- Photos: your profile photographs. Per SoulSinq's core design they are revealed progressively - other users first see a blurred version, which becomes visible tile by tile as your interactions with a match deepen.
- Communications: text messages and voice notes you send to your Connects, and your answers in the in-app games you play together. If you edit or delete a message, it changes or disappears for both of you straight away, and we keep a copy of what was originally sent (the text, or the recording in the case of a voice note) so that a report about the conversation can still be reviewed. That copy is never shown to the other person; only a trained moderator can open it, and only from a report, which is logged. It is included in your data export and it is erased with the rest of your account.
- Reports: when you report someone, or someone reports you, we keep with the report a copy of the conversation between the two of you as it stood at that moment (up to its last 200 messages, voice notes included). A block deletes the conversation for both people; the copy is what lets a moderator still review the report. Only a trained moderator can open it, and every opening is logged. It is deleted 12 months after the report is decided, or earlier when either account is erased.
- Account credentials: handled by Firebase Authentication (your password is stored only as a secure hash, or you sign in with Google/Apple).
2.2 Information collected automatically
- Device & push: device platform, the push notification registration token needed to deliver notifications you have enabled, your device's timezone, which we use only to keep quiet hours in your own local time, and the language you use in the app, which we use only to write your notifications and our emails to you in it.
- Crash reports: technical crash diagnostics via Firebase Crashlytics, so we can fix defects. Crash reports are not used for advertising.
- Matching activity: your interactions with suggested profiles and Connects (interested/pass, messages sent, games completed, reveal progress) - this drives the progressive photo reveal and improves your suggestions.
- Service logs: minimal technical logs for security and reliability. Our hosting provider records in them the IP address and time of each request to our servers; they are kept for 30 days. We deliberately do not log message contents.
2.3 Information from third parties
If you sign in with Google (or, on iOS, with Apple), we receive your name and email address from that provider, subject to your settings there.
3. How and why we use your information
| Purpose | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|
| Creating and managing your account; operating the matching algorithm; suggesting compatible profiles; the progressive photo-reveal feature; messaging, voice notes and games between Connects | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Using who you want to meet (which can reveal your sexual orientation) to suggest people | Your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)), asked before it is stored. The Service cannot suggest anyone without it; you withdraw it by deleting your account |
| Storing your religion/spirituality, politics/worldview and physical intimacy answers and using them in matching | Your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)) - optional, revocable in Settings → Privacy choices, which erases the answers |
| Telling you by email of a moderation decision about your account, or about a report you made | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)): Articles 16 and 17 of the EU Digital Services Act |
| Push notifications about your matches and conversations | Performance of a contract; you control categories in Settings and can disable them entirely in your device settings |
| Screening uploaded photos for prohibited content (automated screening by Google Cloud Vision, followed - where it flags something - by review of that photograph by an authorised member of our team), handling reports and blocks (including reading the conversation a report is about, and keeping the copy described in Section 2.1), preventing fraud and abuse, rate limiting | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)): keeping the Service safe |
| Writing a short AI summary of why two people are compatible, with Google Gemini (on Vertex AI, in the EU) | Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), given by both people: a summary is written only when you and the other person have both turned it on. Only the names of the shared topics that are not private are sent - never people's names, photos, messages or answers. Withdraw it at any time in Settings → Privacy choices; any summary can be reported from the app, which takes it down at once. No automated decision with legal effect is made about you. |
| Crash reporting and service diagnostics | Legitimate interest: a working, secure app |
| Anonymous usage analytics | Only with your consent (Settings → Privacy choices); currently no analytics SDK is active in the app |
| Complying with legal obligations and enforcing our Terms | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)); legitimate interest |
We do not use your photographs for facial recognition, and we do not make automated decisions about you that produce legal or similarly significant effects.
4. The progressive photo-reveal feature
When you upload photographs, they are stored securely on our EU servers and are never shown directly to other users. A match first sees a fully blurred rendering; as you and your match interact, tiles of the photo become visible. No other user ever receives the original file - only the composited, partially revealed image is delivered to them. Where our automated screening flags a photograph, an authorised member of our team views the original in order to decide it, and every such access is logged. You keep full control and can delete your photos at any time.
5. Sharing of your information
5.1 With other users
Your profile information (first name, age, city, and the profile content you chose to share) is shown to users you are suggested to or matched with, and your photos progressively per Section 4. A match also sees how compatible you two are, overall and on your three strongest topics in common (which can include finances, closeness or family history), as percentages, never your answers themselves. Your last name, email, exact birthdate and your special-category answers are never shown to other users.
5.2 With service providers (processors)
We use a small set of providers, bound by data-processing agreements, to run the Service:
| Provider | Role | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud / Firebase (Google Ireland Ltd.) | Hosting, file storage, realtime updates, AI summaries (Gemini on Vertex AI) | EU (Belgium; realtime updates in Google's EU multi-region) |
| Google Firebase and Google Cloud (Google Ireland Ltd.) | Authentication, push delivery (FCM), crash reporting (Crashlytics), automated photo screening (Cloud Vision) | Google's global infrastructure, which can include the United States (see Section 10) |
| Neon Inc. | Database hosting | EU (Frankfurt, Germany) |
| [EMAIL PROVIDER] | Sending the emails about moderation decisions | [EMAIL PROVIDER LOCATION] |
| Apple / Google app stores & RevenueCat | Payment processing for optional subscriptions, when offered | Per their own policies |
5.3 For legal reasons and business transfers
We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the rights and safety of our users, and in the event of a merger, acquisition or asset sale your information may be transferred to the acquiring entity (you would be notified of any such change).
5.4 No sale of personal data
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers.
6. Data retention
- Your data is retained while your account is active.
- If you delete your account (Settings → Delete my account), it is disabled immediately and all personal data - profile, photos, messages, voice notes, game history - is physically erased from our systems within 72 hours (at most 90 days in case of technical failure, which we monitor).
- Notification history is automatically deleted after 90 days.
- The copy of a conversation kept with a report is deleted 12 months after the report is decided (long enough for the decision to be contested), or earlier when either account is erased.
- If a report you made, or a report about you, is still being reviewed when you delete your account, the erasure waits for its decision: normally within 24 hours, never more than 14 days. This keeps the evidence in front of the person deciding (GDPR art. 17(3)(e)).
- If we ban an account for a serious breach of our Terms, we keep it closed, with the evidence of the breach, instead of erasing it on request, for 12 months after the ban, to defend the decision and answer the authorities (GDPR art. 17(3)(b) and (e)). It is then erased like a deleted account.
- We may retain minimal records where required to comply with legal obligations or resolve disputes.
7. Data security
All traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS) and stored encrypted at rest. Free-text answers from the earlier version of our questionnaire carry an additional application-layer encryption, with a key held separately from the database. Access is restricted, uploads are size- and content-validated, and abuse is rate-limited. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we apply current industry practice and monitor continuously.
8. Your privacy rights
Under the GDPR (and similar laws where applicable) you have the right to: access a copy of your data; rectify inaccurate data; erasure; restriction of processing; data portability (a structured, machine-readable export); object to processing based on legitimate interests; and withdraw any consent at any time without affecting prior processing.
- In the app: edit your profile and answers at any time, change your consents in Settings → Privacy choices, download a copy of your data (Settings → Download my data, which hands you a JSON file straight away), and delete your account in Settings.
- By email: soulsinq@gmail.com for anything you cannot do in-app. We answer within 30 days.
- Complaint: you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection supervisory authority.
Users in Switzerland have the same rights under the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), and can complain to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). Religious and political views and the intimate sphere are sensitive data under the FADP too, handled with the same explicit consent.
9. Children's privacy
SoulSinq is intended solely for users who are 18 years of age or older. You tell us your date of birth when you create your account and we refuse any sign-up below 18; we do not check that date against an identity document, so the age you give us is a declaration you make. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18 we close it at once and erase its data, once any report involving it has been decided and, where an adult was involved, the evidence has gone to the authorities. If you believe a minor is using the Service, or has given us information, contact us at soulsinq@gmail.com and we will act on it without delay.
10. International data transfers
The Service is hosted in the European Union (Belgium and Germany). Some Google services we rely on run on Google's global infrastructure and can process limited data outside the EU, notably in the United States: sign-in (Firebase Authentication), push delivery (Firebase Cloud Messaging), crash reports (Crashlytics) and photo screening (Cloud Vision). For those transfers we rely on the EU-US and Swiss-US Data Privacy Frameworks, under which Google is certified, and on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
11. Changes to this policy
When we make material changes we will update the effective date above and notify you in the app or by email. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
12. Contact
SoulSinq - Privacy
[OPERATOR: FULL LEGAL NAME], [POSTAL ADDRESS, COUNTRY]
Email: soulsinq@gmail.com
The same address is our single electronic point of contact under Articles 11 and 12 of the EU Digital Services Act, for users and for authorities alike. Write in English and we will reply in English; a person reads it, not only an automated system.