Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

JoinMe is an app for meeting people through real-world activities. It is operated by:

In this policy, "JoinMe", "we", "us" and "our" refer to the operator named above, who is the controller of your personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"). This policy covers the JoinMe apps for iOS and Android, the JoinMe web app, and the website at joinmesocial.com (together, the "Service").

2. The data we collect

2.1 Account data

When you create an account or sign in, we process:

• your email address;
• if you use Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google, an account identifier and the details that provider shares with us, such as your email address, your name if you allow it, and, for Google, a link to your profile picture;
• if you sign in with email and a password, your password, which we store only in hashed form and cannot read;
• technical records of your sign-ins and active sessions.

When you sign up or sign in, we record which version of our Terms you accepted and which version of this Privacy Policy was shown to you, how you signed in, and when. We store a new record only when one of these versions has changed. We keep these records for as long as your account exists (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).

2.2 Profile information

Your profile is what other people see. Some details are needed to create a profile: your name, date of birth, gender, height and at least one photo. Everything else is optional, including your bio, interests, work and job title, school, subject and education level, hometown, nationality, languages, pets, children and family plans, relationship type and what you're looking for, and your food, film and lifestyle preferences.

Your gender is the one you identify with. After you've finished setting up your profile, you can change it yourself once; after that, our support changes it on request, with no proof or reason needed. When it changes, we keep a private record of the change (the old and new value, when, and whether you or our support made it), so that activities meant only for women or only for men aren't misused. Only our moderators can see this record, and only when they handle a report about your account (legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

We ask for your date of birth. We use it only to confirm that you are at least 18 and to work out the age shown on your profile, which goes up by one automatically on your birthday. Other members only see your age, never your date of birth (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). If the date you enter is under 18, we refuse the sign-up and don't store it. If you already have an account and the date you give is under 18, we don't store it either; we pause the account while we check your age, as described in section 13. When you first give your date of birth or later correct it, we keep a private record of the change (the previous and new value, when, and whether you or our support made it) for 12 months, to prevent misuse of the 18+ rule. Only our moderators can see it, and only when they handle a report about your account.

2.3 Photos

We store the profile photos and activity photos you upload. The app accesses your camera or photo library only after you grant permission, and only uses the images you choose. We may resize or compress images so they load quickly.

2.4 Location

With your permission, the app uses your device's precise location while you are using it. It does not access your location in the background. We store your most recent coordinates, when they were last updated, and a general area name, so that we can show activities and people near you and calculate distances.

You can turn location access off at any time in your device settings. Without it, JoinMe can't show what's nearby or how far away things are.

2.5 Activities, connections and messages

• activities you create, including their title, description, time, meeting place, media and whether they are about dating or friendship;
• requests to join activities, whether and when they were accepted, and whether and when you or the host ended them;
• who you like or pass on, your matches, and which profiles you've already seen;
• the messages you send and receive, when they were sent, and how far you've read in each conversation;
• conversations you have chosen to hide.

Checks on your device. To nudge people towards kinder chats, the app checks a message when you tap Send, and the messages you receive, against a short list of harmful words and phrases (slurs, threats and sexual demands). This happens on your device. Nothing is sent to us for this check: we do not receive its result or whether a message was flagged, and nothing about the check is stored. The message itself is handled like any other chat message. If a message is flagged, the app asks you "Are you sure?" before you send it, or "Does this bother you?" when you receive it, and you decide what to do. If you then choose to report a message, section 2.6 applies.

2.6 Reports and blocks

If you block someone, we store that block so that we can hide the two of you from each other. You can see and undo your blocks in Settings.

If you report a person, activity or message, we store your report: who and what you reported, the reason, any details you add, and a copy of the reported text as it was at that moment. If you report from a conversation, this includes up to the last 50 messages from both people. Photos are not copied: the report keeps links to the reported person's profile photos at that moment and to a reported activity's photos. Those photos are held: if their owner deletes one, we keep it, at its hard-to-guess web address, until we dismiss the report or, if we acted on it, until we delete the report (section 9), and delete it at our next monthly clean-up after that. If the account is deleted, we move them to private storage that only we can access. For the reported account, we also keep its account ID, email address, phone number, when it signed up and last signed in and, for serious reports, IP addresses from our logs, so that we can act on the report and, if needed, pass it to the police. We also record how we handled the report.

The person you block or report is not notified, and they cannot see your report or who made it. If we act on a report, for example by warning them or by restricting their account while we look into a serious report, we tell them what we did and why, and may ask for their side, but we never tell them who reported them.

2.7 Preferences

The settings you choose for who and what you want to see, such as age range, distance and other filters, and your notification settings (which notifications you want).

Your language for messages from us (German or English). The app sets it once from your device language when you first save your profile and never overwrites a choice you made. You can change it in Settings → Messages from us. Only you can see it, and our servers read it only when we write to you, so that safety messages and emails show your language first. If it isn't set, we put German first.

2.8 Device and technical data

• a push notification token for your device, if you allow notifications;
• when you last opened the app and when you created your account. Other users don't see these times, only whether you were active today or joined recently (section 6);
• your device type, operating system and app version;
• your IP address, which our hosting provider processes when your device connects;
• crash and error reports, with technical details such as the error, your device model, operating system and app version. We configure them to leave out your name, email address and phone number, and to remove the parameters from web addresses. Sentry receives your device's IP address when the app sends a report and is set not to store it. They can contain a random installation ID and internal account IDs, which don't identify you by themselves. The same service also receives app-health data: whether an app session ended normally, and when the app stopped responding.
• when the app checks for updates, our update service (Expo) receives your IP address and a random installation ID, which doesn't identify you by itself.
• when you open the email-code, password sign-in or password-reset steps, or start filling in the sign-up form, a security check (Cloudflare Turnstile) that tells people from automated scripts. It processes your IP address and technical information about your device, browser or app and your connection, such as the user agent. It runs in your browser, or in a small browser window inside the app, and may store technical information in that browser's storage on your device; that is strictly necessary for the sign-in you asked for. It does not receive your email address, phone number or password.
• stored only on your device: the audience you last chose for your own activities, so the form can suggest it again; it stays on your device and is not sent to us. It is deleted when you sign out or delete your account.

2.9 When you contact us

If you email us, we process your message, your email address and anything else you choose to send us. If your email reports another user or content, we also write a short summary of it in our own words into a private log, without your email address, and may note which account it concerns.

If we ask you to confirm your age (section 13), we process the proof of age you send us and delete it right after checking.

2.10 When you visit joinmesocial.com

Our website does not use cookies, analytics, advertising tags, third-party fonts or any other third-party scripts. When you visit it, our hosting provider automatically records standard server logs, which contain your IP address, the date and time, the page you requested, your browser type and the referring page. These logs are used only to deliver the website and keep it secure.

3. Sensitive information

You can choose to add information to your profile that the GDPR treats as a special category of personal data:

• your sexual orientation;
• your religion or beliefs;
• your political views;
• your ethnicity;
• your drinking, smoking, cannabis and drug use, which may reveal information about your health.

All of these fields are optional. If you fill one in, it is shown on your profile. In addition, other users can filter the people and activities they see by religion, political views and ethnicity, which means your answers to those fields are used when someone applies such a filter. If you leave a field blank, it isn't shown and can't be used to find you by that attribute. We do not use any of these fields to rank or recommend anything (see section 5).

Other users can also filter the people and activities they see by other profile details, such as height, hair colour and eye colour. The filters a person chooses, including any religion, political views or ethnicity filter, are used to build their feed when it loads and are not stored in their account or profile.

We process this information only because you choose to provide it, on the basis of your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR). The app asks for this consent before you save any of these fields for the first time, and we record when you gave it. You can withdraw your consent for a detail by clearing the field in your profile or by emailing privacy@joinmesocial.com. Emailing works at any time, including if your account is suspended and you can't edit your profile; we then remove the detail for you (see section 11 for when we reply). Withdrawing does not affect processing that took place before you withdrew it.

4. How we use data and why

We only use personal data where the law allows it. Specifically:

Where we rely on legitimate interests, those interests are keeping JoinMe secure and working reliably for everyone who uses it, preventing misuse, and making the Service relevant to you. We only rely on them where they are not overridden by your interests and rights.

You need to give us your account data and the required profile details to use JoinMe, because we can't provide the Service without them. Everything else is optional.

We do not sell your personal data, use it for advertising, share it with data brokers, or track you across other companies' apps and websites.

5. Personalisation

To make the explore feed useful, we automatically decide the order in which activities appear. Your filters decide which activities can appear at all. So does who a host says an activity is for (women, men or everyone): we compare that with the gender on your own profile, and you only see and can join activities meant for you. If your gender is set to "Prefer not to say", you only see activities open to everyone. Among the activities that can appear, the order depends on:

• Relevance: interests you share with the host, how far away the host is (based on their location rounded to roughly one kilometre), and how recently the host last opened JoinMe (in the last day, in the last week, or longer ago).
• How people respond to a host: how often other users ask to join a host's activities compared with how often they pass on them. This gives every host a score that moves their activities up or down in other people's feeds. New hosts start with a neutral score, and a handful of responses can't move anyone to the top or the bottom.
• What you respond to: from your most recent swipes, we learn which host traits you tend to ask to join or pass on, namely hair colour, hair style, age range and height range, and move activities by hosts with those traits up or down in your feed. A trait only counts after you have responded to at least five hosts who share it, and only traits that hosts have added to their own profiles are used.
• What you've already seen, and variety: we mix hosts and types of activity so that no single host or type fills your feed.

These scores are calculated on our servers each time your feed loads. They are never shown to you or to other users, and they only affect the order in which activities appear, not whether you can use JoinMe or contact anyone. We do not make decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

The ordering never uses the sensitive information described in section 3, nationality, or anything a host hasn't added to their own profile. You can shape what you see at any time by changing your filters, and where this ordering relies on our legitimate interests you can object to it (section 11).

When you save an activity, a profile text or your name, our servers also check it automatically against a short list of clearly prohibited words (see section 8.3 of the Terms of Service). Text that matches is not saved. This check uses only the text you are saving, and it does not create any new record about you. It is a first check: anything it does not catch is handled when someone reports it.

6. What other users can see

• Your profile: your name, photos, age, bio and any other fields you have filled in.
• Whether you're active or new: a label showing that you opened JoinMe in the last 24 hours, and a label showing that you joined in the last 14 days. Other users can also filter by recent activity. We don't show other users the exact time you were last active or when you signed up, but because these labels change over time, someone who checks your profile repeatedly could estimate roughly when you were last active or when you joined.
• Your approximate location: your coordinates rounded to roughly one kilometre, which the app uses to show how far away you are. Other users never see your exact location or exact coordinates.
• Your activities: including the meeting place you set, so that people can find it. Please don't use your home address as a meeting place.
• Your messages: visible to the people you're chatting with, together with when each message was sent. They can also see when you've read their messages (shown as a double tick).
• Your requests and matches: a host can see that you've asked to join their activity, and both of you can see when a request was accepted and whether you or the host ended it.

Photos are stored at hard-to-guess web addresses: anyone who has the address of a photo can open it without an account. Anything you share with other users can be seen and, for example by screenshot, copied by them. Please think carefully before sharing contact details or other personal information.

7. Who we share data with

7.1 Service providers

We use carefully selected providers to run JoinMe. They process personal data only on our instructions, under data processing agreements, and only for the purposes below, except where a note below says otherwise.

About geocoding: to add the country to the place name shown on your profile, the app asks the geocoder of your phone's operating system (Apple on iPhone, Google on Android) what place lies at your location. We send it your coordinates rounded to a grid of about 1 km, not your exact position. The geocoder answers with the place names it knows for that spot: country, region, city, district and county. As Apple or Google provides the service, it also sees your device's IP address. We show only the country, next to the city you typed. The other names are used on your device to check that your typed city matches your location. We do not store any of these names from the geocoder.

About notifications: a notification only says that something happened: that you have a new message (for example "New message · Neue Nachricht"), a new join request, or that your request was accepted. It contains no names, no message text and no activity title, so none of that shows on a locked screen. So that a tap opens the right screen, it carries an internal ID of the chat or activity, which contains no names or content. It is passed through Expo to Apple or Google for delivery to your device. You see the details in the app. You can turn off message or match notifications in the app under Settings → Notifications, and all notifications in your device settings.

About maps: when you view a map in the app, the map provider receives technical information, such as your IP address and the area of the map you're viewing, in order to load it.

About the security check: Cloudflare runs the check for us as our processor. Separately, as a controller in its own right, Cloudflare also uses the same technical signals to improve its detection of automated traffic, based on its legitimate interests. That use is governed by Cloudflare's own Turnstile privacy addendum, not by our instructions. Cloudflare states that it uses these signals only to detect automated traffic and to improve that detection.

7.2 Other users

We share the information described in section 6 with other JoinMe users.

7.3 Authorities and legal requirements

We disclose personal data to authorities or other third parties only where we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to protect someone's life or physical safety, or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

7.4 Business transfers

If JoinMe is sold, merged or transferred, personal data may be transferred to the new operator, who will remain bound by this policy. We will tell you in advance.

8. International transfers

Our database and file storage are located in the European Union. Some of our providers are based in, or may access data from, countries outside the European Economic Area, in particular the United States. Where that happens, we make sure the transfer is protected by an adequacy decision of the European Commission, including the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it, or by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR). You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards using the contact details below.

9. How long we keep data

• Your account and profile: for as long as your account exists.
• Terms and Privacy versions: the record described in section 2.1, for as long as your account exists.
• Suspended accounts: a suspended account can't be deleted in the app. Email privacy@joinmesocial.com and we reply within one month. We may keep what an open case needs.
• When you delete your account: we delete your profile, photos, activities and their photos, your matches, likes, requests and preferences, your blocks, and your notification tokens. We also delete every conversation you are part of, for both people, including the other person's messages, and, for activities you host, every request and conversation on them. The exceptions are safety reports and preservation requests from authorities, described below.
• Reports: we keep each report with the copy of the reported content and, for the reported account, its account ID, email address, phone number, sign-up and last sign-in time, any IP addresses we added for a serious report, and the reported photos. This continues if an account involved is deleted: the report no longer points to an account in the app, but we keep it and move the reported photos to private storage that only we can access. After we close a report, we keep it for 12 months if we acted on it, or 30 days if we dismissed it, and delete it within the following month, unless an authority asks us to keep it longer or we need it for a legal claim.
• Preservation requests: if an authority asks us in writing, we keep a copy of the data we still hold about the named account for 90 days (90 more days on a further written request), also after the account is deleted, then delete it.
• Backups: deleted data may remain in encrypted backups for a limited period until those backups are overwritten in their normal rotation. Backups are not used for anything else.
• Date of birth changes: the private record of each change for 12 months, then deleted.
• Gender changes: the private record of each change for 12 months, then deleted. We only keep a note that you've used your one change in the app for as long as your account exists.
• Spam and flood limits: a record of your account, the kind of action (message, join request, activity or report) and its time, deleted automatically after 2 days. We use it only to limit how many of these an account can send.
• Safety records: if we restrict or close an account because of a serious breach of our Terms, or because the person is under 18, we may keep the information needed to prevent that person from registering again (such as the account ID, email address and phone number) and to deal with any related claims, for as long as necessary to protect our users. For an account closed because the person is under 18, we remove the profile details and photos and cancel their activities. What stays is hidden from other members: the account record (with the age given, app settings and notification token), the cancelled activities, their messages in existing chats, and what a safety report holds.
• Emails with us: for as long as needed to deal with your request, and longer only where the law requires it or we need them for a legal claim. The log summary of an emailed report is kept like a report: after we close it, for 12 months if we acted on it, or 30 days if we dismissed it.
• Website server logs: only for as long as necessary to operate and secure the website, after which our hosting provider deletes them.

10. How we protect data

We use technical and organisational measures appropriate to the sensitivity of the data we handle. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Your sign-in session is kept on your device: in the phone apps in the device's secure storage, and in the web app in your browser's storage until you sign out. The app also stores a few small settings on your device, such as whether you have already seen the safety tips; they never leave your device. Access to personal data is limited to what is needed to run and support the Service, and crash reports leave out your name, email address and phone number, and Sentry is set not to store the IP address it receives.

No system is completely secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will notify the competent authority and, where the law requires it, you.

11. Your rights

Under the GDPR, you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy;
• correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• delete your data;
• restrict how we use your data in certain circumstances;
• receive the data you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format, and have it sent to another provider (data portability);
• withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting processing carried out before you withdrew it;
• complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU country where you live or work, or where you think a breach occurred.

The supervisory authority responsible for us is the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht, BayLDA), www.lda.bayern.de.

How to use your rights

• You can view and edit most of your data directly in the app.
• You can delete your account in the app under My Profile → Settings → Delete Account. If you can't use the app, see how to delete your account by email. If your account is suspended, it can't be deleted in the app: email privacy@joinmesocial.com and we reply within one month. We may keep what an open case needs (Art. 17(3)(e) GDPR).
• You can turn off location access and notifications in your device settings, and message or match notifications in the app under Settings → Notifications.
• For anything else, email privacy@joinmesocial.com. We will reply within one month. For complex requests this may be extended by up to two further months, in which case we'll tell you why. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we act on a request, to protect your account.

Exercising your rights is free of charge.

12. Additional information for US residents

If you live in a US state with a consumer privacy law, such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia or Texas, the following also applies.

What we collect. In the last 12 months we have collected identifiers (such as your email address, account identifiers and IP address); personal characteristics (such as age, gender, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity, if you choose to share them); professional and education information (if you choose to share it); photos; precise geolocation; information about your use of the Service; and inferences drawn to personalise your feed. We collect these from you and your device, for the purposes described in section 4, and disclose them only to the recipients described in section 7.

Sensitive personal information. Some of this is sensitive personal information: precise geolocation, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, racial or ethnic origin, the contents of your messages, and your account login credentials. We use it only as necessary to provide the Service you have asked for, and not to infer characteristics about you.

No sale or sharing. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not "share" it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We have not done so in the last 12 months. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. Because we don't sell or share data, we have nothing to opt you out of, but we treat Global Privacy Control signals as a valid opt-out request. We also do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing.

Your rights. You have the right to know what personal information we have collected about you and to access it, and to request that we correct or delete it. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. To make a request, email privacy@joinmesocial.com. We will verify your request by confirming it through the email address linked to your account. You may use an authorised agent, who must provide proof that you have authorised them.

Appeals. If we decline your request, you can appeal by replying to our decision. If we deny your appeal, you may contact your state Attorney General.

13. Age requirement

JoinMe is only for people aged 18 or over, and our systems reject sign ups with a date of birth under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. You can correct your date of birth yourself once in the app; after that, if it is wrong, contact us and we will correct it.

If someone reports an account, or we have another reason to think that its owner may be under 18, we may suspend the account until the person confirms their age. We may then ask you by email for proof of age, for example a photo of an identity document on which everything except your name, date of birth and photo is covered. We use it only to check your age and delete it right after checking; we keep only a note that the check was done and what it showed. If you do not confirm that you are 18 or over within 14 days, or we learn that someone under 18 has an account, we will close it, remove its profile details and photos and cancel its activities. We keep, hidden from other members, the account record, the cancelled activities, their messages in existing chats and what we must keep for safety reports, as described in section 9. If you believe this has happened, please contact us.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Service or the law changes. The date at the top shows when it was last changed. If we make significant changes, we will let you know in the app or by email before they take effect. Where a change requires your consent, we will ask for it.

15. Contact us

For any question about this policy or your personal data, email privacy@joinmesocial.com, or write to the address in section 1.