Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

Authentication providers

You sign in with a third-party provider. When you use Google or Apple sign-in, we receive your name, email address, and (if available) a profile photo from that provider. We do not receive your password.

Phone number

We verify a phone number by sending a one-time code over SMS or, if you ask, reading it to you in an automated phone call. We store a one-way, irreversible fingerprint of the number to ensure each person has one account, to support safety, and - only if you turn on contact matching - to let members who already have your number find you (see "Contacts" below); we do not retain the raw phone number after verification.

Contacts (optional, off by default)

If you turn on contact matching and press "Sync contacts," the phone numbers in your address book are sent to us over an encrypted connection so we can check them against the verified numbers of members who have also turned matching on. Each number is converted immediately into a one-way, irreversible fingerprint; we do not store or log the raw numbers, and the fingerprints from a sync are kept only while matching runs and are deleted when it finishes. What remains afterward is the resulting matches - which members' verified numbers appeared in your contacts - and a small record of the sync itself (when it ran and how many numbers were accepted). We read only phone numbers - never names, emails, or anything else from your address book - and a sync happens only when you press the button.

Profile information

A profile photo you upload, and optional details you choose to add - a short bio, age, gender identity, cultural background, interest tags, and the hobbies you join. Gender identity and cultural background are sensitive; see "Sensitive information" below.

Username

Every account is given a username automatically when it is created - a made-up pair of words and four digits, such as brave_otter_4821. You can change it later to any unused username you like. Your username is how other members see you everywhere in the app except your profile - on events you create or join, in the Local forum and event comments, in event chats, among friends and contact matches, and in the notifications they receive. Your name stays on your profile, next to your username, and any signed-in member who types your username exactly can open your profile. If your account does not have a username yet, your first name and last initial are shown instead. When someone writes @ in a post or a comment, Valentree suggests their friends and members whose username begins with what they type. When you delete your account your username is removed from your profile and retired permanently - nobody else can ever take it.

User-uploaded content

Photos you upload, Local posts and event comments, and messages you send in event group chats and in one-to-one chats with your friends. This content may be reviewed by automated tools and our team - for example, when it is reported - and removed if it breaks our rules.

Neighbourhood postings, businesses and listing chats

Things you post in the Neighbourhood - items for sale, homes for rent, jobs, local news - with their text, photos, details such as a price or a rent, any contact details you add (a phone number, a KakaoTalk or WhatsApp ID, an email address or a link), and the place they are shown, with the address you pick if you choose to show its exact spot (a home for sale always does); businesses you add, with their name, description, photos, hours, the contact details you add (such as a phone number, email address, website, social link or KakaoTalk or WhatsApp ID) and, if you choose to show its exact spot, the address you pick; profiles you make to post under, with their name and any photo and short description you add; and the messages you send and receive in a chat about a posting. Postings and businesses are published as soon as you post them and are not reviewed first. Members can report one from its page in the app, and anyone can report one to us by email at moderation@valentree.com. Business details are not verified.

Event participation data

Events you create, join, or request; private attendance observations you submit about other participants and they submit about you (each is one person's individual observation, not verified attendance); ratings you give and receive; records of late departures and late cancellations; and attendance and no-show records kept from before attendance observations were introduced.

Approximate and location-related data

The area you choose for yourself, which is saved to your account so we can show you what is happening nearby; the neighborhood/area you set for an event; and, with your permission, your device's location to show nearby meetups. A neighborhood is shown publicly on listings; an event's exact address is revealed only to the people who join it and to the person who created it. The area you choose for yourself is stored only to about a tenth of a mile and is deleted with your account. It and the community you are viewing also decide which local ads you see in the Neighbourhood banner; it is not used for tracking and never leaves our servers to target you anywhere else. Other members never see it as you saved it, unless you place a posting or a business at your area and choose to show its exact spot. A Neighbourhood posting or business is placed at your area or at an address you pick. Unless you choose to show its exact spot, it is stored and shown only to about 1 km: other members see a nearby place name, a distance and that rounded area, never your address. If you choose the exact spot, other members see a pin there and the address you picked, if any. A home for sale always shows its address and exact location.

Moderation and reporting information

Reports you submit or that are submitted about you, and the limited content needed to review them (for example, the reported message or photo). We use automated tools to help screen event listings and reported content.

Rewards

If you claim or receive a reward from a local business's campaign, we record the reward, its code, the post that qualified you, if any, and when and by which of the business's staff it was redeemed. To give each person one reward per campaign, we also keep a one-way marker made from your phone number's fingerprint and that campaign. The marker is not stored with your number, your account, your reward or the time you claimed it, and it is different for every campaign. Staff who redeem a reward see the reward and its code, never your name or profile. Rewards and these markers are kept after account deletion, so an issued reward cannot be claimed a second time.

Ad credits and banner ads

If you book a banner ad, we keep the booking: its days, area, place and what it shows. If you buy ad credits, Apple or Google take the payment; we never receive your card or bank details. We receive the store's record of each purchase - the pack, its transaction or order number, when it was bought, and any refund - together with an account token the app sends with the purchase so the credits reach your account. The token is made from your Valentree account id and is the same for every purchase you make. We keep a record of the credits added to your account, spent on ads, and taken back after a refund.

When a paid banner ad appears in your banner or you tap it, we record that under your Valentree account id, with the time it last appeared in your banner and the time you last tapped it, so we can count the ad's views, viewers and clicks. The advertiser sees only totals and counts for each day, never who had the ad in their banner or tapped it. We keep these records after you delete your account, under an identifier that no longer leads to you.

Device and usage data

Push-notification tokens and basic technical and usage data needed to operate, secure, and improve the service.

2. Sensitive information

If you choose to share a gender identity or a cultural background, you give us your explicit consent to process this information. Both are optional, you can change or remove them at any time, and cultural background includes a "prefer not to say" option. They appear on your profile next to your first name and age group, and are visible to any signed-in Valentree member who opens your profile. We never use them for advertising and never sell them. If you make your age group private, other members can't see it.

3. How we use your information

• Provide the service - create your profile, run discovery and sign-ups, power group chat, and send transactional notifications such as event reminders and account actions.
• Help you find people you know - if you turn on contact matching, compare fingerprints of your contacts' numbers with members who have also turned it on.
• Community curator - where enabled, when you mention the curator account or reply to one of its posts, AI models check and read that post or comment, the one it replies to, your earlier replies in that thread, an event the post links, and relevant public event information. The curator may reply, create an event, or change one it created, under the same permissions as other members.
• Order the Local feed - where enabled, an AI model reads the text and poll options of each new Local post and scores how informative, specific and useful it is; the scores and the post's age order the Local feed. Scoring never decides whether a post is shown.
• Keep the community safe - verify phone numbers, screen event listings and reported content, and enforce our community rules.
• Improve and secure the platform, and comply with legal obligations.

4. How we share your information

• Service providers - Amazon Web Services (hosting, place search and venue planning, plus AI services used for content moderation and photo screening), Anthropic (the AI models behind the community curator, including the screening of its input and output, and, where enabled, the scoring of Local posts that orders the Local feed), Google and Apple (sign-in), Google (weather forecasts for event areas and curator planning), and SMS, voice-call and push-notification providers. They process data on our behalf under contract.
• Other users - your username, profile photo, and the limited signals above are visible to anyone who can open an event you join or create, and to people who open a public event you've marked as interested, where you may appear among those interested, and your first name and last initial are on your profile. The neighborhood of an event you create is shown publicly on its listing; its exact address is shared only with the people who join. A posting you add shows your username and profile photo, or only the name and any photo of your business or of a profile you make when you post it as one; a business or profile you add shows its name, never your username or photo. Each shows its text, photos and details, any contact details you add, and its place (only an area about 1 km wide, or, if you choose to show its exact spot, a pin there and the address you pick; a home for sale always shows its address), to any signed-in member; a business's contact details, and its address if you choose to show its exact spot, are public. A message you send in a listing chat is seen by the other person in that chat, who also sees when you have read their messages; in a chat about a posting you made as your business or a profile, they see that name, not yours. A message you send in a chat with a friend is seen by that friend, who also sees when you have read their messages while you are friends. If you turn on contact matching, members who have your number in their contacts (and have matching on) can see your username and profile photo as a match, and can open your profile; turning matching off hides you from their matches again.
• Apple and Google - when you buy ad credits, Apple's App Store or Google Play processes the payment under its own terms and privacy policy and receives the account token the app sends with the purchase, which is made from your Valentree account id; we check each purchase with them.
• Legal and safety - we may disclose information if required by law or to protect the rights, safety, and security of our users or the public.

For curator tasks, Anthropic receives the relevant post or comment text, the asker's earlier replies in that thread, an event the post links, and public event planning facts, and Anthropic also checks the member-written parts of that text and the model's output with a separate AI model. We mask usernames and do not add member profiles, account identifiers or exact event addresses to the model prompt; text members write may itself contain personal information and is screened. AWS Location receives venue-search text and an approximate planning area. Google Weather receives the centre of the city or neighbourhood nearest the asker's area, or of an approximate event-area cell, for curator planning. We do not log raw curator prompts or model responses.

For Local feed scoring, Anthropic receives a post's text and poll options. We mask usernames and do not add profiles or account identifiers; text members write may itself contain personal information. We keep the scores with the post and do not log the post's text.

We do not sell your personal information.

5. International data transfers

We operate in Canada and the United States, and our service providers (including AWS) may process your information in data centers located in the United States. Where personal information is transferred across borders, we take steps to ensure it receives a comparable level of protection.

6. Data retention

We keep your account information while your account is active. Group-chat messages are retained with event history. Chat images stop being served 30 days after they are sent and then age out of storage. Marking an event as interested is deleted 30 days after the event ends, or when you delete your account. Contact fingerprints from a sync are deleted as soon as matching completes; the matches and the record of your last sync are kept until your account is deleted (turning contact matching off hides your matches without deleting them). Reports and safety records may be kept longer where needed to keep the community safe or to meet legal requirements.

A Neighbourhood posting stays stored until you delete it or your account is deleted; it leaves the Neighbourhood's lists when it expires or is marked sold, rented or filled, and stays in your Activity. Messages in listing chats and in chats with friends are kept with the chat; hiding a chat removes it from your list but deletes nothing, and ending a friendship or blocking someone makes your chat with them read-only without deleting it.

Curator work records keep routing identifiers and checked plans so interrupted actions can be reconciled. Pending work is cleared when finished; reply-link and question markers expire after 30 days. The lane position and unresolved failure records have no automatic expiry and may remain after an asking member deletes their account. These records do not store raw source posts, member profiles or prompts; failed plans can contain generated event or reply text and venue details.

7. Account deletion

You can request account deletion in Account settings or from our account deletion page.

Once we verify and accept an emailed request, your account enters a 7-day grace period. Sign back in during that period to cancel.

After the grace period, we delete or scrub your sign-in identity, provider links, phone-verification fingerprint, profile information and photos, contact matches and any synced contact data, saved items, push tokens, and active event references.

We retain limited safety, fraud-prevention, report, feedback, event-completion, reward, ad booking, ad credit purchase and credit record, ad view and tap, and shared event-history records after identity links are removed. Unused ad credits are lost. Group-chat message text is also retained; some retained text may identify a person, and these records currently do not expire. Chat images stop being served 30 days after they are sent and then age out of storage.

Your Neighbourhood postings lose their text, photos, details, contact details and any address, and your businesses their name, description, photos, contact details and address, and your profiles their name; all leave the Neighbourhood. Messages you sent in listing chats and in chats with friends are kept, readable by the other person in each chat, under an identifier that no longer leads to you; like group-chat text, they currently do not expire.

8. Your choices and rights

You can view and edit your profile in the app and manage which push notification categories you receive. Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete your personal information - contact us to exercise them.

9. Security

We protect your information using encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, and security monitoring. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to safeguard your data.

10. Children

Valentree is for adults 18 and older. If we learn we have collected information from someone under 18, we will delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will update the "Last updated" date above and, for material changes, provide notice in the app.

12. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your information? Email moderation@valentree.com.