Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

Account & profile information: your phone number (used to sign in), email address (required for account and safety notices), display name, date of birth, gender and gender preference, bio, and the photos you upload.

We use date of birth only to confirm that you are 18 or older and allow you to complete onboarding; we do not use it for ads or share it with other users.

We use your email to contact you about your account, safety reports, and support requests. We do not use it for third-party advertising or marketing.

Event activity: which event you check into and when, so we can show you other attendees who are also checked in.

Precise location: requested only to determine which events are near you right now (see “Location Data” below).

Push notification token: if you allow notifications, we store a device-specific token (not tied to your phone number or any other personal identifier) so we can notify you about new Flares, matches, and messages. You can revoke this anytime from your device’s system notification settings.

Contacts (optional): if you turn on “Hide me from my contacts,” we read phone numbers from your device address book only to create one-way private codes (cryptographic hashes). We do not upload contact names, raw phone numbers, or your full contact list. Turning the setting off deletes those codes from our servers.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to operate the App’s core features: verifying your identity via SMS code, showing your profile to other attendees at the same event, matching gender preferences, letting you send and receive Flares, and contacting you about account or safety matters.

We may use automated tools to review profile bios for spam, solicitation, contact information, harassment, and other prohibited content before they are shown to other users.

Profile photos are re-encoded on your device (for example HEIC to JPEG) and size-limited before upload. We rely on user reports for inappropriate photos: reporting can place an account under review until our team clears it. We do not currently run automated NSFW scanning on every upload.

We may also automatically scan chat messages for phone numbers, social handles, links, and similar personal contact information. When detected, we may show an in-app safety warning discouraging sharing personal information; the message is still delivered, and we log that the warning was shown.

We do not use your personal information for third-party advertising or marketing purposes.

3. SMS verification

When you enter your phone number on the login screen, you must check an unchecked box agreeing to receive SMS one-time passcodes from Flaret Labs LLC for account login and verification. Message frequency varies. We do not send marketing or promotional SMS. We do not sell or share mobile numbers for third-party marketing. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to unsubscribe. Reply HELP for help, or email [email protected]. Continue stays disabled until that box is checked. No SMS is sent until you submit your own number.

4. Location Data

Flaret asks for your precise location only to determine which events are happening near you right now. Your location is used in the moment to run that search and is not stored or retained on our servers — we keep only the event you actually check into, not your ongoing location history.

You can decline location access, but you won’t be able to discover nearby events without it.

5. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties or marketing/advertising agencies for their own purposes.

We may disclose information only where required to do so by law (e.g. a valid subpoena, court order, or other legal process), or where necessary to protect the safety of a user or the public.

Service providers that help us operate the App (such as our hosting/database provider and SMS verification provider) process data strictly on our behalf, under agreements that prohibit them from using it for their own purposes.

6. Data Retention

We retain your profile information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account from within the App, we immediately remove your profile from Discover, blank out your display name, bio, and photos, and close any open matches — other users see only a generic “this user deleted their account” placeholder, never your original content.

Your account record is then held for up to 30 days in this de-identified state before being permanently deleted from our production database, to allow time to resolve any in-flight safety report, dispute, or fraud investigation involving your account.

After that window, we retain only two narrow categories of data, and only where applicable: (1) purchase/transaction records disconnected from your profile, kept as long as required for accounting and tax compliance; and (2) if your account was ever reported by another user or blocked for a safety reason, a one-way hashed identifier used solely to detect repeat sign-ups attempting to evade a safety action. Neither category includes your photos, messages, or other profile content.

7. Data Security

We use industry-standard measures (such as encrypted storage and access controls) to protect your information. No system is completely secure, so we can’t guarantee absolute security, but we work to protect your data appropriately.

8. Your Choices & Rights

You can review and update most of your profile information at any time from within the App (Profile → Edit Profile).

You can hide your profile from Discover at any time without deleting your account.

You can opt out of verification SMS by replying STOP to a Flaret text. Reply START if you want to receive login codes again.

You can turn “Hide me from my contacts” on or off anytime in Edit Profile. While on, people whose login phone matches a private code from your address book (or vice versa) won’t see each other on Discover, Flares, or public profiles. Turning it off deletes your stored contact codes immediately.

You can permanently delete your account and request deletion of your data at any time from within the App (Profile → Support → Delete Account), or by contacting us at the address below. See “Data Retention” above for what happens to your data, and on what timeline, once you do.

If you are a California resident, you have rights under the CCPA to know what personal information we collect, request deletion of it, and not be discriminated against for exercising those rights; if you are in the EEA/UK, you have equivalent rights under the GDPR (including data access, correction, deletion, and portability). You can exercise any of these rights using the in-App deletion flow above or by contacting us.

You can report another user or piece of content directly from their profile at any time; reports are reviewed by our team.

9. Children’s Privacy

Flaret is intended only for users who are 18 years of age or older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we’ve collected information from someone under 18, we will delete it.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we’ll let you know within the App before they take effect.

11. Contact Us

Questions about this Privacy Policy, or want to exercise your data rights? Reach out at [email protected].