Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Vela collects, why, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

What we collect

• Your email address, to sign you in. We email you a one-time code, so we never store a password.
• Your date of birth, to enforce our 18+ rule. It is never shown to other people — they only see your age.
• Your profile: display name, age, neighborhood, bio, interests, prompt answers and photos. This is what other people see.
• Your gender and who you'd like to meet, used only to decide who appears in Discover. Neither is shown on your profile.
• Your approximate location, either from your browser or the city you pick. We store coordinates so we can calculate distance.
• Activity needed for the product to work: sparks, matches, when a video date started and ended, verdicts, and messages in unlocked chats.

What other people see about your location

Never your coordinates. Before any distance is shown we apply a deliberate offset to your position and round the result, so a distance cannot be used to find where you live. Other people see an approximate distance and whatever neighborhood you typed yourself.

Video dates

Video and audio flow directly between you and the other person (peer-to-peer WebRTC) wherever the network allows. We do not record, store, or watch your calls. Our server only passes the connection details needed to set the call up. If your network requires a relay, the encrypted stream passes through a TURN relay without being stored.

What we never do

• We do not sell your data.
• We do not run third-party advertising trackers.
• We do not record video dates.
• We do not show your exact location to anyone.

Deleting your data

Go to Settings and choose Delete my account. This immediately and permanently removes your profile, photos, sparks, matches and messages. You can also download a copy of your data from the same screen.

Retention

We keep your account data until you delete it. Reports may be retained after deletion where we need them to keep other people safe or to meet a legal obligation.

Who processes your data for us

We use a small number of service providers, under contract, only to run Vela. They may not use your data for their own purposes.

• Render (application hosting)
• our managed PostgreSQL provider
• our S3-compatible photo storage provider
• our transactional email provider
• Sightengine (automated image moderation)
• a TURN relay provider, only when a direct connection fails
• Apple Push Notification service
• Sentry (crash and error reports)

Photos you upload are scanned automatically for nudity and graphic content before anyone else can see them, and may be reviewed by a person on our team if flagged or reported. Reported profiles, messages and photos may also be reviewed by our moderators.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, we store a device token so we can tell you about new sparks, matches and messages. Turn them off any time in iOS Settings.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or California), you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your data, and to object to or restrict how we use it. Most of this is self-service in Settings; for anything else, email us and we will respond within 30 days. We do not sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Contact

TODO: Your legal name or company, TODO: Street, City, State ZIP, Country.
Privacy requests: privacy@meetvela.date
Everything else: support@meetvela.date