Privacy Policy

Motéma is built by a team working to make dating about real commitment again. It is not yet incorporated as a company; until it is, the team operating Motéma is responsible for your personal data ("Motéma", "we", "us"). Once the company exists, it will become the controller and this policy will be updated with its name and address.

For any privacy question or request, message us on TikTok at @motema.app.

Information you give us:

• Account: email address, phone number, password, and the codes used to verify them.
• Profile: name, username, date of birth, gender, photos, bio, height, education, job, languages, countries, interests, and the answers and preferences you choose to add (such as dating goals, relationship type, children, smoking, drinking, diet, music and sport).
• Optional sensitive information you choose to add (see section 4): ethnicity, religion, political views, drug use, sexual preferences and kinks, and gender identity.
• Matching filters: the age range, distance, gender and other preferences you search with.
• Identity verification (optional): live selfies and a photo of an identity document.
• Health certificates (optional): sexual health test documents you upload and the results we read from them.
• Cars (optional): brand, model, year, licence plate, registration documents and, if you are not the owner, the owner's identity document and authorisation.
• Messages and activity: chats, likes and the messages attached to them, meeting requests, date plans, friend requests and comments, Spotted notes and reactions, venue stories, reservations, orders and reports you send.
• Support: what you tell us when you contact us.
• Waiting list: your email address and language.

Information collected when you use the Service:

• Location: see section 6.
• Dates and safety: meeting places and times, meeting check-ins, and back-home-safe answers; if you answer that you are not safe, the location trail of your device at that moment.
• Venue activity: which venue you entered and when, and your attendance in venue statistics.
• Reputation and usage: trust points, coin balance and usage, reply times, matches, unmatches, expired matches, bans and the features you use.
• Device: push notification token, app version, language and basic technical logs needed to run and secure the Service.

Information about you from others:

• What other members write about you, such as friend comments, messages and reports.

• To provide the Service you signed up for — your account, profile, matching, chat, date planner, trust points, venues, travel rooms and Spotted (performance of our contract with you).
• To show you people near you and people whose preferences match yours, and to apply the filters you choose, including optional health compatibility (contract, and your explicit consent for sensitive data).
• To verify identity, cars and health certificates when you ask us to (your explicit consent).
• To keep members safe: preventing fake accounts, fraud, spam and abuse, handling reports, enforcing our Terms and keeping limited records of banned accounts (our legitimate interest in a safe service, and to protect vital interests where someone's safety is at risk).
• To send you notifications about matches, messages, plans and safety (contract; you can change notification settings at any time).
• To send you news or offers by email, only if you agreed (consent, which you can withdraw at any time).
• To fix problems, secure and improve the Service and produce anonymous statistics (legitimate interest).
• To comply with the law and respond to lawful requests from authorities (legal obligation).

We do not sell your personal data, we do not use it for third-party advertising, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.

Some information you can add is a special category of data under the GDPR, such as your health, sex life or sexual preferences, gender identity, ethnicity, religion and political views. Some can also be inferred, for example sexual orientation from your gender and the gender you search for.

All of this is optional. We only process it with your explicit consent, which you give by adding it, and only to show it where you choose and to apply the matching filters you set. You can remove it or change who sees it at any time in your profile, which withdraws your consent for the future.

Health certificates are visible only to you and to the authorised staff who review them. Other members only see a badge, and if you turn on the health filter, the people shown to you are limited to compatible profiles.

Identity documents and verification selfies are visible only to you and authorised reviewers, and are only used to confirm that you are the person in your photos and of legal age.

• Other members can see your public profile: first name or username, age (not your date of birth), city (not your address), approximate distance, photos, the profile details and answers you choose to show, verification badges and, if you enable it, your car.
• Other members never see your exact location, email, phone number, identity documents or health documents.
• People you chat with see your messages. Messages you sent remain visible to the recipient in their chat history.
• Members inside the same venue can see that you are there while you are checked in, unless you are in incognito mode.
• Members in the same travel room can see your profile and the stop you are heading to.
• Spotted notes are shown to members nearby at the place where they were left. You stay anonymous, except to members you choose to reveal yourself to by replying.
• Venues you book or order from receive the details needed for the booking or order, such as your name, phone number, guests, notes and delivery address. Venues may also see anonymous statistics such as how many people of each gender visited.
• Public web pages linked to QR codes (/u, /r, /b) only open the app and show no personal data.

Motéma is location-based. With your permission, we use your device's location to:

• set the city on your profile and calculate distance to other members;
• detect when you enter or leave a partner venue, so you can be shown to people there — this uses your location in the background, only if you allow "Always" location, and you can turn it off at any time;
• show Spotted notes and venues near you, and notify you about things nearby;
• run travel rooms, where your position and speed are updated while you travel so the room can follow your train, bus or boat;
• confirm that you are at the meeting point when checking in to a date;
• record where you are if you answer that you did not get home safe, so we can help.

We store your profile location as a point for your city. Travel room positions are kept only for the last few updates. You can control location permission in your phone's settings; some features will not work without it.

To turn coordinates into a city name and to search for places, we send coordinates or search text to our geocoding provider (see section 9).

Some features involve information about people who may not use Motéma:

• Car owners: if a member registers a car they do not own, they may upload the owner's identity document and authorisation, which we use only to verify the right to drive that car.
• Spotted notes may describe a moment involving someone else. Our rules prohibit identifying people who have not agreed to it.

If you believe we hold information about you as a non-member, contact @motema.app on TikTok and we will help you exercise your rights, including objecting to and erasing it.

Some decisions are made automatically by rules, not by people:

• Matching: who is shown to you depends on distance, both people's filters and preferences, availability and features such as health compatibility.
• Trust points: points are added or deducted automatically according to the meeting rules in the app (for example check-ins, late reschedules and no-shows). A balance of zero or below pauses first-date mode and meeting requests until it recovers.
• Limits: free allowances and rate limits, for example on likes.

You have the right to ask for human review of an automated decision that affects you, to express your point of view and to contest it. Write to @motema.app on TikTok.

We share personal data only as needed to run the Service, with:

• Service providers who process data on our behalf, under contracts that require them to protect it: Supabase (database, authentication, file storage), Expo and Apple / Google push notification services (delivering notifications), Twilio (SMS verification codes), LocationIQ (geocoding and place search), our email provider (sending emails), and Apple / Google maps (displaying maps in the app).
• Other members and Venues, as described in section 5.
• Authorities, courts or other parties when the law requires it, or when necessary to protect someone's life or safety, or to establish or defend legal claims.
• A buyer or successor if Motéma is incorporated, merged or sold, who will be bound by this policy.

Push notifications may show the sender's name and the beginning of a message on your lock screen. You can hide message previews in your phone's notification settings.

Some of our providers are located, or may access data, outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. When that happens we rely on safeguards recognised by the GDPR, such as an adequacy decision (including the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified) or the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. You can ask us for more information.

We keep personal data only as long as needed for the purposes above:

• Account and profile: while your account is active. When you delete your account, we delete or anonymise it within 30 days.
• Messages: while your account is active; messages you sent may remain visible in the recipient's history until they delete their account.
• Likes, dislikes and plate messages: until they expire (at most 30 days; plate messages 14 days), then deleted.
• Spotted notes: until they expire (24 hours, or 30 minutes inside a venue), or up to 7 days later if someone reacted, then deleted together with their photos.
• Identity documents: deleted within 30 days after the verification is decided. Verification selfies are kept while your verified badge is active, so we can check new photos against them, and you can delete them at any time.
• Health certificates: kept while the certificate is valid and deleted when you remove it or delete your account.
• Back-home-safe location trails: kept for 90 days, or longer only if needed for an ongoing safety report or legal claim.
• Reservations and orders: as long as required by tax and accounting law.
• Ban records: a minimal record (for example a phone number or identifier and the reason) for up to 3 years after a ban, to stop banned people from returning.
• Waiting list: until you join the app or ask to be removed.
• Backups: deleted data may remain in encrypted backups for up to 30 days.

You have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy;
• correct inaccurate data (most of it you can edit in the app);
• delete your data and your account;
• receive your data in a portable format;
• object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and restrict processing in certain cases;
• withdraw consent at any time, without affecting what we did before;
• ask for human review of automated decisions (section 8);
• complain to a data protection authority, in particular in the country where you live or work, or where you think your rights were infringed.

To exercise any right, message us on TikTok at @motema.app. We will ask you to confirm that the Motéma account is yours before acting on the request. We answer within one month, which may be extended by two months for complex requests, as allowed by law. Exercising your rights is free.

If you live in a US state with a privacy law, such as California, you also have the right to know, delete and correct your data and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. We do not sell or share personal data for cross-context behavioural advertising.

You can delete your account in the app under Settings, Account, or by writing to @motema.app on TikTok. Deletion is permanent: your profile disappears immediately from other members' view, and your data is deleted or anonymised within 30 days, except for the limited records described in section 11. Uninstalling the app does not delete your account.

We protect your data with technical and organisational measures appropriate to its sensitivity, including encryption in transit, access controls that limit sensitive files (identity documents, health certificates, car documents) to authorised staff, private storage with short-lived links for photos, and logging of administrative access. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach puts your rights at risk, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

Motéma is only for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we learn that a minor has created an account, we delete it. If you think a minor is using Motéma, please tell us at @motema.app on TikTok.

Our website does not use advertising or analytics cookies. It stores your chosen language in your browser's local storage, which is strictly necessary to show the site in your language. The admin area uses strictly necessary browser storage to keep authorised staff signed in.

We will update this policy when our practices change. If the changes are significant, we will tell you in the app or by email before they take effect, and ask for your consent again where the law requires it.

Privacy questions and requests: message us on TikTok at @motema.app. If the translation of this policy differs from the English version, the English version prevails, unless the law of your country requires otherwise.