Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal data SFSocial collects, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and what rights you have over it.

We have written it to describe what SFSocial actually does today, not what we plan to build. Where a feature is not yet built, we say so rather than describing it as though it exists.

1. About SFSocial

What it is

SFSocial is a community-first social and dating app for adults. The idea is simple: you meet people through shared interests and public conversation first, and move into private conversations only when both people agree to it.

It is deliberately not a swipe app. There is no endless deck of faces, no public ranking of members, no "hot or not", and no way to see who has looked at you.

How it works

Communities and channels. You join public communities built around topics and interests, and take part in ordinary group conversation there. This is where most meeting happens.

Profiles. A profile is more than photos. It carries your bio, interests, pronouns, country, and optionally the city you are in. You control what is shown.

Consent-based direct messages. You cannot simply message a stranger. You send a request, and the other person can accept, decline, block or report it. If they decline, you cannot keep asking. A conversation only opens when both people want it.

Optional dating and matching. Dating is switched off until you turn it on. If you do, SFSocial suggests one person at a time based on your stated intentions, interests, personality answers and preferences. You can skip anyone, privately, and they are never told.

Safety tools. Blocking, reporting, rate limits and human moderation are built into the product rather than added afterwards.

Why it was made

Most dating apps ask you to judge strangers on a photograph and a sentence, at speed and in volume. That produces a lot of matches and very little context, and it puts the people who are most likely to be harassed in the least protected position.

SFSocial was built on the opposite assumption: that people connect better when there is something shared to connect over, and when contact requires consent rather than persistence. Communities come first, dating is optional, and private contact is something you agree to rather than something that happens to you.

It is also built for adults only, and moderated on the basis that safety is part of the product rather than a feature to add later.

What it is not

• Not free of risk. We do not verify who anyone is. See sections 3 and 16.
• Not finished. See section 3.
• Not advertising-funded. We run no ads, sell no data, and charge nothing.

2. Who we are

SFSocial is operated by Mohamed Mefjouj, an individual trading as SFSocial (publicly known as Simo Jumpur). There is no company: the service is run by one person, with a small number of volunteers who help with moderation.

For data protection purposes, Mohamed Mefjouj is the controller, meaning the person who decides why and how your personal data is processed.

3. Development status: please read this

SFSocial is under active development and is not a finished product. This matters for your privacy, so we would rather be blunt about it than reassuring.

What that means in practice:

• Features change. Parts of the service described here may be altered or removed, and new features will be added. We will update this policy when that happens.
• Some of your rights are handled by email, not by a button. We do not yet have in-app account deletion or data export. Both are available today by emailing support@sfsocial.app, and we handle them manually. See sections 13 and 14.
• Some processes are manual. Automated deletion and clean-up routines are still being finalised. In the meantime we remove data manually or on request.
• Age is self-declared. We ask for your date of birth at signup and require you to be 18 or over, but we do not currently verify it against any document or external source. See section 16.
• Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. They are encrypted in transit, but we can technically access message content stored on our systems. See section 15.
• Not everything has been independently reviewed. This is a small, self-funded project. We have applied the security measures described in section 15, but we have not undergone an external security audit or certification.

If any of this is not acceptable to you, please do not create an account.

4. Who this policy applies to

• Anyone aged 18 or over who uses SFSocial. The service is 18+ everywhere. Where the age of majority in your country is higher than 18, that higher age applies to you.
• All platforms we currently ship: Android, web, Windows and Linux. macOS and iOS are not yet available.
• All features: profiles, communities and channels, group chats, direct messages, matching, reporting and moderation, and notifications.

Definitions

• Personal data: information that identifies you or relates to you, directly or indirectly.
• Processing: anything done with that data, including collecting, storing, using, sharing or deleting it.
• Controller: the person who decides why and how data is processed (us).
• Processor: a company that processes data on our instructions (our suppliers).

5. What we collect

A. Account and identity

B. Profile

Information you choose to add. Most of it is visible to other users:

• Bio: free text
• Gender and pronouns: optional
• Country: required, and always visible
• City: optional, and only visible if you turn on "show city"
• Approximate coordinates: a latitude and longitude used only to calculate distance for matching. Never shown to anyone, and never returned to other users' devices
• Profile photo and banner: stored in our media storage

C. Dating profile, only if you opt in

SFSocial can be used without dating. Dating features are off until you explicitly turn them on. If you do turn them on, we additionally collect:

• Occupation (a field of work, not an employer)
• Height, and the height range you are open to
• Personality tags
• Lifestyle answers (smoking, drinking, exercise, pets, children)
• Matching preferences: age range, distance, and your dealbreakers

Two of your matching settings, strict dealbreakers and never show this person again, are private by design. They are never exposed to other users through any part of our system.

If you turn dating off, this information is hidden, not deleted, so that turning it back on restores your answers. If you want it erased rather than hidden, email us.

D. Interests

The interests you pick from our predefined list. Visible on your profile and used for matching.

E. Connections and messages

• Connections: friend requests, DM requests, matches and blocks, including the optional message you can attach to a request
• Direct, group and community messages: the content you send, including any links, images or GIFs
• Conversation metadata: who is in a conversation, timestamps, and read state
• Reactions: which messages you reacted to, and with what
• Mentions: structured data recording who you @mentioned in a message
• Typing indicators and online status: sent live between devices and not stored

F. Reports and moderation

• Reports you submit: the category, your description, any screenshots or links you attach, and a snapshot of the reported content
• Reports about you: the same information, submitted by someone else
• Moderation outcomes: warnings, suspensions and bans applied to your account, with the reason
• Staff notes: internal notes written by our moderators. These are not visible to you unless we choose to share them

Moderation is carried out by the operator and by a small number of volunteer moderators. See section 10.

G. Device and technical data

• Device and app information: device type, operating system, app version, language
• IP address: seen whenever your device connects. Used for rate limiting, abuse detection and temporary blocks
• Security events: sign-in attempts, rate-limited actions, blocked actions and temporary blocks
• Trust level: an internal rating (new, normal, trusted, restricted) calculated from your account age and any reports or blocks against you. It adjusts your rate limits and how often you see a CAPTCHA
• CAPTCHA clearances: short-lived tokens proving you passed a bot check

We do not use any analytics or crash-reporting service. There is no Google Analytics, no Firebase Analytics, no Crashlytics, no Sentry, and no equivalent in the app.

H. Notifications

• Push tokens: a device registration token, on Android and web only
• Notification preferences: which notifications you want. Moderation notices cannot be switched off
• Notification records: a record of notifications sent to you, including a short preview of the message that triggered them

Push notifications are currently available on Android and web only. They are not available on Windows, Linux, macOS or iOS.

I. Matching activity

• Impressions: a record of each profile shown to you, so the same person is not shown again immediately
• Passes: a record of profiles you skipped. The other person is never told. There is no notification, and our access rules prevent them from seeing it
• Match requests: sent, received, accepted, declined or withdrawn

6. Special category data

Some of what SFSocial processes falls into what EU and UK law call special category data, meaning information that needs stronger protection.

Using our dating features can reveal something about your sexual orientation. Our matching currently pairs people of opposite genders, so your gender combined with your decision to use dating features indicates the kind of partner you are looking for. Under the GDPR that counts as data revealing sexual orientation, even though we never ask you the question directly.

We rely on your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a) GDPR) to process this. That is why dating is a separate, deliberate choice rather than something switched on for you:

• Dating is off by default. You are asked a direct question and must answer yes.
• Turning it on is recorded as a distinct setting. We never infer it from the presence of other data.
• You can withdraw at any time by turning dating off in your settings. Your dating profile is then hidden from everyone and you are removed from other people's matching pools.
• Withdrawing consent hides your dating answers so you can return later. If you want them permanently erased instead, email us and we will delete them.

If you never turn on dating, we do not process special category data about you.

7. Why we use your data, and our legal basis

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered whether our interest is overridden by your rights, and you can object at any time (section 14).

What we do not do

• We do not sell your personal data.
• We do not run advertising and we are not connected to any ad network.
• We do not profile you for advertising or share your data for cross-context behavioural advertising.
• We do not charge for anything. SFSocial has no paid features, no subscriptions and no payment processing. We do not hold any payment or card data.

8. Matching and automated ranking

If you use dating features, SFSocial ranks other members for you automatically. We think you should know how that works.

• We compare your answers with other members' answers and produce a compatibility score, built from your stated intentions, personality answers, shared interests and height preferences. Categories only count when both people have answered, so skipping an optional question does not count against you.
• The score is shown to you as a number, a tier and a short list of reasons.
• Members are then filtered by hard rules covering age range, distance, gender, blocks, and whether you have already seen or passed them. One candidate is drawn at a time.
• Your own filters and score are never shown to anyone else. Other members do not see the criteria they were judged against, and never see a distance or the size of your pool.
• Passing on someone is completely private. They are not notified and cannot find out.

This ranking decides the order in which we suggest people. It does not produce any legal effect and has no consequence outside the app. If you would like a human to look at how you have been ranked, email us.

9. What other people can see

Online status is live. SFSocial shows other members when you are online in real time, for as long as the app is open. There is currently no way to appear offline or invisible. We plan to add one, but it does not exist yet.

Blocking someone hides your profile from them.

10. Who we share data with

Volunteer moderators

Moderation is handled by the operator together with a small number of volunteer moderators. To review a report they can see the reported content, a snapshot of the surrounding conversation, any evidence attached to the report, and the profile of the person reported. Access is limited by role, so a moderator only sees what their role allows, and every moderation action is written to an audit log.

Volunteers are not employees. They act under our instructions and are required to keep what they see confidential and to use it only for moderation.

Moderators do not have routine access to your private conversations. They see a conversation only where it has been reported, or where they are investigating a specific report.

Suppliers

We are working through formal data processing agreements with these suppliers and had not completed them at the time of writing. We will update this section once they are in place.

Other disclosures

We may also disclose data:

• To other users, as part of using the service. People in your conversations and communities see what you send, and members you match with see your dating profile.
• Where the law requires it, in response to a valid legal request, or to investigate serious abuse, protect someone's safety, or defend a legal claim.
• If the service changes hands. If SFSocial is ever transferred to someone else, your data would transfer with it. We would tell you before your data became subject to a different privacy policy.

We may publish genuinely aggregated statistics that cannot identify anyone, such as the total number of members.

11. Where your data is stored, and international transfers

Your data is stored in the European Union, in a Supabase data centre in Paris, France.

We are based in Morocco. That means we access data stored in the EU from outside the EU, and some of our suppliers are based in the United States. Morocco is not covered by a European Commission adequacy decision.

Where personal data protected by the GDPR is transferred outside the EEA, we rely on appropriate safeguards, including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses where they apply. Some of our suppliers are certified under the EU to US Data Privacy Framework.

We are honest that this arrangement is still being formalised. We had not completed transfer documentation with all suppliers at the time of writing, and we are taking advice on the correct mechanism for access from Morocco. We will update this section as that work concludes.

Morocco has its own data protection law (Law 09-08), overseen by the CNDP. Any registration or authorisation required under Moroccan law is our responsibility, and we are addressing it.

12. How long we keep data

Where we can state a fixed period, we do. Where we have not yet settled on one, we tell you the criteria we use instead, rather than publishing a number we do not apply.

We are still automating this. Some clean-up routines are not yet running on a schedule. Until they are, we remove data manually, and always on request. This is a genuine limitation of an unfinished product and we would rather state it than imply an automation we have not switched on.

We do not currently maintain long-term backups. We will set up backups before public launch and will update this policy to say how long deleted data may persist in them.

13. Deleting your account, and what happens to your messages

This section describes behaviour that surprises people, so please read it before you create an account.

How to delete your account

There is no in-app delete button yet. To delete your account, email support@sfsocial.app from the address registered to your account. We will confirm your identity and action it, and we aim to complete this within one month.

We are building an in-app deletion option, and a web-based one, and will update this policy when they exist.

What deletion removes

Your profile, photos, bio, interests, dating profile and preferences, settings, connections, blocks and push tokens. Your username is released. Your login stops working. This cannot be undone.

What deletion does not remove: messages

We do not delete the messages you have sent. Instead we remove the link between those messages and your account. Your name, username and profile picture are taken off them, and they appear as coming from a former member. The text of the message stays visible to the people you sent it to.

We do this because a conversation belongs to everyone in it. Deleting your side would erase part of another person's record of an exchange they took part in, and would destroy evidence needed to investigate harassment or abuse by someone who then deletes their account. We rely on our legitimate interests and those of other members (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR), and on the need to establish, exercise or defend legal claims (Article 17(3)(e) GDPR).

We do not claim these messages become anonymous. Someone who was in the conversation may still know who wrote them, and in a one-to-one conversation that is obvious. A message may also contain identifying details you typed yourself. Removing the account link reduces how easily the messages can be connected to you. It does not make them untraceable, and we will not pretend otherwise.

If you want your message content gone as well, delete your messages before you delete your account, or ask us in your deletion email and we will delete them for you.

What else we keep

Moderation records, reports about you, and the outcomes of any moderation action, for the reasons and periods in section 12. Without these, a banned member could return by deleting their account and signing up again.

Deleting a conversation is not deleting your account

These are different things, and neither one deletes the other:

• Leaving or closing a conversation removes it from your view. The other people in it keep their copy. Nothing is erased from our systems.
• Deleting a message removes its content from the conversation for everyone.
• Deleting your account removes your identity, but not the messages you sent.

14. Your rights

If you are in the EU, the EEA or the UK

The GDPR and UK GDPR give you the right to:

• Access: get a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Rectification: have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected
• Erasure: have your data deleted, subject to the exceptions in section 13
• Restriction: ask us to limit how we use your data
• Portability: receive your data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format
• Object: object to processing based on our legitimate interests
• Withdraw consent: where we rely on consent, including for dating features
• Complain: to your national data protection authority

If you are in Morocco

Moroccan law (Law 09-08) gives you rights of access, rectification and objection. You may contact the CNDP.

Everyone else

Wherever you live, and regardless of whether your local law requires it, you may ask us to access, correct, export or delete your data, and to stop sending you optional messages. We apply the same process to everyone.

We do not currently meet the thresholds that would make us a "business" under the California Consumer Privacy Act. We are not claiming CCPA compliance. We extend the rights above to Californian users voluntarily, and will publish a specific CCPA section if and when the Act applies to us.

How to exercise your rights

Email support@sfsocial.app. We may need to confirm your identity first.

We respond within one month. If your request is complex, we may extend this by up to two further months, and we will tell you within the first month if we need to.

Both data export and account deletion are handled by email. We do not yet have in-app tools for either. See section 3. You can update your profile, settings and notification preferences in the app at any time.

There is no charge for any of this, and we will never treat you differently for asking.

15. Security

What we do

• Encryption in transit: TLS for all traffic between your device and our servers
• Password hashing: passwords are stored only as hashes by our authentication provider. We cannot see them
• Row-level access control: enforced in the database itself, so access rules apply even to direct queries, not just through the app
• Server-side rate limiting: on messages, requests, reports and uploads
• Bot protection: CAPTCHA challenges on higher-risk actions
• Brute-force protection: sign-in lockout after repeated failed attempts
• Link fetching protection: our link preview service refuses to fetch internal or private network addresses
• Separation of privileges: moderation tools require a staff role, roles are limited to what each moderator needs, and internal records are not reachable from the app
• Audit logging: moderation actions are recorded in an append-only log

Known limitations, stated plainly

• No end-to-end encryption. Messages are encrypted in transit but we can technically access them on our servers. Do not use SFSocial to send anything you would not want a service operator to be able to read.
• No independent security audit. We have not been externally audited or certified.
• Age is self-declared. See section 16.
• A small team. SFSocial is run by one individual, with volunteer moderators helping to review reports. We do not have a dedicated security team or 24-hour incident response, and reports are reviewed by people rather than instantly.

If something goes wrong

If a security breach affects your personal data, we will notify the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of it where the law requires, and we will tell affected users without undue delay where the breach is likely to present a high risk to them.

16. Age, and users under 18

SFSocial is for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly allow anyone under 18 to use it, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

How our age check actually works: we ask for your date of birth at signup and refuse the signup if it shows you are under 18. We do not verify it. We do not check identity documents and we do not use any external age assurance service. Someone determined to give a false date of birth can currently do so. We consider this a serious limitation and are working on it.

If we find out that someone under 18 has an account, we will block it immediately and delete the associated data.

If you believe someone under 18 is using SFSocial, please report them in the app or email support@sfsocial.app. We treat these reports as our highest priority.

17. Cookies and similar technologies

SFSocial uses only the storage needed to keep you signed in and remember your settings. We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking technologies.

See our Cookie Policy for details.

18. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy as SFSocial develops, and because it is under active development we expect to update it more often than a finished product would.

• Material changes, such as a new purpose, a new supplier, or a change to how deletion works, will be notified to you by email at least 30 days before they take effect, unless the change is needed immediately for safety or security.
• Minor changes, such as clarifications and corrections, take effect when published.
• The "Last updated" date at the top always reflects the current version.

Continuing to use SFSocial after a change takes effect means you accept the updated policy. If you do not accept it, you can delete your account (section 13).

19. Contact

For any privacy question, or to exercise any right in this policy:

support@sfsocial.app

We do not publish a postal address. If you need to reach us in writing for a legal or data protection matter, email us and we will provide an address for correspondence.

We are a very small operation and we read every message, but we are not staffed around the clock. We will always respond within the legal time limits in section 14.

If you are unhappy with our response, you can complain to your national data protection authority, or to the CNDP in Morocco.