Privacy Policy

In short

• We collect what the app needs to work: your account, your page, your friends.
• No ads, no tracking, no analytics, and we never sell your data.
• Your email, phone number and full birth date are never shown on your page.
• You can delete your account in the app at any time, and it's gone straight away.

Who is responsible

Bindung is run by an individual, who is the controller of your data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

Nils Christopher Garny, Netherlands
Email: hello@bindung.app

What we collect

Your account

Your email address, a password (in hashed form), your username and your date of birth. We ask for your birth date to make sure you're at least 16.

Your page

Whatever you choose to add: first and last name, favourite colours, answers to questions, where you sit on scales, links to your profiles on other apps, and your favourite place (its name, address and map position, picked through Apple Maps).

Your phone number (optional)

If you add a phone number, it's stored privately with your account. If you also switch on “Let friends find me by phone number”, we store a one-way code (a SHA-256 hash) of it, so people who already have your number can find you. Switch it off and you can't be found that way.

Your contacts (only if you allow it)

If you give the app access to your contacts, it reads their phone numbers on your device, turns each into the same one-way code and checks whether that code belongs to someone who has chosen to be findable. Names and other contact details are never read. Raw phone numbers never leave your phone, and we don't store the codes we check. Please note that a phone-number hash is a protective measure, not full anonymisation.

Friends, blocks and reports

Who you've sent requests to, who you're bound to, and who you've blocked. If you report someone, we store your user ID, their user ID, the reason, your optional note and a copy of their page as it was at that moment. The person you report is not told who reported them.

Technical data

When the app talks to our servers, our hosting provider processes technical data such as your IP address, device and app version, and timestamps. This is used to run the service securely and to fix problems. Your choice of light or dark appearance stays on your device.

Who can see what

• Other Bindung users can find you by username and see your name, username and colours in search results.
• Friends see your whole page.
• Nobody but you sees your email address, phone number or full date of birth.

The app only opens full pages for friends, but your page is stored so that signed-in users' apps can load it. Please treat anything on your page as visible to other Bindung users, and don't add anything you wouldn't want them to see.

Why we process it

• To provide the app - your account, page, friendships and search (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, performance of our agreement with you).
• Phone-number matching, contact matching and showing your birthday — only because you switched them on (Art. 6(1)(a), consent). You can switch them off at any time.
• Keeping people safe — the age check, blocking, reports, moderation and security logs (Art. 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in a safe service, and Art. 6(1)(c) where the law requires it).

Who helps us

Google (Firebase)

Login, database and server functions run on Google Firebase, provided by Google Ireland Limited. Our database and server functions are located in Belgium (europe-west1). Firebase Authentication may process data outside the EU, including in the USA. Such transfers are covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, as part of Google's data processing terms.

Apple

When you search for a favourite place, your search is sent to Apple Maps, and opening a place shows Apple's map details. Apple handles that data under its own privacy policy. Apple also distributes the app through the App Store.

Links to other apps on someone's page take you to those services, whose own privacy policies apply.

How long we keep it

We keep your data for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account in the app, we immediately delete your page, your private details, your friendships and requests, your blocks, your username, your phone-number code and your login. Copies may remain in our provider's backups and logs for a short period until they are overwritten.

Reports are kept after an account is deleted, as a record of moderation, for as long as needed to keep the community safe and to meet legal obligations.

Your rights

You have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to its processing, to receive it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting what happened before. Most of this you can do in the app; for anything else, write to hello@bindung.app.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU country where you live.

Children

Bindung is for people aged 16 and over. Sign-up is refused for anyone younger. If you believe someone under 16 has an account, please tell us and we'll delete it.

Changes

If we change how we handle your data, we'll update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll tell you in the app.