Privacy Policy

1. Minimum age

LFG is not intended for people under 14. During sign-up we ask for your date of birth and we refuse accounts below the minimum age; the check is also enforced on our servers.

We do not verify identity or age with documents. If we become aware that an account belongs to someone under 14, we remove it.

2. Account and profile data

Depending on what you fill in, we may process:

• email address and account identifier;
• nickname / username;
• avatar image you upload;
• bio;
• favourite games, platforms, genres, interests, languages, microphone availability;
• gender/identity field you choose to set;
• visibility and presence settings (deck visibility, invisible mode);
• app language and other technical preferences.

3. Date of birth and age

Your date of birth is collected only to enforce the minimum age of 14 and to derive the age/LVL shown on your profile.

It is stored in a private area of your profile that other users cannot read: publicly only the derived age/LVL can be shown, never the full date.

4. Content you create

When you use the social features we process the content you create:

• board posts and comments;
• chat messages and chat requests;
• swipes, likes and matches;
• “Great teammate” reviews (shown anonymously to other users, but technically linked to the author in our systems for abuse prevention);
• reports you send and users you block.

5. Chat history and unmatch

Chat messages are not deleted on a timer. While a match exists, the conversation stays available to both users.

When one of the two users removes the match, the match ends and the conversation, including its messages, is deleted from our database for both users. It cannot be restored. If the same two people match again later, a new empty conversation is created.

Chat requests that are never accepted expire automatically after a limited period.

6. Presence and social features

To make matchmaking work we process a last-seen timestamp and an online indicator. You can turn on invisible mode, which hides your online status from other users, and you can hide your profile from the discovery deck.

You can mute a conversation for 8 hours, one week or indefinitely. The mute setting is stored on our servers so it works across your devices, and it is only used to stop notifications for that conversation: it does not delete messages and does not end the match.

7. Push notifications

If you allow notifications, we store what is technically required to deliver them:

• the push token or browser endpoint and its cryptographic keys;
• the provider used (web push or Google Firebase Cloud Messaging for the Android app);
• a technical device identifier and the platform, where available;
• the user agent string, where available;
• the state of the push subscription (active/inactive, last registration).

8. Referral and anti-fraud

LFG has a referral programme. To prevent abuse, repeated reward claims and fraudulent sign-ups we may use pseudonymous identifiers derived from your device (hashes). These identifiers are pseudonymous, not anonymous: they cannot be read as personal data on their own, but they are used to recognise repeated activity.

When you delete your account, the direct link between these anti-fraud records and your account is removed where it is no longer needed, and the minimised records are kept for a maximum of 12 months, after which they are deleted automatically.

9. Moderation, suspensions and safety

Reports, blocks and the information strictly necessary to prevent abuse are processed to keep the service safe.

If an account involved in a report is deleted, we keep the report in pseudonymised form so that repeated abuse can still be detected; free-text fields that are no longer necessary are cleared. This pseudonymised moderation history is kept for a maximum of 12 months and is then deleted automatically. It is never accessible to other users.

Preventing the circumvention of suspensions and bans is part of keeping LFG safe, and is one of the purposes for which we process data.

Where an account is permanently suspended and is afterwards deleted, we may keep a pseudonymised authentication identifier. It is produced by a one-way cryptographic transformation (a keyed hash) of the authentication identity used to sign in: the original identity is not stored in that record and we cannot read it back from the stored value.

That record contains no nickname, profile content, message, report text, IP address, browser/device string or device identifier. LFG does not use device fingerprinting to apply these measures.

A record connected to a permanent suspension can be kept for as long as it remains necessary to prevent re-registration and evasion. It is subject to internal review and can be revoked administratively; the review date is an internal reminder to reassess the measure, not an automatic deletion date.

If a new account is created with an authentication identity matching such a record, the account is still created, but it is suspended immediately.

Pseudonymisation reduces, but does not eliminate, the possibility of correlation: we do not claim absolute anonymity.

10. Payments

LFG never receives or stores your card number, CVV or full payment credentials. Payment data is handled by the payment provider.

Web purchases are processed by Paddle, which acts as reseller/Merchant of Record for the transaction. Purchases made inside the Android app are processed by Google Play Billing.

Our backend does store technical purchase and subscription data that we need for entitlement, reconciliation, support, accounting and fraud prevention, including: plan or product purchased, provider, status, start/end and renewal dates, subscription and transaction identifiers, and the provider notification payloads (webhooks / real-time developer notifications) linked to your purchases.

We also keep a record of the consent you give before each checkout to the immediate start of the supply: the exact text shown, its version and language, a SHA-256 fingerprint of that text, the date and time, your browser/device string and a salted hash of the network address of the request. We do not store the address itself. Legal basis: compliance with a legal obligation and performance of the contract. You can read and download them yourself under Legal > My consent receipts.

If you delete your account, the receipt is no longer available inside the app. A minimised proof of that consent may be kept, no longer linked to your account: consent ID, product and product type, payment channel, version, language, the accepted text and its fingerprint, the date and time, and a one-way pseudonymous reference. The browser/device string and the network-address hash are erased. We keep this minimised proof only for the period required by applicable consumer, tax and accounting law and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims (Art. 17(3)(b) and (e) GDPR), and we delete it when that is no longer necessary.

11. Legal bases (EEA/UK)

• Performance of a contract: creating and running your account, matchmaking, chat, board, subscriptions and Boost.
• Legitimate interests: keeping the service secure, preventing abuse and fraud, supporting users, and enforcing moderation measures — including preventing suspended accounts from returning through a new registration.
• Legal obligation: accounting, tax and record-keeping duties related to purchases.
• Consent: push notifications on devices where the operating system asks for permission. You can withdraw it at any time in your device or browser settings.

12. Deleting your account

Normally you can delete your account from Settings. Deletion removes your profile and your user data according to our current implementation, including your posts, comments, conversations and matches.

While a temporary suspension is active, the self-service deletion button is not available until the suspension ends; the app shows you the end date. If a suspension is permanent, self-service deletion stays available.

This concerns the automatic self-service button only. It never prevents you from submitting a deletion request: whatever the state of your account, you can write to us at the contact address below and ask for your account to be deleted, and we handle that request separately. Our public Account deletion page explains what to send.

Requests concerning your data protection rights are assessed on their own merits under the applicable law, independently of whether a suspension is in place.

Some data survives deletion because we are required or allowed to keep it: billing and audit records connected to purchases (legal, tax, anti-fraud and transaction-management duties), pseudonymised moderation history for up to 12 months, minimised referral/anti-fraud records for up to 12 months, and — for accounts that were permanently suspended — the pseudonymised authentication identifier described in section 9. Paddle and Google keep their own records under their own policies.

Backups and provider logs are cycled on their own schedules, so we do not promise that every copy disappears instantly.

Deleting your LFG account can cause the immediate loss of any remaining Premium time. Before deleting, the app tells you what happens to your subscription: for Paddle we ask Paddle to stop the automatic renewal at the end of the current period, while Google Play subscriptions are managed by you through Google Play. Deleting the LFG account is not the same as cancelling a Google Play subscription.

13. Service providers

We only use the providers we actually need to run LFG:

• Supabase, as the database, authentication and storage layer of our Lovable Cloud backend;
• Lovable, for hosting and deployment of the application;
• Cloudflare, for the delivery and execution of the web application;
• Google, for Firebase Cloud Messaging (push delivery to the Android app) and for Google sign-in when you use it;
• Paddle, for web payments.

14. International transfers

Our providers may process data outside your country, including outside the European Economic Area. In that case the transfer relies on the safeguards offered by the provider in its own data processing terms, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses where applicable.

We do not claim any specific hosting region or certification beyond what our providers publish in their own documentation.

15. Cookies and local storage

LFG does not use analytics, advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

We use browser local storage and session storage for strictly necessary purposes: keeping you signed in, caching content so the app stays fast, remembering technical preferences such as language, and device-based anti-fraud. Payment and sign-in providers may set their own strictly necessary cookies when you use their flows.

16. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict or object to the processing of your data, the right to data portability where applicable, and the right to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

Many of these actions are available directly in the app (edit your profile, mute, block, delete your account). For anything else, write to lookingforgroup.community@gmail.com and we will answer within a reasonable time.

If you believe we handled your data incorrectly, you can lodge a complaint with your competent data protection authority.

17. Changes

We may update this policy when the service changes. The effective date and the last update date are shown at the top of this page. Material changes will be communicated in the app.

18. Contact

For any privacy question: lookingforgroup.community@gmail.com.