The short version
- We collect what you put in your profile, your photos and selfie, the spot you pin on the map, and what you do in the app, such as interests, matches and messages.
- Other members see your profile and photos. If you’re a sister, you can have your photos blurred for everyone you haven’t matched with. Your selfie and your exact location are never shown to other members, and your guardian’s details are shown only to members you match with.
- We don’t sell your information, show ads, or use analytics or tracking.
- You can delete your account in the app at any time. Deletion is immediate.
Who we are
Spouz (“Spouz”, “we”, “us”) runs the Spouz app and this website, spouz.org. If you have any question about this policy or your information, email us at spouz.support@gmail.com.
What we collect
Your account
Your email address and password. We store your password only as a salted hash, so nobody at Spouz can read it.
Your profile
Everything you enter when you build your profile:
- Basics: name, date of birth, gender, marital status, height, city and country
- Faith: sect, madhab, how you practise, how often you pray, hijab or beard, diet, and whether you’re a hafiz or a revert
- Appearance and health: body type, complexion, weight, and whether you have a disability, with any details you add
- Family: family type and values, your parents’ occupations, brothers and sisters, ethnicity, and caste or biradari
- Education and work: education, field of study, occupation, job title, employer, employment status and income range
- Lifestyle and marriage: languages, smoking and alcohol, living arrangement, whether you’d relocate, your views on dowry and mahr, previous marriages and children, polygamy, when you hope to marry, and your “About me”
- Background: country of origin, residency status and nationalities
- Your guardian (wali): their name, their relationship to you and their phone number. Only add someone who has agreed to be contacted by the members you match with.
Photos and selfie
You add 2 to 6 photos of yourself. For each one we keep the full photo, a smaller copy and a blurred copy. Before a photo is uploaded, the app checks on your phone that it shows exactly one face. This check uses Google ML Kit on your device, and the photo isn’t sent to Google.
You also take one selfie. Only our review team sees it, to compare it with your photos. It’s never shown on your profile.
Photos keep the information your phone stored in them. A photo file can carry details such as the camera model, when it was taken and, if your camera records it, where. We keep that information in every copy we store, including the blurred copy, and anyone who can view a photo can read it. To keep your location out of your photos, turn off location tagging in your camera settings before you take them, or choose photos without it.
Your location
When you set your city, you pin a spot on a map. We store that spot’s exact coordinates to work out distances between members. They’re never shown to anyone. If you ask the app to use your current location, it reads your phone’s approximate location only to centre the map.
What you do in Spouz
Interests you send and receive, members you pass on, your matches, profiles you view, your messages, blocks and reports, and your settings, such as photo blur, notifications and match preferences.
Your device
A notification token and your phone’s platform (Android or iPhone), so we can send you notifications.
Technical logs
Our server keeps technical logs to run the service and fix problems. They can include the content of requests, such as a profile edit or a message, and are overwritten automatically as new logs are written.
What other members see
- Your name, age, city and country, and how far away you are, rounded to the kilometre
- Your photos. If you’ve turned on blur, members you haven’t matched with only ever receive the blurred copies.
- Whether you’re online now
- Your profile details: marital status, height, ethnicity, education, occupation, your “About me”, your sect, madhab, practice, prayer and diet, country of origin, languages, smoking, living arrangement, whether you’d relocate, when you hope to marry, body type, complexion, family type and values, and brothers and sisters
- Only once you match: your guardian’s name, relationship and phone number
- When you open someone’s full profile, they can see that you viewed it, and they may get a notification saying so.
Other members never see your selfie, email address, exact date of birth, or the spot you pinned. They also don’t see the other details you give us, such as your weight, disability, caste, income, employer, your parents’ occupations, and your previous marriages and children. Our review team can see everything in your account.
How we use your information
- To show your profile to other members and show you theirs, nearest first and filtered by your match preferences (age, distance, sect, madhab and practice). Members only see members of the opposite gender.
- To review your profile and selfie before you can send interests or messages
- To deliver interests, matches and messages, and to share guardian details when you match
- To send you the notifications you allow
- To keep Spouz safe: acting on reports, applying blocks and enforcing our terms
- To run, secure and fix the service
We don’t sell your information, show ads, or use your information for advertising or analytics.
Our reasons for using it
- To provide the service you signed up for: your account, profile, matching, interests, matches and messages
- Your explicit consent: for the sensitive details you choose to add (see below) and for notifications
- Our legitimate interest in a safe, working service: profile reviews, acting on reports, technical logs and backups
- Legal obligations: for example, reporting child sexual abuse material to the authorities
Sensitive information
Some profile details are sensitive: your faith and how you practise, your ethnicity and caste, and any disability. You add them so they can appear on your profile, help others judge whether you’re compatible, and, for sect, madhab and practice, be used for matching. By adding them, you explicitly agree to us using them for those purposes. You can change them in the app at any time, or delete your account.
Who handles your information for us
- OVHcloud hosts our server and database in Singapore. They hold everything described above.
- Microsoft Azure stores photos, selfies and database backups in its Southeast Asia region (Singapore). Photos are private and are reached only through links that expire within 30 minutes. When your phone loads a photo, Azure receives your phone’s IP address.
- Google Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers notifications. A notification can contain a member’s first name and a short preview of recent messages, never photos.
- Google Play distributes the app, under Google’s own privacy policy.
- Google Fonts supplies the app’s typefaces. When the app downloads them, Google receives your phone’s IP address.
- Google ML Kit runs the face check on your phone. It sends Google statistics about how it’s used, not your photos.
- OpenStreetMap provides the map in the location picker. Its tile servers receive your phone’s IP address and the map area you view.
- Your phone’s location service turns a place search or a pin into a place name. It receives what you search for and where you pin, and on most Android phones it’s a Google service.
- Firebase Hosting (Google) serves this website.
We share information with authorities only when the law requires it or to protect someone from serious harm.
Where your information is stored
On servers in Singapore. Our team may access it from other countries to run and support the service.
How long we keep it
- Your account, profile and activity: until you delete your account, or until you remove something yourself, such as a photo
- Notifications: deleted 7 days after they’re sent
- Database backups: kept for up to 30 days
- Deleted photos: recoverable by us for up to 7 days, then gone
- Technical logs: overwritten as new logs are written
Deleting your account
In the app, open Profile, scroll to the bottom and tap Delete account. Deletion is immediate and permanent. If you can’t use the app, you can ask us by email. Delete your account explains both ways and what’s removed.
Your choices and rights
- Edit your profile, photos and match preferences in the app at any time
- If you’re a sister, turn photo blur on or off
- Turn notifications off in the app
- Block or report anyone from their profile or your chat
- Delete your account, in the app or by email
- Email us to ask for a copy of your information, to correct something you can’t change in the app, or with any question about how we use it
Depending on where you live, data protection law may give you further rights, such as objecting to how we use your information or complaining to your data protection authority.
Security
Everything between the app and our server is encrypted in transit. Photos are stored privately and reached only through short-lived links, and passwords are stored only as salted hashes. No system is perfectly secure; if you find a problem, email us.
Children
Spouz is for adults. You must be 18 or older to use it. See our child safety standards.
This website
spouz.org doesn’t use cookies, analytics or tracking. Firebase Hosting serves it and processes your IP address to deliver the pages.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we’ll post the new version here and update the date at the top.