Privacy Policy

Summary (the short version)

Here's the whole policy in a paragraph, with the detail below for anyone who wants it. velvv collects what it needs to run a safe dating and nightlife app: the profile you build, the content you post, your messages, optional location, and the signals that power matching. Your one-to-one chats are visible only to you and the person you're talking to. We do not sell your data, we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers, and the whole service runs on infrastructure we host and control rather than a public third-party cloud. You can edit, export or delete your data, and the app is strictly for adults (18+).

Who we are & scope

velvv ("velvv", "we", "us", "our") is operated by Ughoron. This policy applies to the velvv mobile app (Android and iOS), the velvv website, and the Velvv Business portal. It explains, in detail, what personal data we process, the purposes and legal bases, who it is shared with, how long it is kept, and the rights and controls available to you. By creating an account you acknowledge this policy. Where local data-protection law (such as the Nigeria Data Protection Act, the GDPR or the CCPA) gives you additional rights, those rights apply.

Our backend is a self-hosted Appwrite instance running on servers we operate. Unlike many apps, your data is not handed to a large third-party platform by default — most of it never leaves our own infrastructure.

Information we collect

We collect the categories below. "Required" means the app can't function without it; "optional" means it's only collected if you choose to use the related feature.

a. Account & identity (required)

• Email and password. Your password is hashed by our auth layer (Argon2) — we never see or store it in plain text.
• Name, shown on your profile.
• Phone number. Stored on your account and additionally as a one-way SHA-256 hash. We use it to secure your account, to issue SMS one-time codes when phone verification is enabled, to enforce one account per phone number, and to power Hide-from-contacts. Your number is private — it never appears on your profile. It is immutable after signup; a permanent, hashed history of any numbers tied to the account is retained for abuse prevention.
• Date of birth. Used to enforce our strict 18+ rule and to compute the age shown on your profile. Changes to DOB, name or gender are reviewed by our team and limited in frequency.
• Device identifier. An installation fingerprint used only to refuse multiple sign-ups from the same physical device. This is not an advertising ID and is not used for tracking across apps.

b. Profile & content

• Profile fields you provide: photos, an optional intro video, bio, gender, who you want to meet, your intent (Dating / Casual / Friends-with-benefits), interests, city, and "available tonight" status. These are shown to other users — that is the purpose of a dating profile, not third-party sharing.
• Reels and stories you post, which appear publicly in the discovery feed until you delete them.
• Media you share in chats — photos, videos, voice notes, and "view-once" photos.

c. Messages, calls & safety signals

• Messages (text and media), read receipts, timestamps, and any disappearing-message timers you set. Conversations are visible only to the two participants — and to our moderation team only when a message is reported to us.
• Voice and video calls are peer-to-peer (WebRTC); the audio/video stream travels device-to-device. Only brief signaling metadata passes through our server to connect the call.
• Screenshot / screen-record attempts on chats, view-once photos and calls are detected and the other person is alerted; the capture is blanked on Android.

d. Location (optional)

• City — coarse, used to surface nearby people and venues. You can use a city instead of precise GPS.
• Precise GPS — only with your permission, for the Places map, in-app directions, and the Hide-zones feature (home/office areas you draw so you never appear to people physically inside them).

e. Contacts (optional, hashed on your device)

• If you use Hide-from-contacts, the app reads your contacts and hashes the phone numbers on your device. Only the irreversible hashes are stored. Raw contact numbers never leave your phone, and we cannot recover them.

f. Verification media (optional)

• For the "Verified by velvv" badge, we confirm you are the person who appears in your own profile media. When you add your intro video and photos, we extract a few still frames from the video and register them, with your photos, as your reference identity (a face template per image) in our self-hosted face-matching service (CompreFace); these templates stay on our infrastructure and are deleted when you turn verification off or delete your account. At verification, a short guided liveness scan runs on-device (Google MLKit — those frames are not uploaded); one captured frame is sent to CompreFace and matched against your enrolled identity, then discarded after the decision.
• Diamond blue-tick and celebrity applications include the details you submit; celebrity material is reviewed privately and never shown publicly.

g. App activity (used only to personalize your experience)

• Who you like, pass and view, and reel plays/likes. These signals power the ranking that decides what you see. They stay on our servers and are not shared.

h. Notifications & diagnostics

• Push tokens, so we (and another user's device) can deliver alerts. We deliberately hide the contents of notifications in the system banner.
• Minimal crash / stability information to fix bugs. We do not run third-party advertising or analytics SDKs.

i. Payments

• Records of plans, Flirts and (for businesses) ad-spend/earnings, and order references. Card and bank details are entered directly on Paystack/Flutterwave's secure flow; velvv stores only references and balances — never raw card numbers.

How & why we use your data

• Provide the service — create and secure your account, build your profile, match you with compatible people, rank your feed and map, deliver chats, calls and notifications. (Basis: performance of our contract with you.)
• Safety & integrity — verify age and identity, prevent bots, fraud, duplicate accounts and abuse, and act on reports. (Basis: legitimate interests and legal obligation.)
• Personalization — use your in-app activity to decide what to show you. (Basis: legitimate interests; you can limit this via Discovery settings.)
• Communication — service messages, verification codes, and (optional) push notifications.
• Legal — comply with applicable law and respond to lawful requests.

We do not use your personal data to build advertising profiles, and we do not make solely-automated decisions that produce legal effects about you.

What we don't do

• We can't read your one-to-one messages — only you and the person you're chatting with can, unless a message is reported for safety review.
• We do not sell your personal information.
• We do not share your data with advertisers, ad networks or data brokers, and we don't embed third-party advertising/analytics SDKs.
• We block screenshots and screen recording of chats, one-time photos and calls, and we tell the other person if someone tries.
• We don't ask for more permissions than a feature needs, and each one is optional until you use that feature.

Sharing & processors

We share personal data only with the infrastructure processors below, each acting on our behalf under contract and only for the stated purpose — never with data brokers or advertisers.

• Appwrite (self-hosted) — our database, authentication, file storage and realtime layer, on servers we control.
• CompreFace (self-hosted) — face enrollment + matching for verification (frames from your intro video + your profile photos, plus the live verification scan).
• Google Play Services / MLKit — on-device face-liveness and map rendering (the liveness frames are not uploaded).
• Expo Push — notification delivery (push token + generic notification text).
• Termii — SMS one-time codes, only if phone verification is enabled (your phone number).
• Paystack / Flutterwave — payment and payout processing.
• Other users — the profile content you choose to display is visible to other people in the app, which is the point of the product.
• Authorities — where we are legally required to, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our users or the public.

International transfers

Our infrastructure is operated by us; where data is processed in a country other than yours, we rely on appropriate safeguards (such as standard contractual clauses or equivalent) and only transfer what the processor needs for the purpose described above.

Verification & moderation

A quick selfie liveness check, optional phone/email verification, and a human review team help keep bots and bad actors out. When you report someone, our team reviews the report and may warn, restrict, suspend or ban the account. We may retain limited records of moderation actions to enforce our Terms and keep repeat offenders out.

Location data

Location is always optional. You can grant precise location for the map and directions, use a city only, or deny location entirely and still use most of the app. Hide-zone coordinates are stored so the geofence can be enforced; otherwise we use your location transiently and don't keep a location history.

Contacts data

The Hide-from-contacts feature is privacy-preserving by design: we hash contact numbers on your device and store only the hashes, so we never hold your address book and cannot reverse the hashes back into numbers. You can clear this list at any time in the app.

Retention

• Account and profile data is kept while your account is active.
• Phone-number hashes and device identifiers are retained even after a number change, for abuse prevention.
• Messages follow any disappearing-message timer you set; otherwise they remain until you or the other party delete them or close the account.
• When you delete your account we remove your profile, reels and chats on the schedule the law allows; minimal records (e.g. a banned-device or banned-number hash, transaction records) may be retained where legally required or for fraud prevention.

Your rights & choices

• Access & edit — view and edit your profile any time in the app.
• Export — request a copy of your personal data.
• Delete — delete your account (in-app, or email support@velvv.com).
• Restrict / object — turn off discovery, hide your profile, limit who can message you, and control location, contacts, notifications and app-lock from Settings.
• Withdraw consent — revoke camera, location, contacts or notification permissions in your device settings at any time.
• Some sensitive changes (name, gender, DOB, photos for verified users) are reviewed before they go live and limited to once every 30 days.
• You may also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.

Security

We encrypt data in transit (TLS) and at rest, keep one-to-one chats visible only to participants, enforce per-document access controls, and limit internal access on a least-privilege basis. You can add an app lock (PIN or biometric) and 2FA, and the app blocks screenshots of sensitive content and warns when someone shares a phone number or link in chat. No system is perfect, but we work hard to protect you and will notify you and the authorities of a breach where the law requires.

Age & children

velvv is strictly for adults aged 18 and over. We enforce this at signup with a date-of-birth gate and remove any account we determine to be under 18. The app is not directed to children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.

Website & cookies

Our website and Business portal use only the cookies and local storage needed to keep you signed in and remember basic preferences. We don't use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. The mobile app does not use web cookies.

Velvv Business data

If you signed up to put a business on velvv — a venue, brand, store, service or anything else — a different slice of data is involved. Here's how we handle it.

• Business profile. Name, category, photos, address, hours, contact details, the team member who runs the account. Public — that's the point.
• Booking data. Customer names, dates, party size and notes for bookings made through velvv. Shared with you so you can confirm or decline. Customers see your business name and confirmation status; you see the customer's basic booking info.
• Payments & wallets. Top-ups and earnings flow through Paystack or Flutterwave; we hold balances and ledgers for your Ad-spend and Earnings wallets. Bank account details you provide for payouts are encrypted and used only to pay you out.
• Campaign data. Creative, targeting and performance (views, clicks, spend). We use it to deliver, measure and improve your ads — and to give you the analytics in your dashboard. We don't share campaign performance with other businesses.
• Audience targeting. Your campaigns can target broad audience signals (city, gender, interest), but you never receive personally identifying data about the people who see your ads.
• Verification. We may ask for documents that confirm your business is real before approval. We store these only for as long as the review needs.
• Deletion. Close a business account from the dashboard and we'll remove the listing, pause active campaigns, settle outstanding earnings, and delete identifying business data on the schedule the law allows.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves or the law changes. When we make a material change we'll update the date at the top and, where appropriate, notify you in the app. Continuing to use velvv after an update means you accept the revised policy.

Contact

Questions, requests or complaints about your data? Email support@velvv.com or hello@velvv.com. Business-specific questions: business@velvv.com. We're operated by Ughoron.

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