Privacy Policy

Who we are

AroundMe is operated by GROWVATION PVT LTD. Questions about this policy or your data: deven@aroundme.co.

What we collect

• Your email address. At launch it must be a ucr.edu address. That is how we verify you are a real student, and it stands in for a location check so we never have to ask for GPS.
• Your first name. Shown only to the people matched into your own group, on the invite they each receive. Never to anyone else, and never on a public page.
• The date you confirmed you are 18 or older. You tick that box when you join, on the weekly join screen or at an event, and we keep the date you did it. That is the whole record: no birthday, no ID, and no age on your account for anyone to see.
• What you tell us in the intake: the activities you pick and your answers to the questions that follow from them, which days and times of day you are generally free, your age band, your gender if you give it, whether you would prefer a same-gender group, and anything you write in your own words. We hold it to build your group and to work out which meetups to run.
• Your phone number, if you give it. Optional. We text you a one-time 6-digit code to confirm the number is yours. Until you enter that code back into your account, we never send anything else to it. After that it is used only for meetup-day details and reminders, about two messages in a week you have opted in to. Never marketing. Reply STOP at any time and the texts stop; you can also remove the number in one tap. We keep the date you gave consent and the wording you were shown, because we have to be able to prove you agreed. Your number is never shown to anyone you meet.
• Your activity on AroundMe: which weeks you opted in, which invites you confirmed, declined or attended, and the feedback you leave afterwards.
• An approximate location derived from your IP address: country, region and city only, recorded when you join, whether that is on the weekly join screen or at an event, and when you sign up to the waitlist. We use it to work out which region you are in, to pre-fill the location question so you do not have to type it, and to count how many people want AroundMe in each place. It is always a suggestion you can overrule: whatever you tell us wins. We do not use GPS, we do not track you, and we do not store a location history.
• If you join the waitlist:your name, email, the location you tell us, what you are interested in, when you are generally free, anything you write in the box, how you reached the page (the link or ad you came from, and your browser), and (if you arrived through someone's invite link) the fact that they referred you. We use this to decide which region to open next, and to email you when yours opens.
• If you join through an event someone else is running:which event it was and the moment you cleared its door, which sittings you said you would come to, what you said would make it worth coming, your answer to “What do you do?” if you write one, and your answers to the organizer’s own questions. We also store which sentence was printed under each of those boxes at the moment you typed, so that an organizer who changes their mind later cannot turn an answer you gave privately into one that gets read out. Two of these answers are meant to be read by other people, and both say so under the box before you type: your “What do you do?” line, and any organizer question marked “Your group will see this when you meet.” Those appear beside your first name to the people in your own group, and to nobody else. Every other box on that form says “Just for matching. Nobody sees this.” and that is the whole of it. The organizer gets counts and themes, never a name and never what one person wrote.
• The city you name at the end of an event: once an event you joined is over we ask you one thing, once: whether you want to keep meeting people this way. We ask that before we ask anything about where. Say no and we record the no and nothing else. No city, and nothing further from us about that event. Say yes and, if we cannot already tell where to seat you, we ask which city. What you type, or the region you tap, becomes a waitlist entry exactly like the one described above, because that list is how we decide which city opens next. If you go on to tell us what you would actually turn up to, that goes on the same entry. And if the place you name is one we already run in and your address opens it, there is no waitlist entry at all: we set the region on your account and you can start that week.

We do not collect your student ID, your grades, your class schedule, or anything academic, and we never ask a professor for information about you.

What we never do

• We never sell or rent your personal information, and we never have.
• We never show your profile to other members. Nobody can browse people on AroundMe.
• Your invite tells you enough to decide: the first names of the 4-6 people in your group, why you were put together, and which venue and when. What it withholds until you confirm is the street address and the exact spot to find everyone inside. You never see anything about anyone outside your own group.
• We never track your location in the background.
• We never share your data with your university.

Who we share it with

Only the service providers that make the product run, and only the fields they need to do their job:

• Supabase: our database. Stores everything above.
• Netlify: hosts the site and serves every page.
• Resend: sends your verification codes, invites and reminders. Receives your email address.
• Twilio: sends your phone verification code and, once the number is verified, meetup-day texts. Receives your phone number at the moment you ask us to verify it, which may be before you have any meetup. Your text-messaging opt-in and consent are never shared with anyone else, for any purpose.
• Google Analytics: aggregate traffic measurement. It runs on the public site and inside the app, but never receives the address of an invite link, because that link is a key to your meetup.
• The matching provider:when we build groups, the matcher is told each person’s first name, interests, intake answers, what you said you want out of it, gender if given and whether you asked for a same-gender group, who you have already been grouped with before, and who you have asked never to be grouped with again. That last one is never shown to the person blocked, and never to anyone else. If you came in through an event, it is also told your answers to the organizer’s own questions, and which of those you were told your group would see. It is not told your email address, your phone number, or your location.
• ipwho.is: turns your IP address into an approximate city, so the waitlist form can suggest your region and so we know which regions to open next. They receive the IP address itself. This happens when the waitlist page loads, not only when you submit it, and again when you verify your email.
• Google Gemini or Anthropic Claude: are that matching provider. They receive exactly what is listed above and nothing else: no email address, no phone number, no contact detail of any kind. Your data is not used to train their models.

We will also disclose information if the law requires it, or if we believe in good faith that it is necessary to prevent serious harm to someone.

Your rights

You can exercise all of these yourself, immediately, from your account page, with no email and no waiting on us:

• Download your data.On your account page, “Your data” → download everything we hold on you as a JSON file.
• Delete your account. Same page, at the bottom. This erases your profile, answers, opt-ins, invites and any waitlist entry you started with, permanently and immediately. It is not a soft flag: the data is gone and we cannot restore it. You can also delete your account here.
• Correct your information. Everything in your intake can be edited from your account page.

California residents have the rights to know, delete, correct, and to opt out of sale or sharing under the CCPA/CPRA. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined, so there is nothing to opt out of; the download and delete buttons above satisfy the rest directly. We will never discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. If you would rather have a human do it, email deven@aroundme.co and we will respond within 45 days.

How long we keep it

For as long as your account exists. When you delete your account, your personal data is deleted immediately, including the waitlist entry you may have started with. Two things remain. Aggregate, non-identifying counts (for example “22 people attended meetups in week 3”) stay, because they contain nothing that identifies you. And if someone has filed a safety report about your conduct, that report stays: a report is the reporter’s account of what happened, and deleting an account cannot be a way to erase it.

Age

AroundMe is for people aged 18 and over. We ask you to confirm this when you join. If we learn that someone under 18 has created an account, we delete it.

Cookies

We use a small number of cookies: one to keep you signed in, and Google Analytics cookies for aggregate traffic measurement across the site and the app. We do not run advertising trackers and we do not build advertising profiles.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that affects how we handle your data, we will email you before it takes effect. The previous PDF version of this policy is archived here.

3 September 2026

• Added what we collect when you join through an event someone else is running: the event, when you came in, which sittings you picked, and the answers you gave on that form. We have held all of it since the event pages shipped and this page did not name any of it. No new field, and nothing new is shown to anybody.
• Said plainly which two of those answers your group can read, and quoted the sentence printed under each box before you type. That is how the form already worked.
• Added what happens to the city you name at the end of an event: it becomes a waitlist entry, because that list is what decides which city we open next. Also said what a no does, which is nothing beyond recording the no.
• The approximate location we take from your IP address is recorded at an event join too, not only on the weekly join screen and the waitlist. Same practice, now described in full.
• Corrected and completed what the matcher is told. It was described as receiving your general availability, which it does not and never has. It does receive three things this page did not name: what you said you want out of it, who you have already been grouped with, and, if you came in through an event, your answers to that organizer’s questions. Nothing about the matching changed. The description of it was wrong in both directions and is now the same list the code sends.
• Removed “how far you will travel” from what the intake collects. No form in AroundMe has ever asked it. The field existed in our code and in two test fixtures and nowhere else, so there was nothing to delete and nothing of yours was ever held.
• Removed “This is what the matcher uses” from the same list. It was not true of all of it: the days and times you say you are free are used to work out which meetups to run, not who you sit with. Each thing now says what we hold it for, and the section above still lists exactly what the matcher is told.
• Described the intake as it now is. The old fixed list of interests became a shorter set of activities with follow-up questions that depend on what you pick. Same kinds of answers, fewer questions, and nothing new collected.
• Named three things the waitlist form has always collected and this page did not: when you are generally free, what you write in the box, and how you reached the page. No new field.
• Corrected the name of the account section that holds your download, and cut three sentences that explained how our matching works rather than what we hold about you. Nothing we do changed. Everything this page promises never to show you, or never to send anyone, is untouched.

2 September 2026

• Punctuation only. We removed the long dashes from this page and replaced them with ordinary punctuation. Nothing changed about what we collect, who receives it, or anything we promise here: every sentence means exactly what it meant on 24 August. No email went out, because nothing about your data changed.

24 August 2026

• Added the date you confirmed you are 18 or older to the list of what we collect. We have recorded that date since the join screen shipped, and this page did not say so. Nothing about it changed: it is a date, it is not a birthday, and nobody you meet ever sees it.

15 August 2026

• Corrected what an invite shows. It has always named the people in your group and the venue before you confirm; the earlier wording said otherwise. What confirming unlocks is the street address and the exact spot to meet.
• Google Analytics no longer receives the address of an invite link, or your email address on the sign-in and waitlist pages. It had been receiving both.
• Added the matching provider and ipwho.is to the list of who receives data. Both were missing.
• Deleting your account now also deletes the waitlist entry you may have started with. It previously survived, which made the promise above incomplete.