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.
• What you tell us in the intake: your interests and your answers to the follow-up questions, your general availability, age band, gender (optional), whether you would prefer a same-gender group, how far you will travel, and anything you type in the free-text box. This is what the matcher uses.
• 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 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, 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.

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, general availability, gender if given, and who they have asked never to be grouped with again. That last one is how a block is honoured; it is never shown to the person blocked, and never to anyone else.
• 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 — form the weekly groups. They receive your first name, interests and intake answers. They do not receive your email address, phone number or any contact detail, and 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 — no email, no waiting on us:

• Download your data.“Your account & data” → download everything we hold on you as a JSON file.
• Delete your account. Same section. 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 — and 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.

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.