Privacy Policy

Kessi ("we," "us," or "our") is the operator of the Kessi mobile application and related services (collectively, the "Services"). Kessi is a social discovery platform designed to help adults connect through local events, community groups, and shared places.

For privacy-related inquiries, requests, or complaints, please contact us at the email address above. We aim to respond to all requests within 30 days.

Kessi is a 21+ platform. You must be at least 21 years of age to create an account, access, or use any part of our Services. By registering, you represent and warrant that you are 21 years of age or older.

We take age compliance seriously. We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under 21 years of age. If we become aware that a user is under 21, we will:

• Immediately suspend and terminate the account.
• Delete all personal information associated with the underage account.
• Remove any content posted by the underage user.

If you believe someone under 21 has created an account on Kessi, please report it immediately to kessiapp@outlook.com.

We collect information you provide directly, information generated by your use of the Services, and certain technical data.

Information You Provide

• Account and profile details: Name, username, email address, date of birth (for age verification), profile photo, biography, gender (optional), pronouns (optional), and interests.
• Location information: Your city or region as you enter it, and locations you associate with events or places you interact with.
• Community activity: Events you create or join, groups you participate in, places you save or review, polls you respond to, and invitations you send or receive.
• User-generated content: Photos, posts, reviews, and other media you upload.
• Communications: Messages sent through in-app chat features, support requests, reports you submit about other users or content, and feedback you provide.
• Verification data: Identity verification documents or selfies you optionally submit to obtain a verified badge on your profile.

Information Collected Automatically

• Usage data: Features you access, pages you view, events you browse, search queries, and timestamps of your activity.
• Device and technical data: IP address, device type, operating system, browser type, device identifiers, and referring URLs.
• Log data: Error reports, performance data, and diagnostic information that help us identify and fix technical issues.
• Cookies and local storage: Session tokens, preference data, and analytics identifiers stored on your device to keep you signed in and improve your experience. See Section 6 for more on location data specifically.

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Provide the Services: Enable account creation, event discovery, group participation, chat functionality, and all other core features.
• Personalization: Tailor event recommendations, suggested connections, and community content based on your location, interests, and activity history.
• Safety and security: Detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, harassment, illegal activity, and violations of our Terms of Service. Review identity verification submissions.
• Age verification: Verify that users meet the 21+ age requirement and enforce our age restriction policy.
• Communications: Send transactional notifications (event updates, join requests, message alerts), safety alerts, and service announcements. With your consent, send promotional or marketing communications.
• Analytics and improvement: Analyze aggregated usage patterns to improve existing features, develop new features, and measure the effectiveness of changes.
• Legal compliance: Meet our obligations under applicable laws, regulations, and court orders, and respond to valid requests from law enforcement or regulatory authorities.
• Dispute resolution: Investigate and resolve disputes between users or between users and Kessi.

We may share your information in the following limited circumstances:

• With other Kessi members: Your public profile information (name, photo, bio, interests, verified status) is visible to other members. Content you post publicly (events, group messages, reviews) is visible according to your privacy settings. Direct messages are visible only to the intended recipients.
• With service providers: We use trusted third-party vendors to operate the Services, including cloud hosting (Supabase), analytics providers, email delivery services, and customer support tools. These vendors are contractually prohibited from using your data for any purpose other than providing services to us.
• For legal reasons: We may disclose information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is required by law, court order, or regulation; to protect the rights, safety, or property of Kessi, our users, or the public; or to investigate potential violations of our Terms of Service.
• During a business transfer: If Kessi is involved in a merger, acquisition, asset sale, or bankruptcy proceeding, your personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
• With your consent: We may share information for other purposes if you have given us explicit consent to do so.

Location is central to Kessi' community-focused features. Here is how we handle it:

• City-level location: You provide your city or region manually as part of your profile or when creating events and places. This information helps match you with your local community.
• No background location tracking: Kessi does not automatically collect your precise GPS coordinates in the background. We do not track your real-time physical location without your explicit action.
• User-submitted location context: When you create an event or place, any address or location data you enter is associated with that content and visible to other users.
• City Groups: Your profile city is used to automatically match you to your city's community group within the app. Only the city group corresponding to your stated location is shown to you.

Kessi provides in-app messaging features including direct messages between friends, group chats, and event chats. Please be aware of the following:

• Message storage: Messages sent through Kessi are stored on our servers to deliver them to recipients and to maintain chat history within the app.
• No end-to-end encryption: In-app messages are not end-to-end encrypted. This means that Kessi staff may access message content in limited circumstances, such as investigating reports of harassment, abuse, or violations of our community guidelines.
• Safety moderation: We may review message content flagged by users or identified through automated safety systems to enforce our Terms of Service and protect community safety.
• Retention: Chat messages are retained for the duration of your account. If you delete your account, your messages may remain visible to other participants in group or event chats, but your identifying information will be removed.

You have meaningful control over your personal information. Your rights include:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction: Update or correct inaccurate information directly through your profile settings, or by contacting us.
• Deletion: Request deletion of your account and personal data. Some information may be retained for legal compliance, dispute resolution, or safety purposes even after deletion.
• Portability: Request your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Restriction: Request that we limit how we process your personal information in certain circumstances.
• Opt-out of marketing: Unsubscribe from promotional emails at any time using the unsubscribe link in any email, or by adjusting notification settings within the app.
• Privacy settings: Control who can view your profile using the Hide Profile and Ghost Mode features in Settings. Ghost Mode (a Pro feature) allows you to browse without appearing in discovery.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at kessiapp@outlook.com. We will respond within 30 days. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

We take the security of your personal information seriously and implement industry-standard measures to protect it:

• Encryption in transit: All data transmitted between your device and our servers is encrypted using TLS/HTTPS.
• Access controls: Access to personal data is restricted to authorized personnel on a need-to-know basis.
• Secure infrastructure: Our Services are hosted on Supabase, a secure cloud platform with enterprise-grade security practices.
• Row-Level Security: Our database enforces row-level security policies ensuring users can only access data they are authorized to see.
• Regular review: We periodically review and update our security practices to address new threats and vulnerabilities.

Despite these measures, no method of data transmission or storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security. If you suspect unauthorized access to your account, please contact us immediately at kessiapp@outlook.com.

In the event of a data breach that affects your personal information, we will notify you as required by applicable law.

We retain personal information for as long as necessary to provide the Services and fulfill the purposes described in this policy, subject to the following:

• Active accounts: We retain your profile data, activity history, and content for as long as your account remains active.
• Deleted accounts: When you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal information within 90 days, except where retention is required for legal compliance, dispute resolution, fraud prevention, or enforcement of our Terms.
• Legal obligations: Certain data may be retained longer to comply with applicable laws, regulations, or valid legal process.
• Aggregated data: Anonymized or aggregated data that cannot identify you may be retained indefinitely for analytics and product improvement.
• Backup systems: Residual copies of deleted data may remain in backup storage for up to 90 additional days before being permanently overwritten.

We are in full compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and do not direct our Services to children under 13, nor to minors under 21 for whom our platform is not appropriate.

If we discover that a person under 21 has provided us with personal information, we will:

• Immediately terminate the account.
• Delete all personal information associated with that account.
• Remove all content posted by that user.

Parents or guardians who believe their child under 21 has registered on Kessi should contact us immediately at kessiapp@outlook.com.

Kessi is operated in the United States. If you access the Services from outside the United States, your personal information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your country.

By using the Services, you consent to the transfer of your information to the United States. We will take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal information receives an adequate level of protection wherever it is processed, consistent with applicable data protection laws.

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) provide you with additional rights regarding your personal information:

• Right to Know: You have the right to request that we disclose what personal information we have collected, used, disclosed, or sold about you in the past 12 months.
• Right to Delete: You have the right to request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain exceptions.
• Right to Correct: You have the right to request correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing: We do not sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. No opt-out is required because we do not engage in these practices.
• Right to Non-Discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights.
• Right to Limit Use of Sensitive Personal Information: Where we process sensitive personal information (such as precise location), we limit its use to the purposes disclosed in this policy.

To exercise your California privacy rights, contact us at kessiapp@outlook.com. We will respond to verified requests within 45 days as required by law. You may designate an authorized agent to submit requests on your behalf.

We may communicate with you in the following ways:

• Transactional notifications: Messages about your account activity such as event updates, friend requests, group join approvals, and safety alerts. These are necessary for the operation of the Services and cannot be fully disabled while your account is active.
• Marketing communications: Promotional emails about new features, events, or offers. You can opt out of these at any time by using the unsubscribe link in any marketing email or by contacting us.
• In-app notifications: Alerts within the Kessi application. You can manage your notification preferences in the app's Settings section.

You may delete your Kessi account at any time from the Settings section of the app. Upon deletion:

• Your profile will be immediately removed from public view.
• Your personal information will be permanently deleted from our active databases within 90 days.
• Content you posted (such as events or group messages) may remain visible to other participants in a de-identified or anonymized form.
• Certain data may be retained where required by law or for legitimate safety purposes as described in Section 10.

If you are unable to delete your account through the app, please contact us at kessiapp@outlook.com and we will process your deletion request within 30 days.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, the Services, or applicable law. When we make material changes, we will:

• Update the "Effective" date at the top of this policy.
• Notify you via in-app notification or email for significant changes.
• In some cases, ask you to review and acknowledge the updated policy before continuing to use the Services.

Your continued use of the Services after an updated policy becomes effective constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy. If you do not agree to the updated terms, you should stop using the Services and may delete your account.

For any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal information, please contact us:

We aim to respond to all privacy-related inquiries within 30 days. For urgent safety concerns, please also use the in-app reporting tools available on any event, profile, or group.