privacy policy

ThroughFriends ("we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). This policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, who can see it, and your rights in relation to it.

By creating an account, you agree to your information being handled as described here.

Who we are

ThroughFriends is operated by ThroughFriends Pty Ltd (ACN 702 643 105), an Australian company based in Sydney. If you have any questions about this policy or how your information is handled, contact us at support@throughfriends.com.au.

Information we collect

Account information. Your mobile number, which you provide when you sign up, and to which we send a one-time code by SMS. We collect it to create your account, to sign you in, and to make it harder for one person to run duplicate or fake accounts, because a mobile number is harder to churn through than an email address. Your mobile number is never shown to other users, it is never shown to your matchmakers or to anyone you match with, and we do not use it for marketing or hand it to anyone for advertising or tracking.

You can instead sign up and sign in with an email address and a password, which is the option behind "use email instead" on the sign-in screen. Whichever you use, passwords are stored only as salted hashes by our authentication provider, and we never see your password. If you gave us an email address as well, we use it to send account emails such as a sign-up confirmation or a password reset.

Profile information. Your first name and surname, date of birth (from which we calculate and display your age), and the photos you upload. Alongside these you may add your gender, pronouns, sexual orientation, occupation, bio, height, interests, answers to profile prompts, relationship goal, preferred kind of first date, whether and how much you drink, whether you smoke, whether you have children and whether you want them, your religion, and your politics.

Everything in that second list is optional. You choose what to put in these fields, and you can edit or remove them at any time in the app.

Your visibility choices. For each optional field you can choose to fill it in and show it, fill it in and keep it hidden from your profile, or decline it altogether. We store those choices so the app can honour them.

Matching preferences. The age range and the gender or genders you would like to be matched with.

Location. A postcode is required when you sign up, because we can only match people who can realistically meet. From it we look up your suburb and state, and the centre point of that suburb from a public postcode table, which we use to place you in the right match pool and to show your area on your profile. That centre point is the same for everyone in the postcode. It is not your address, and it is not where your phone is.

You can also let the app read your device's location as a shortcut to filling in the postcode. If you grant permission, it reads your location once at the moment you tap to set it, converts it into a postcode and suburb, and discards the coordinates it read from your phone. Only the postcode and suburb are kept, exactly as if you had typed them. We do not track your location in the background, and we never read it at any other time. Granting location permission is optional. Providing a postcode is not.

Availability. The days and times you mark as free, which we use to schedule dates.

Matchmaker and friend relationships. Who you have invited to be your matchmaker, who has accepted, and any written review a friend contributes to your profile. Invitations are sent by you as a link you share yourself. We do not access your phone's contacts or address book.

Activity in the app. Selections your matchmakers make on your behalf, matches, booked dates, messages you send to a match, date attendance, cancellations, and the ratings you leave after a date.

Push notification tokens. If you turn on notifications, your device gives us an anonymous token that lets us send you a notification about a match or a booked date. It identifies the device, not you, and we use it for nothing else. To deliver a notification we pass that token and the text of the notification to Expo, our push delivery provider, which hands it on to Apple or Google.

Safety reports. If you report or block another user, we collect the report reason, any details you write, and the account and date it relates to. We retain this information for safety purposes.

Technical and usage information. When you use the app, our analytics and crash reporting providers receive technical information such as device model, operating system version, app version, general region derived from IP address, crash and error diagnostics, and records of which screens and actions you used. We use this only to keep the app working and to understand how the product is used.

Sensitive information

Some of what a dating profile naturally contains is treated by the Privacy Act as "sensitive information", which attracts a higher standard of protection than ordinary personal information. Three of our optional profile fields fall into that category:

• your sexual orientation, which you can state directly, and which your gender together with your match preferences may in any case reveal
• your religion
• your politics

All three are optional, all three can be filled in and kept hidden from your profile, and all three can be left out entirely. We collect them only with your explicit consent, given when you choose to complete those fields, and we use them for nothing beyond building the profile your matchmakers see and placing you in the right match pool. We do not use them to make any decision about you outside the matching function, and we never disclose them to anyone except the people described below.

If you join the waitlist

Our website has a waitlist you can join before the app is open to you. If you do, we collect your email address, your suburb, and optionally your gender, who you are looking to meet, and how you heard about us. We use this to tell you when we open in your area and to understand where demand is. It is kept separately from any app account you later create, and it is not added to a profile.

You can ask us to remove you from the waitlist at any time by emailing support@throughfriends.com.au, and every email we send from it has an unsubscribe link.

How we use your information

We use your information to:

• create and maintain your account, and send the one-time code that signs you in
• build the profile that you and your matchmakers see
• generate daily match batches and run the matching process
• schedule and book dates around your stated availability
• let you and your match exchange messages about a booked date
• investigate safety reports and enforce blocks
• keep the app stable and diagnose crashes
• understand how the app is used so we can improve it
• contact you about your account or about a booked date

We do not use your information for purposes unrelated to the app's core function without your further consent. We do not use it to build advertising profiles, we do not serve advertising, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.

Who can see your information

Your matchmakers. You may appoint up to five matchmakers, who view your daily profile batch and make selections on your behalf. This is disclosed to you during onboarding and requires your active setup. Matchmakers see the profile information needed to make a selection, meaning photos and profile responses. They do not see your mobile number, your email address, your password, your account settings, or your messages.

Other Daters' matchmakers. Once your profile is complete, it is also shown, as part of their daily batch, to the matchmakers of other Daters who are looking for someone like you. These are people you have not chosen and may not know. This is how the app works: someone else's friend has to pick you before a date can be booked. They see the same profile fields your own matchmakers see, subject to your visibility choices, and never your mobile number, your email address, your messages, or your exact location. The only location they see is the suburb shown on your profile.

People you are matched with. When you match, the other person sees your profile and can exchange messages with you about the booked date. They do not see your mobile number, your email address or any other contact details unless you choose to share them.

Friends who write a review. If a friend contributes a written review to your profile, that review and the friend's first name are visible to people who view your profile. You choose whether to feature a review.

Nobody else. Your profile is not public, is not indexed by search engines, and is not visible outside the app.

Disclosure to third parties

We do not sell personal information to anyone.

We use the following service providers to run the app. Each may access personal information only to provide services to us, not for their own purposes:

Information may be disclosed to venue partners only to the extent necessary to facilitate a booked date, such as party size and time, not your profile details.

We may also disclose personal information where we are required or permitted to do so by law, or where we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to prevent a serious threat to someone's life, health, or safety.

Overseas storage and disclosure

Our primary database and your photos are hosted in Australia (Sydney region). Some providers we rely on, listed in the table above, process information on servers located outside Australia, including in the United States. Where this occurs we take reasonable steps to ensure overseas recipients handle your information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, as required by APP 8.

Security

We take reasonable steps to protect your information, including encryption in transit and at rest, row-level access controls in the database so that users can only read the records they are entitled to, and profile photos served through short-lived signed links rather than public URLs. No system is perfectly secure, but we review these controls as the service grows.

Access and correction

Most of your information can be viewed and corrected directly in the app under profile and settings. You may also request access to, or correction of, your personal information by emailing support@throughfriends.com.au. We will respond within a reasonable time, and we will not charge for a straightforward access request. If we refuse a request, we will tell you why in writing.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time from inside the app, under profile and settings. You do not need to contact us or give a reason. If you would rather ask us to do it, email support@throughfriends.com.au from the address on your account and we will action it within 30 days.

Deletion happens immediately and cannot be undone. It removes your profile (including your name, date of birth, gender, occupation, bio, prompt answers and location), your photos, your availability, the messages you have sent, the ratings you have left, your links to your matchmakers and to anyone you matchmake for, and any review you have written about someone else. Your mobile number and your email address are both scrubbed from the account record, freeing the number and the address for use again if you or anyone else later signs up with them, and the account is locked so it can never be signed into. You are signed out on every device.

Some things are deliberately kept. Where you and another person were matched or went on a booked date, a record that the booking happened is kept on their side, stripped of your profile details, because it is equally their history and not only yours.

Safety reports and blocks are also kept, whether you filed them or they were filed about you, because deleting them would let someone escape a report by deleting and re-registering. Where a report was made about something said in the app, we keep a copy of the messages it relates to, taken at the moment the report was filed. Without them a report is an accusation with nothing behind it, and someone could erase the evidence against them by deleting their account. That copy is readable only by us, is used only to deal with the report, and is never shown to another user.

None of what is kept retains your name, photos, contact details or profile.

Deleted data may also persist in routine encrypted backups, which are cycled out within 90 days.

Retention

While your account is active, we retain your profile and activity data so the service can function. If you delete your account, it goes as described above, apart from the narrow exceptions listed there.

We are a new and small service, and we are still putting formal retention periods in place for the operational records that build up behind the scenes, such as past match batches and completed dates. Our commitment is the one the Australian Privacy Principles set: we do not keep personal information once it is no longer needed for the purpose we collected it, and we will publish the specific periods here once they are set.

Analytics and crash reporting data is retained by those providers on their standard retention schedules and is not used to build a profile of you.

Children

ThroughFriends is not intended for anyone under 18, and you must be 18 or over to create an account. We rely on self-reported date of birth at signup, consistent with standard practice for dating apps. If we become aware that we have collected information from someone under 18, we will delete it and close the account.

Data breach notification

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) in accordance with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The "last updated" date at the top will reflect the most recent change, and we will notify you in the app of any material change before it takes effect.

Complaints

If you have concerns about how your information is handled, you can complain to us directly at support@throughfriends.com.au. We will acknowledge your complaint and respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.