PRIVACY POLICY

Who we are

Association MEET AND EXPLORE PAU

A non-profit association governed by the French law of 1 July 1901 and the decree of 16 August 1901

RNA: W643014137 · SIREN: 105 880 199 · SIRET: 105 880 199 00010

Registered office: Pau (64000), France

Legal representative: Raivis Vanags, President

General contact: support@meetandexplore.com

Data protection contact: legal@meetandexplore.com

This Privacy Policy explains how the Association MEET AND EXPLORE PAU ("Meet & Explore", "we", "our") collects, uses, stores and protects your personal data when you use the Meet & Explore mobile app and its related services (the "Service").

The Service is operated in accordance with French and European law, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, Regulation 2016/679) and the amended French Data Protection Act (Loi Informatique et Libertés no. 78-17).

The French version of this Policy is the reference version. Translations are provided for convenience.

1. Adults only (18+)

Meet & Explore is exclusively for individuals aged 18 and over. You may not create an account, use the app or take part in an event if you are a minor.

• Self-declared check: when you sign up, the date of birth you enter is checked against the minimum age.

• Certified check with an identity document: if you choose ID-document verification (Section 5), your date of birth is extracted from the official document and verified.

• If a minor is detected: if identity verification shows you are under 18, the verification badge is refused, your account is immediately suspended until your 18th birthday, and an internal moderation report is opened. A dedicated screen tells you the date your account will be unlocked automatically.

If you suspect a minor is using the Service, please contact legal@meetandexplore.com immediately.

2. Personal data we collect

2.1 Data you provide directly

• Account and profile data: first name, last name, optional preferred name (public display name), email address, date of birth, gender, optional profile photo, bio, interests, languages spoken, occupation, education level, relationship status, whether you have a car and/or driving licence, and your per-field privacy settings.

• Home location (optional): town name and geographic coordinates (latitude/longitude), used only to calculate how far events are from you. Exact coordinates are never shown to other members.

• Approximate device location (optional): when you search for a place and we do not know your town, you can let the app use your phone's approximate location. It is rounded to about 10 km on your phone, sent without your identity to Mapbox and, for place names, to Komoot (OpenStreetMap), only to sort the results, and not stored.

• Location for Explore (optional): Explore shows events within a distance of you (10 km unless you change it). For this the app can use your phone's approximate location or a place you pick. It is rounded to about 1 km on your phone, sent to our server only to choose which events to show you, and not stored. If you do not allow location, the distance is measured on our server from your profile town.

• Phone number: when you verify by SMS, we store it securely to enforce the one-account-per-number rule and to validate event sign-ups (RSVPs).

• User content: events and groups you create, chat messages, uploaded photos, polls, event ratings, post-event feedback, endorsements and vouches.

• Event drafts: when you save an event as a draft before publishing it, its details and, if any, its cover photo are kept so that you can finish it later. The draft can be read and edited by the co-organisers you name on it and by the organisers of the group it belongs to; it is not shown to other members until it is published.

• Link previews: when a chat message contains a link to another website, our server fetches that page's public title, site name and preview picture so that a preview can be shown under the message. The website sees our server, not you or the people reading the message. The preview and its picture are kept for 7 days at most.

• Organization pages: if you create an organization (for example a café, club or association), the details you enter — its name, type, description, address, website and photos — are shown on its page to other members. To create one, you enter its SIREN and/or RNA number. We look the number up in the French public registers (INSEE Sirene and the Répertoire national des associations, through the government's open APIs), sending only the number, or the name you type to search for it, and show the registered name and number on the page.

• Choices and consents: records of your acceptance of the Terms and this Privacy Policy, and your explicit consent to identity verification.

2.2 Data generated by your use of the Service

• Activity and participation: events organised, joined, saved, followed or cancelled; RSVP timestamps; attendance confirmations and check-ins.

• Trust and reputation: trust level (Trust tier t0–t3), reliability rate (Reliability, in %), Standing level, badges earned, endorsement/vouch counts and 6 growth indicators (reliability, decisiveness, contribution, hosting, generosity, exploration).

• Personalisation: declared preference profile (vibe), computed behavioural profile (updated daily), stated intents, and a log of what the feed showed you (rank, score assigned, whether you opened it).

• "See again" signal: a private, one-way indicator that you would like to see a participant again after an event (see Section 6).

• Safety and integrity: reports you file or receive, anomaly/fraud indicators, the co-attendance graph (who attends the same events, used only to detect networks of fake accounts), and security/sign-in logs.

2.3 Data from third parties

• Sign-in providers (OAuth): if you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive your first name, last name and email address. We never receive your password.

• Identity verification provider (Didit): see Section 5.

• Other members: ratings, endorsements, vouches, reports and "See again" signals that other users generate about you.

2.4 Technical and device data

• Push notification token, device type, operating system version, app version, technical error reports, and anonymous feature-usage events.

• Device permissions: the camera is used on your device to take profile/event photos and to scan check-in QR codes. Photo library and calendar access happen only on your device.

3. Where the data comes from

Data is collected:

1. directly from you when you enter it in the app;

2. automatically by our systems when you use features;

3. from Apple or Google when you sign in with them;

4. from our specialist processor Didit during verification;

5. from other members of the community (feedback, endorsements, reports).

4. Purposes and legal bases

• Creating, securing and managing your account; providing the social features (profile, events, groups, messaging, participation) — Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)).

• Applying the age and gender limits an organiser sets on an event or group: your gender and date of birth decide which of those events and groups you can see and join — Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)).

• Verifying your email address and your phone number by SMS — Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and legitimate interest in preventing duplicate accounts (Art. 6(1)(f)).

• Biometric identity verification (liveness selfie / ID document scan) — Explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)).

• Age verification and, where the user chooses that route, document-based identity verification — Performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR), to apply the Service's adults-only access rule and to provide the features that require verification; and, for any processing of biometric data, explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a) GDPR).

• Calculating trust levels, reliability rate, Standing, badges and managing waitlists — Legitimate interest in keeping the community reliable and limiting unannounced no-shows (Art. 6(1)(f), documented legitimate-interest assessment).

• Personalising and ranking the event discovery feed — Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)), with a right to object at any time (Art. 21).

• Fraud prevention, fake-account detection, member safety and moderation (co-attendance graph, phone-number matching, identity fingerprint — see 5.7) — Legitimate interest in keeping in-person meetings safe (Art. 6(1)(f), documented legitimate-interest assessment).

• Sending service notifications, confirmation codes and alerts — Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)).

• Aggregate audience measurement and app improvement — Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)), under the CNIL "audience measurement" exemption.

• Detecting crashes and technical errors, and measuring how long screens take to load (Sentry) — Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)).

• Protection against bots and attacks (Cloudflare Turnstile) — Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)).

• Legal compliance, responding to authorities and defending legal claims — Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) / Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)).

5. Identity verification and biometric data (Didit)

Identity verification is optional for exploring the app, joining groups, chatting in discussion threads and sending friend requests.

5.1 When verification is required

You need to verify your identity to sign up for or create an event, unless the event belongs to a private group, and to create a public group; private groups and their events need only a verified phone number. Creating an organization needs a verified identity document. Direct messages between two members with no other connection need both to have verified with an identity document. How it works, what data is processed and what happens if you decline are explained before the verification starts.

5.2 Your two verification options

You can verify your identity in either of two equivalent ways:

1. Live selfie (biometric): you take a short video selfie. Our processor Didit checks that a real person is present (active liveness) and compares it 1:1 with your profile photo.

2. ID document + selfie (biometric + document): you scan an official identity document (passport, identity card or driving licence) and take a selfie. Didit checks that the document is genuine, extracts your legal name and date of birth, and compares the selfie with the document and with your profile photo.

5.3 Biometric data and consent

The live selfie involves processing biometric data (a special category under Article 9 GDPR). We process this data only on the basis of your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)), collected on a dedicated screen separate from the Terms.

5.4 What Meet & Explore keeps (strict minimisation)

Meet & Explore keeps only:

• the verification dates (photo verified, identity verified), equivalent to a true/false status;

• for the document option: your verified legal name, verified date of birth, the document's expiry date and issuing country.

What Meet & Explore NEVER receives or stores:

We never receive or store selfie images, document images, the document number, the MRZ zone, your postal address, biometric templates or Didit's raw scores. These are processed only transiently by Didit.

5.5 Deletion and purge

As soon as Didit makes its decision, Meet & Explore immediately instructs Didit to purge the verification session completely (privacy erasure). The source data is erased at Didit.

5.6 Withdrawing consent

You can remove your verification at any time in Settings › Privacy › Verification › Remove. This immediately deletes your certified status/badge and instructs Didit to purge the related session.

5.7 Identity fingerprint and multiple-account prevention

To prevent one person from operating multiple accounts, we derive a one-way cryptographic fingerprint from your verified ID’s name, date of birth and issuing country when you complete identity verification. We do not store the name or date of birth themselves for this purpose. The fingerprint is kept for as long as your account exists — including if you later withdraw ID verification — and is deleted when your account is deleted. It is used only to detect this kind of duplication.

6. Reputation, personalisation and automated decisions

6.1 Reputation indicators and visibility

• Glossary: the Trust tier shows a user's verification level (t0 to t3). Reliability (%) is the share of the events you committed to that you actually attended. Standing expresses an overall level of following the rules.

• What other members can see: your display name, profile photo, join date, Standing level, Reliability rate (only after 5 completed events), public event/group history, total number of events attended, badges, friends list and aggregate endorsement counts (without naming who gave them).

• What event-chat participants can see: messages, photos and polls posted in an event chat are visible to that chat's participants (the organiser, co-organisers and confirmed attendees), including which poll option each participant voted for.

• What anyone with the link can see: the title, date, place and cover photo of a public event, and the name, place and cover photo of a public group or organization, can be shown to anyone who has its link, including in link previews in messaging apps, and can appear in search engine results. Organisers' and participants' names and the number of participants are never shown this way. Private, members-only, friends-only and attendees-only events and private groups never are.

• What stays strictly PRIVATE: your email address, phone number, exact date of birth, home GPS coordinates, internal raw scores, vibe personalisation profiles, "See again" signals and fraud indicators.

• What organisers can see: an event's organiser sees your RSVP status, your Reliability rate at the time you signed up, any new-member badge and — if you use check-in — the time, distance and GPS coordinates recorded at check-in.

6.2 Personalised event discovery

We rank and order the events shown in the Explore tab according to your declared preferences and your actual behaviour (computed nightly). We deliberately include varied suggestions ("curveballs") to avoid filter bubbles.

• No restriction of access: personalisation only changes the display order; it never stops you finding or joining an event by searching or browsing.

• Right to object: you can object to profiling/personalisation at any time by contacting legal@meetandexplore.com.

6.3 Private "See again" signal

After an event, you can indicate privately that you would like to see a participant again. This signal is used only to make some event suggestions more relevant. It is not public, it is not shared with the person concerned or with other members, and it is not used to build a sensitive profile about you.

6.4 Fraud protection (human review)

To detect networks of fake accounts, we analyse phone-number matches and the co-attendance graph. A fraud signal NEVER leads to an automatic ban or block. Any restrictive measure is first reviewed by an authorised human moderator.

6.5 Review and challenge procedure (Art. 22 GDPR)

Any challenge to participation data, a no-show, a waitlist position or a moderation measure can be sent to legal@meetandexplore.com. It is reviewed by an authorised person with the power to have the data corrected or the consequence reconsidered. We acknowledge receipt within a reasonable time and reply no later than the deadline the GDPR sets for rights requests, unless special circumstances apply, in which case we will tell you.

7. Audience measurement, errors and tracking technologies

7.1 Audience analytics (PostHog)

We use PostHog (hosted in the European Union) to measure aggregate use of the app (screens viewed, features used).

• CNIL exemption: strict configuration with no individual profiling, no cross-app tracking, and the client IP address discarded. On that basis, we rely on the consent exemption for audience measurement.

• Opt-out: you can turn this off at any time in Settings › Privacy › Share anonymous usage data.

• The website meetandexplore.com sends the same kind of anonymous audience measurement to PostHog: page views and taps on the store buttons, with no cookie, no identifier kept on your device and the IP address discarded. Nothing links a visit to an account.

7.2 Error reporting and screen load times (Sentry)

We use Sentry (EU region) to capture technical crashes and to measure how long screens take to load (the screen's name, never its content, and its load times). Only technical metadata and your internal account identifier are sent (no name, email or private content). Legal basis: legitimate interest in keeping the Service stable and responsive.

7.3 Bot protection (Cloudflare Turnstile)

The sign-in and sign-up screens use Cloudflare Turnstile to tell humans from automated scripts. Legal basis: legitimate interest in security.

8. Recipients and processors

Your personal data is shared with the following categories of recipients:

1. Members and organisers: strictly within the app's features and your visibility settings. If you accept a role on an organization's team (owner, organizer or staff), your display name, profile photo and role appear on that organization's page, and the organization's name and picture appear as a preview on your own profile. You can leave the team at any time, and the listing disappears when you do.

2. Authorised Association staff: the President (Raivis Vanags) and the Secretary (Denys Velyhoria), for administration, support, security and handling complaints. When an event chat is reported, these moderators may read that chat — messages and photos, read-only — while the report is open, to handle it.

3. Technical processors:

• Supabase Inc. — database, authentication, Edge Functions. Data: all account, profile, content and reputation data. Location: European Union (Ireland).

• Cloudflare Inc. — R2 storage, CDN, Turnstile. Data: uploaded photos (profile, events, chat), technical anti-bot signals. Location: European Union (EU R2 storage).

• Didit Identity Spain, S.L. — identity verification (biometric / ID). Data: profile photo, video selfie, identity document (transient). Location: European Union (Spain / AWS EU) · SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certified.

• Twilio Inc. — sending verification SMS codes. Data: phone number. Location: United States · Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).

• PostHog Inc. — anonymous audience measurement. Data: anonymised usage events (IP discarded). Location: European Union.

• Sentry (Functional Software Inc.) — technical crash reports and screen load times. Data: technical metadata, account identifier. Location: European Union.

• Grafana Labs (Grafana Cloud) — performance statistics of our servers (processor, memory, connections). Data: technical measurements of the infrastructure, no personal data. Location: European Union.

• Mapbox Inc. — maps, geocoding and place search. Data: search text, coordinates and the map area being shown (without identity), your device's IP address when maps load. Location: United States · Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).

• Apple / Google — sign-in (OAuth), push notifications (APNs / FCM). Data: name, email (sign-in), push token. Location: United States · SCCs / DPA.

4. Independent recipients, which are not our processors: they receive only the data listed and handle it under their own terms and privacy policy:

• Komoot GmbH (Photon, OpenStreetMap data) — place search. Data: search text and an approximate area (without identity or IP address). Location: European Union (Germany).

We never sell your personal data to third parties.

9. International data transfers

Your core account data is hosted and processed within the European Union (Ireland, Spain).

For technical processors located outside the European Union (in particular in the United States: Twilio, Mapbox, Apple, Google), we use a transfer mechanism recognised by the GDPR, such as an adequacy decision or the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, and appropriate supplementary measures where needed.

10. Retention periods and account deletion

10.1 Retention by category

• Account and profile data: for as long as the account is active.

• Reputation and participation history: tied to the active account (rolling reliability window).

• Identity verification status (Meet & Explore): until you change your photo, withdraw it or close your account.

• Verification data at the provider (Didit): purged immediately after the decision, or within 30 days at most (the minimum configurable limit).

• SMS phone verification (Twilio): number kept with the account; technical logs of code delivery deleted within 30 days.

• Check-in GPS coordinates: 90 days at most after the event (deleted automatically).

• Feed impression logs: 180 days at most (deleted automatically).

• Fraud and anomaly records: 24 months at most, in de-identified/pseudonymised form.

• Reports and moderation evidence: for as long as the report is being handled, then 24 months at most in restricted archive to prevent repeat offences and handle appeals.

• Attachments to reports: 6 months at most after the moderation case is closed (unless a dispute is ongoing).

• Administrative audit and security logs: rolling 12 months (tracing privileged access and detecting incidents).

• Crash and technical error reports and screen load times (Sentry): 90 days at most (deleted automatically).

• Server performance statistics (Grafana Cloud): 14 days at most (deleted automatically).

• Audience measurement data (PostHog): 13 months at most, in aggregate form (CNIL recommendations).

• Archives for disputes and defence of legal claims: the applicable statutory limitation period (5 years under the French Civil Code), in a separate restricted archive.

• Consent records (which version of the Terms and Privacy Policy you accepted, and your consent to identity verification): 5 years after account deletion, so that we can demonstrate that consent was given (Art. 7(1) GDPR).

• Incomplete sign-up drafts: 24 hours.

• Unpublished event drafts: 90 days after the last edit (deleted automatically). They are also deleted as soon as you ask for your account to be deleted, and are not restored if you cancel the request.

• Messages you delete (text and photos): a copy is kept for moderation for 90 days at most, then erased automatically, photos included.

• In-app notifications: 30 days.

• Link previews (a linked website's title, site name and picture): 7 days at most (deleted automatically).

• System backups: rotated and deleted automatically within 90 days.

10.2 Account deletion

You can ask for your account to be deleted directly in the app (Settings › Delete account) or by emailing support@meetandexplore.com.

1. Cancellation period (30 days): your account is deactivated immediately — your profile is hidden from other members, messages to and from you stop, upcoming events you organise are cancelled and the people signed up are told, and your sign-ups to upcoming events are released. You have 30 days to sign back in and cancel the deletion if you change your mind; cancelled events and released sign-ups are not restored.

2. Permanent erasure (after 30 days): subject to the exceptions below, the following are permanently erased: your private messages, feedback, personal details (date of birth, phone), interests, push tokens, vibe profiles, "See again" votes (in both directions), recommendation history, reputation, friends, blocks, profile-visibility settings, verification sessions, phone logs and uploaded photos. The cover photos of events you organised are erased too, except covers of past events other members attended, which stay with those events. Groups you own pass first to an owner of the organization they are linked to, otherwise to their longest-standing organiser, and are archived when there is neither.

3. Exceptions (restricted archive): where necessary and proportionate to handle a report, prevent or establish fraud, meet a legal obligation, or establish, exercise or defend legal claims, certain strictly necessary data may be kept separately, with restricted access, for the period that applies to that purpose (for example up to 24 months for fraud records and moderation reports, 5 years for dispute archives, and consent records for 5 years after deletion, for the same reason).

4. Minimal pseudonymised record: an anonymous marker of participation in past events is kept in pseudonymised form (no name, no link to your identity) so that organisers' and other participants' records stay intact.

11. Data security

We apply appropriate technical and organisational measures:

• encryption of all communications in transit with TLS/HTTPS;

• encryption of data at rest in our EU databases;

• strict isolation of sensitive data (date of birth, phone, identity fields) in restricted tables protected by Row Level Security policies;

• restricted administrative access protected by multi-factor authentication (MFA);

• no storage of biometric images or templates on our servers.

12. Your GDPR rights and how to use them

Under Articles 15 to 22 GDPR, you have the following rights:

• Right of access (Art. 15): get a copy of your personal data.

• Right to rectification (Art. 16): correct inaccurate data directly in the app; a name or date of birth verified with an identity document is corrected by writing to support@meetandexplore.com.

• Right to erasure / to be forgotten (Art. 17): ask for your account and data to be deleted.

• Right to restriction of processing (Art. 18): temporarily suspend the processing of certain data.

• Right to data portability (Art. 20): receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.

• Right to object (Art. 21): object at any time to processing based on legitimate interest (personalisation, audience measurement).

• Right to withdraw consent (Art. 7(3)): withdraw your consent to biometric verification at any time with the verification's "Remove" option (Settings › Privacy › Verification › Remove).

To exercise your rights:

Email legal@meetandexplore.com. We will reply within the time limit set by the GDPR. If you believe your rights have not been respected, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés — www.cnil.fr).

13. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this Policy to reflect legal, technical or product changes. If a change is substantial, we will tell you by in-app notification or email at least 7 days before it takes effect.