Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Party Match (“Party Match”, “we”, “us”) is based in Lagos, Nigeria, and is the data controller for the personal information described here. For anything about your privacy, including reaching the person responsible for data protection, email whatsup@partymatch.social.

2. What we collect

Information you give us

• Account: your email address (confirmed with a one-time code), or your name, email and Google account ID if you sign in with Google. A phone number is optional and only used if you add it.
• Profile: your name, @username, anonymous handle, date of birth, gender, photos, bio, the party types and music you like, prompt answers, quick picks (such as your go-to drink and when you usually leave), favourite artiste, star sign and social links.
• Selfie verification: if you choose to get verified, a front-camera photo our team compares with your profile photos. It is only used for that check and is never shown to other users.
• Activity: parties you RSVP to, mark as going or interested, check in to or say you went to; whether you choose Squad, Vibe, both or neither; likes and passes in a party’s deck, matches, waves, squads, follows and blocks.
• Content: posts (named or anonymous), photos, polls, replies, reviews, reports, parties and places you add, and edits you suggest.
• Messages: chats with matches, squads and party groups. See Chats and encryption.
• Payments and identity: to start a pool, your Bank Verification Number (BVN) and date of birth, and a code sent to the phone number linked to your BVN. We keep your legal name, the last 4 digits of your BVN and a one-way hash of it (to stop one BVN being used on several accounts), not the full number. Wallet top-ups, contributions, ticket purchases, refunds and payout bank accounts (bank, account number and the account name your bank confirms) are recorded in our ledger. We don’t see or store your full card details; Paystack handles them.
• Hosts and venues: the name you party under, Instagram, website, CAC number and proof of who you are; for paid tickets, the owner’s National Identification Number (NIN), and for higher payout limits a CAC certificate and proof of address; your team members; and the bank account you’re paid into.
• Support: anything you send us when you contact us.

Information we collect automatically

• Location, when you allow it. See the next section.
• Device and usage: a device identifier (we allow one device per account for check-ins), push notification tokens, app version, operating system, IP address, when you were last active, and logs of errors and requests that keep the service running and secure.
• Email delivery: whether our emails bounce or are marked as spam, so we stop sending to addresses that don’t work.

Information from others

• Google, if you sign in with it: your name, email address and Google account ID.
• Our identity partner (Dojah) confirms the details linked to a BVN or NIN you give us.
• Paystack tells us when a payment succeeds or fails and confirms the name on a payout bank account.
• Other users may tag you in posts, add you to a squad, check you in at the door or report you.

3. Location, Nearby and the heat map

Location is optional, and you can turn it off in your phone’s settings at any time. Without it you can still browse parties and pick an area by hand. When you allow it, we use it in these ways:

• Distances and what’s near you. We keep your most recent location to show parties, places and posts near you and how far away they are. Other people only ever see a rough distance, never your exact location.
• Check-in. When you tap “I’m here”, we check you’re within about 300 m of the venue. We also check that two check-ins aren’t further apart than you could travel, to stop fake check-ins.
• Posts without a party carry the area they were written in so they reach people nearby. The exact point is never shown.
• Heat map. While the app is open, your location is turned into a square of about 550 m on your device’s request before anything is stored, alongside a token that changes every day. We keep no coordinates and no history, and nothing is kept for more than 15 minutes. An area needs at least 5 people before it shows any heat, and the map shows busy areas, never people or numbers. There is no background tracking. Ghost mode takes you off the heat map straight away.
• Nearby is off until you turn it on. While it’s on, we keep only your latest point, rounded to about 110 m, for 15 minutes, with no history. Others see “Very close”, “Close” or “Nearby”, never a distance in metres, a direction or a map.

4. Chats and encryption

• One-to-one chats, squads and pool chats are end-to-end encrypted once everyone in the chat is on a version of the app that supports it; the chat says so when it is. Messages and photos are locked on the sender’s device and can only be unlocked on the participants’ devices. We can’t read them.
• Party-wide group chats (open to everyone going) and older messages sent before a chat became end-to-end encrypted are encrypted in our database, but we hold the key, so they are not end-to-end encrypted.
• Even for end-to-end encrypted chats, we can see who is in a chat and when messages are sent, which we need to deliver them. Push notifications for those chats show the sender’s name, not the message.
• If you report a message, your app sends us the text you chose to report so our team can review it. That is the only way we see the content of an end-to-end encrypted message.
• A new phone or browser sign-in only shows end-to-end encrypted messages from that point on.

5. How we use your information

• To run Party Match: your account and profile, Explore, the feed and timelines, party decks, matches, Nearby, chat, squads, check-in, notifications and emails.
• To recommend parties and people: party decks put people who share your party types, music and energy first. These suggestions don’t have legal or similarly significant effects on you, and you can use Party Match without Vibe or matching.
• To move money safely: pools, tickets, the wallet, payouts, refunds, fraud checks and keeping accurate financial records.
• To verify people and hosts: age at sign-up, selfie verification, BVN for pool starters, and NIN, CAC and address checks for hosts.
• To work out your Aura score, ranks and badges from things you’ve done on Party Match.
• To keep people safe: reviewing reports, enforcing our Terms, suspending accounts, and stopping spam, fake check-ins and fraud.
• To send you service emails (codes, receipts, tickets, payouts, review results and security notices) and, if you haven’t turned them off, reminders about parties.
• To understand how Party Match is used, fix bugs and improve it, mostly using counts and aggregated data.
• To meet our legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t show you ads based on it.

6. Our legal bases

Under the NDPA we rely on:

• Contract: to provide the service you signed up for, including pools, tickets and payouts.
• Consent: for location, Nearby, push notifications, selfie verification and party reminder emails. You can withdraw consent at any time in the app or your phone’s settings; this doesn’t affect what we did before.
• Legal obligation: for identity checks, financial records and responding to lawful requests.
• Legitimate interests: for safety, moderation, fraud prevention, security and improving Party Match, balanced against your rights.
• Vital interests: rarely, when we need to act to protect someone’s life or safety.

7. What other people see

• Your public profile: photos, name, @username, bio, vibe, Aura score, ranks and badges, followers, named posts and, unless you hide them, the parties you’re going to and went to. People see an age bracket (such as 26–29), never your date of birth.
• You can hide your profile entirely, hide your party history (for all parties or one at a time), turn off being discoverable at parties, keep “last active” off (it’s off by default) and use Ghost mode. Hosts always see their own guest list.
• Anonymous posts show your anonymous handle, not your profile, and never appear on your profile or notify your followers. Party Match still knows who wrote them so we can act on reports.
• Posts, photos, reviews, parties and places you add are public on Party Match, and parties, places and posts have public web links anyone can open. Share links and cards never show a street address.

8. Who we share it with

We share personal information only as needed to run Party Match, with service providers who process it on our instructions and under contract:

We also share information:

• With hosts of parties you RSVP to, buy tickets for or check in to: your name, profile and ticket and check-in status. The people in a pool see who has paid.
• With the law, when we must by law or court order, or to protect someone’s safety, prevent fraud or defend our rights.
• In a business change, such as a merger or sale, with whoever takes over, who must keep protecting it as this policy says.

9. Where your data is stored

Our servers and some providers are outside Nigeria, mainly in the European Union. When we transfer personal information abroad we do so as the NDPA allows, to countries with adequate protection or under contractual safeguards with the provider.

10. How long we keep it

• Heat map and Nearby location: no more than 15 minutes.
• Your most recent location: until it’s replaced or you delete your account.
• Profile, content and messages: while your account is open. You can delete posts and photos at any time.
• Sign-in codes: a few minutes, stored hashed.
• Unanswered waves vanish after 24 hours; matches expire unless both people keep them; recap photos disappear after 24 hours.
• Financial records (ledger entries, receipts, payouts) and identity check results: as long as the law requires, even after you delete your account.
• Reports and moderation decisions: as long as needed to keep people safe and stop banned people coming back.

When you delete your account, we sign you out everywhere, delete your chat keys, remove your photos, bio, date of birth, gender, email, Google link and location, take you off the heat map and Nearby, and replace your name with “Deleted user”. Public posts and reviews you wrote stay, shown as from a deleted user, so conversations still make sense; delete any you don’t want kept before you delete your account. You can’t delete your account while you lead or have money in an active pool, or have a wallet balance; email us to withdraw your balance first.

11. Your rights and choices

Under the NDPA you have the right to:

• be told how your data is used (this policy);
• get a copy of your personal information;
• correct information that’s wrong or incomplete;
• have your information deleted;
• restrict or object to how we use it;
• receive your information in a commonly used format and have it sent to another service;
• withdraw consent at any time;
• not be subject to decisions based only on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

You can edit your profile, privacy settings and notifications, and delete your account, in the app under Me. For anything else, email whatsup@partymatch.social. We may ask you to confirm it’s you, and we’ll reply within 30 days.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, you can complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (ndpc.gov.ng). We’d appreciate the chance to sort it out first.

12. Security

We use encryption in transit, encrypt chat messages in our database, end-to-end encrypt private chats, store sign-in codes and BVNs only as hashes, and limit staff access to what their job needs. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach puts your rights at risk, we’ll tell you and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission as the law requires.

13. Age limit

Party Match is only for people aged 18 and over. We check your date of birth at sign-up. If we learn that someone under 18 has an account, we close it and delete their information. If you think a child is using Party Match, report their profile or email whatsup@partymatch.social.

14. This website and cookies

If you join the waitlist on partymatch.social, we collect your name, email, phone number, which side of Lagos you’re on and the party types you like, to tell you when Party Match launches and to plan where to start. Email us to be taken off the list.

This website uses Google Analytics, which sets cookies to count visits and see which pages and buttons are used. You can block these cookies in your browser settings or with Google’s opt-out add-on. The web app uses only the cookies and browser storage it needs to keep you signed in and to hold your chat keys.

15. Changes to this policy

We’ll update this policy when Party Match changes. If a change is significant, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. The date at the top shows when it last changed.

16. Contact us

Questions or requests about your privacy: whatsup@partymatch.social