AnewPrivacy policy
Anew ("we", "us") is a dating app for divorced, separated, widowed and annulled people. It is run by Vipul Bajaj, Bengaluru, India, who is the Data Fiduciary for your personal data under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDP Act"). This policy explains what we collect, why, who processes it, how long we keep it and your rights.
1. What we collect
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address (or phone number, when phone sign-in is available) | To sign you in with a one-time code and to contact you about your account. |
| Profile: first name, birth date, gender, who you'd like to meet, height, marital status and since when, children, what you're looking for, work, interests, languages, education, lifestyle choices, prompts and answers | To show your profile to other members and pick your daily matches. Your exact birth date is never shown; others see your age. |
| Religion, community and workplace (optional) | Shown only if you choose to show them. Stored encrypted. |
| Profile photos | Shown to members who are shown your profile or match with you. |
| A short live selfie check (optional, for the "Selfie verified" badge) | Confirms you are a real person and that your main photo is you. See section 3. |
| Approximate location (rounded to about 1 km, plus your city) | To show people nearby. Others see only a distance range such as "5–10 km", never your location. We do not use precise location. |
| Likes, passes, matches, blocks and reports | To run matching and keep members safe. |
| Messages | To deliver your conversations. Stored encrypted. Automatically checked for money requests and contact details only to show you safety tips. |
| Device push token and notification choices | To send the notifications you've chosen. |
| Anew Plus subscription (only if you buy it): plan, start and end dates, renewal and cancellation events | To turn Plus features on and off. Payment is handled by Google Play; we never see your card, UPI or bank details. |
We do not collect your contacts, call logs, SMS, microphone or precise location, and we do not use advertising trackers.
2. How we use it
- To create and show your profile, pick daily matches and run likes, matches and chat.
- To keep members safe: verification, reports, blocks, spam limits and safety tips.
- To send sign-in codes and the notifications you've turned on.
- To meet legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.
We process your data on the basis of your consent, which you give when you create your account and add each detail. You can withdraw consent at any time by changing or removing details, or by deleting your account.
3. Selfie verification and face data
Selfie verification is optional, but needed to like and chat. It is a short live check run by our provider, Amazon Web Services (Rekognition Face Liveness, in Mumbai, India): your camera streams for a few seconds while the screen shows a sequence of colours, so the check can tell a real person from a photo, screen or mask. AWS then gives us a single still image of your face, which we compare with your main photo.
- We keep no video or images from the check. The still image is only held in memory for the comparison, then discarded.
- We keep only the result and two scores (how sure the check was that you were live, and how closely you matched your main photo) for 90 days, to limit attempts and investigate problems.
- Nothing from the check is shown to other members.
- If you change your main photo, your badge is removed until you verify again.
4. Who can see what
- Other members see your profile card (not your exact birth date, location, email or phone) only if they were shown your profile, liked you, were liked by you, or matched with you.
- Religion, community and workplace appear only if you turn them on.
- Only you and your match can read your messages.
- If you have "Share read receipts" on (Settings), Anew Plus members you've matched with can see when you've read their messages. Turn it off to hide this from everyone.
- Reports are private: the reported person is not told who reported them.
5. Who processes your data
We do not sell or rent your data. We use these service providers to run Anew, under contracts that limit their use of your data:
| Provider | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in, file storage and server functions | Mumbai, India |
| Amazon Web Services | Selfie face comparison (Rekognition) | Mumbai, India |
| Resend | Sending sign-in code emails | United States |
| Expo and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging | Delivering push notifications | United States |
| Google Play | Anew Plus payments and subscriptions | Global (Google) |
| RevenueCat | Checking Anew Plus subscription status (your random account ID and Google Play purchase records; no names, photos or messages) | United States |
| Google Firebase Crashlytics | Crash and error reports (device model, app version, what went wrong and your random account ID; no names or messages) | United States |
By default, message notifications show only the sender's name ("Priya sent you a message"), so your message text doesn't pass through notification services unless you turn on message previews in Settings.
We may disclose data when required by Indian law, a court order or a lawful request from authorities, or to protect a person's safety.
6. How we protect it
- All data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Your profile details (name, birth date, city, height, work, interests, languages, lifestyle, religion, community, prompt answers), your messages, report details and device notification tokens are additionally encrypted inside the database, with a key kept in a separate secure vault. Only the categories used to suggest matches (such as gender, age, marital status and approximate area) are stored unencrypted, and they are never shown on their own.
- Strict access rules in the database decide who can read what; photos are in private storage and shared only through short-lived links.
- Access to systems is limited to the person running Anew.
No system is perfectly secure. If a personal data breach affects you, we will inform you and the Data Protection Board of India as the law requires.
7. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Your account and profile | Until you delete your account (then erased within 7 days) |
| Live selfie check video and images | Never stored |
| Selfie check results and scores | 90 days |
| Anew Plus subscription records | Until you delete your account (Google Play keeps its own payment records) |
| Daily match picks | 7 days |
| Conversations that ended (unmatch or block) | 90 days, hidden from both people, in case of a safety report |
| Reports (with an encrypted copy of the conversation) | While under review, then 1 year after they're closed |
8. Your rights
Under the DPDP Act you can:
- Access your personal data: in the app, go to Settings → Download my data to save a copy of everything we hold about you.
- Correct or update it: most details can be edited in the app.
- Erase it: delete your account in Settings, or see how to delete your account.
- Withdraw consent at any time.
- Nominate someone to exercise your rights if you die or become unable to.
- Raise a grievance with our Grievance Officer (below), and if you're not satisfied, with the Data Protection Board of India.
Email [email protected] from the email you sign in with. We respond within 30 days.
9. Age
Anew is only for adults aged 21 or over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18; if we learn we have, we delete it. See our child safety standards.
10. Grievance Officer
11. Changes
If we make important changes to this policy, we'll tell you in the app before they take effect. The date at the top shows the latest version.