Privacy Policy

Yap is operated by Hari Vishnu S, individually — not through a registered company. If something here should have a company’s name instead, it doesn’t yet.

Questions or requests about your data: harivishnu20258@gmail.com. Hari Vishnu S is also Yap’s Grievance Officer.

When you sign up

• Your email address, from the Google account you sign in with — it’s what identifies your account. We never receive your Google password. Google’s sign-in also hands over the name on your Google account and a link to its photo, and our sign-in provider (Supabase) stores them with your account record. We don’t use them: they are never shown to anyone in Yap, never copied into your Yap profile, and they’re deleted with your account.
• Your date of birth, checked once against a minimum age and then stored so we don’t have to ask again. It is never shown to anyone you’re matched with.

When you use Yap

• What you write — prompt answers and chat messages.
• Voice notes, only if you record one in a conversation. The microphone is used only while you’re recording, and a note is at most a minute long. It’s stored like a message and can be played only by the two people in that conversation — including someone you haven’t become friends with, who hears your voice but still doesn’t see your name or picture. Prompt answers are always written, never recorded.
• Photos you send a friend, only if you send one. Photos can only be sent to a friend — someone you both chose to keep a conversation open with — and only the two of you can see them, while you’re still friends. They’re resized and re-saved on your phone before sending, which drops the location and camera details. A view-once photo can be opened once by your friend; after that it’s hidden from both of you, kept for 30 days only in case it’s reported, and then deleted (if it is reported, it’s kept with the rest of that conversation — see Reports, warnings and suspensions). One that’s never opened is deleted after 14 days. We can’t stop someone photographing their screen, and we don’t tell you whether a photo was opened.

Only if you add them

• A name and a profile picture. They are shown only to friends — someone you share a conversation with where you both chose to keep it open. People you’re matched with before that see neither. Pictures are re-saved when you upload them, which drops the location and camera details your phone may have attached.
• A verification selfie, only if you ask to be verified. You take it with the in-app camera; a person (the operator) compares it by eye with your profile picture, and it is deleted as soon as it has been reviewed, approved or not. It is never shown to other users — they see only a “Verified” badge. There is no automated face recognition, and no face measurements are extracted or kept.

Automatically, while you use it

• Basic usage events — things like when you opened a prompt or were matched, and when you open the app and how long it stays open — used to understand whether the app is working and whether people come back, not to build a profile of you. Each notes which kind of phone the app runs on (Android). We don’t record which screens you look at. These stay in our own database; no analytics company receives them.
• When to remind you, and about what. If reminders are on (they can be switched off on the You tab), we use the time of day you usually open the app and the lanes you usually answer in to choose when to send one and which lane it mentions — worked out when it’s sent, not stored as a profile. Your phone tells us its timezone for this. We keep a record of each reminder (what kind, when, whether it was opened) for 90 days, to stop sending ones nobody opens.
• A push notification address, only if you turn notifications on in the app. It identifies your device to send a notification to, nothing more. A notification never carries anything a person wrote: when you tap Show on a message notification, your phone fetches the words from us directly, so they don’t pass through Google’s or Expo’s notification services, and they are never shown while your phone is locked. A reminder can show one of our own questions from a light-hearted lane.
• Technical details of each sign-in. When you sign in on a phone, our sign-in provider records the IP address it came from and a short description of the device and app (its “user agent”), to keep you signed in and to spot someone else using your account. They’re removed when you sign out of that phone or delete your account. The services we run on (see Who we share data with) also keep short-lived logs of requests, IP addresses included, for security and fixing faults.

We don’t collect your location (only your phone’s timezone, for reminders — and photos are re-saved without theirs), your contacts, your photo library (you pick one photo at a time with your phone’s own picker, and Yap sees only that one), or your advertising ID. Nothing about you comes to us from other apps or data brokers.

Yap asks for the camera (to take a photo or a verification selfie), the microphone (to record a voice note) and notifications, each only when you first reach for it, with an explanation before your phone asks. Saying no just turns that one thing off, and you can change any of them later in your phone’s settings.

Running the app: signing you in, matching you with someone who answered the same prompt, and showing you your own conversations. Keeping people safe: looking into reports, acting on them, and meeting what Indian law asks of an app like this one. Nothing else. We don’t use your data for advertising — there are no ads in this app — and we don’t sell it to anyone.

We do this on the strength of your consent (the I agree step — see Your rights and choices), except for the few things Indian law makes us do whatever you choose: keeping a reported conversation and a deleted account’s sign-up details for 180 days, and answering a lawful order.

The two people in a conversation, and no one else — enforced by the database itself, not just by the app’s screens. A request for someone else’s conversation is refused at the data layer even if it came from a modified client.

Messages are not end-to-end encrypted the way Signal or WhatsApp messages are — there is no key that only you and the other person hold. Content is stored on our infrastructure (Supabase, hosted in Mumbai), protected by access controls, and sent over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) between your device and our servers.

We don’t read conversations. The one exception is a conversation somebody reported: then a person (the operator) reads that one conversation — both sides of it, both answers, its voice notes and photos — to decide what happened. Each time they open it is logged. Nobody reads a conversation that wasn’t reported, and a report never opens anyone’s other conversations. Beyond that, content is only disclosed where the law requires it — a lawful order from an Indian authority, or a report of child sexual abuse to the police.

Messages are screened by a keyword-based filter before they’re sent, to catch some obviously harmful content. It is a starting safeguard, not a guarantee — please use Report if something gets through it. Voice notes are not screened by anything automatic at all, so Report is how a harmful one reaches us; reporting keeps the recording so it can be reviewed. Photos are checked for nudity before they’re delivered, by an open-source model (NSFWJS) that runs on our own hosting — the photo isn’t sent to any other company to be checked. The result (a handful of scores) is stored with the photo. It is a model, so it gets things wrong both ways. Every photo from someone else arrives blurred until you tap it.

What these checks can do on their own:

• The message filter can stop a message from being sent. It stays on your phone, and you choose whether to edit it or discard it.
• An answer with almost nothing in it (a couple of characters, or the same letters repeated) isn’t accepted.
• The photo check can deliver a photo behind a stronger blur and a warning, with Report one tap away. It is still delivered.
• If three different people report you within 30 days, you can’t be matched with anyone new until a person has reviewed those reports. Conversations you already have carry on.
• A Google account that belonged to a permanently disabled account starts disabled if it signs up again.

Nothing automatic warns, suspends, disables or deletes anyone — those are decisions a person makes after reading a report. If you think an automatic check got something wrong, write to the Grievance Officer and a person will look at it.

Reporting ends the conversation and blocks the two of you from being matched again. At that moment a copy of the conversation is made — both answers and every message, voice note and photo — with a fingerprint of each item so it can be shown later not to have changed. If you report someone, what you wrote in that conversation is part of the copy too.

The copy is kept for 180 days, as the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 require, and longer only if it’s been reported to the authorities or an authority asks us to keep it. It’s kept even if either of you deletes your account, then deleted. Only the operator can see it.

If a report holds up, it counts against the person reported: the first time is a warning, the second a 7-day suspension, the third a permanently disabled account. Something serious — anything sexual involving a minor, threats, or exposing who someone is — disables an account the first time. If three different people report someone within 30 days, they can’t be matched with anyone new until the reports are reviewed. The person is told which house rule it was about and how to contest it, never who reported them or which conversation. Whoever reported is never told the outcome.

When an account is disabled for good we keep a one-way fingerprint of its email address (not the address itself), so the same Google account can’t simply sign up again. It is removed if the account is re-enabled.

Anything sexual involving someone under 18 is reported to the police, as Indian law (POCSO) requires.

Nobody outside this app sees your conversations. These companies run parts of the service, and handle your data only to do that:

• Supabase — the database, sign-in and file storage (voice notes, photos, pictures). Hosted in Mumbai, India.
• Vercel — hosts this website and the server code the app calls (photo checks, sending notifications), which runs in Mumbai, India.
• Google — signing in, and Firebase Cloud Messaging, which delivers notifications to Android phones.
• Expo — passes our notifications on to Google’s delivery service, and delivers updates to the app. A notification never holds anything a person wrote: at most “A friend” or “Anonymous”, “New message”, or one of our own questions.
• GitHub — runs the daily backup job, which copies the database, encrypts the copy and stores it there. The stored backups can’t be read without our key.

Expo, GitHub and Google handle data outside India, mainly in the United States. Indian law allows that unless the government restricts a country; if it restricts one we rely on, we’ll stop.

Beyond them, we disclose data only where the law requires it (see Who can see your messages). If Yap moves to a company set up to run it, or is taken over, your data goes with it only under this policy, and we’ll tell you in the app before it does.

• Your account, profile, answers, messages, voice notes and photos: until you delete them or your account (view-once photos go sooner — see What we collect). Conversations that have ended — because you left, blocked, or reported someone — are kept the same as an active one; ending a conversation doesn’t by itself erase it.
• Usage events: for as long as your account exists, and deleted with it.
• The record of each reminder sent to you: 90 days.
• Sign-in details (IP address, device): until you sign out of that phone or delete your account.
• Your notification address: until you sign out or delete your account.
• A reported conversation, and a deleted account’s email and date of birth: 180 days, longer only while the authorities need them.
• The fingerprint of a permanently disabled account’s email: until the account is re-enabled.
• Backups: we haven’t set an end date for them yet. When we do, it will be stated here.

You can delete your account at any time from the You tab in the app, or without the app by following these steps. This removes your account, your answers, your messages, voice notes and photos, your profile picture, any selfie still waiting for review, and the Google name and photo link stored with your sign-in. We keep a note that an account was deleted, and when, with nothing in it that says whose.

Two things are kept for 180 days after you delete your account, because Indian law requires it, and then deleted: the email address and date of birth you signed up with, and any conversation you were in that somebody reported (with the report). If either has been reported to the authorities, it’s kept until that’s resolved.

We keep encrypted daily backups of the database to recover from a failure, and a copy of your data can remain in them after you delete your account. They’re private and used for nothing but restoring the service.

Who can read what is decided by rules in the database itself, not just by the app’s screens. Everything travels over an encrypted connection, backups are encrypted before they’re stored, and the only person who can reach the admin tools signs in to a separate account with a password. Each time a reported conversation is opened, that’s logged. Nothing online is perfectly secure, though, and we can’t promise it is. If a breach affects your data, we’ll tell you and the Data Protection Board of India, as the law requires.

Before you answer your first prompt, the app shows Yap’s house rules and a short summary of this policy, and asks you to tap I agree. We record which version you agreed to and when. If this policy or the Terms change in a way that matters, the app asks again before you carry on.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by deleting your account — that stops everything we do with your data. Smaller choices are in the app: reminders and notifications can be switched off on the You tab, and your name and picture can be changed or removed there.

You can also ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask a question or make a complaint, by writing to our Grievance Officer at harivishnu20258@gmail.com. We acknowledge it within 24 hours and resolve it within 15 days. If we don’t resolve it, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

You can name someone to use these rights for you if you die or become unable to act yourself — write to the same address with their name and how to reach them. If you live outside India, your own country’s law may give you more rights than these; write to us and we’ll answer under it.

You must be 18 or older to use this app, worldwide — there is no lower age anywhere. Today that’s checked from the date of birth you enter. We may introduce an additional age-verification step in the future; if that happens, this policy will be updated first to describe exactly what it involves before it applies to you.

If you think someone under 18 is using Yap, report them from the conversation (“They seem underage”) or write to the Grievance Officer. We disable the account straight away, and keep its data only for as long as the report, or the police, need it. Our standards against child sexual abuse and exploitation are in the Terms and the safety guide.

This website uses no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. Our host keeps short-lived logs of visits, including IP addresses. The only cookie it sets is for the operator’s own admin sign-in.

This app is not a crisis or mental-health service and isn’t staffed to respond to one. If you need to talk to someone now, findahelpline.com finds a helpline for wherever you are. In India, Tele-MANAS is free and open all day on 14416.

If this policy changes in a way that matters — what we collect, or who can see your messages — we’ll say so here with an updated date, and for anything significant, the app will ask you to agree again before you carry on.

This policy is governed by the laws of India.

Write to harivishnu20258@gmail.com about anything in this policy. Complaints, contesting a decision about your account, and requests about your data go to the Grievance Officer, at the same address, with the timelines on that page.