What we collect
When you sign up
- Phone number, to send you a sign-in code and keep it to one account per number.
- Profile: first name, birth date, gender, who you’re interested in and the age range you’re looking for, 2–6 photos, a short bio, your neighborhood and your Instagram handle.
- A selfie in a pose we ask for, so a founder can check your photos are really you.
- A way to reach you: a push subscription from your browser (a technical address and keys for sending you alerts).
When you use Mona
- Your sessions: whether you’re out tonight or now, your time window, the neighborhoods and activities you picked, an optional note, and whether you’re solo or with a friend.
- Likes and passes, matches, plan proposals and who confirmed them, and messages in your chats.
- “On my way” and “I’m here” taps, cancellations, and your answers after a date: whether you met, whether you felt safe, whether you’d use Mona again, who showed up, and whether you’d meet them again.
- Any contact detail you choose to share after a date, blocks, reports, venue suggestions and share-my-date links you create.
- Product events, such as “went live”, “match created” or “plan confirmed”, and how many sessions passed each discovery filter. We use these to see which step of the app works and which doesn’t.
Technical data
- A sign-in cookie, and the browser name and version (user agent) of each signed-in device.
- The IP address of sign-in code requests, used only to stop abuse and deleted after 24 hours.
- Like most websites, our servers keep short technical logs, such as IP addresses and error reports, to keep the service running and secure.
What we don’t collect
- Your location. No one’s location is ever shown to anyone or stored. If you let Mona use your location, your phone uses it once to suggest a neighborhood. The coordinates never leave your device.
- Your Instagram account. We don’t connect to Instagram or pull anything from it. A founder looks at the public profile of the handle you give us, by hand.
- Your contacts, or advertising trackers. There are no ads, no third-party analytics and no advertising cookies. We don’t sell or rent your data.
Who sees what
| People who are out at the same time and fit your preferences (and you theirs) | Your first name, age, star sign, bio, photos and neighborhood, plus your session: tonight or now, your window, neighborhoods, activities and note. In a duo, your friend’s card is shown with yours. |
|---|---|
| People you match with | The above, plus your Instagram handle, the plan, the match chat, and your “On my way” and “I’m here” taps. |
| Someone you both want to meet again | Only if you both say yes after the date: a private chat for the two of you, and the contact detail you chose to share. |
| Anyone with your duo invite link | Your first name, one photo, the time window, neighborhoods and activity of the session, and your note. |
| Someone you send a share-my-date link | Your first name, the first names of the people you’re meeting, the venue and the time, until 12 hours after the plan’s start time, or until you switch it off. |
| Founders | What they need to review profiles and keep people safe: your profile, photos, selfie and Instagram handle, reports and no-show flags, and product numbers. The review tools don’t show your phone number, email, birth date or preferences. |
| No other user, ever | Your phone number, email, birth date, gender preferences and age range, your selfie, and your location (which we don’t have). |
Blocking someone hides you from each other in Discover and stops all contact both ways: plans you had together are cancelled like any other plan, and the person you blocked disappears from your plans and chats. Test accounts we use for quality checks never see real accounts, and real accounts never see them.
Your photos
- Every upload is re-encoded and stripped of all metadata, including any GPS coordinates your phone camera added.
- Photos are stored privately on our server, never in a public folder. They’re shown through links that expire after about 15 minutes, and only to people who are allowed to see you right then.
- Your selfie for review is only ever seen by founders.
How we use your data
- To run Mona: show you to compatible people who are out, create matches, suggest venues and times, send alerts, and run chats and plans.
- To review new profiles, and to act on reports, blocks and repeated no-shows.
- To prevent abuse, for example by limiting how many sign-in codes can be requested.
- To improve Mona using product events and aggregate counts.
- We never use your data for advertising, and we don’t sell it.
Services we rely on
We share the minimum each one needs to do its job:
- Plivo delivers sign-in codes when SMS login is enabled, so it receives your phone number. During the private beta, individual invitation links sign you into a separate test account without phone verification.
- Browser push services (for example Apple, Google or Mozilla, depending on your browser) deliver push alerts. The alert content is encrypted on the way.
- Our hosting provider runs the servers where Mona and its data live.
- OpenStreetMap: if you open the venue map, your browser loads map images from OpenStreetMap’s servers, which see your IP address. The list view doesn’t do this.
How long we keep it, and deleting your account
We keep your data while you have an account. You can pause your profile or delete your account at any time from your profile.
Deleting your account cancels any live session or plan (the others get a neutral notice) and removes your profile, photos and selfie (the files too), phone number, email, Instagram handle, birth date, preferences, messages you sent, your answers after dates, connections, blocks, alerts, push subscriptions and sign-ins.
What we keep afterwards, not linked to you:
- Product events and records of past sessions and matches, without your name or any personal details, for aggregate numbers.
- Reports, kept for safety review, with your account removed from them.
- A one-way hash of your phone number (not the number itself), and whether the account was banned, so a banned person can’t simply sign up again.
Records of sign-in code requests are deleted after 24 hours. Share-my-date links stop working after 12 hours.
Security
Mona runs over encrypted connections. Access rules are enforced in the database itself, sign-in tokens are stored only as hashes, and photos are private with expiring links. No system is perfect, so if you notice something wrong, please tell us at hello@whereismona.com.
Cookies
We use one cookie, to keep you signed in for up to 30 days. There are no advertising or third-party analytics cookies.
Your choices and rights
- See and edit your profile, preferences and alerts at any time. One way to reach you (push or email) has to stay on while you use Mona.
- Pause your profile to stop showing up, or delete your account for good.
- Email us to ask for a copy of your data, to correct something, or with any privacy question. Depending on where you live, you may have more rights over your data; we’ll help you use them.
21 and over only
Mona is only for people 21 and older. If we learn that someone under 21 has signed up, we delete the account.
Changes to this policy
Mona is new and will change. When this policy changes, we’ll update the date at the top, and we’ll tell you in the app before any change that affects what others can see about you.
Questions?
Email hello@whereismona.com. A founder reads every message.