HugTone Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 29, 2026

This is HugTone's privacy policy. We wrote it in plain English because we want you to actually read it. No tricks, no buried clauses.

The Short Version

We collect data to match you with compatible people. We will never sell your data. We will never give anyone access to it. Your data exists to serve you, and only you. Period.

1. Who We Are

If you have questions about this policy, contact us at hugtonesupport@gmail.com.

2. What We Collect and Why

Account Information

Phone number — to verify you're a real person. We store a one-way hash, not your actual number.
Email address — for account recovery and important notifications.
Date of birth — to verify you're 18+ and for age-range matching.
Display name — so your matches can identify you after meeting.

Personality & Compatibility Data

AI conversation responses — your answers during onboarding about values, emotional style, humor, communication, and life goals. This is used to build your compatibility profile.
Compatibility profile — a numerical vector (30 dimensions) generated from your conversation. This is what we use to calculate match scores.
Physical preferences and dealbreakers — what you're looking for and what's non-negotiable.

Why we collect this: This is the core of HugTone. Without it, we can't match you with compatible people. We do not share your individual responses or profile with other users or anyone else. Other users only see a compatibility percentage, never your actual answers.

Photos

Profile photo — visible to matches after a proximity encounter.
ID photo and selfie — used for identity verification. AI compares the selfie to the ID photo to confirm you are the person on the document, extracts the date of birth and gender to confirm you are 18 or older, validates that the document is genuine, and computes a one-way hash of the document number to prevent banned users from re-registering. The selfie and ID images are deleted from our servers immediately after processing — only the verification result, the document number hash, the document type (e.g., "driver's license"), the extracted date of birth, and the extracted gender are retained. We do not extract or store visual attributes like eye color, hair color, height, or ethnicity from your ID. Those come from what you tell us in your profile.
Private photos (photos of you) — analyzed by AI to understand your physical appearance for compatibility matching. These photos are never shown to any other user, ever. They exist solely for our AI to generate an anonymous appearance vector.
Type photos (people you find attractive) — analyzed by AI to understand your physical type preferences. These are also never shown to any other user.

Why we collect this: Photos of you help our AI match you with people whose type you fit. Type photos help us understand what you're attracted to. Neither set of photos is ever displayed to anyone. We extract numerical data from them and use that data for matching.

Location Data

Approximate location — city-level location used to limit matches to people in your geographic area. We use a ~25-mile radius, not your exact coordinates.
Bluetooth proximity — when the app detects another HugTone user nearby via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), it triggers a compatibility check. We do not store your moment-to-moment location. We store the fact that a proximity event occurred, not where it occurred.

Why we collect this: HugTone's core feature is playing a tone when a compatible person is physically near you. This requires knowing when two users are in proximity. We minimize what we store — we care about who was near whom, not where.

Device & Technical Data

Push notification tokens — so we can send you notifications.
Device type — for app compatibility.

We do not collect browsing history, contacts, call logs, or any data unrelated to the HugTone service.

3. How We Use Your Data

Your data is used for exactly three things:

1. Matching you with compatible people — calculating compatibility scores, evaluating physical preferences, and determining type match. 2. Verifying your identity — confirming you are who you say you are. 3. Operating the service — sending notifications, processing payments, and providing customer support.

That's it. There is no fourth thing.

4. What We Will Never Do With Your Data

We want to be unambiguous about this:

We will never sell your data. Not to advertisers. Not to data brokers. Not to AI companies. Not to anyone. Not ever.
We will never give third parties access to your data. No "partners." No "affiliates." No exceptions except as required by law (see Section 7).
We will never use your data for advertising. There are no ads in HugTone. There never will be.
We will never share your compatibility profile, conversation responses, photos, or preferences with other users. Other users see a compatibility score and, after a proximity encounter, your display name and profile photo. Nothing else.

This commitment is permanent. It is not subject to change with a quiet policy update. If we ever attempted to reverse these commitments, this original policy stands as evidence of the promise we made to you.

5. AI Processing

HugTone uses artificial intelligence (powered by Anthropic's Claude) for:

Onboarding conversation — an AI conducts your personality assessment.
Profile extraction — AI converts your conversation into a structured compatibility profile.
Photo analysis — AI analyzes your photos to extract physical appearance data and type preferences. The AI sees your photos; no human does.
Identity verification — AI compares your selfie to your ID document.
Content moderation — AI screens photos and message text against our community guidelines.

Important: When we send your data to the AI for processing, it is sent via Anthropic's API under their data usage policy, which prohibits using customer data for training. Your conversations and photos are processed and discarded by the AI — they are not stored by Anthropic or used to train their models.

5a. Third-Party Service Providers

To operate HugTone, we share specific data with the following third-party services. Each provider operates under their own privacy policy and is contractually bound to use your data only for the purposes described:

Anthropic (AI processing) — onboarding conversation text, photos for analysis and verification, message text for moderation. No training use.
Twilio (SMS) — phone numbers when sending verification codes only.
RevenueCat (payment processing) — subscription and purchase status, anonymized user ID. Actual payment information is handled by Apple App Store / Google Play directly; we never receive your credit card.
Sentry (error monitoring) — crash reports and error context. May include your user ID and the screen you were on, never your conversations or photos.
Cloudflare R2 (photo storage) — your uploaded photos, encrypted at rest.
Railway (server hosting) — the encrypted database that holds all HugTone data; Railway operates the underlying infrastructure but cannot access your data.
Expo / Apple APNs / Google FCM (push notifications) — your device's push token only.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your data with any of these providers. They process your data only on our instructions and only for the operational purposes listed above.

6. Data Security

All data is transmitted over HTTPS (encrypted in transit).
Photos are stored on secured servers, not in publicly accessible locations.
ID document numbers are stored as one-way hashes — we cannot reverse them.
Phone numbers are stored as one-way hashes.
Passwords are not used — authentication is via phone verification codes.
We conduct regular security reviews of our infrastructure.

No system is 100% secure. If we ever experience a data breach, we will notify affected users within 72 hours and provide full transparency about what was accessed.

7. When We May Disclose Data

We will only disclose your data if:

Required by law — a valid court order, subpoena, or legal process compels us.
Preventing harm — we have a good-faith belief that disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm to a person.
With your explicit consent — you specifically ask us to share something.

We will never voluntarily provide data to law enforcement or government agencies without a valid legal order, and we will notify you if legally permitted to do so.

8. Your Rights

You have the right to:

Delete your data — request complete deletion of your account and all associated data. When you delete your account, we delete everything: your profile, photos, conversations, matches, and compatibility data. This is permanent and irreversible.
Modify your data — update your profile, photos, and preferences at any time.
Opt out of proximity matching — go invisible at any time so no tones trigger.

You can delete your account and modify your data directly in the app's Settings. For other requests, contact hugtonesupport@gmail.com.

9. Data Retention

Active accounts — data is retained as long as your account is active.
Deleted accounts — all data is permanently deleted immediately.
ID verification images — retained for fraud prevention (to prevent banned users from re-registering). Document numbers are stored as irreversible hashes only.

10. Children

HugTone is for users 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we discover that a user is under 18, we will immediately delete their account and all associated data.

11. International Users

HugTone data is stored and processed in the United States. By using HugTone, you consent to your data being transferred to and processed in the United States. We comply with applicable data protection laws including GDPR for European users and CCPA for California residents.

12. Changes to This Policy

If we change this policy, we will notify you via the app and email before any changes take effect. We will never reduce your privacy protections without your explicit consent. The commitments in Section 4 ("What We Will Never Do") are permanent and will never be modified.

13. Contact

Questions, concerns, or data requests:

Email: hugtonesupport@gmail.com

This privacy policy is a promise, not a formality. We built HugTone because we believe people deserve better than what the dating industry gives them. That includes how their data is treated.