Privacy policy

Your phone number and Google

To send your sign-in code we use Google's Firebase. Google processes your phone number in the United States and keeps it to prevent spam and abuse across its services. We can't delete Google's copy, even if you delete your account.

What we collect, and why

• Your phone number, to sign you in: it is your account. We store it hashed and encrypted, it's never shown to other people, and it never appears in our logs.
• Your date of birth, to make sure you're 18 or older. Other people see your age, and you can hide it.
• Your gender and who you want to meet, to show you the right people.
• Your profile: your name, where you live and where you're from, your photos, your interests, what you're looking for and what you write about yourself. Other people see it, which is what a profile is for. Your username also gives you a public page that anyone can see, with your first name, age, city and main photo.
• Your location, to show you people nearby. Other people see only a distance, rounded to the kilometre and never less than 1 km, and you can hide it. If you don't share your location, you pick your area instead.
• Your photos. We re-encode every photo you upload, which removes hidden data such as where it was taken, and we check each one before it goes live.
• Your selfie, to check that you're really you. It's never shown to anyone.
• Your messages and voice notes. We keep them even when you clear a chat, so that reports can be checked. In a Thread's first 20 messages, phone numbers, email addresses, UPI IDs and social media handles are hidden from the other person; we keep the original so that moderators can see it.
• Your payments. Razorpay handles the payment itself. We keep a record of every payment and a permanent history of your Velas.

Where your data is

• Your profile, messages, Velas, payment records and our hashed, encrypted copy of your phone number are stored in Mumbai, India.
• Every request you make is handled by our servers in Singapore.
• Your photos, selfie, voice notes and private album are stored by Cloudflare, outside India.
• Photos are checked by Sightengine, on servers in the United States or Europe, and deleted there after the check.
• Your selfie is compared by Amazon Web Services, in Mumbai, India.
• Your phone number is also handled by Google, in the United States, as described above.

Who else handles your data

Google (sign-in codes), Razorpay (payments), Sightengine (photo checks), Amazon Web Services (selfie checks), Cloudflare (storing photos and voice notes), Supabase (our database), Upstash (our cache), Fly.io (our servers) and Vercel (our website).

Cookies

We use cookies only to keep you signed in.

Your choices

In your settings you can hide your profile, your age or your distance, pause your account, download a copy of your data, or delete your account.

Deleting your account

When you delete your account, your profile disappears straight away. Within 30 days we erase your profile, your photos, your private album and everything else other people can see of you, except your messages.

Your messages stay in the other person's chat, shown as from “Deleted account”, and we keep them as moderation records. Otherwise, deleting an account could be used to destroy evidence someone has reported.

We also keep your history of Velas and payments, any reports and moderation records about you, and a hashed copy of your phone number, so that deleting an account can't be used to escape a ban or a report.

Google's copy of your phone number stays with Google, as described above.

Under-18s

Velora is only for people aged 18 and over. If someone gives a date of birth under 18, we refuse the sign-up and keep a hashed copy of the phone number, so that it can't sign up again.

Questions and complaints

Our Grievance Officer handles questions and complaints about your data. We acknowledge every complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 15 days.

Grievance Officer

To be confirmed

Email

To be confirmed