Privacy Policy

HeyArab (the "service", "we", "us", "our") is a culture-first dating service for the Arab diaspora. The service is offered through our mobile app, our website (heyarab.app), and the supporting back-end. HeyArab is a product of ALM Tech Studio LLC, which is the data controller. You can reach us at privacy@heyarab.app.

This policy covers personal information we collect through the HeyArab mobile app, the heyarab.app website, and any communication you have with us by email or other channels. It does not cover websites or services that link to HeyArab but that we don’t operate (for example, news articles or social media platforms that mention us).

We try to collect as little as possible while still running the service well. The categories below cover everything we currently collect.

Account information

• Phone number (used as your primary identifier and for SMS one-time codes during sign-in).
• Email address, if you choose to add one.
• Display name.
• Authentication tokens issued by AWS Cognito.

Profile information you provide

• Date of birth (used to confirm you are 18 or older and to display your age).
• Gender, religion and denomination, dialect, country of origin, current city, education level, relationship intent, and stance on children.
• Photos you upload to your profile.
• Voice recordings: your voice intro and any prompt you answer by voice. These are short audio clips.
• Prompt answers and any free-text fields you complete, including polls you write and places you pick for a place prompt.
• Your Good to know note (up to 150 characters). Only your matches can read it.
• A song you add to your profile. We look it up with Apple and keep the song, artist and a link to its preview.
• Filter preferences (age range, distance, religion, etc.) used by the discovery algorithm.
• How you use the app, which also feeds the discovery algorithm: when you were last active, and whether you reply to people who message you first. We look at whether a reply was sent, not at what it said. This affects how often your profile is shown to other people. It is never shown to anyone else, and nobody sees a score for you or for anyone.

Photo verification (optional)

If you choose to verify your photos, we collect a short video selfie. We send it to AWS Rekognition, which checks that the face is a real person (“liveness”) and compares it with the photos on your profile. Comparing faces this way is biometric processing. We use it only to confirm you're real and that your photos are you. We keep the result and one reference image so a moderator can check it, and delete both when you delete your account or ask us to remove your verification. We don't keep a face template, and we never sell, lease or trade this data.

Separately, when you add any photo, an automated check looks at whether it shows a face and how many. That's used for photo rules (for example, your first photo has to show you) and for Profile review below. It isn't used to identify you or to search for you anywhere else.

Contacts you choose to hide from (optional)

If you use “Hide from people you know”, the app reads the phone numbers you pick from your address book. Our server turns each number into a one-way hash right away and keeps only the hash, never the number or the name. We use it so you and those people don't see each other. You can remove a contact at any time. This means we hold a hash of other people's numbers, which we use for nothing else.

Profile review

When you add a photo, we send it to AWS Bedrock, an AI service, to check simple things that help your profile: whether your face is clear, whether it's a group shot, whether it's blurry or too dark. When you tap “Review my profile”, we also send your prompt answers and bio to Bedrock for writing tips. The check gives back short labels, never comments on how you look. Only you see the results. They aren't shown to anyone else and don't change how often your profile is shown. AWS doesn't keep what we send or use it to train its models.

Automated safety checks

We use automated tools (AWS Bedrock and Rekognition) to check photos, bios, prompt answers, names, Good to know notes, notes sent with likes, notes a matchmaker adds to a pick, and chat messages for scams, harassment, explicit content, and asks to move to another app. Likes that trip these checks may go to the other person’s Hidden likes instead of their inbox. We also combine reports, blocks, and activity patterns to spot accounts that may be abusive. Voice recordings are checked by people, not software. Automated checks can hide content or flag an account, but a person decides on any suspension or ban.

Usage information

• Likes, passes, matches, and messages, including replies, reactions, and poll answers.
• Voice and video calls: who called whom, when, and for how long. We don’t record calls.
• Contact details you choose to share in a chat. They’re shown to the other person only after they accept.
• Support tickets and appeals you send us, and our replies.
• Screens you visit and the order you visit them in (used to improve the onboarding flow and surface bugs).
• Reports and blocks you submit.
• Time you last opened the app, used to power the "last active" indicator and to retire long-inactive accounts.

Device information

• Device type, operating system, app version, and language.
• Push notification token (issued by Apple, Google, or OneSignal).
• IP address, used for rate-limiting and to flag obviously coordinated abuse.
• A one-way hash of your device ID. If we ban an account, we keep that hash so the same phone can’t be used to come straight back (see retention below).

Location information

You tell us where you're based by searching for your city during onboarding. You can also tap “Use my location” to let the app read your device's location once, in the foreground, so we can find the nearest city for you. Either way, we resolve your location to a city and store that city along with its coordinates, which we use to show approximate distance to other members. If you add a place prompt, we store Google’s ID for that place, and its coordinates for no more than 30 days. We never access your location in the background and we don't continuously track your movements. If you'd rather not share device location at all, just type your city instead.

Subscription information

If you join HeyArab Club or buy Boosts, RevenueCat manages the purchase state on our behalf. RevenueCat receives an app user ID that we can link to your account, the product you bought, and its status (renewed, refunded, in a grace period). When you're signed in, RevenueCat also receives your country, app language, whether you finished signing up and whether you're verified, which we use to choose which plans and prices to show you, plus IDs that link your account to our push and analytics tools. It also learns when you open a subscription or Boost screen and where in the app you opened it. On iPhone, it gets a token from Apple that shows which Apple ad, if any, brought you to the app. Apple App Store and Google Play handle the payment itself. We never see your card number.

Ad measurement

We run ads on Facebook and Instagram. To see which ads bring people to HeyArab, the app tells Meta when it was installed and opened and when you finish signing up, along with a random ID Meta's software makes for your device, your IP address, basic device details (model, system version, language and time zone) and, on Android, your device's advertising ID. If you buy HeyArab Club, Boosts or Crushes, RevenueCat tells Meta about the purchase using that same random ID and your device's identifiers (your IP address and, on Android, your advertising ID). Meta never gets your name, phone number, profile, photos or messages. We don't ask to track you across other apps on iPhone, so Meta can't see your iPhone's advertising ID, and Apple only gives Meta anonymous, grouped results about which ad led to an install.

Diagnostic information

When the app crashes or hits an unexpected error, we send a stripped-down report to Sentry to help us fix it. Phone numbers, tokens and coordinates are removed on your phone before the report is sent.

Vouches from friends

If a friend vouches for you through the link you send them, we collect their first name, how they know you, and what they write. Once you approve it, it's shown on your profile. Cloudflare checks the form for bots, so Cloudflare sees your friend's IP address and browser signals. Vouches are deleted with your account.

Waitlist

If you join the waitlist on our website, we keep your email, country, language, and the page you signed up on, so we can tell you when the app is live in your area. You can unsubscribe from any email.

We use the information above to:

• Run the matching service and show you potential matches.
• Deliver and store messages between you and your matches, and connect voice and video calls.
• Keep you hidden from contacts you pick.
• Verify photos when you ask us to.
• Give you tips on your photos and prompts (Profile review).
• Investigate reports, block harmful behavior, and keep the community safe.
• Bill and manage HeyArab Club subscriptions.
• Send you service notifications (new match, new message, account changes).
• Improve the product. Understand which screens cause confusion, which features get used, where we lose people during onboarding.
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security threats, including keeping banned people from signing up again.
• Comply with legal obligations.

We do not use your data to train machine-learning models for advertising. We do not run ads on HeyArab.

Under the GDPR and equivalent laws, we rely on the following legal bases to process your information:

• Performance of a contract: to run the matching service you signed up for.
• Legitimate interests: to keep the service safe (moderation, automated safety checks, device bans, fraud detection, security) and to understand how the product is used.
• Consent: for optional features like photo verification, hiding from your contacts, voice recordings, push notifications, and any future use of sensitive data. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.
• Compliance with legal obligations: to respond to lawful requests from regulators or courts.

We don't sell your personal information. We share information only with the service providers that make HeyArab work, listed below, and only what each of them needs to do their job.

• Amazon Web Services (United States): hosting, database, file storage, content delivery, authentication (Cognito), SMS sign-in codes, photo verification (Rekognition), and AI features (Bedrock) for automated safety checks and Profile review. AWS doesn’t keep what we send to Bedrock or use it to train models.
• LiveKit, Inc. (United States): carries voice and video calls. Call audio and video pass through LiveKit’s servers while the call is live, along with your user ID and IP address. Calls are not recorded.
• RevenueCat (United States): subscription management for HeyArab Club.
• Apple Inc. and Google LLC: payment processing for in-app purchases on iOS and Android. They handle the actual transaction; we receive only the receipt.
• Google LLC (United States): Google Maps Platform, used for city search during onboarding, place search for place prompts, and the maps shown in the app. Google receives what you type into a search and the technical data any map request carries, such as your IP address. We do not send Google your account identity. This is separate from Google Play, which processes Android in-app purchases.
• Google LLC (United States): Google Analytics, on our website only, to measure visits (see Cookies below).
• Apple Inc. (United States): the iTunes Search service, used to look up songs you add to your profile. Our server sends Apple the song, not who you are.
• Cloudflare, Inc. (United States): Turnstile, a bot- and abuse-prevention check run when someone submits a vouch, opens a matchmaker link and starts looking, or starts filling in the waitlist form on our website. Cloudflare receives that person’s IP address and browser signals.
• OneSignal (United States): push notifications and in-app announcements. OneSignal receives your push token and your HeyArab user ID. If you join the waitlist, it also receives your email so it can send the launch email.
• PostHog (United States): product analytics. In the app, events are linked to your HeyArab user ID.
• Klipy (United States): GIF search and delivery. Klipy is contacted when you send, search for or view GIFs in chat. It receives your device’s IP address, the words you search for, your country code, and a random-looking code we make for you that lets it tell your requests apart from other members’. The code doesn’t show who you are, and Klipy never gets your name, phone number or profile.
• Meta Platforms, Inc. (United States): measuring our Facebook and Instagram ads (see Ad measurement above).
• Sentry (United States): crash reporting and error monitoring.

Inside HeyArab, a small number of staff can see member profiles, photos, reports, and conversations when they need to, for example to investigate a report or a safety problem. Staff sign in with multi-factor authentication, and moderation actions are logged.

We may also disclose information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to comply with a lawful request, protect someone's safety, enforce our Terms of Service, or in connection with a corporate transaction (merger, acquisition, sale of assets). If a corporate transaction would change how your information is handled, we'll let you know first.

HeyArab is operated from the United States, and our servers run in the U.S. (AWS us-east-1). When we transfer personal information from the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland to the United States, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, supplemented by AWS's transfer-impact safeguards. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards by emailing privacy@heyarab.app.

• Active accounts: we keep your information while your account is active.
• Deleted accounts: when you delete your account, it disappears from HeyArab right away, and we remove your profile, photos, voice recordings, prompts, song, vouches, verification, and hidden contacts, usually within minutes. Your matches end, and the voice notes in your chats are deleted, except voice notes someone reported, which we keep while the report is reviewed. Messages you sent, including photos in a chat, and the short note on a like you sent stay with the people you sent them to. We keep only what’s listed below.
• Purchase records: as long as tax and accounting law requires (usually 7 years).
• Banned devices: the device hash for 180 days after a ban, unless we lift it sooner.
• Device hashes: a one-way hash of each device you used with HeyArab, kept after you delete your account so we can spot repeat sign-ups and ban evasion. No end date is set yet.
• Support requests: the tickets you sent us and our replies, kept after you delete your account so we can show what was decided. No end date is set yet.
• Deletion feedback: the reason you chose, and anything you wrote, when you deleted your account. No end date is set yet.
• Banned or suspended accounts: if you delete an account while it’s banned or suspended, we keep a one-way code made from its phone number, never the number itself, so a new account with that number gets the same ban or suspension. A ban carries over for 180 days, a suspension until its end date.
• Photos, prompts, and chat voice notes behind a decision: if you delete an account while it’s banned, suspended, or has an open moderation case (opened from a member’s report or from our automated checks), we keep its photos and prompts, and any chat voice notes someone reported, for as long as we need them to protect members or meet legal obligations, then delete them. While we hold them, someone who saved the direct link to one of these photos or prompt recordings could still open it.
• Matchmakers you invited: the name you gave and the phone hash stay while the link is in use and for 30 days after it ends. Notes and picks are deleted with your account. See section 13.
• Place coordinates: no more than 30 days.
• Waitlist emails: until you unsubscribe or we no longer need them to tell you about the launch.
• Reports and moderation records: up to 5 years after they’re closed, so we can investigate repeat offenders and meet trust-and-safety obligations.
• Audit logs of staff actions: at least 1 year, in a tamper-evident store.
• Profile review: a photo’s check is deleted with the photo. Saved reviews older than 180 days are deleted, except your latest one.
• Diagnostic information and server logs: 90 days.
• Backups: database backups are kept for 14 days. Deleted or replaced photos and recordings can stay in storage versions for up to 30 days. Then they are destroyed.

No matter where you live, you can:

• See what we hold about you.
• Correct anything that’s wrong.
• Delete your account (Settings → Delete account, or email privacy@heyarab.app).
• Export your data in a structured, machine-readable format.

If you live in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland (GDPR)

• Access, correction, deletion, restriction, and objection rights.
• Right to data portability.
• Right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that significantly affects you. Our automated checks can hide content or flag an account, but a person makes any decision to suspend or ban, and you can appeal from the app.
• Right to withdraw consent for any consent-based processing.
• Right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority. We’d appreciate the chance to address your concern first, so email privacy@heyarab.app.

If you live in California (CCPA / CPRA)

• Right to know what categories of personal information we’ve collected and how we use them.
• Right to delete personal information we hold about you.
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information.
• Right to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" of your personal information. We do neither, but the right exists.
• Right to limit the use of sensitive personal information (race or religion you choose to share, biometric verification data) to what’s strictly necessary to provide the service.
• Right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

Other U.S. states (Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, and others) give you broadly similar rights. If you live in one of those states and want to exercise them, the same email address works: privacy@heyarab.app.

Biometric information (Illinois, Texas, Washington, and similar laws)

Photo verification is the only place we process biometric information, and only if you choose to verify. We use it only to confirm you are real and that your photos are you, never sell or share it beyond AWS processing it for us, and delete it as described under Photo verification above.

How to exercise your rights

Email privacy@heyarab.app from the address associated with your account, or use the in-app Settings menu. We’ll respond within the time required by your local law (30 days under GDPR; 45 days under CCPA, with a possible 45-day extension). If we need to verify your identity first, so that no one else can impersonate you, we’ll tell you what we need.

HeyArab is strictly for adults. You must be 18 or older to use the service. If we discover an underage account, we'll close it immediately and delete its profile, keeping only what we need to stop the same person coming back. If you believe a child is using HeyArab, email us at safety@heyarab.app and we’ll act fast.

• All data in transit is encrypted with TLS 1.2 or higher.
• Photos, voice intros, and database backups are encrypted at rest using AWS-managed keys.
• Access to production systems and to the staff dashboard is limited to a small team and requires multi-factor authentication. Moderation actions are logged.
• Numbers from contacts you hide from, and device IDs, are stored only as one-way hashes.
• We run automated security checks on our dependencies and apply security patches on a regular cadence.

No system is perfectly secure. If you become aware of a vulnerability, please email security@heyarab.app and we'll respond promptly.

Our website uses Google Analytics 4 and PostHog to measure visits and clicks, so we can see which pages are useful and fix the ones that are not. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we ask for your consent first, and analytics only load if you accept. Elsewhere, analytics load by default, and you can opt out at any time from the “Cookie settings” link in the site footer.

The website also stores your light or dark theme choice and your cookie choice in your browser’s local storage. The mobile app does not use cookies.

A member can invite a sister, brother, parent, cousin or friend to help them look. We call that person a matchmaker. A matchmaker does not have a HeyArab account and does not make a profile. This section covers what we handle about matchmakers, and what it means for the members they look at.

If you are a matchmaker

You get a link from the member, and the member tells you a 4-digit code. When you start looking, you type your first name, say you are 18 or older, and agree to the Terms, this policy and the Community guidelines. You can stop at any time from the page.

What a matchmaker sees

• The member’s first name. Nothing else about the member: no photos, location or prompts.
• Up to 10 profiles a day of people the member has not seen yet: photos, prompt answers, voice clips, a song, and how far the person is from the member, rounded to the nearest 5 miles or shown as less than 5 miles.
• Never whether someone has liked the member, and never a member who turned off “Show me to other people’s matchmakers”, who uses Incognito, or who hid the matchmaker’s phone number.
• What happened to a pick (sent, seen, liked) only if the member turned that on.

What we store about a matchmaker

• The name and phone number the member typed when they invited you. The member sees the name. We keep only a one-way hash of the number, never the number itself, and use it to apply blocks and hidden contacts, and to keep a matchmaker who is also a member from seeing their own profile.
• The first name you typed, shown to the member, and printed faintly across the photos you view with the date.
• A label for each browser you use, like “iPhone, Safari”, worked out from the browser’s description of itself. We do not store a location.
• A sign-in cookie called ha_mm. It keeps you signed in on that browser for up to 90 days, and we store only a one-way hash of it. We also store the date you first opened the link and last used it.
• Your skips, picks, notes and any reports you send.
• Your IP address is used briefly for rate limiting and is seen by Cloudflare, which runs the bot check when you start looking.
• A few usage counts, such as “link opened” and “pick sent”. They are not tied to a profile of you. The page loads no analytics or advertising scripts.

How long we keep it

• A link nobody opens stops working after 7 days.
• A pick that nobody acts on expires after 14 days.
• Browser sessions are deleted when you stop or the member removes you, and unused ones after 90 days.
• The phone hash, your typed name and your browsing history are deleted 30 days after the link ends.
• Notes and picks stay with the member’s account and are deleted when the member deletes it.

Reports and your choices

A matchmaker can report a profile from the page. A member can report a matchmaker and remove them at any time. Staff review reports, and a person decides what happens. To ask what we hold about you as a matchmaker, or to have it deleted, email privacy@heyarab.app and include the link you were sent so we can find the record. Your other rights in section 09 apply to you too.

If you are a member

• Your profile can appear to other members’ matchmakers, but only to someone who could already see you in their member’s discovery. Nobody is told that a matchmaker looked at you, and a view does not change how often your profile is shown.
• A matchmaker can send a pick with a short note. The member it was sent to decides what to do with it. If they like you, you see that like the usual way. Notes are checked by the same automated tools as other text.
• You can turn this off in Settings, under “Show me to other people’s matchmakers”.
• You decide who to invite. Give us the name and phone number only of people you know and who are happy to help. You can remove a matchmaker at any time, and removing them ends their access straight away.

We'll update this policy as the service evolves or the law changes. Material changes are flagged at the top of the policy with a new effective date, and we’ll send you a notice through the app or by email at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use after the change means you accept the updated policy.

For privacy questions, requests, or concerns: privacy@heyarab.app.

For trust-and-safety issues: safety@heyarab.app.

For everything else: support@heyarab.app.