beates — Privacy Policy

Version 1.0 — Effective September 9, 2026 · Last updated October 13, 2026

Who runs beates. As the Terms of Service explain, beates is operated by its founder as an individual, not a registered company.

1. Who we are

The individual currently operating beates (reachable at privacy@beates.app), operating beates as an individual from Pakistan ("beates," "we," "us"), operates the beates mobile application (the "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, why, and what choices you have. It applies to everyone who uses beates, wherever you're located — beates is a global product, not limited to any one country. If beates is later incorporated as a company, that entity will take over as the party described here, and users will be notified per Section 11.

Person in charge of personal information. The founder of beates, who runs it, is the person in charge of the protection of personal information and is accountable for how beates handles it. Contact: privacy@beates.app.

If you're in the European Economic Area, UK, or another jurisdiction with a data protection authority, beates acts as the "data controller" for the personal data described below unless stated otherwise.

2. Data we collect

a) Data you provide directly

• Phone number — used to create and verify your account.
• Profile information — name, username, profile photo, and any bio/details you choose to add.
• Date of birth — asked when you create your account (or, if you skipped it, when you add it in Edit Profile; once set, it stays set), to check you are old enough to use beates where you live and for the features that have their own age, such as messaging people you don't know (Terms, section 2). It is kept with your account and deleted with it, and never shown to anyone else.
• Content — photos, videos, voice messages, captions, comments, and text you send or post through Chat, Status, Status+, and Collab Studio.
• Communications with us — if you contact support or report content. When you report a chat, we save a copy of that conversation's recent messages to the report — up to the last 50, including who sent each one, when, and any media attached — so we can see what happened when we review it. That copy stays with the report even if the conversation is later cleared or deleted, and it is visible only to us.
• Waitlist — if you join the waitlist on beates.app: your email address, your country, the sentence you agreed to and when you agreed, when you confirmed your email, and which link brought you, if any: someone's invite link, or a short campaign code from the link you came from (for example beates.app/?ref=name). The campaign code is kept in your browser's session storage for your visit (not a cookie), is sent with your sign-up to us and to no one else, and is used to count sign-ups per link. A sign-up is counted once in these per-link totals.
• Founding member seat — if you hold one of the 1,000 Founding member seats (from your waitlist place, by its code, or a free seat taken when you sign up): its number, when you claimed it, and how, kept with your account. The number is shown on your profile with the Founding member badge. The code we email you waits with its email until the email is sent; after that it is kept as an unreadable fingerprint, until the seat is claimed or its time to claim runs out. A wrong code you enter is counted for a day, to stop guessing, then deleted.

Signing in: you can sign in with Apple or with Google. When you do, we receive your name and email address from them, and Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your own. We never see your Apple or Google password. Verifying your number: we send a one-time code by SMS through Supabase, the service that runs our backend, which delivers it using Twilio. If we add another way to send codes, such as a local SMS provider or WhatsApp, we will name it here before it is used.

b) Data collected to make the Service work

• Contacts (with your permission) — when you allow contacts access, beates sends the phone numbers from your device's address book to our server to check which of them already have a beates account. The numbers are matched and not stored. Only the result of the match — which existing beates users are in your contacts, plus the name you saved them under — is kept on our servers, so we can show them to you as suggested chats. Numbers of contacts who aren't on beates are discarded as soon as the check is done.
• Camera and microphone — accessed only when you actively take a photo, record a video, or record a voice message. beates does not access the camera or microphone in the background.
• Photo library — accessed only when you choose to pick or save media from your device gallery.
• Push notification token — a device identifier issued by Apple/Google (via Expo's push service) so we can deliver notifications to your device. This is not a marketing identifier and isn't shared with advertisers.

c) Data generated by using the Service

• Activity and engagement data — likes, saves, comments, follows, reposts, and which posts you've viewed. This is used to operate core features, like showing like and comment counts. While Personalized feed is on (Settings → How your feed works), it also decides the order of Status+ Discover, Collab Studio's Duets, the duets on a collab, and what Up next plays. With Personalized feed off, that order uses only how many likes a post has, how recent it is, and variety, and none of your own activity. Personalized feed starts off for accounts in Canada and on everywhere else, and you can switch it either way at any time.
• Interests you select — the topics you choose in Settings → What you like to watch, used the same way, and only while Personalized feed is on.
• Device and technical information — app version, operating system, and standard request metadata (such as IP address at the time of a request) generated automatically when your device communicates with our servers or our service providers.
• Crash reports — if the app crashes or hits an error, a technical report goes to Sentry, our crash-reporting provider: the error and where in the app it happened, the app version, your phone's model and operating system, and a short list of the screens and taps just before it. It does not include your name, email, phone number, messages, photos, videos or contacts. We use it only to find and fix what broke.

d) What we don't currently collect

We do not currently use advertising SDKs, third-party analytics/tracking libraries, or precise location data. If that changes — for example, when the creator monetization features described in our Terms of Service are eventually built — we will update this Policy before any such collection begins, and highlight the change in-app.

3. How we use your data

We use the data above to:

• Create and secure your account, and verify your phone number.
• Operate core features — deliver messages, show your Status/Status+ posts to the right audience, run Collab Studio: to deliver your collab to the collaborators you send it to, and to publish duets that credit you, and show you content from people you follow or have matched with via contacts.
• Order Status+ Discover, Collab Studio's Duets, the duets on a collab, and what Up next plays for you while Personalized feed is on, using the signals listed in 2(c).
• Send notifications you've enabled (new messages, likes, comments, follows, Collab Studio activity) and play in-app alert sounds.
• If you joined the waitlist: email you the link that confirms your email, email you when beates opens in your country (with the code for your Founding member seat if your place has one, or if a seat passes to you), and show you your place on the list.
• Maintain safety — review reports, enforce our Terms of Service, and respond to legal requests.
• Improve and debug the Service (for example, error logs that may incidentally include technical device data).

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share your content or activity data with advertisers.

4. Who we share data with

We share data only as needed to operate the Service:

• Supabase (our backend database, file storage, authentication, and real-time messaging provider) — stores account data, messages, content metadata, and many of the photos and videos you share, on our behalf, acting as our data processor.
• Cloudinary (our media processing and content-delivery provider) — stores, processes, and serves the other photos, videos, and audio you upload.
• Render (our video-processing server) — puts together the Collab Studio duets and template videos you make from your clips.
• Amazon Web Services (video rendering and email) — renders those videos for us, and sends the waitlist's emails: the link that confirms your place, and the email when beates opens, with your Founding member code if you have one.
• Twilio (text messages) — delivers the one-time code we send to verify your phone number.
• Expo, Apple, and Google — deliver push notifications to your device; Apple/Google also distribute the app itself through their app stores. When the app checks for an update, it sends Expo a random identifier for your install, the app's version and your phone's platform, so the right update reaches it.
• Google ML Kit (Android) — finds faces and people in your photos and videos for effects, on your phone: the pictures are not sent anywhere. The ML Kit library may send Google technical information about the device and how the feature performed. On iPhone this is done by Apple's own on-phone tools.
• Apple and Google sign-in — if you sign in with Apple or Google, they confirm who you are and send us your name and email address (Section 2(a)). When you delete your account, we tell Apple to end beates' sign-in link with it.
• Sentry (crash reporting) — receives the crash reports described above so we can fix errors. Crash reports are never used for advertising or to follow you across other apps.
• Cloudflare (website hosting) — serves our website, beates.app, including the page an invite link opens and the page your Founding member code opens (the code stays in your browser and is not sent to us). When you join the waitlist, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a person, not a bot, is joining, and Cloudflare tells us which country your connection comes from: we check that it is the United States, Canada or Pakistan and do not keep it.
• Zoho (email) — hosts our @beates.app mailboxes in the United States, so the emails you send us, and our replies, are stored with them.
• Other users — content you post is visible to the audience you choose (contacts for Status, followers/Discover for Status+, the other participant for Chat and Collab Studio), by design.
• Legal and safety — we may disclose data if required by law, legal process, or a good-faith belief it's necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of beates, our users, or the public.
• Business transfers — if beates is involved in a merger, acquisition, or asset sale, data may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to this Policy or a successor policy you're notified of.

5. Data retention

• Status posts automatically expire and are removed 24 hours after posting, by design.
• Status+ posts, Chat messages, and Collab Studio posts are retained while your account is active, or until you delete the specific content, delete a chat, or delete your account — subject to the copies-already-shared exception described in our Terms of Service. Clearing a chat hides the conversation on your own device; it does not delete the messages from our servers or from the other person's copy. Deleting a chat removes it from your list. The other person keeps their copy until they delete it too; then it is deleted from our servers.
• Date of birth is kept while your account exists and deleted with it.
• Views — who viewed a post is kept for 185 days; after that we keep just the number of views per post per day, with no viewer in it. Your own views of your own posts (and of duets you made together) are kept while the post exists.
• Notifications are deleted 90 days after they are sent.
• Feedback you send in the app is deleted after one year.
• Reports — a report, and the copies of content it holds as evidence, are kept while the report is open and for one year after it is closed, and longer where the law requires it (for example, a report we have made to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children).
• Contact-match data (Section 2(b): the names you saved and the match links) is kept until you revoke contacts permission, remove synced contacts in Settings → Privacy, or delete your account.
• Waitlist — an email that is not confirmed within 48 hours of the last link we sent is deleted. A confirmed entry is kept until we email you that beates is open in your country, then deleted. Leave the waitlist from its page on beates.app, or email us, and your entry is deleted at once.
• Founding member seat — the seat stays with your account while you have it. Delete your account and the seat is no longer linked to you; its number is never given to anyone else. An emailed code is deleted when its seat is claimed, when its time to claim runs out, or when the Founding member programme ends.
• Account deletion — delete your account yourself in Settings → Account → Security → Delete account, or email us to request it (Section 12). We delete or anonymize your personal data within 30 days of a verified deletion request, except where we're required to retain it for legal, safety, or dispute-resolution purposes.

6. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate data (most profile fields are editable directly in-app).
• Delete your data or account.
• Object to or restrict certain processing, including switching off Personalized feed at any time (Settings → How your feed works).
• Withdraw consent for contacts, camera, microphone, or notification access at any time via your device's OS settings — features that depend on that permission will stop working until you re-grant it.
• Data portability, where applicable.
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@beates.app. We'll respond within 30 days, or sooner where the law requires.

7. Children's privacy

beates is not directed to children under the minimum age stated in our Terms of Service (13, 14 in Canada, 18 in the United States, or higher where local law requires), and we don't knowingly collect personal data from children below that age. If we learn we've collected data from a child under the applicable minimum age, we'll delete it. Parents/guardians who believe their child has provided us data can contact us at the address in Section 12 to request deletion.

8. Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS) between the app and our service providers, and database access controls that restrict which data a given account can read or write. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

If something goes wrong. If a breach of our security affects your personal data, we assess the risk to the people affected straight away. Where it creates a real risk of significant harm to you (in Quebec, a risk of serious injury), we tell you, and the authorities the law names, as soon as we can: in Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and, for people in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec. We keep a record of every such incident, whether or not it had to be reported, for at least five years.

9. Where your data is stored

Your data is stored and processed in the United States, which may not be the country you live in. For people in Canada, that means outside Canada:

• Our database and file storage (Supabase, in Virginia): your account, profile, messages, and many of the photos and videos you share.
• Our other providers: the other photos, videos, and audio (Cloudinary); putting together and rendering Collab Studio and template videos (Render and Amazon Web Services); the waitlist's emails (Amazon Web Services); the text message with your sign-in code (Twilio); push notifications (Expo); crash reports (Sentry).
• Our website is served by Cloudflare from its worldwide network.

beates is run from Pakistan, so the founder may reach your data from there to look after the Service and answer your requests. United States law applies to data held there, and courts and authorities in the United States may be able to obtain it under that law. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards (such as standard contractual clauses) for these transfers.

10. Local storage on your device

Some preferences (such as your chat mute setting, chosen wallpaper, and draft posts) are stored locally on your device rather than on our servers, so they stay private to that device and aren't shared with us or other users beyond what's needed to sync the feature itself. Your phone also remembers, for up to 30 days, the posts you marked "Not for me" and, while Personalized feed is on, the posts you skipped within two seconds or watched to the end. That memory stays on your phone and is never sent to us.

11. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we'll provide notice through the Service before the change takes effect. The "Last updated" date above reflects the most recent revision.

12. Contact us

Questions about this Privacy Policy or your data: privacy@beates.app. It reaches the person in charge of personal information named in Section 1.

13. If you live in Canada

• You must be at least 14 to use beates in Canada.
• Personalized feed starts off. Your activity doesn't decide the order of your feeds until you switch it on in Settings → How your feed works (Section 2(c)).
• Show online status starts off for accounts created in Canada. Other people don't see when you're active until you switch it on in Settings → Privacy.
• Your data is stored outside Canada, in the United States (Section 9).
• For access to your data, a correction, or any question or complaint, write to the person in charge of personal information at privacy@beates.app. You can also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or, in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec.

Version 1.0. See the notice at the top of this document about legal review status.