Privacy Policy

Welcome to Parea. We value your privacy as much as we value community discovery. This policy explains how we collect, process, and protect your information when you use our platform.

Parea is operated by John Owodiye, based in Milton, Canada, who is responsible for how your personal information is handled. Privacy questions and requests can be sent to support@getparea.app.

1. Data Collection

We collect the following categories of information:

• Account Information: Name, email address, password (hashed), and profile preferences.
• Profile Data: Bio, avatar image, community interests, languages, and heritage or diaspora/expat background (if voluntarily provided). Heritage can reveal ethnic or cultural origin, so we treat it as sensitive: it is optional, it is used to match you with communities, and it appears on your profile card to other members. You can leave it out or change it at any time.
• Location Data: Your city and country, and a position rounded to a ~1 km grid. We do not store the exact point your device reports, and we never show coordinates to other users. See Section 2 for full details.
• Messages & Content: Posts, comments, community chat messages, and content shared in temporary rooms. Temporary room data is deleted when the room expires.
• Analytics: Usage patterns, feature engagement, session durations, and in-app interactions — used only to improve the product.
• Device Information: IP address, device type, operating system, app version, and push notification tokens.

2. Location & Discovery

Parea is built on local discovery. Location is sensitive, so we collect it only when you choose to share it, keep it approximate, and give you controls:

• You Choose When: We read your device's position when you tap "Use my location" or detect your location while setting up or editing your profile, and while you use features that search near you. You can also simply type a city. We read your position only while the app is open, and the first time you save a location we explain what is shared before we do it.
• Searching Near You: When you open Discover, your device's position is sent to our servers to find people, places, and events near you. It is used for that search and is not saved to your profile.
• What We Store: Your city and country, and a position rounded to the centre of a ~1 km grid cell. We do not keep the exact point your device reported. This prevents pinpointing a specific address.
• What Others See: Other members see how far away you are in whole kilometres, never your coordinates or position, and only while you are discoverable and shown on the map.
• Your Controls: You can turn off "Show me on the map" and discoverability in Privacy settings, change or replace your location in Edit Profile, and disable location access in your device settings, at any time.
• Keeping It Current: If your saved location is more than about 90 days old, we may ask you to confirm or refresh it. We clear a stored location automatically if your account has been inactive for 30 days.
• Device Location Services: To turn coordinates into a city name, or a typed city into coordinates, your phone's operating system may send them to Apple or Google location services under their own policies.
• No Background Tracking: We do not access your location while the app is closed or in the background.

3. How We Use Data

• Discovery: Surfacing nearby communities, events, and places relevant to your interests and approximate location.
• Personalization: Tailoring your feed based on engagement history and stated preferences.
• Security: Detecting fraudulent activity, preventing abuse, and protecting accounts.
• Product Improvement: Product-usage analytics, tied to a pseudonymous account identifier, to understand how features are used.
• Communications: Transactional notifications (security alerts, account changes) and service updates. Marketing messages require separate opt-in.

4. Push Notifications

Parea uses push notifications to alert you to community activity, direct messages, event reminders, and moderation updates. Specifically:

• Push tokens are collected when you grant notification permission on your device.
• Notifications are delivered through Expo's push service, which relays them to Apple APNs and Google FCM. Your push token and the notification's content are shared with these providers to route and display it.
• You can revoke notification permission at any time in your device's system settings or within the Parea notification preferences screen.
• We do not use push tokens for advertising or sell them to third parties.

5. Moderation & Reporting

Parea is a community platform. We take safety seriously:

• User Reporting: Any user can report content or another user. Reports include the reported content and the reporting user's account ID.
• Moderation Review: Reports are reviewed by our moderation team. In some cases, automated flagging assists human review.
• AI-Assisted Community Review: When you request a new community, an AI service may help our team check whether a similar community already exists. It receives only the proposed community's name, description, category, heritage tags, and city-level location — never your identity or exact coordinates — and it only advises: approval decisions are made by our systems and team under this policy.
• Data in Reports: Content submitted in a report may be retained beyond its normal deletion window for the purpose of safety investigation.
• Outcome Notifications: Users who file reports receive status updates. Users who receive moderation actions are notified of the action taken.
• Appeals: You may appeal a moderation decision by contacting support@getparea.app.

6. AI Personalization (Future Capability)

We are building AI-driven personalization features that will improve community recommendations and content relevance. We are disclosing this now so you can make an informed choice:

• When AI personalization is released, it will use anonymized interaction history to improve recommendations.
• Your private messages will never be used to train AI models — only aggregate, non-identifiable behavioral signals.
• AI features will be clearly labelled in the app and will include opt-out controls before they are enabled.
• We will not use your data to train third-party generative AI models without separate, explicit consent.

7. Third-Party Services

We do not sell your personal data. We share information only with the service providers required to operate the platform, each of which processes data solely to provide its service to us:

• Messaging (Stream / GetStream.io): Powers community and room chat. Processes your message content, display name, and avatar to deliver messaging. Not used for advertising.
• Image & Media Storage (Cloudinary): Stores and delivers profile photos, community banners, event covers, and images you share.
• Product Analytics (Amplitude): Product-usage analytics tied to a pseudonymous account identifier. Not sold, and never used for advertising.
• Push Notifications (Expo, Apple APNs, Google FCM): Deliver notifications to your device. Your push token and the notification's content are processed to route and display it; push tokens are never used for advertising.
• Error Monitoring (Sentry): Receives diagnostic crash and error data with PII disabled — no message content, name, email, or location; an anonymous account identifier may be attached for crash attribution.
• Moderation Assistance (Anthropic): When you request a new community, its proposed name, description, category, heritage tags, and city-level location may be processed by Anthropic's Claude API, in the United States, to help our team spot duplicate communities. Your identity and exact coordinates are never shared, the data is not used to train AI models, and Anthropic deletes it within 30 days.
• Feature Flags (Statsig): Decides which features you see. Receives your pseudonymous account identifier and standard device and network information, such as IP address. Not used for advertising.
• Authentication (Sign in with Apple, Google Sign-In): If you choose social sign-in, the provider confirms your identity and shares your email and basic profile per your consent.
• Cloud Infrastructure: Encrypted managed database and application hosting.

We require our service providers to protect your data and to use it only to provide their service to us.

Processing Outside Your Country: Our service providers may store or process data outside Canada and outside your country of residence, including in the United States. Their laws may differ from yours, and courts or authorities there may be able to access the data under those laws.

8. Data Retention

• Account Data: Kept while your account is active. When you delete your account, your personal data is erased immediately; only a minimal, non-identifying record is retained where necessary so that community content you contributed continues to function (shown as "Deleted user").
• Temporary Room Messages: Deleted when the room expires (defined at room creation).
• Analytics: Kept only as long as needed to understand and improve the product.
• Moderation Records: Retained only as long as needed to support safety investigations and appeals.
• Location Data: Your city, country, and a position rounded to a ~1 km grid are stored on your profile to power local discovery, and are never shown to other users as coordinates. A stored location is cleared automatically after 30 days of account inactivity, and all location data is erased when you delete your account.

9. Your Rights

To exercise any of these rights, email support@getparea.app with the subject line "Privacy Request". We will respond within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) or, if you live in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca).

10. Children's Privacy

Parea is for adults aged 18 and over, as set out in our Terms of Service. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we will delete it promptly. See also our Child Safety page.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as Parea changes. We will post the new version here with an updated date and version number, and we will tell you in the app or by email before a material change, including any new use of your location, takes effect.

12. Contact Us

Questions about this policy or our data practices? Parea is operated by John Owodiye, Milton, Canada, who is accountable for our privacy practices. Contact us at support@getparea.app.