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.

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, and diaspora/expat background (if voluntarily provided).
• Location Data: Approximate location only — city or neighborhood level. We never expose raw GPS coordinates to other users or third parties. 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 data is handled with extreme care:

• Approximate Only: We use city- or neighborhood-level location to suggest relevant communities and events. Exact GPS coordinates are never shown to other users.
• Grid-Based Approximation: Internally, we snap location to a ~1 km grid. This prevents reverse-geocoding to a specific address.
• Opt-Out Available: You can disable location services in your device settings or within the Parea app at any time. You can still use the app by manually selecting a Discovery Zone.
• No Background Tracking: We do not access your GPS in the background unless a feature you have explicitly activated requires it.

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.
• 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.

All third-party processors are bound by data processing agreements and may not use your data for their own purposes.

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: Aggregated for up to 24 months; raw event logs deleted after 90 days.
• Moderation Records: Retained for up to 3 years to support safety investigations and appeals.
• Location Data: Your city, country, and coordinates are stored on your profile to power local discovery. Coordinates are snapped to a ~1 km grid before being shown to other users, and your exact position is never exposed. 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.

10. Children's Privacy

Parea is not intended for individuals under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If we discover that we have done so, we will delete it immediately.

11. Contact Us

Questions about this policy or our data practices? Contact us at support@getparea.app.