Privacy Policy

Effective Date: August 8, 2026 · Last Updated: September 21, 2026 · Applies to the Mutemate mobile application and web platform.

MUTEMATE ("Operator", "we", "us", or "our"), having its office at Unit No KCO45, B 128 First Floor, Sector 2, Noida, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, 201301, operates the Mutemate mobile application and web platform (collectively, the "Service" or "App"). We are committed to protecting the privacy, confidentiality, and security of our users ("Members" or "you").

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, share, and protect your personal data when you use Mutemate, as well as your rights regarding your information under applicable privacy laws, including the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the rules made under it, and India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) as it comes into force. MuteMate is intended for use in India only.

By creating an account or accessing the App, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy and consent to the collection, processing, and transfer of your personal data as described herein.

1. Information We Collect

To provide matchmaking and social discovery services, we collect several categories of information:

(a) Information You Provide Directly

• Registration & Profile Details: You sign in with your Google account, so we receive your email address and Google account ID — we never see or store your Google password. When you set up your profile, you provide your display name/pseudonym, date of birth, gender, sexual orientation, dating preferences, city, state, occupation, marital status, bio description, and physical attributes.
• Sensitive Personal Data: Certain information you voluntarily share (such as sexual orientation, dating preferences, the interests you pick for your profile, and profile photos) is considered sensitive under data protection laws. By voluntarily adding this information to your profile, you explicitly consent to our processing of this data for matchmaking purposes.
• Photos & Media: Profile pictures and photos uploaded to your profile or shared in private chats.
• Voice Recordings: If you choose to record a voice "thirst", the app uses your microphone (only while you record) and we store the recording. It can be played on your profile when you make it public.
• Communications & Support: Messages exchanged with other users within the App, feedback submitted to us, and customer support inquiries.

(b) Information Collected Automatically

• Geolocation Data: With your explicit device permission, we collect your precise GPS location to suggest nearby matches and calculate distance. To show your city name, your device's coordinates are sent to a reverse-geocoding service (BigDataCloud), and the text you type into city search is sent to LocationIQ (see Section 4).
• Device & Usage Data: IP address, device model, operating system, device identifiers (such as an app-instance ID; we do not use your advertising ID), app crashes, and feature interaction logs.
• Analytics: We use Google Firebase Analytics to see which screens and features are used. It receives your MuteMate user ID (a random ID, not your name or email), your gender, whether you have a paid plan, and whether you are face-verified, together with the screens you open and actions such as sending a like or a message.
• Crash Reports: We use Sentry to receive crash reports containing technical details about an error and your device. We configure Sentry not to collect personal identifiers.
• Push Notifications: If you allow notifications, a push token for your device is stored and used, through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, to deliver alerts.
• Login Sessions: We use session tokens to keep you signed in.
• Website Visits: When you visit mutemate.in, we record the choices you make in the sign-up picker, campaign tags in the link you arrived by (such as a referral code) and page-interaction events. We do not ask for your name or email on the website, and your IP address is kept only as a one-way hash.

(c) Payment Information

We do not store or process payment card details on our servers. All in-app purchases, credit packs, and subscriptions are processed securely through Google Play Billing.

(d) Biometric Information

If you complete our optional face verification check, we process biometric data in the form of live facial images. Because this is a sensitive category, it is described separately and in full in Section 2 (Biometric Information).

2. Biometric Information (Face Verification)

Mutemate offers a face verification check to confirm that an account belongs to a real person and to reduce impersonation and fake profiles. Because this involves biometric data, we describe it separately and in full below. Biometric data is treated as sensitive personal data under the DPDP Act, 2023 and equivalent laws.

(a) What Is Collected

During verification, your device camera captures a short sequence of live images while you follow on-screen prompts (blink, turn left, turn right). These images are used to confirm that a live person is present and to compare against the profile photo already on your account.

(b) Consent

We request your explicit consent on screen before the camera is opened, and the notice shown there describes this same processing. You may decline. If you decline, the scan does not take place, though certain features that depend on a verified account may remain unavailable to you. You may withdraw consent at any time by contacting our Grievance Officer.

(c) Who Processes It

Face verification is performed by Amazon Rekognition, a service of Amazon Web Services, acting as our data processor. Your images are transmitted to Rekognition as inline image data for immediate analysis and are not enrolled into any Rekognition face collection. No reusable biometric template or faceprint of you is created or retained by our verification provider. We do not sell, license, or disclose biometric data to any other third party, and it is never used for advertising, profiling, or shown to other users.

(d) Retention and Deletion

Scan images are retained only for as long as the verification decision requires:

• If verification succeeds: your scan images are not retained.
• If the result is unclear and is referred for human review: the images are retained solely so a trained reviewer can reach a decision, and are permanently destroyed at the moment that decision is recorded.
• Record of the decision: after the images are destroyed we retain the outcome of the check (pass or fail, the reason, and the date). This record contains no biometric data and exists so that you can query or appeal a decision and so that we can demonstrate the check was carried out fairly.

Any scan images still held are also destroyed when your account is deleted, as described in Section 5.

(e) Your Rights

You may request confirmation of whether biometric data relating to you is held, request its erasure, or withdraw your consent, by writing to support@mutemate.in. We will respond within the timelines stated in Section 10.

3. How We Use Your Information

We process your personal data for the following purposes, based on your consent or as otherwise permitted by law:

• Core Service Delivery: To create your profile, enable search algorithms, process matches, and facilitate real-time chat.
• Safety & Security: To detect, prevent, and address fraud, spam, harassment, fake profiles, and unauthorized access.
• App Improvement & Analytics: To diagnose server errors, optimize user experience, and refine matchmaking mechanics.
• Customer Support & Notices: To send account verification alerts, security updates, and administrative notifications.
• Legal Compliance: To enforce our Terms of Service and comply with statutory legal obligations.

4. How We Store and Share Your Data

We do not sell, rent, or monetize your personal information to third parties for direct marketing purposes. We share data only with the service providers below, and only what each one needs to do its job:

• Hosting & Storage: Your photos, media files, and chat records are stored on our own servers, which we host on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure in India (Mumbai region). Access is limited to authorised staff, and data is encrypted in transit.
• Authentication & Backend Endpoint: Data is transmitted securely over HTTPS/SSL to our primary application servers hosted at mutemate.in.
• Google: Google Sign-In (your email address and Google account ID), Firebase Cloud Messaging (your push token), Firebase Analytics (the data described in Section 1) and Google Play Billing (your purchases — we receive order details, never your card details).
• Sentry: receives crash reports (see Section 1).
• City Search & City Name: LocationIQ receives the text you type into city search. BigDataCloud receives your device's coordinates (and, as with any web request, your IP address) to turn them into a city name.
• Email: emails you send to support@mutemate.in are received by Zoho Mail (India). Any system email we send you is delivered through Resend.
• Legal & Regulatory Disclosures: We may disclose your data if required to do so by law, court order, or governmental demand, or when necessary to protect the safety of our users or the public.

Transfers Outside India

Some of these providers — Google, Sentry, LocationIQ and Resend, and possibly BigDataCloud — process data outside India, including in the United States and Japan. We send them only what each needs for its purpose. Face-verification images are processed in AWS's India (Mumbai) region.

5. Data Retention and Account Deletion

(a) Retention

We retain your personal information only for as long as your account remains active or as required to fulfill the operational purposes outlined in this policy.

(b) Right to Erasure / Account Deletion (Google Play & Apple Compliant)

You have the right to delete your account and remove your personal data at any time:

• In-App Deletion: You can delete your account at any time by navigating to Settings > Account > Account Info > Delete account.
• Web Request: You can request deletion without installing the app at mutemate.in/legal/account-deletion.
• Email Request: You may also request complete account and data deletion by emailing support@mutemate.in with the subject line "Data Deletion Request".

Deletion happens in two stages, and we describe both because they differ:

• Immediately: your account stops being visible to other users, and your personal content — profile details, photos, voice recordings, matches, likes and chat messages — is erased from the Service.
• For 180 days afterwards: a limited set of registration records is retained, as required by Rule 3(1)(g) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. This is retained for legal and fraud-prevention purposes only and is not used to contact you or to reconstruct your profile.
• After 180 days: those remaining registration records are permanently deleted (except the scrambled safety records described below).

Exception — accounts under investigation. Where an account has been banned, or is the subject of an unresolved report by another user, the related content is preserved as evidence for moderation, safety and law-enforcement purposes rather than erased immediately. Records of payments, safety reports and moderation actions are likewise retained where we are legally required to keep them.

Records kept to stop repeat abuse. To stop banned people from coming back, we permanently keep scrambled (one-way hashed) records: a hash of the email address of any banned account, and, when an account is deleted, a hash of its email address (and phone number, if one was on file) together with a note of whether it had been banned. A hash cannot be turned back into your email address and cannot be used to restore your profile or contact you.

(c) Other Retention Periods

• Photos sent in chat are view-once: they disappear for both people shortly after the recipient opens them. The sender may keep a private copy in their own Saved Media until they delete it or delete their account.
• Messages deleted for everyone disappear from the chat at once and are erased from our servers after up to 30 days. They are kept longer only while a report involving them is open.
• Reported photos: when a photo is reported, a copy is kept in a private evidence store for up to 180 days and then erased.
• Server logs (which include IP addresses and the requests made) are kept for 180 days, as required by the CERT-In directions, and then deleted.
• Website page-interaction records are deleted after 90 days.

6. Security Measures

We implement robust administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your personal data against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction:

• Encryption: All data in transit between the App and our servers is encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) / TLS technology. Access to stored data is restricted to authorised staff.
• Anonymity: Search engines are blocked from indexing user profiles or photos on Mutemate.
• Breach Notification: In the event of a security breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and relevant authorities in accordance with applicable statutory laws.

7. Age Restriction (Children's Privacy)

Mutemate is strictly intended for individuals who are at least 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If we discover that a user under 18 has created an account, we will immediately delete their profile and associated data from our servers.

8. Regional Privacy Rights

(a) Indian Residents (DPDP Act, 2023 & IT Act)

As a Data Principal under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (as its provisions come into force) and under the IT Act and its rules, you have the right to:

• access a summary of the personal data we hold about you and how we process it;
• correct, complete and update your data — you can edit most of it in Edit Profile, or write to us;
• ask us to erase your personal data — delete your account in the app or write to us (see Section 5);
• withdraw your consent at any time by writing to support@mutemate.in or by deleting your account. Withdrawing consent may mean some features stop working, and it does not affect processing already done;
• have your grievances answered by our Grievance Officer (see Section 10); and
• nominate another person to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to do so.

If you are not satisfied with our reply to a grievance, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India, as the law provides.

(b) Outside India

MuteMate is offered for use in India only. We do not offer the Service to people in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or California, and this policy is written for Indian law. If you use the Service from another country, you are responsible for following your local law.

9. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to update or modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by updating the "Effective Date" at the top of this page, issuing an in-app notice, or sending an email notification prior to the changes taking effect. Continued use of Mutemate following such notification constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

10. Grievance Redressal & Contact Information

In accordance with the Information Technology Act, 2000, the IT Intermediary Guidelines Rules, 2021, and the DPDP Act, 2023, if you have any questions, privacy concerns, or grievances regarding the processing of your data, you may contact our designated Grievance Officer:

• Platform: Mutemate (operated by MUTEMATE)
• Grievance Officer: Grievance & Compliance Officer
• Office Address: MUTEMATE, Unit No KCO45, B 128 First Floor, Sector 2, Noida, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, 201301
• Contact Email: support@mutemate.in
• Response Timeline: Acknowledgment within 24 hours; resolution within 15 days of receipt.

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