Last updated 24 September 2026

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information CampusFlare collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. We aim to align with the South African Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and similar data-protection principles more broadly.

Who is responsible for your information

CampusFlare is owned and operated by Siyo Holdings (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2026/709519/07), whose registered office is at 16 Durham Road, Bellville South, Cape Town, 7530, Western Cape, South Africa. For the purposes of POPIA, Siyo Holdings (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for the personal information described in this policy.

• Information Officer: Ongama Siyo, appointed in terms of section 56 of POPIA.
• Privacy and data requests: privacy@campusflare.app
• Safety concerns: safety@campusflare.app
• You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa if you believe we have not handled your information lawfully.

What we collect

• Account information: your email address and the password you set (stored securely, never in plain text).
• Profile information: your name, birth date, gender, who you are looking for, bio, university, campus, course, year of study, interests, and photos.
• Activity data: who you swipe on and match with, and the messages you send within the App.
• Reports and blocks you submit, and reports submitted about you by other users.
• Subscription information, if you buy CampusFlare Premium: which plan you are on, its status, when it started and renews, which app store it came from, and a record of each payment (amount, currency, and date). We never receive or store your card, bank, or app store login details — your app store handles the payment itself.
• Product analytics: a record of when you open the Premium screen, tap subscribe, reach the payment step, complete or renew a purchase, and when you use a Premium feature (such as a Super Like, Boost, or Rewind). Each of these is stored with your account and a timestamp.
• Cancellation feedback: if you cancel Premium and tell us why, we keep the reason you selected and any comment you write.
• Technical data: device type and a push-notification token, if you enable notifications.

How we use it

• To create and run your profile, and show it to other eligible students.
• To power matching, messaging, search, and discovery.
• To send you notifications about matches and messages, if enabled.
• To investigate reports, enforce our Community Guidelines and Child Safety Policy, and keep the App safe.
• To provide, bill, and support CampusFlare Premium, including confirming with your app store that a purchase is genuine, and helping you if something goes wrong with a subscription.
• To understand how the App and Premium are actually used — for example, how many students opened the Premium screen and how many went on to subscribe — so we can fix what is broken, decide what to build, and set fair pricing.
• To maintain the security and reliability of the App.

How we analyse the App (and what staff can see)

We want to be straightforward about this, because it involves your personal information rather than just anonymous statistics. A small number of authorised CampusFlare staff can use an internal dashboard to review how Premium is performing. That dashboard shows aggregate figures — such as how many students at a given university viewed Premium, subscribed, or cancelled — and it also allows staff to open the underlying list of individual accounts behind those figures, and to view one account's Premium history (which Premium features they used and when, their subscription and payment record, and any cancellation feedback they gave).

• Access is limited to accounts we have specifically granted administrator rights to, and every one of these views is restricted at the database level, not just hidden in the interface.
• Staff use this to run and improve the product — for example, to find out where students are getting stuck when subscribing, or to spot a broken payment step. It is not used to profile you for advertising.
• This dashboard does not give staff access to the content of your private messages.
• We group results by university and campus to compare how the App is doing at different schools. Where we publish or share any statistics outside CampusFlare, we do so only in aggregate form that does not identify you.
• We do not sell this information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

Who can see your information

• Your profile (name, photos, bio, university, campus, course, interests, and approximate age) is visible to other signed-in students, except anyone you have blocked or who has blocked you.
• Your email address is never shown to other users.
• Messages are only visible to you and the person you matched with.
• Whether you subscribe to Premium, what you pay, which Premium features you use, and any cancellation feedback you give are never shown to other users. Authorised CampusFlare staff can see these — see "How we analyse the App" above.
• We do not sell your personal information to third parties, and we do not share it with advertisers.
• The only third parties that process your information are the ones needed to run the App: Supabase (hosting and database), Google Firebase (push notifications), your app store (payments), and OpenAI (automated photo moderation — see below).

Where your data is stored

Your data is stored with our backend provider, Supabase, using industry-standard security practices including encryption in transit and access controls that limit who can view raw data. Photos are stored in a dedicated, access-controlled bucket. Payments are processed by your app store (Google Play or the Apple App Store) under their own privacy policies; we receive only confirmation of the purchase and its basic details, never your payment credentials.

Automated checks on your photos

Every profile photo you upload is checked before it goes live. That check is automated: we send the image to OpenAI, our content-moderation provider, which scores it for nudity or sexual content, graphic violence, and self-harm. A photo that is clearly against our rules is rejected automatically. Anything borderline is held and reviewed by a person on the CampusFlare team before it appears. Nothing is published until it has passed one of those two checks.

• What is sent: the photo itself. Your name, email address, university and profile are NOT sent — the provider receives an image and nothing that identifies you.
• OpenAI processes the image on our behalf as our operator, and does not use images sent through this moderation service to train its models.
• This means your photo is transferred outside South Africa, to servers in the United States. POPIA permits this where the recipient is bound to protect the information to a comparable standard, which is the basis we rely on.
• We keep the moderation score alongside the review record so the decision can be explained or overturned. If a photo is rejected, that record and the image are deleted after 7 days.
• You can ask a human to re-check any automated rejection — contact us using the email below.
• If our moderation provider is unavailable, photos are held for human review rather than published unchecked.

How long we keep it

We keep your data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, your profile, photos, messages, matches, swipes, and device tokens are permanently deleted, generally within a short period of the request being processed. Reports you have filed, or that were filed about you, may be retained for a limited period afterwards where necessary for safety and moderation records.

• Records of when you used a Premium feature are kept for up to 24 months, and are deleted immediately if you delete your account.
• Records of when you viewed or interacted with the Premium screen are kept for up to 24 months. If you delete your account, these are detached from your identity straight away, so what remains is an anonymous event that cannot be traced back to you.
• Records of payments you have made are kept for 5 years from the date of each payment, even if you delete your account, because we are required to retain financial and tax records. See "If you delete your account" below.

If you delete your account

Deleting your account removes your profile, photos, messages, matches, swipes, device tokens, and your Premium feature-usage history. What we keep is deliberately narrow: the record of any payment you made.

• We retain, for 5 years from the date of each payment: the amount, currency, plan, app store used, the date, and a snapshot of your name, email address, and university as they were at the time of that payment.
• We keep your name and email against those payments because a financial record has to identify who the transaction was with in order to be usable in an audit, a tax query, or a refund dispute.
• This retained information is only accessible to authorised CampusFlare staff and our accountants and auditors where required. It is not used for marketing, analytics, or any other purpose, and it is never shown to other users.
• After 5 years these records are deleted automatically.
• Everything else associated with your account is deleted as described above. If you never paid for Premium, deleting your account leaves no financial record because there is none to keep.
• Under POPIA you can ask us to delete your information, and we will — except where another law requires us to keep it, which is the case for these financial records. We will tell you if that is the reason we cannot delete something.

Your rights

• Access and correct your information at any time by editing your profile in the App.
• Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, including your Premium and analytics records.
• Delete your account and associated data at any time from Settings.
• Object to how we use your information for product analytics. Because these records are created as a direct result of using the App, the practical way to stop new ones being created is to stop using the relevant features, but you can contact us to discuss it.
• Complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa if you believe we have handled your information unlawfully.
• Ask us questions about how your data is used, using the contact email below.

Children's privacy

CampusFlare is restricted to users 18 years and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. See our Child Safety Policy for how we handle suspected underage accounts.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated in the App before they take effect.

Contact

For any privacy question, or to exercise any of the rights above, contact us at the email below.

Contact

Questions about this document can be sent to safety@campusflare.app.