1 Who We Are
Amar is a dating and social connection platform operated by Amar Technologies, developed by Jaspa, Johannesburg, South Africa. Amar Technologies is the responsible party for your personal information under POPIA.
Our Information Officer can be contacted at privacy@amardating.com.
2 Information We Collect
- Account information: name, username, date of birth, gender, and the email address or phone number you sign in with (including Google Sign-In).
- Profile information: profile photos, bio, interests, city/country, and your personality-quiz answers.
- Optional sensitive details: details such as your religion and who you would like to meet (for example, gender preference). Some of this is special personal information under POPIA. You choose whether to provide it, and we only use it with your consent, to show you more relevant matches.
- Location: if you allow it, your device location. We store an approximate position (deliberately blurred, not your exact address) to show people near you. You can switch location off in your phone settings at any time.
- Verification video and face comparison: if you choose to get verified, you record a short selfie video. We take a frame from it and compare it with your profile photo using automated face-matching. This is biometric information, which is special personal information, and we process it only with your explicit consent. We do not collect ID documents.
- Messages and media: chat messages, voice notes, and photos or videos you send. Calls are never recorded; we keep only call details such as who, when, type and duration (needed to charge tokens).
- Activity: likes, matches, blocks, reports you make or that are made about you, and feedback you send us.
- Payments: token purchase records (order reference, amount, tokens credited) and your token balance. Payments are handled by Google Play (or Apple); we never see your card details.
- Technical information: device type, operating system, app version, push-notification identifier, IP address and security logs.
- Website visitors: if, and only if, you accept cookies on www.amardating.com, Google Analytics records how you use the site (see section 6).
3 Why We Use It, and Our Basis
- Provide the service (performing our agreement with you): create and run your account, suggest matches based on your profile, quiz answers, preferences and approximate location, enable messaging, voice notes and calls, and process token purchases and spending.
- With your consent: location, optional sensitive details, biometric face-matching for verification, push notifications, and website analytics cookies. You can withdraw consent at any time (section 8).
- Safety and security (our legitimate interest and legal obligations): detect fake profiles and abuse, handle reports and blocks, prevent fraud, enforce our Terms, and cooperate with lawful requests from authorities.
- Improve Amar (our legitimate interest): fix bugs, measure performance and plan new features, using aggregated or de-identified data wherever possible.
- Legal and financial records: keep payment and tax records as the law requires.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your messages for advertising.
4 Who We Share It With
Other members can see the profile information and photos you put on your profile, your approximate distance, and whether you are verified. Messages are visible only to the people in that conversation.
We use trusted service providers (“operators”) who process information on our behalf under agreements that require them to protect it:
- Google Firebase — sign-in, chat messages, call ringing and online status.
- Google Play Billing (and Apple, on iOS) — payments for tokens.
- Agora.io — real-time voice and video calls. Agora does not record calls.
- OneSignal — push notifications.
- Amazon Web Services (Rekognition) — face comparison for verification.
- Our hosting provider — the servers that store profiles, photos and token records.
- Google Analytics — website analytics, only with your consent. It is not used inside the app.
We may also disclose information where the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety, or to report child sexual abuse material to the authorities.
5 Transfers Outside South Africa
Some of our operators (including Google, Agora, OneSignal and Amazon Web Services) process information on servers outside South Africa. When this happens we make sure the recipient is bound by law, a binding agreement or corporate rules that give your information a level of protection substantially similar to POPIA, or we rely on your consent.
6 Cookies & Website Analytics
Our website uses Google Analytics only if you click Accept on the cookie banner. Until you accept, we do not load Google Analytics and no analytics cookies are set.
- What it does: counts visits, shows roughly where visitors come from (country or city), the type of device, how you arrived, and which download buttons are clicked.
- Cookies set:
_gaand_ga_…, which can last up to 2 years. - What it does not do: it does not identify you by name, and we have turned off Google’s advertising personalisation features.
- Your choice: click Decline, or use Cookie Settings at any time to change it. Declining or withdrawing removes the analytics cookies from your browser.
The app itself does not use Google Analytics. Our website also stores your cookie choice in your browser (local storage) so we don’t keep asking.
7 How Long We Keep It
- Your account information is kept while your account is active.
- When you delete your account, your profile, photos, matches, messages, verification video, notifications and sign-in are removed from our live systems immediately. Copies held in our backups are overwritten within 30 days.
- Payment and transaction records may be kept for up to 7 years to meet tax and financial-record laws.
- Analytics data is kept by Google Analytics for the period set in our analytics account (currently no longer than 14 months).
To delete your account and data: Data Deletion Request →
8 Your Rights
Under POPIA you may:
- Access — ask what personal information we hold about you and receive a copy.
- Correct or delete — ask us to correct inaccurate information, or to delete it (you can also delete your account in the app).
- Object — object to processing based on our legitimate interests, or restrict certain processing.
- Withdraw consent — for example turn off location, stop push notifications, remove your verification, or change your cookie choice. Withdrawing does not affect what we did before, and some features may then stop working.
- Human review — if an automated face-match verification does not work for you, ask us to have a person review it.
- Complain — to us, or to the Information Regulator (South Africa).
Exercise any right by emailing privacy@amardating.com. We respond within 30 days and may need to confirm your identity first. There is no charge for ordinary requests.
Information Regulator (South Africa): inforegulator.org.za · complaints: complaints.IR@inforegulator.org.za
9 Security
- HTTPS encryption on all data in transit.
- Database and file access restricted to our systems and authorised staff; verification videos are private and never shown to other users.
- Chat access is restricted so only the two people in a match can read a conversation.
- Passwords are never stored in plain text (sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication; admin passwords are hashed).
- Regular reviews of our code and infrastructure.
If we discover a security breach that affects your personal information, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.
10 Children’s Privacy
Amar is strictly for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has registered, contact us immediately at safety@amardating.com. See our Child Safety Standards.
11 Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. We will tell you about significant changes in the app or by email. The “Last updated” date shows the latest revision.
12 Contact Us
- Privacy / Information Officer: privacy@amardating.com
- Safety reports: safety@amardating.com
- Website: www.amardating.com
- Company: Amar Technologies, Johannesburg, South Africa