Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Close Couples (the "app", "we", "us") is operated by Bizleads Limited, a company registered in the United Kingdom (company number 09408048), registered office 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, England, WC1N 3AX. We are the "data controller" for the personal data described here.

You can reach us about anything in this policy at support@closecouples.app.

2. What we collect

We collect only what we need to give you a working account and a shared space with your partner. We do not ask for a date of birth, a phone number, or any government ID.

Account & identity

• How you sign in. Either an email address and password, or "Sign in with Apple" / "Sign in with Google". If you use email and password, your password is stored only in hashed form by our authentication provider — we never see or store the plain password. If you use Apple's "Hide My Email" private relay, we store only the relay address Apple gives us, and we mark your account as relay-based so we only ever send essential service email to it.
• Profile. A display name you choose, an optional profile photo, and your device's time zone (so the app can show "it's 9pm there" and avoid notifying your partner in the middle of their night).
• Age confirmation. Close Couples is for adults. At sign-up you confirm you are 18 or older; we record that you confirmed and when. We do not store your date of birth.

Your shared space (couple content)

This is the heart of the app, and it is visible only to you and your partner. Depending on what you use, it can include:

• Presence & moods — the mood you set and, on the Plus plan, an optional short custom status.
• Love notes — text, photo, or voice notes you send each other, including the media you attach.
• Daily question answers — your written answer to the shared daily question (kept hidden until you've both answered).
• Our Story — memories you save: photos, captions, dates, and an optional city-level place label. Photo "stories" you post fade automatically after about a day unless you save them.
• Milestones & special days, your anniversary date, and your reunion countdown and any extra event countdowns you add.
• Your settings for the space — e.g. the daily-question language, the shared "glow" opt-in, and any topics you've chosen to exclude from daily questions.

Subscriptions

Close Couples Plus is sold through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Your payment is handled by them and our subscriptions provider, RevenueCat — we never receive or store your card details. We store your subscription status (free or Plus, active/expired, renewal date) and the technical purchase events needed to grant access (e.g. product, amount, currency).

Device & technical data

• Push token — if you turn on notifications, a device token so we can deliver them.
• Coarse device & session info — app version, platform (iOS/Android), operating-system family/version, device model, country, and network type. This is used for reliability and product analytics and is deliberately coarse — never a precise device fingerprint or your device's name.
• IP address — like any internet service, our hosting providers process your IP address transiently to route requests and protect against abuse. We don't use it to track you across the web.

3. How we use it

• To run the service — create and secure your account, pair you with your partner, store and sync your shared space, and deliver the features you use.
• To communicate with you — service messages (e.g. account, security, subscription) and the in-app notifications you opt into.
• To process subscriptions — grant and manage Close Couples Plus, including the free trial and graceful downgrade.
• To keep it safe & working — prevent abuse, debug crashes and errors, and maintain reliability.
• To improve the product — understand which features are used, using our own first-party, aggregated analytics (see §9). We do not build advertising profiles.
• To meet legal obligations — when the law requires it.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with third parties for their own advertising.

4. Lawful bases for processing (UK/EU)

If UK or EU data-protection law applies to you, we rely on these bases:

5. Your partner and the couple

Close Couples only works when two people share one space, so this deserves its own section.

• What you add to the shared space is visible to your partner. That's the whole idea — moods, notes, answers, and memories are shared by design. Please only add content you're comfortable sharing with them.
• We never surface inactivity. We do not tell your partner whether you've opened the app, read a note, or "gone quiet". Presence is something you choose to express, never something we track and report on.
• If you unpair (a break-up, or any reason): either partner can end the pairing. When that happens, your shared content is preserved and stays available to export to both of you for a retention window of 30 days, after which it is permanently deleted. Within that window you can also choose to re-pair and restore the space.
• Neither partner can unilaterally destroy or take away the other's copy. If one of you exports or deletes your own account, the other keeps their copy of the shared memories and their own export path. This is a deliberate safeguard against coercive control.

6. Who we share it with

We use a small set of trusted service providers ("processors") to run the app. They process data only on our instructions and only for the purposes below. We don't sell data and we don't share it for third-party advertising.

We may also disclose information if required by law, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights and safety of our users — and to a buyer in the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets (with notice to you, and this policy continuing to apply).

7. Location

The distance feature is built to be private by construction:

• Sharing your location is optional and off until you turn it on.
• We never collect precise GPS or live location. When you share, your position is reduced to a coarse, city-level area (roughly an 11 km grid) on your device and again on our servers — there is no setting that enables precise tracking, because no part of the system can store one.
• We use this only to show an approximate distance between you and your partner. We never show a map pin, a route, or a history of where you've been.
• You can stop sharing at any time, which clears the stored coarse location.

8. Notifications

Notifications are opt-in. If you enable them, we store a device push token to deliver them through Apple's and Google's push services (via Expo). You can turn notifications off — by type or entirely — in the app's settings or your device settings at any time. We schedule notifications with your time zone in mind so they don't arrive in the middle of your night.

9. Analytics

We use our own first-party analytics — there is no third-party advertising or cross-app tracking SDK in the app. We record a limited set of product events (for example: app opened, onboarding step completed, a note sent, a couple paired) to understand how the product is used and improve it. These events are tied to an account identifier so we can measure things like activation and retention, but:

• they do not contain the content of your notes, answers, captions, or moods;
• our servers actively strip out personal-data-shaped fields as a safeguard; and
• raw analytics events are automatically deleted after about 180 days.

10. How long we keep it

11. Your rights

If UK or EU data-protection law applies to you, you have the right to: access your data; correct it; delete it ("erasure"); restrict or object to certain processing; receive a portable copy; and withdraw consent for anything based on consent. We build the two most important of these right into the app:

• Export — request a copy of your data from inside the app. Export is never put behind a paywall: you can always leave with your data.
• Delete — delete your account from inside the app, subject to the partner-copy safeguard in §5.

To exercise any right, use the in-app controls or email support@closecouples.app. We won't discriminate against you for exercising your rights. If you're in the UK or EU and think we've got something wrong, you can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) or your local supervisory authority — though we'd appreciate the chance to put it right first.

12. California privacy rights

If you're a California resident, the CCPA/CPRA gives you the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to request access and deletion, to correct it, and to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined, and we do not use it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. To make a request, email support@closecouples.app; we may need to verify your identity before responding.

13. Security

We protect your data with: encryption in transit (HTTPS everywhere); database row-level security that scopes every couple's content to its two members and no one else; hashed passwords held by our auth provider; file storage scoped to your couple; and signature-verified payment webhooks. No service can promise perfect security, but protecting an intimate, private space is something we take seriously and design for from the ground up.

14. International data transfers

We're a UK company, and some of our providers process data in the European Union. Where data leaves the UK/EU, we rely on appropriate safeguards — such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement / EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or a provider's certification under an approved framework — so your data keeps an equivalent level of protection.

15. Children

Close Couples is for adults and is not directed at anyone under 18. We don't knowingly collect personal data from people under 18. If you believe a minor has used the app, contact us at support@closecouples.app and we'll delete the account.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. When we make material changes we'll update the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app. Continuing to use Close Couples after a change means you accept the updated policy.

17. Contact us

Questions, requests, or concerns about your privacy: support@closecouples.app
For general support: support@closecouples.app
Bizleads Limited, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, England, WC1N 3AX.

See also our Terms of Service.