Privacy policy

Matchmonster (“we”, “us”) is built so that family data is never treated as inventory. This policy describes that design: personal details live in a vault, nothing personal is published without your choice, contact details move only through consented, revocable reveals, and we do not sell data — to anyone, for anything. The readable version of these commitments is on our Privacy & trust page; this document is the precise one. It covers matchmonster.us.

We collect only what the Service needs:

• Account data — email address (verified at signup), name, and your sign-in credentials, held by our identity provider. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email from Google; nothing is posted back.
• Profile data you author — the matrimonial profile you build: age, community, education, occupation, lifestyle, preferences, photos, and the optional depth answers that power compatibility.
• Vault data — the private layer described in section 3.
• Verification notes — our advisors' notes from your verification call, kept internal and never shown on any profile.
• Activity data — interests sent and received, matches, shortlists, messages after a match, reveal events, and credit transactions.
• Technical data — IP address, device and browser information, used for security, rate-limiting and tenant resolution (.in vs .us).

We do not collect SMS numbers for verification (we never use SMS), we do not run third-party advertising trackers, and we do not buy data about you from anyone.

Your vault holds anything that could identify or reach you directly: full name, exact date of birth, phone numbers, email, family members' names and contacts, private photos, and your privacy settings. Vault data is stored separately from your public profile by architecture, is excluded from search and matching, and is accessible only to you, to the advisor/admin staff who serve your account, and to the reveal mechanism in section 5. It is never included in what other members can browse, whatever they pay.

Your public profile contains only fields you chose to show: a display name (first name or alias), age in years, and the cultural, professional and lifestyle details you filled in. Photos follow your per-photo policy (public, connections only, or on request). Profiles are shown to browsing visitors and members according to your visibility setting; free text you write is screened to keep contact details (numbers, emails, handles) from slipping into public view. Public profile fields also feed the compatibility engine; vault data never does.

Your contact card (the subset of vault data you chose to share — typically name and phone number) can be revealed to another member only when three conditions hold together: (a) you and that member have a mutual match, (b) your settings allow sharing on match, and (c) the requesting member completes the reveal. Every reveal is logged; you can see who holds your card and revoke sharing at any time, which closes it for future access. We ask every member to treat revealed details as held in trust; misuse violates our terms and can be reported to us.

In legal terms, we process data to:

• provide the Service you asked for — profiles, matching, interests, messaging, reveals (performance of contract / consent);
• verify profiles through advisor calls, and maintain platform safety and integrity (legitimate interest in a trustworthy matrimonial service);
• process payments and maintain credit ledgers (contract, legal obligation);
• send service email — verification, match notifications you enabled, replies to your messages (contract). Marketing email only with consent, always with unsubscribe;
• meet legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

We do not profile you for advertising, we do not make automated decisions with legal effect about you (advisor approval is a human decision), and compatibility scores are computed only from public profile fields, as an aid you can ignore.

We never sell or rent personal data. We share it only with: (a) other members — strictly per sections 4 and 5; (b) a verified matchmaker, if you engage one, and only what is needed for the introduction you requested; (c) processors who host and operate the Service under contract (cloud infrastructure, email delivery, payment providers); (d) authorities, where the law genuinely requires it — in which case we disclose the minimum and, where lawful, tell you; and (e) a successor operator, if the Service ever changes hands — under this same policy, with notice to you before the transfer takes effect.

Card and payment details go directly to our payment partner, Stripe, and never touch our servers. We keep the transaction record: what was bought, when, the amount, and the credit ledger entries it created.

We use only functional cookies and browser storage: keeping you signed in, remembering your session, and rate-limiting abuse. No advertising cookies, no cross-site trackers, no analytics that identify you personally. Because there is nothing to opt out of, there is no cookie banner theatre.

We keep your data while your account is active. Deleting your account removes your profile, vault, photos and shortlists; conversations disappear from your side and are anonymized for the other member. We retain payment and ledger records for the period tax and accounting law requires, and minimal logs needed to investigate abuse, after which they are deleted in turn. Export-then-delete is always available (section 11).

Wherever you live, we honor: access (a copy of your data — self-serve export from settings), correction (edit your profile and vault anytime), erasure (self-serve deletion), withdrawal of consent (revoke reveals, disable sharing, pause your profile), and portability (the export is machine-readable).

California residents have equivalent rights under the CCPA/CPRA — noting we do not “sell” or “share” personal information as those laws define it. If you are in the EU/EEA or UK, they correspond to your GDPR rights, and you may also lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority.

Data is encrypted in transit; access to production systems and to vault data is restricted to the small team that operates the Service, on a need-to-serve-you basis; payment credentials are handled solely by our payment partners. No internet service can promise perfection — if a breach ever affects your data, we will notify you and the required authorities promptly and plainly.

Matchmonster is for adults of legal marriageable age (18 and over). We do not knowingly collect data about minors; a profile found to concern a minor is removed and its data deleted.

The Service runs on infrastructure in Europe and serves members through matchmonster.us; your data may be processed outside your home country. Wherever it is processed, this policy and the safeguards above travel with it, and transfers from jurisdictions that require them use recognized mechanisms (such as standard contractual clauses).

Privacy questions and requests: [email protected] — mark the subject “Privacy”. We acknowledge within 72 hours and aim to resolve within 30 days. If we ever fall short, say so — this policy only means anything if we answer for it.

When this policy changes materially, we will tell you on the site or by email before the change takes effect. We will never quietly weaken the vault, the reveal rules, or the no-selling commitment — a change to those would be announced plainly and would apply only going forward, with your choices intact.