Privacy Notice

This notice explains which personal data is processed when you use MeGroove, why and on what legal basis it is processed, who it is shared with, where and for how long it is kept, and what rights you have. It also serves as the information notice under Article 10 of the Turkish Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK).

1. Data controller

Data controller: —. VERBIS registration:. For questions and requests about this notice, use the addresses on the support page.

2. Data we collect

• Account: e-mail address, an irreversible hash of your password (the password itself is not stored), date of birth. If you sign in with Google or Apple, that account's permanent identifier. At sign-up, where your phone can share age information, the age range your phone provides and how your account's age check was made.
• Profile: username, profile photos, bio, tags, gender, country; the age and zodiac sign calculated from your date of birth.
• Stories: the photos you share, whether a photo came from the camera or the gallery, view and like counts. Who viewed and liked which story is also recorded; this is not shown to users.
• Usage: who you follow, who you block, who you have conversations with (without the content of messages), how many messages were sent in conversations awaiting a reply, a name you gave an anonymous person for yourself, your settings (privacy, notifications, language), when you were last active.
• Purchases: the product you bought, the period, the status (active, cancelled, refunded) and the store's transaction ID. Your card details and the amount you paid never reach us.
• Device and security: device model, system and app version, a check result showing that the device and app are genuine (Apple App Attest, Google Play Integrity), a hash of a persistent device signal to recognise blocked devices (Apple DeviceCheck on iOS, an irreversible hash of the device ID on Android), IP address and connection port.
• Notifications: your device's notification address, so that notifications can be sent.
• Reports, appeals and support: reports you send and reports about you, evidence sent with reports, your appeals, in-app feedback and screenshots you attach to it.
• Error logs: crash and error logs created when the app or the server fails, cleaned of personal information.

What we do not collect: your contacts, precise location, advertising ID, phone number, health and financial information, browsing history. We do not track you across apps and websites. The app currently has no usage analytics. The camera is used only while you take a photo or video, the gallery only while you choose a photo or video; the microphone is used only while recording a video. Location data in photos and videos you send in messages is removed on your phone before they are sent.

3. Who sees what on your profile

• Everyone in the app sees your username, profile photos, bio, tags, gender, age and zodiac sign on your profile. Your date of birth itself is never shown anywhere; your age and zodiac sign are calculated from it.
• Your country and gender are used in the feed and story filters of Premium users.
• The profile preview on the website (/u/yourusername) shows anyone who has the link, even without the app, only your username, profile photo and bio; your age, zodiac sign and other details are not there. This page is closed to search engines. A frozen, deleted, hidden or restricted profile is not shown there.
• Your follower list is not shown to anyone; your profile shows only your follower count. Only you see the list of people you follow.
• Who looks at your profile is not recorded. No user can see who viewed or liked your story; you see only the counts.
• You can turn off last seen, online status and read receipts in settings; if you do, you cannot see other people's either. If you turn off "Appear in the feed", you do not appear in the discovery feed.
• A person you block does not see you anywhere.

4. Your messages

• Your messages and the photos and videos in them are not kept permanently on our servers. The server only delivers a message to the recipient; if the recipient is offline, it holds the message until delivery, for at most 30 days, and deletes it when it is delivered or when that time runs out. A media file is deleted from storage when the recipient downloads it or after 30 days at the latest. Messages awaiting delivery are not included in backups either.
• Messages are kept on devices, in a database encrypted with a key specific to each account. When you switch to another device, your old messages do not come with you.
• The server keeps only content-free information about the conversation itself: who has a conversation with whom, whether it is awaiting a reply, the number of messages sent until a reply, muting and the name you gave an anonymous person. So that MeGroove does not accept fake evidence, the server creates a signature when it delivers each message; the signature does not reveal the content of the message.
• MeGroove does not look at the content of private messages and does not scan private messages automatically. The link rule in conversations (only Instagram, YouTube, Spotify) is applied on the phone; the server does not look at the message.
• Reported messages: when you report a message, the reported message and, for context, at most 20 messages just before it in the conversation (messages of both sides, with their media if any) are sent from your device. These messages are kept as evidence only for reviewing that report (section 10). The reported message is also screened automatically during the review (section 6).
• Notifications do not contain the content of messages.

5. Anonymous messages and profile sharing

• When you send a message anonymously, the recipient does not see who you are; they see a random anonymous name made for that conversation. This name is not derived from your username or your account.
• MeGroove knows the sender. This information is not shared with the recipient, in notifications, in report results or in the blocked users list; no paid feature, Premium included, reveals the sender. It is used only when reviewing a report, when sanctioning a sender who broke the rules and when there is a legal request.
• An anonymous sender's online status and last seen are not shown to the recipient.
• Sharing your profile: if you reveal your identity with "Share my profile" in the conversation menu, the recipient sees your username, profile photo and profile. This cannot be undone.
• The "Accept anonymous messages" setting: this setting is on by default. If a user has turned it off, when you want to write to them you are asked whether you want to share your profile. If you agree, your profile (your username, profile photo and profile) is shared with the recipient automatically and your message is sent; if you do not agree, your message is not sent and your profile is not shared. In this case too, until the recipient replies you can send at most 3 messages and no media.

6. Automated content checks and AI

• Public content (username, bio, profile photos and story photos) is checked automatically before it is published: first by a word filter on our server, then by a third-party AI service, OpenAI's content moderation service. For this purpose the content itself is sent to OpenAI; your e-mail address, date of birth or messages are not sent.
• Reported content (the reported profile, story or message and its media) is passed through the same OpenAI service again during the review. The earlier messages sent for context are not sent to OpenAI.
• Private messages do not go through any automated check and are not sent to OpenAI unless they are reported.
• The only purpose is to check that content follows the Community Guidelines. Content that clearly breaks the rules is not published; suspicious content and serious reports are looked at by a person. If a sanction is applied to you as a result of an automated assessment, you can appeal from the app; a person reviews the appeal.
• OpenAI is located in the USA; see section 9 about the transfer.

7. Why we process data and on what legal basis

• To create your account, sign you in, show your profile and stories, deliver your messages and send notifications: establishing and performing the contract (KVKK Art. 5/2-c).
• To apply the 18+ age limit, prevent fake accounts, spam and abuse, check content, review reports and apply sanctions, and recognise blocked devices and e-mail addresses: legal obligation and legitimate interest (Art. 5/2-ç, 5/2-f).
• To keep the access logs required by law and to answer requests from competent authorities: legal obligation (Art. 5/2-ç).
• To provide the features you bought, apply refunds and keep financial records: performing the contract and legal obligation (Art. 5/2-c, 5/2-ç).
• To fix errors and keep the service secure: legitimate interest (Art. 5/2-f).
• To establish, exercise or protect a right (e.g. report evidence): Art. 5/2-e.

Your data is not used for advertising, is not sold and is not shared with anyone for advertising.

8. Who we share data with

Data is shared only as far as needed to provide the service, with the following service providers working on our behalf:

• Database: MongoDB Atlas (all account and app data; Europe, Frankfurt).
• Application server: Hostinger (processes data, does not keep it; Europe, —).
• Storage, network and security: Cloudflare (profile and story photos, message media awaiting delivery, report evidence, the legal log archive and encrypted backups; all traffic passes through Cloudflare's network; the bot protection on the website is Turnstile).
• Content checks: OpenAI (the public and reported content described in section 6).
• Sign-in, notifications, device checks and stores: Apple and Google (sign-in with Google or Apple, notification delivery, device checks, age information, purchases); Expo (passing notifications to Apple and Google; notifications contain no message content and no identity of an anonymous sender).
• Purchase records: RevenueCat (purchase and subscription status; linked only to your account's server ID, your username and e-mail are not sent).
• E-mail: Resend (your e-mail address and the code sent, for verification and password reset codes and required e-mails about your account).
• Error tracking: Sentry (error and crash logs cleaned of personal information).
• Competent authorities: only when there is a duly made legal request and only as far as the law provides. Message content cannot be given because we do not have it, except what is kept as report evidence.

These providers process data only on our instructions and for these purposes.

9. Transfers abroad

Some of the service providers above are outside Türkiye (the European Union and the United States; Cloudflare, Apple and Google use global networks). Wherever a region can be chosen, the European region is used. The main data going to the USA: public and reported content to OpenAI; notification address and notification text to Apple, Google and Expo; purchase records to RevenueCat; e-mail address and the code sent to Resend. Transfers are made under Article 9 of the KVKK on the basis of.

10. How long we keep data

General periods

• Your account data is kept while your account is open.
• Stories disappear after 24 hours and the photo is deleted (if there is an open report case, it is kept until the case is closed).
• Messages awaiting delivery wait at most 30 days, then they are deleted.
• A frozen account is deleted permanently if nobody signs in within 15 days.
• In an account not signed in to for 30 days, profile photos, bio, tags and remaining stories are deleted; the account and username remain.
• When you delete your account, your e-mail, password hash, date of birth, profile, photos, stories, follows, blocks, settings, notifications and notification address are deleted; your messages awaiting delivery are deleted. The messages on the devices of the people you chatted with stay on their devices; they are not in our hands. Your username is not given to anyone else for a while.
• Backups: deleted data is removed from our backups within 30 days at the latest.
• Rate limit counters (with IP address) are kept only for a short time. Retention period for error logs: —.

What is kept even after the account is deleted

• Legal access logs: for sign-up, sign-in, sign-out, password and username changes, freezing and deleting the account, and sharing and deleting content: the e-mail, username, IP address, port, device and time at that moment. The content itself is not recorded. These logs are kept for the period required by law (currently 2 years is planned) in a locked archive where they cannot be changed; they are not anonymised and are deleted automatically when the period ends.
• Report and review cases, their evidence and sanction records: until the case is closed and the legal period ends. For a permanently closed account, an irreversible hash of the e-mail and the device is kept to prevent signing up again.
• Purchase records: as financial records, anonymised.
• Your acceptance of the legal texts: which version you accepted and when, as legal proof, anonymised.
• Reports and feedback you sent, anonymised.

11. How we protect your data

• Your password is stored as an irreversible hash; some sensitive fields are encrypted in the database.
• The database and internal services are closed to the outside world; connections are encrypted.
• Backups are encrypted and stored so that they cannot be deleted; the legal log archive cannot be changed.
• Staff access user data only as far as their permissions allow, and everything they look at is recorded. Legal logs can be looked at only by an authorised person, when there is a legal request.
• On your device, your session details are in the phone's secure storage and your messages are in a database encrypted with a key specific to your account.
• If there is a data breach, the Personal Data Protection Board and the people affected are notified as the law provides.

12. Your rights

Under Article 11 of the KVKK you have the right to: learn whether your personal data is processed, request information if it is, learn the purpose of processing and whether it is used for that purpose, know the third parties in Türkiye or abroad to whom it is transferred, request correction if it is incomplete or wrong, request its deletion or destruction, request that corrections and deletions be notified to the third parties it was transferred to, object to a result against you arising solely from analysis by automated systems, and claim compensation if you suffered damage because of unlawful processing.

• You can change most of your account details yourself in the app. Date of birth, gender and country cannot be changed in the app after setup; if they are wrong you can contact us.
• You can delete your account from the app or from the account deletion page.
• For other requests, write to the address on the support page. We answer your request within 30 days at the latest. We do not give account information in response to requests where we cannot verify your identity. Because we do not have your messages, we cannot give a copy of message content.
• If your request is rejected or you find the answer insufficient, you can complain to the Personal Data Protection Board.

13. Website, cookies and bot protection

This website does not set cookies, does not store anything in your browser and has no visitor analytics. Only on the account deletion page, when you press "Delete my account", Cloudflare Turnstile is loaded to prevent automated attacks; your IP address and browser information are sent to Cloudflare for bot detection and are not used for advertising. If you choose to verify with Google or Apple on the same page, that provider's window opens and that provider manages its own cookies under its own rules.

14. Age limit

MeGroove is not for people under 18 and does not knowingly process the data of people under 18. If an account of someone under 18 is found, the account is closed. Details are in the Child Safety Policy.

15. Changes

When we change this notice we publish a new version, and the app asks you to accept it before you continue. Previous versions are listed at the bottom of this page. If the Turkish and English texts differ, the Turkish text prevails.