Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Bubbles is a social and dating application operated by Koosk Media Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17515102. Koosk Media Limited is the data controller for the personal data you provide when using the app.

Koosk Media Limited, Clarence House, Clarence Street, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2LA — bubbles_support@kooskmedia.com

2. Data We Collect

When you register and use Bubbles, we collect:

• Identity data — your e-mail address, first name, date of birth, and gender. If you turn on Let Others Find Me by Email, a person who already knows your e-mail address can find your profile by it. If you sign in with Google or Apple, they confirm who you are and we receive your name and e-mail address (or Apple's relay address); Google also sends a link to your Google profile picture, which the app does not use.
• Profile data — photos, videos, biography, interests, lifestyle information, and any prompts you complete. Photos you upload are re-saved without their camera and location metadata before they are stored; a photo that cannot be re-saved is not uploaded. Videos you upload have the recording location removed before they are stored.
• Location data — the town or area you type, and a map point for it rounded to two decimal places (about a kilometre). If you tap Use My Current Location, your phone reads your position once and your phone's own geocoder turns it into a place name; we store only the rounded point and the name. We use it to show you nearby people and groups and to show others roughly how far away you are. We never track your movements or keep your precise GPS position.
• Contact preferences — who you are looking to meet and what type of relationship you are seeking.
• Usage data — when you last used the app and the searches you save.
• Profile views and likes — when you open another member's profile, we record that you viewed it, and when you like a profile, we record your like.
• Communications — messages, voice notes and attachments sent between users through the app, together with related messaging data such as read receipts (whether and when your messages have been read) and typing indicators. You can unsend a message within 24 hours of sending it: it is then shown to both of you as "Message removed" and its attachment is deleted, but a notification already delivered to the other person's phone, which may show the message's words, cannot be recalled. You can hide a conversation from your inbox (it is hidden from your view only; its messages are kept, and it comes back when either of you sends a new message) or delete it for yourself (its messages are removed from your inbox for good; the other person keeps their copy, and anything they send later still reaches you).
• Call records — when you make or receive a video call, we record who called whom, when, and whether it was answered or missed. We never record or store the call itself.
• Moderation data — reports you submit or that are submitted about you (including reported profiles, posts, comments, conversations and groups), the users you block, and related moderation records.
• Device data — whether your phone is an iPhone or an Android phone, its model name, the language the app is shown in, and the token that lets us send notifications to it.
• Subscription data — whether you hold a subscription or a free trial, whether a free trial is still open to you, who bills it (Apple, Google Play or Stripe), its status, when it renews or ends, and the reference Apple, Google, RevenueCat or Stripe gives it. We never see or store your payment card details: Apple, Google or Stripe handles your payment.

3. Special Category Data

Dating apps by their nature may involve information about your racial or ethnic origin, your sexual orientation, your relationship preferences, and your religious views, if you choose to share them on your profile. This is considered special category data under UK GDPR.

We collect this data only with your explicit consent, which you give when you create your profile. You can remove this information from your profile at any time.

4. How We Use Your Data

We use your personal data to:

• Create and maintain your account.
• Show your profile to other users and show you other profiles based on your search preferences.
• Enable messaging, video calls, and other social features.
• Process your subscription and verify your access level.
• Send you app notifications (new messages, activity alerts) if you have enabled them.
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and violations of our Terms and Conditions.
• Fix problems and improve the app, using the records described in section 2. We use no analytics or tracking tools.

Profile views and likes: you can see how many different people viewed your profile in the last 30 days, but never who they were. A person you like can see your like. Your favourites (hearts) stay private: no one is told that you added them. When two people who both have Dating in their bubbles like each other, each is told it is a match.

We do not use your data for automated decision-making or profiling beyond matching you with relevant search results based on your stated preferences.

5. Legal Basis for Processing

We process your data on the following legal bases:

• Contract — to provide the services you have signed up for.
• Consent — for special category data and push notifications.
• Legitimate interests — to keep the app secure and improve its functionality, where this does not override your rights.
• Legal obligation — where we are required to retain or share data by law.

6. Who We Share Your Data With

We do not sell your personal data.

We share personal data with a small number of third-party processors who help us operate Bubbles:

• Supabase — our database, authentication, and file-storage provider, which securely stores your account, profile, media, and message data.
• Stripe — our payment provider for subscriptions billed by card, which processes those payments and manages those subscriptions and their trial periods on our behalf. For this it holds your name, your email address, your Bubbles user ID and your payment details.
• RevenueCat — our subscription-management provider for subscriptions bought through the App Store or Google Play. It checks those purchases with Apple and Google and tells us whether your subscription is active. It holds your Bubbles user ID (a random identifier, not your name or email address), the purchases you make in the app and their status, your device's locale and currency, and the identifiers its software collects to recognise your device. It does not receive your payment details. A RevenueCat record is created under your Bubbles user ID whenever you sign in to the app, even if you never buy anything.
• Expo — our push-notification provider. A notification carries the sender's first name and, for a message or comment, its words, and Expo passes it to Apple (for iPhones) or Google (for Android phones) to deliver it to your phone. You can turn each kind of notification off in Settings.
• Cloudflare — relays the audio and video of a call when the two phones cannot connect directly. It sees both phones' internet addresses and carries the encrypted call; it cannot listen to it, and nothing is recorded.
• LocationIQ — our geocoding provider. When you type a place name, we send that text (and the app's language) to LocationIQ to find the matching map point. Your phone's own address is not sent.
• Google and Apple — if you sign in with Google or Apple, they confirm who you are and give us your name and e-mail address (or Apple's relay address). If you tap Use My Current Location, your phone's own geocoder (Apple's on an iPhone, Google's on an Android phone) turns your position into a place name. Notifications reach your phone through Apple's or Google's notification service (see Expo above).
• Google — on iPhones, the app checks that your phone is connected to the internet by contacting a Google web address, which receives your phone's internet address and nothing about you or your account.

When you subscribe in the iPhone app or the Android app, you buy the subscription from Apple (through the App Store) or from Google (through Google Play), not from us. Apple or Google takes your payment and keeps your payment details and its record of the purchase under its own terms and privacy policy. For a subscription we do not send Apple or Google your Bubbles profile. Through RevenueCat we learn your subscription's status (including whether it is a free trial and whether it will renew), when it renews or ends, the product bought, and the store's reference for it.

Some of the providers named above are based in the United States, so your data may be processed there. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on safeguards recognised under UK data protection law, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or the UK–US data bridge, as set out in each provider's data-processing terms.

We may also disclose data to law enforcement or regulatory bodies if we are legally required to do so, for example in response to a court order.

When a post or message contains a YouTube link, we show a preview image loaded from YouTube's servers, so YouTube (Google) receives your device's IP address when that post or message is displayed. Opening the link takes you to YouTube or TikTok, whose own privacy policies then apply.

7. How Long We Keep Your Data

We keep your personal data for as long as your account is active.

Profile view records are deleted after 30 days.

When you delete your account, your personal data is erased as part of the deletion process described in section 9, except where we are required by law to retain specific records (for example, financial records relating to subscription payments).

For subscriptions: when you delete your account, we ask RevenueCat to delete its record of you, and we remove your name, email address and Bubbles user ID from your Stripe customer record. Stripe keeps the record of your past payments, because we must keep it for tax purposes, and the card saved for your subscription stays with Stripe. Apple and Google keep their own records of App Store and Google Play purchases under their own policies.

Moderation and safety records, such as reports, may be kept where necessary to protect our users or to comply with legal obligations.

8. Your Rights Under UK GDPR

You have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate data.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data ("right to be forgotten").
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Object — object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at bubbles_support@kooskmedia.com. We will respond within 30 days. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

9. Data Deletion

You can delete your account at any time from the app settings. Deleting your account removes your profile, your photos and videos, your posts, comments and reactions, your group-chat messages, the events you created, and every private conversation you were part of — for the other person too, including their messages, voice notes and attachments in it. A group you own passes to another member if it has one, or is deleted. It cancels a subscription billed through Stripe and deletes your record at RevenueCat. Reports you made are kept without your name.

Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription bought through the App Store or Google Play. Only you can cancel it, in your Apple account's subscription settings or your Google Play subscription settings, so please cancel it before you delete your account. The app reminds you of this before you delete.

If you are unable to access your account, email us at bubbles_support@kooskmedia.com and we will process the deletion manually.

10. Reports and Content Moderation

When you report a profile, post, comment, conversation or group, we receive your report and the reason you chose. We review reports to decide whether something breaks our Terms or Community Guidelines and what to do about it. We do not scan, monitor or read private messages, and we never record calls: we look at a private conversation only when it has been reported to us, or where the law requires it. If you delete your account, reports you made are kept without your name. Where the law requires it, or where we believe someone is at serious risk, we may share reported content and account information with the police or other authorities; we report child sexual abuse material.

11. Data Security

We take the security of your data seriously. All data is transmitted over encrypted HTTPS connections. Passwords are never stored — we use Supabase Auth which handles credentials using industry-standard hashing.

Media you upload is stored in two tiers. Private media — message attachments, gallery photos and videos, post media, and event images — is held in private storage and served only through time-limited signed links. Profile photos and group cover images are stored publicly so they can be displayed across the app.

Despite these measures, no system is completely secure. If you suspect your account has been compromised, please contact us immediately.

12. Children

Bubbles is strictly for users aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account, please report it to bubbles_support@kooskmedia.com and we will investigate and delete the account immediately.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page. For significant changes, we will notify you via the app. Continued use of Bubbles after changes take effect means you accept the revised policy.

14. Contact

For any privacy-related questions, requests, or concerns:

Koosk Media Limited, Clarence House, Clarence Street, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2LA — bubbles_support@kooskmedia.com

You can also reach the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or by calling 0303 123 1113.