Privacy Policy

Distalove (“Distalove”, “we”, “us”) is operated by Oleksandr Bilokur, Poland. For any privacy question, or to exercise the rights described below, write to quiz.where@gmail.com.

This policy covers the Distalove mobile app for iOS and Android, its home-screen and lock-screen widgets, and this website.

• Precise location (latitude and longitude) and your device time zone — to calculate the distance and direction between you and your partner, to show your partner’s local time, and to look up the weather at their location. Stored as a single record that is overwritten on each update: we keep no location history.
• Display name you type during onboarding — so your partner sees who they are paired with. It can be any nickname; we never ask for your legal name.
• Account identifier and optional recovery email — an anonymous identifier is created automatically so your device can reach its own data. If you switch on account protection, a verified email address is linked to that same identifier so you can restore your data on a new device. We never use passwords or phone numbers.
• Pairing data: invite code, pair identifier, the two member identifiers, and the dates you enter (anniversary, next meeting).
• Messages and drawings you send to your partner, plus unread and “seen” markers.
• Push notification token — so your partner’s device can notify you and refresh your widgets in the background.
• Feature counters (how many messages, drawings and affections were sent) — to run in-app counters and the free-tier daily limits.
• Subscription status — to unlock Distalove Premium for you and your partner. Payment itself is handled by Apple or Google; we never see your card details.
• Optional local diagnostics — only if you switch them on in Settings. They never leave your device unless you export and send them to us yourself.

Distalove is built around a simple promise: the app shows how far apart you are, never where you are. No screen, widget or notification ever displays your partner’s address, map position or coordinates.

We want to be precise about how this works today, because “the app does not show it” is not the same as “the data never travels”:

• Your coordinates are stored on our server and are readable by the app of the one partner you are paired with — and by nobody else.
• The distance, the compass bearing and your partner’s weather are calculated on the device, which means your partner’s copy of the app receives your coordinates to do that maths locally.
• Consequently, a technically skilled person who modified the app on their own phone could read the coordinates of the partner who paired with them. Nobody outside your pair can.

We are working on end-to-end encryption, which will remove even this possibility. Until that ships, please treat pairing as something you do only with a person you trust, and remember that you can pause location sharing or break the pair at any moment in Settings.

If you grant the “Always” location permission, Distalove updates the distance while the app is closed, which is what keeps your widgets fresh. The app deliberately publishes a new position only when you have moved enough to change the displayed distance — it does not stream your movement continuously. You can withdraw this permission at any time in your device settings.

• No phone number and no password. An email address is processed only if you choose to switch on account recovery yourself.
• No contacts, photo library, microphone or camera access.
• No advertising identifiers, no ads, no ad networks.
• No third-party analytics or tracking SDKs, and no cross-app or cross-site tracking.
• No location history — each new position overwrites the previous one.
• We never sell or rent personal data, and we never share it for advertising.

• Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — running the pairing, distance, widgets, chat and counters you asked for.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — access to location and to notifications, which you grant through the operating system and can withdraw there at any time.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — keeping the service secure and abuse-free, and answering your support requests.

• Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore) — our database, anonymous sign-in and the optional passwordless email recovery. Our database is located in the European Union (europe-west1, Belgium).
• Expo Push Service, Apple Push Notification service and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging — delivery of notifications.
• Open-Meteo — the weather shown for your partner’s city. The request contains the coordinates being looked up and the requesting device’s IP address.
• Apple and Google — app distribution and subscription payments, as independent controllers under their own privacy policies.
• RevenueCat — subscription state management.

Your core data is stored in the European Union. Some providers listed above operate from the United States; where that happens, transfers rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or an adequacy decision, as set out in each provider’s own terms.

• Location: one current record per person, overwritten on every update.
• Messages and drawings: until you or your partner delete them, or the pair is broken.
• Profile, pairing data and push token: until you delete your data in the app.
• Recovery email: until you delete your account.
• Invite codes: removed once used or when the pair is broken.

“Delete my data” in Settings removes your profile, your location record, your push token, the pair and its messages from our servers, and clears the local copy on your device. Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone by us.

If you are in the EEA or the UK you have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict and object to the processing of your data, and the right to data portability. If you are in California you have the rights to know, delete, correct, and to opt out of sale or sharing — noting that we do not sell or share personal information at all.

Two of these rights are built into the app, so you do not need to write to anyone:

• Export — Settings → Data → “Export my data” produces a JSON file with everything we hold about you.
• Deletion — Settings → Data → “Delete my data”.

For anything else, write to quiz.where@gmail.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

All traffic between the app and our servers uses TLS. Access to the database is restricted by server-side security rules so that a device can only read its own data and the data of the single partner it is paired with. As explained in section 3, coordinates are not yet end-to-end encrypted; that work is planned.

The app does not use cookies. This website does not set analytics or advertising cookies either, and there is no tracking pixel on it — which is why you are not seeing a consent banner. Our hosting provider may keep standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting.

Distalove is not intended for children under 13, and under 16 in countries where that is the age of digital consent. We do not knowingly process data from them. If you believe a child has used the app, write to us and we will delete the data.

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page, and for significant changes we will notify you in the app before they take effect.

Oleksandr Bilokur, Poland
quiz.where@gmail.com