Last updated: 22 October 2026 · Version 2.1
Socializer is a mobile app that helps you meet people who are at the same venue as you. This policy explains which personal data is processed when you use the app and when you join the early access list on our website (usesocializer.com), why and on what legal basis, who it is shared with, how long it is kept and what rights you have. It also serves as the privacy notice required by Article 10 of the Turkish Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK). If the Turkish and English versions differ, the Turkish version prevails.
Data controller: Fırat Öncü Şener, Seyyitömer Mahallesi, Hüseyin Kazım Sokak No: 53, Fatih / İstanbul, Türkiye. Contact: oncu.sener@gmail.com
In short
Your data is collected through the app, electronically and by automated means. The letters in the legal basis column refer to KVKK Article 5(2): (c) entering into or performing a contract, (f) legitimate interest.
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Nickname | Identifying your account and showing it to other users | Performance of contract (c) |
| Phone number | Account verification; preventing more than one account per number and abuse of invite rewards, and making fake or re-created accounts harder. If you started without phone verification under the founding member programme, your number is not collected; it is only collected when verification is requested and you enter it. | Performance of contract (c), legitimate interest (f) |
| Date of birth | Enforcing the 18+ age limit. Other users only see your age, never your date of birth. | Performance of contract (c), legitimate interest (f): protecting minors |
| Bio (optional) | Building your profile | Performance of contract (c) |
| Profile photos | Showing your profile; checking for inappropriate content and fake profiles | Performance of contract (c), legitimate interest (f) |
| Verification selfie | Granting the profile verification badge. Your profile must be verified before you can send chat messages. | Performance of contract (c) |
| Location (latitude/longitude) | Listing nearby venues, confirming that a check-in happens close to the venue, sending notifications about busy venues nearby and our own regional announcements, investigating fake locations and abuse (authorised staff can see currently open check-ins on a map in our admin panel) | Performance of contract (c), legitimate interest (f) |
| Check-in records (venue, mode, duration, visibility choice, time) | Running Discover, showing how busy venues are (as anonymous counts), investigating abuse, producing our own usage statistics to improve the service | Performance of contract (c), legitimate interest (f) |
| Online status and last seen time | Passing whether you are online and when you were last seen to the app of the person you are matched with, if your setting is on (see section 2), producing our own usage statistics (for example daily active users) | Performance of contract (c), legitimate interest (f) |
| Eye contacts, matches, messages | Meeting people and short chats | Performance of contract (c) |
| Report, block and moderation records | Protecting users, reviewing rule violations and enforcing our rules | Legitimate interest (f) |
| IP address | Detecting fake location (fake GPS/VPN), security | Legitimate interest (f) |
| Device ID (randomly generated) | Preventing venue-level separations (a declined eye contact, an ended match and similar) from being bypassed with a new account on the same device, and stopping one-off benefits such as founding membership from being claimed again on the same device | Legitimate interest (f) |
| Push token | Sending push notifications | Performance of contract (c) |
| Premium, subscription, founding member and invite details | Providing Premium features, founding member perks (your founding member number, whether you skipped phone verification under the programme, whether your founding member Premium is suspended) and invite rewards (we record who invited you) | Performance of contract (c) |
| Support correspondence (your email address and message) | Answering your request | Legitimate interest (f) |
Socializer does not use passwords. You sign in with an Ed25519 signing key that is created on your device and never leaves its secure storage; only the public key is sent to our server. The app does not ask for your real name, email address or ID documents. An email address you choose to give to the early access list on our website is kept separate from your app account (see section 8).
Your location is only used while the app is open and in the foreground. There is no background location tracking; we do not know where you are when the app is closed.
The map is drawn on your device by the Google Maps SDK. To load map images your device connects directly to Google, which receives your IP address and the map area you are viewing. To show your own position on the map, the SDK uses your device's location on the device, and the map is usually centred on where you are, so the map area Google receives can reveal your approximate location. The SDK also collects its own technical data, such as a device identifier, map interactions, crash and performance data. Google's own privacy terms apply to that data.
Your IP address is used to check whether it matches the GPS position you send. This check runs entirely on our server with an offline database; your IP address is not sent to any outside service for this and is not stored in our database. If a serious mismatch is found, it is written to the server logs for security purposes.
Your nickname, phone number and message content are encrypted in our database with AES-256-GCM, so someone with direct database access cannot read them. Exception: the texts in your notification list (such as the nickname and message preview in match and new-message notifications) are stored unencrypted. For fields that need to be searchable or unique (nickname, phone), we also keep an irreversible cryptographic hash (blind index). All traffic between the app and our server uses HTTPS.
When the app is first opened it generates a random device ID on your device. It is not an advertising ID, it is not derived from your hardware and it is not shared with anyone. It has two purposes: to stop someone you have a venue-level separation with (a declined eye contact, an ended match and similar) from showing up at that venue again with a new account on the same device, and to stop one-off benefits such as founding membership from being claimed again on the same device. Uninstalling the app removes the copy on your device; if you restore your device from a backup (for example an Android backup), the ID may come back.
| Service | Data shared | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Vision (Google) | The photo you upload (metadata removed) | Inappropriate content check and face presence check |
| Google Places (Google) | Rounded coordinate, search text | Venue list and venue search |
| OpenStreetMap services (Nominatim and public Overpass servers; one of them is run by VK in Russia) | Rounded coordinate, search text, venue location | Venue list, venue search, a venue's city/district |
| Google Maps SDK (Google) | Your IP address, the map area you view, the SDK's technical data (device identifier, map interactions, crash and performance data) | Showing the map |
| Expo push service, Apple (APNs), Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) | Push token; the notification title and text (in a new-message notification, the sender's nickname and the first 40 characters of the message); record IDs used to open the right screen when you tap the notification (for example the match ID) | Delivering push notifications |
| Expo (EAS Update, app updates) | Your IP address, platform (iOS/Android), app and installed update version, and an installation ID generated randomly on your device | Checking for and downloading app updates when the app opens |
| Sentry | Error reports from our server. Sending IP addresses and default personal data is turned off. | Finding and fixing technical errors |
| SMS provider | Your phone number, verification code | Sending the verification code |
| Hosting provider | Data stored on our servers | Running our servers (infrastructure only) |
| Apple App Store, Google Play | Purchase record. Your card details never reach us. | Taking payment once paid features go on sale |
| Apple, Google or Yandex Maps | The location of the venue you chose | Directions. Only when you tap "directions"; their own app opens. |
Some of these providers are located outside Türkiye, so the data listed above is transferred abroad to the extent each service requires. These transfers fall under Article 9 of the KVKK; each provider receives only the minimum data needed for its service.
Apart from this, your data is shared only with public authorities that are legally entitled to request it, upon a lawful request and to the extent the law requires. Your data is not used for third-party advertising, not sold and not shared with third parties for marketing. We may send you our own announcements as notifications (for example events in your area or at venues you have visited, or new features); your check-in locations from the last 30 days may be used for this. The app contains no ad networks and no third-party analytics tools; we only produce statistics from our own records to improve the service.
You can join the early access list by entering your email address in the early access form on our website (usesocializer.com), to hear when Socializer launches. This section applies only to that list. Joining the list does not create a Socializer account; the list is kept separate from your app account. Socializer is for people aged 18 and over; please only join the list if you are 18 or older.
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Your email address | Sending you the launch and early access notification |
| Your language (Turkish or English) | Sending the notification in the language you used on the form |
| Sign-up time | Showing when you gave your consent and calculating the 12-month retention period |
| Source (the fact that the sign-up came from the form on our website) | Knowing where the sign-up came from |
Your IP address is not saved to the list and is not stored permanently. To prevent abuse of the form (for example automated bulk sign-ups), it is used only for short-term rate limiting and, for that purpose, is held only in our server's memory. As with any request to our server, it may appear in general server and error logs; section 9 applies to how long those logs are kept.
We use your email address only to send you a one-time notification email telling you that Socializer has launched or that early access has opened. We do not send newsletters, campaigns, advertising or any other commercial electronic messages, so no message covered by Türkiye's commercial message registry (İleti Yönetim Sistemi, İYS) is sent either. We will not extend this purpose without asking for your explicit consent again.
Your explicit consent, given by ticking the consent box on the form (KVKK Article 5(1)). You can withdraw your consent at any time; when you do, your address is removed from the list. Withdrawal does not affect processing carried out before it.
The list is stored on the infrastructure of the hosting provider that runs our servers (see section 7). Apart from that, it is not shared with any third party: it is not given to marketing networks, advertisers or data brokers, and it is not sold. The only exception is the legal requests described in section 7. Your rights under KVKK Article 11 and, if you are in the European Union, under the GDPR apply to this list too (see section 12).
| Data | Period |
|---|---|
| Account and profile details | As long as your account is open |
| Raw GPS position at check-in | 30 days, then deleted automatically |
| Check-in records (venue, mode, time) | As long as your account is open; after deletion they stay linked to the anonymised account, without location |
| Messages | Deleted 24 hours after the match ends. If there is an open report, until the review ends, at most 180 days. |
| Eye contact and match records (without message content) | As long as your account is open. On deletion, eye contacts are deleted and match records stay linked to the anonymised account. |
| Notifications | Until you delete them or delete your account. Notifications with a message preview are deleted together with the messages. |
| Push token | Deleted immediately when you sign out or delete your account. Also deleted if your account is suspended indefinitely or deactivated; during a time-limited suspension it is kept, but no notifications are sent to you until the suspension ends. If you uninstall the app, it is deleted once the notification service reports it as invalid. |
| Notification delivery records (delivery ticket and push token) | Until the delivery result is checked, at most about 24 hours. Deleted immediately when you delete your account. |
| Verification selfie | Until the verification decision. If you send a new selfie the previous one is deleted, and a pending selfie is deleted immediately if you delete your account. |
| Photos rejected by moderation | Never stored |
| Photos you remove from your profile | The file is deleted right away, together with its thumbnail |
| Phone verification codes | A code is valid for 5 minutes; the code itself is never stored. The verification record, which holds a hash of the code and of your phone number, is deleted automatically after 24 hours. |
| SMS sending records | Not linked to your account; kept with a hash of your phone number, the SMS provider and the delivery status. Kept for 180 days to limit SMS abuse, then deleted automatically. |
| Report and moderation records | Kept for user safety; after account deletion they stay linked to the anonymised account |
| Phone number (if you verified it) and device ID (after account deletion) | 6 months, then deleted automatically |
| Server and error logs | As long as needed for security and debugging. These logs may contain IP addresses and request addresses (which can include location). |
| Support correspondence | As long as needed to resolve your request and any dispute |
| Early access list (email, language, source, sign-up time) | No more than 12 months from sign-up, then deleted automatically. If you ask for earlier deletion, it is deleted on your request (see section 8). |
| IP address when submitting the early access form | Not saved to the list and not stored permanently; held in server memory only for short-term rate limiting |
You can delete your account in the app at any time: Menu › Security & Privacy › Delete Account Permanently. If you are stuck on the phone verification screen (for example because your founding member perk has ended), you can do the same from the Delete my account link on that screen. Your profile, photos (with their files on our server), a pending verification selfie, the messages you sent, your eye contacts, notifications, push tokens, blocks and all check-in locations are deleted immediately, and your invite code stops working. Messages in chats with an open report between you are kept until the review is finished, at most 180 days. Your phone number (if you verified it) and device ID are kept for 6 more months to prevent abuse. If you can't access the app, you can send a deletion request by email; we carry it out in our admin panel with exactly the same process as an in-app deletion, to the same extent. The account deletion page explains in detail what is deleted and what is kept, and for how long.
You can block or report anyone who bothers you, right in the app. Blocks and reports work both ways: you will not see each other in Discover and neither of you can send eye contacts or messages. Reports are reviewed by our moderation team, and you will not see the person you reported at any venue again. The rules and sanctions are set out in our Terms of Use.
Under KVKK Article 11 you have the right to:
If you are in the European Union, you also have the GDPR rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and data portability.
To use these rights, write to oncu.sener@gmail.com. We will resolve your request within 30 days at the latest, and we may ask for extra information to confirm that the account is yours. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Turkish Personal Data Protection Board (KVKK) or, in the EU, to your local data protection authority.
Socializer is only for users aged 18 and over. We ask for your date of birth at sign-up and people under 18 cannot register. If we find an account that belongs to someone under 18, we close it. See also our Child Safety Standards.
We may update this policy. If there are important changes, we will let you know in the app. The date at the top of this page shows the version in force.
For any privacy question or request: oncu.sener@gmail.com