This Privacy Policy explains how HowlHub (“we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, discloses, and protects your personal information when you use our mobile application and services.
01Information we collect
1.1 Information you provide
- Account information: email address, password (hashed), username, display name, date of birth, bio, and profile photos.
- Profile details: physical attributes, interests, kinks, relationship preferences, and location (city/hometown).
- Communications: messages sent to other users through the app.
- Content: photos and videos you upload.
- Payment information: processed by our third-party payment providers (RevenueCat, Stripe); we do not store your full payment card details.
1.2 Information collected automatically
- Device information: device type, operating system, unique device identifiers.
- Location: approximate GPS coordinates when you enable location services.
- Usage data: features you interact with, session duration, and in-app actions.
- Push notification tokens.
02How we use your information
- To provide, maintain, and improve the HowlHub service.
- To enable you to connect with other users.
- To send push notifications (woofs, messages, community updates).
- To process subscriptions and payments.
- To enforce our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
- To comply with legal obligations.
- To send service-related communications.
03How we share your information
3.1 With other users
Your profile information (name, photos, bio, approximate location, preferences) is visible to other HowlHub users. You control what you share through your privacy settings.
3.2 Service providers
We share data with third-party vendors who help us operate HowlHub, including cloud storage (Cloudflare), push notification services (Expo), payment processors (RevenueCat, Stripe), and age verification (Didit). These providers are contractually obligated to protect your data.
3.3 Legal requirements
We may disclose information if required by law, subpoena, or other legal process, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the safety of any person or to address fraud or security issues.
3.4 Business transfers
In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction.
04Age verification
HowlHub is strictly for adults aged 18 or over. To meet our legal obligations for age assurance, every user must verify their age before using the app.
Age verification is carried out by our third-party identity-verification provider, Didit (didit.me), acting as our processor. When you verify:
- You take a short selfie, which Didit uses to estimate your age.
- If the estimate does not clearly show you are 18 or over, Didit asks you to photograph a government-issued ID (passport, driving licence, or national ID) and complete a liveness check to confirm you are the person presenting the document.
This may involve biometric data (facial images and, where required, liveness/face-match data) and identity-document data, processed solely to confirm you are 18 or older. Our legal basis is compliance with a legal obligation (age assurance); where applicable we also rely on your explicit consent, given by agreeing to this policy and starting verification.
What HowlHub stores: only the outcome — whether you passed, the date and time, and which method confirmed it (age estimate or ID). We do not receive or store your selfie, ID document, images, name, or date of birth from the verification process.
What Didit stores: your selfie and any ID/liveness data are processed by Didit to produce the result. Once the result is returned to us, we instruct Didit to delete that underlying data (a “process-and-purge” arrangement), so it is not retained beyond what is needed to complete the check. Didit processes this data under its own privacy policy and our data-processing agreement.
If you do not pass age verification you cannot use HowlHub, and you may need to wait a short cooldown period before trying again. If you believe an outcome is incorrect, please contact support.
05Data retention
We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide services. You may request deletion of your account and associated data at any time from the Settings screen.
06Security
We implement industry-standard security measures including HTTPS encryption in transit, bcrypt password hashing, and secure session token management. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure.
07Your rights
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you.
- Correct inaccurate data.
- Request deletion of your data.
- Object to or restrict certain processing.
- Data portability.
To exercise these rights, contact us at admin@howlhub.app.
08Children’s privacy
HowlHub is strictly for users 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from minors. If we learn a user is under 18, their account will be immediately terminated.
09Location data
Location data is used solely to show your approximate distance to other users. Your exact address is never shared. You can disable location sharing at any time in Privacy & Safety settings.
10Cookies and tracking
Our mobile app does not use browser cookies. We may use analytics tools to understand app usage in aggregate.
11Changes to this policy
We will notify you of material changes to this policy through in-app notifications and require your agreement before continuing to use HowlHub.
12Contact
For privacy-related inquiries: admin@howlhub.app