Primal Match ("we," "us," or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use the Primal Match iOS app and the Primal Match web app at app.primalmatch.com (together, "the App") and the primalmatch.com website.
1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT
Personal information you provide:
- Name, date of birth, and gender
- Email address and phone number
- Photos and profile information
- U.S. ZIP code (see "Location" below)
- Diet type, dietary history, exercise habits, and health-related preferences
- Personality assessment responses and scores (IPIP-HEXACO scales, see Section 5)
- Profile prompt responses (future vision, children views, partner preferences), optional voice prompt
- Social media handles and website URLs
- Messages, voice messages, and gifts sent through the App
- A photo of a government-issued ID, only if you choose to apply for the Photo Verified badge (see Section 6)
Information collected automatically:
- Device information (model, operating system, app version, a push-notification token when you allow notifications)
- Usage data (features used, likes and matches, time of last activity)
- Log data (IP address, browser type, access times)
Location: we do not access your device's GPS location and the App never asks for location permission. The ZIP code you enter is converted to an approximate position (your area, not your address) so that distance-based discovery works. Other users only ever see your city and an approximate distance.
2. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
We use the information we collect to:
- Create and manage your account
- Provide, personalize, and improve the App
- Calculate lifestyle and personality compatibility scores
- Show your profile to other users based on discovery preferences
- Facilitate communication between matched users
- Send notifications about matches, messages, calls, and updates
- Analyze usage patterns to improve the user experience
- Enforce our Terms of Service and protect user safety
- Comply with legal obligations
3. SMS COMMUNICATIONS
When you sign up for or sign in to Primal Match with your phone number, we send a one-time verification code by SMS to confirm that you own the number. By providing your U.S. mobile phone number and tapping "Send code" in the App, you consent to receive this verification SMS from Primal Match. Message frequency: recurring as needed, typically 1–2 SMS per sign-up, plus 1 SMS per future sign-in or phone-number change that you initiate. Message and data rates may apply depending on your carrier and plan.
You can reply STOP at any time to opt out of all SMS from Primal Match. After replying STOP you will receive one final confirmation SMS acknowledging the opt-out and no further SMS will be sent; you can still sign in with your email address. Reply HELP at any time for support contact information; you may also email support@primalmatch.com or visit primalmatch.com/support. We do not send marketing or promotional SMS.
SMS messages are delivered through our SMS provider (Twilio). Your phone number is shared with this provider only for the purpose of delivering verification messages. No mobile information, including phone numbers, will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.
4. HOW WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
We may share your information in the following circumstances:
- With other users: your profile (photos, name, age, city, diet and lifestyle details, prompt responses, voice prompt, and, if you turn it on, your personality results) is visible to other members as part of the App's core functionality. Your email address, phone number, date of birth, ZIP code, and ID photo are never shown to other users.
- With service providers: the processors listed in Section 13, each for the purpose described there
- For legal reasons: we may disclose information if required by law, legal process, or to protect the rights and safety of Primal Match or others
- Business transfers: in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.
5. PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT DATA
Your personality assessment data (collected with the public-domain IPIP-HEXACO scales, which measure the six factors of the HEXACO model) is treated with additional care:
- Your individual answers are stored securely and are never shown to other users
- Other users can only see your six trait percentiles and the descriptions derived from them, and only when you turn on "Show my personality to everyone" in Settings → Privacy & Safety (it is off by default)
- Your scores are always used to calculate the compatibility score between you and another member, whether or not you show your traits; that score and the pair-level notes next to it ("aligned on", "wide gap on") never reveal your trait values
- Percentiles are approximate: they place your answers against general-population norms until Primal Match has enough assessments to compute its own, and we may recompute them as our data improves
6. DATA RETENTION
We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active.
Account deletion: when you delete your account through Settings → Manage Account → Delete Account inside the App, your profile is hidden from other members immediately and your account is scheduled for permanent deletion 30 days later. During those 30 days you can restore the account by signing in. After the 30 days we permanently delete your profile, photos, voice recordings, messages, matches, likes, gifts, and device tokens, and we delete your sign-in identity. We keep only what the law requires or what is needed to prevent fraud and abuse (for example, a record that an account was removed for a violation).
ID verification photos: a photo of a government-issued ID that you submit for the optional Photo Verified badge is stored in a private bucket that only our trust & safety reviewers can access, is never displayed to other users, and is deleted as soon as a reviewer approves or declines your request. If you delete your account before a decision, the photo is deleted with it.
7. DATA SECURITY
We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information: all traffic between the App and our servers uses TLS encryption; our data is hosted by Supabase on infrastructure that encrypts stored data at rest; passwords are never stored in plain text (our authentication provider stores a bcrypt hash); on the web your session is kept in secure cookies; database access is restricted by row-level security so that each account can only read what it is allowed to see; and access to production systems is limited to the people who operate the service. However, no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure.
8. SAFETY, ABUSE REPORTS, AND MODERATION
Every user profile in the App exposes Block and Report controls. When you submit a report, we record the reported user's identifier, the reason you selected, your free-text description (if any), and a timestamp. We use this information solely to investigate the report, take moderation action where appropriate, and maintain a record of decisions for auditing purposes.
Report response timeline: our safety team aims to review every submitted report within 24 hours.
Safety contact: for urgent safety concerns or to follow up on a report, contact our safety team at safety@primalmatch.com.
We do not notify the reported user that you reported them, and we do not share your identity with the reported user. Submitting a report automatically blocks the reported user from contacting you while we investigate.
Photos you upload are screened automatically for explicit, violent, or hateful content before they are shown to other members (see SightEngine in Section 13). Photos that fail screening are removed and you are told why.
9. YOUR RIGHTS AND CHOICES
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you
- Correct inaccurate or incomplete information
- Delete your personal information
- Restrict or object to certain processing
- Data portability (receive your data in a structured format)
- Withdraw consent at any time
Inside the App you can edit your profile at any time, export a copy of your data (Settings → Manage Account → Download my data, delivered as a JSON file), control notifications (Settings → Notifications), control personality visibility (Settings → Privacy & Safety), and delete your account (Settings → Manage Account → Delete Account). For anything else, contact us at support@primalmatch.com.
10. THIRD-PARTY LINKS
The App and the website may contain links to third-party websites or services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties. We encourage you to review their privacy policies.
11. CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
Primal Match is not intended for anyone under the age of 18. We require an explicit 18+ self-attestation at sign-up and enforce a minimum age of 18 on the date-of-birth step of onboarding. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors. If we learn that we have collected data from a person under 18, we will delete it promptly. If you suspect a user on the platform is under 18, please report them via the Report control on their profile or email safety@primalmatch.com.
12. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
Our servers are located in the United States. If you use the App from outside the United States, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States. We take steps to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place for such transfers.
13. THIRD-PARTY SERVICES WE USE
We use the following processors to operate the App. Each handles only the data described.
- Supabase (database, authentication, storage, real-time messaging): stores your profile data, photos, voice recordings, messages, matches, and authentication state. Hosted in the United States.
- Apple App Store / StoreKit (in-app purchases on iOS): Apple processes subscription and gift purchases made in the iOS app. We never see your payment method. Apple shares an anonymized transaction identifier with us so we can grant what you paid for.
- Stripe (payments on the web): if you subscribe at app.primalmatch.com, Stripe processes your payment and stores your card details; we never see your full card number. We receive your subscription status and a Stripe customer identifier.
- Firebase Cloud Messaging (push notifications, by Google) and Apple Push Notification service: receive the push token your device generates and deliver new-match, new-message, and incoming-call notifications. The notification itself carries only a short title and preview, and you can turn previews off in Settings → Notifications.
- Agora (video calls): relays the encrypted audio and video of in-app one-on-one calls between the two participants. We do not record or store calls, and we only keep when a call started, ended, and how long it lasted.
- SightEngine (photo content moderation): photos you upload are sent to SightEngine's moderation API to detect explicit content, weapons, hate symbols, and other policy-violating imagery before they are shown to other members. SightEngine does not retain photos after analysis.
- Twilio (phone verification): sends the one-time code you receive when verifying or changing your phone number, under the SMS terms in Section 3.
- Resend (transactional email): delivers account emails such as sign-in codes, phone-change alerts, and support replies.
- Sentry (crash and error reporting): records technical details about crashes (stack traces, device model, OS version) so we can fix bugs. We strip email addresses and names from crash reports before they leave the App.
- PostHog (product analytics): records event counts (sign-ups, matches, messages sent) tied to your account identifier so we can understand which features are working. We do not use session replay and we do not share analytics with other companies.
We do not work with any advertising networks, attribution SDKs, or data brokers. We do not engage in cross-app or cross-website tracking, and we do not use Apple's Advertising Identifier (IDFA).
14. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes through the App or by email. The "Last updated" date at the top indicates the most recent revision.
15. CONTACT US
For privacy questions: support@primalmatch.com
For safety, abuse, or trust & safety reports: safety@primalmatch.com
For legal matters: info@primalmatch.com