Privacy Policy

How Spark collects, uses, and protects your data.

1. Who we are

Spark is developed and operated by Raymond Tempelaars, an individual developer based in the Netherlands. Privacy contact: support@hi-spark.app.

This policy explains what we hold about you, why, and for how long. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

2. What you tell us

To sign in: an email address, or an Apple ID. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose Hide My Email, we never see your real address.

Your profile: your name, age, pronouns, photos, and whatever else you choose to fill in — a bio, interests, height, body type, position, relationship status, communities, languages, lifestyle answers, prompts.

Your conversations: messages, photos you send in chat, private albums you share, voice notes, and meeting places you propose.

Your plans: plans you post — the activity, title, a line about it, the area and the date — the requests you make to join someone else's plan and the line you add, and what is said in a plan's chat, including a meeting place the person who made the plan shares there.

What your phone tells us, without you typing anything: a push token, so a notification can reach your device; a count of what you have not read yet, so the badge on the app icon is right; and the time you last had Spark open. That last one is how we know a stored location has gone stale, and it is what other members see as "online now" — see clause 5.

If you buy Premium: what you bought, when it ends, whether it was refunded, the App Store's reference numbers for the purchase, and a random code that ties the purchase to your Spark account. Not your card, your bank, the price you paid, or your billing name and address — Apple sells Premium and handles the payment, and we never see any of it.

Everything beyond a name and one photo is optional. Leave it blank and Spark works.

3. Sensitive information, and why it is different

Using Spark says something about your sexual orientation. European law treats this as a special category, and holds it to a higher standard.

We hold this information because you chose to give it to us, and for one purpose: showing your profile to other members of Spark. We do not use it to target advertising, we do not analyse it, and we do not share it with anyone. You can remove any of it at any time.

4. Location

Spark shows other members roughly how far away you are, which means we need to know where you are.

Your coordinates stay on our servers. They are never sent to another member's phone. Distances are worked out on our side and rounded before they leave — always to whole kilometres, and "less than 1 km" for anything nearer. If your phone is set to miles, it converts that rounded figure for you; the precision is the same either way, because a number we never sent cannot be recovered. Nobody sees a precise figure.

Turn off Show my distance in Privacy settings and other members stop seeing how far away you are. You stay in their grid; only the number goes.

Turning location off in your phone's settings goes further: we delete the position we held for you, and you disappear from other members' People tab entirely. Nothing is kept from before.

We also let a stored position expire on its own. If you have not opened Spark for 30 days, it is erased and you drop out of the grid until you come back.

Plans use the same position: "Near you" is worked out on our side. A plan shows only its area, never where the person who made it is; the exact place is shared by them in the plan chat, with the people going. Looking at another city changes what you see, not where we think you are.

5. What happens automatically

When you use Spark we record when you were last active. Other members see that as "online now" or "active today" — unless you turn that off in Privacy settings, and then they see nothing at all.

We keep noting it for ourselves either way, and it is fair that you know why: it is how we tell that a stored location has gone stale and should be erased (clause 4), and how a brand-new profile stops being shown as new once nobody is behind it. What the switch governs is whether anyone else is told.

We keep a count of your unread notifications so the badge on the app icon is right.

There is no advertising in Spark, no analytics, and no tracking. We do not build a profile of your behaviour to sell or to score you, and there is nothing in the app that reports what you do back to anyone. Spark does decide what order profiles appear in — by distance, by what you filled in, by who is active — but that is a sorting of the grid, not a judgement about you, and nothing turns on it.

There are no cookies, no advertising identifiers, and no third-party trackers. Spark does not ask permission to track you across other apps, because it has nothing to do with that permission.

6. Who else sees your information

Other members see your profile, and whatever you send them. What they see is governed by your privacy settings. They are also told if you screenshot something they sent you — see clause 8.

In Plans, anyone who can see a plan sees who made it and who is going. Someone going in Incognito or Visible only to matches shows to them as "+1", without a name or photo; the people in the plan see each other. If you make a plan, you are visible on it even in Incognito — Spark tells you before you post. When you ask to join, the person who made the plan sees your profile and the line you added.

Google stores it for us: Spark runs on Google Firebase, on servers in the Netherlands. Google also carries push notifications on their way to your phone. Google processes this on our instructions and for nothing else.

Apple delivers push notifications, handles Sign in with Apple if you use it, and confirms to us that the app talking to our servers is the genuine Spark app on a real device (App Attest and DeviceCheck). Apple learns that your device uses Spark; it does not see your profile or messages.

If you buy Premium, Apple is the seller: it takes the payment under its own terms and privacy policy, and tells us when a subscription renews, is cancelled or is refunded. We tell Apple nothing about you beyond the random code that ties the purchase to your Spark account.

That is the list. We do not sell your information, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not hand it to data brokers.

If the law requires us to disclose something — a valid order from an authority — we comply, and we tell you unless we are forbidden to.

7. Profile photo review

A person reviews each new profile photo before other members can see it. That means a moderator looks at the photos you put on your profile — not the ones in your private albums, and not what you send in a chat. Photos that are rejected are removed.

8. Screenshots

If you screenshot a photo or an album someone shared with you, they are told that it happened.

We do this because the alternative is worse. Nothing can actually stop a screenshot — an app that claimed to block them would be lying, and someone would believe it and send something they otherwise would not. So we do not pretend. What we can do is be honest with the person on the other side.

They are told that it happened, and nothing more: not how many times, not when you did it. We hold that count on our side to keep the notice reliable, and it goes when either of you deletes the account.

9. Reports and moderation

When someone reports you, we keep a copy of the conversation involved so the report can be reviewed fairly. It is deleted once the report has been dealt with — normally within 24 hours, and after 30 days at the very latest. Clearing or blocking removes the messages everywhere else, but the copy stays until the report is handled.

In that one conversation, a moderator can only open the photos and voice messages you sent, and can see that you shared a meeting place — never where. Nothing from the person who reported you is opened.

A report made inside a plan works the same way, with the plan in place of the conversation. We keep a copy of the plan as it was and, if the person reporting is or was in it, of its chat — which holds what everyone in the plan wrote. A meeting place shared there is kept only as the fact that one was shared. The copy follows the same clock: gone once the report is handled, after 30 days at the latest.

If an account is permanently removed for breaking the rules, we hold it for 14 days so an appeal is possible. If someone deletes their account while a report about them is open, we hold the relevant part for 48 hours to finish handling it.

10. How long we keep things

Your profile, photos, and messages stay while your account exists. Delete your account and they go — not marked as deleted, actually removed.

Your location has a shorter life than your account: it expires after 30 days without opening the app, and it is deleted outright the moment you turn location off (clause 4).

Plans have a clock of their own: a plan, every request to join it and its chat are deleted 30 days after the plan's date — also when it was cancelled. Delete your account and the plans you made go at once; the people going are told the plan is off, not why. What you wrote in other people's plans goes too, without a trace that you were there.

Premium is kept the same way: what you bought stays while your account exists, and goes when you delete it. Three small things have their own clock:

• When the App Store tells us something about a purchase — a renewal, a cancellation, a refund — we keep a short note of it: what kind of message it was and when it arrived. On its own, the note doesn't say who the purchase belongs to. We keep these notes for 90 days, only to put things right if Premium doesn't work as it should.
• If you delete your account while your subscription is still running, we keep the App Store's reference number for that subscription — without your account — until the subscription ends. That lets it move to a new Spark account if you start one with the same Apple Account. A subscription does not move on its own if we removed the account for breaking our rules.
• When a subscription moves to a new account that way, we note that it moved and when, and keep that note for 180 days so a mistaken transfer can be undone.

Moderation is the main exception. If we deleted everything the moment an account went, then deleting an account would be a way to erase a moderation record and come back clean. So four things outlive an account, and none of them contains anything from your profile:

• A report someone made about you — who reported whom, and why. Two years after it was made, it goes. A report still being handled stays until it is.
• What a moderator decided — a warning, a suspension, and the reason for it. Two years.
• The queue entry a report passes through, which carries both names while it is being handled. Ninety days after a decision, or thirty if the report was dismissed.
• A block — that someone blocked someone. Erasing it would silently unblock them, which is worse for the person who asked for it. That one has no end date.

When you delete your account, we keep one record of what you agreed to: which version of the Terms you accepted, when, and when you gave your explicit consent. Nothing else. We keep it for two years, so that we can show what was agreed if a dispute ever arises. This rests on our legitimate interest in defending legal claims.

There is also a record that an account was deleted: its identifier, the date, whether a report was open at the time, and whether it was you or us who deleted it. Nothing from the profile itself — no name, no photo, no messages, nothing you ever wrote.

11. Your rights

Under European law you can ask us to show you what we hold, correct it, delete it, hand it over in a portable form, restrict how we use it, or object to a particular use altogether.

Those last two are different things, and the difference matters. Restriction means we keep your information but stop doing anything with it — useful while you are disputing whether it is correct. Objection means you tell us to stop a use we justify by our own interest rather than your consent, which for Spark means moderation and safety (clause 12). We stop unless we can show a compelling reason not to, and we tell you which it is.

Some of it you can do yourself, straight away: your profile is editable in the app, and Settings has Delete Account, which removes everything on the spot.

For a copy of your information, Settings has Request My Data — it opens an email to us with your account ID filled in. We answer within a month, and usually much sooner. Write to support@hi-spark.app for anything else on this list.

If you think we are handling your information wrongly, you can complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or to the equivalent authority in your own country.

12. Why we are allowed to hold this

European law asks us to name a reason for each thing we do with your information.

• To give you Spark — your profile, your messages, your matches, your plans, and Premium if you buy it. We need this to provide what you signed up for, or paid for.
• Because you explicitly agreed — what being on Spark says about your sexual orientation and sex life. European law calls this a special category and asks for explicit consent, which you give by ticking a separate box when you first sign in. You can withdraw it at any time by deleting your account.
• Because you chose to share it — your location. Withdraw it whenever you like, in your phone's settings.
• Because members are entitled to an app where the rules mean something — photo review, reports, moderation, and telling someone their photo was screenshotted. This one rests on our own legitimate interest rather than your consent, so it is worth naming what that interest is: an app where people send intimate pictures to strangers is only safe if someone answers when it goes wrong. We weighed it against your privacy and kept it as narrow as we could — one conversation, only after a report, only the reported person's media. You can object to it (clause 11). The same interest covers keeping a record of what you agreed to after you delete your account (clause 10).
• Because the law requires it — the few cases where we must keep or hand over something.

13. Where your information is

Spark's servers are in the Netherlands, and your information stays in the European Union.

Push notifications pass through Apple, whose infrastructure reaches outside the EU. Apple is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which the European Commission has ruled gives your information protection equivalent to what it has here. And what passes through is only the notification itself.

14. Keeping it safe

Information travels encrypted between your phone and our servers, and is stored encrypted. Access to member data is limited to what moderation actually requires.

No system is beyond reach. If something happens that puts your information at risk, we will tell you.

15. Age

Spark is for adults. We ask for a date of birth when you join and refuse anyone under 18. If we find out that an account belongs to someone under 18, we remove it.

16. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.

Last updated: 27 October 2026