Privacy

freehug.me is operated by Saptarang Ventures (OPC) Private Limited, a company registered in India. For anything in this notice, write to care@freehug.me. We are the data controller (or, under India's DPDP Act, the data fiduciary) for the information described here.

Operated by Saptarang Ventures (OPC) Private Limited · CIN U43900MH2023OPC413456

Only what the site needs to work. Specifically:

• Your email address. Used to send your sign-in link and, if you leave them on, notifications. It is stored in our database in readable form so we can send to it; it is never shown to another member and never sold or shared for marketing.
• A pseudonym. Generated for you, like “Quiet Lantern”. This is the only name other members see.
• Your language, timezone and locale. Timezone is inferred from your connection when you first sign in, and only affects when we would email you.
• Anything you choose to write. Your profile, where you say you are, answers to prompts, notes on hug requests, hugs you send, and messages to people you have matched with.
• Photographs you upload, and their captions.
• What you do here: hugs given and received, who you said yes or no to, who you matched with, who you have blocked, and reports you make.
• Your year of birth, if you fill it in. We never ask for a full date of birth.
• A session cookie (fh_session) so you stay signed in for 90 days.

What we never collect: your real name, your phone number, your precise location, your contacts or address book, or your date of birth. There are no advertising trackers on any page.

People here write about bereavement, illness, job loss and how they are feeling. That is health-related information under laws such as the UK and EU GDPR (Article 9), and we treat it as sensitive whether or not any law where you live says we must.

Everything you write in free text — your profile, prompt answers, hug notes, messages, photo captions and the place you say you are — is encrypted before it is stored, using a key kept outside the database. Someone with a copy of the database alone cannot read any of it.

Photographs are stored in Cloudflare R2 and are encrypted at rest by Cloudflare. They are only ever served to people signed in here, and only to people you have allowed — the permission is checked on every single request, so taking access away works immediately.

To provide the service you asked for, and on the basis of your consent for the sensitive parts. You give that consent by choosing to write something; nothing about your circumstances is ever required. You can withdraw it at any time by deleting the content or your account, and withdrawing it costs you nothing else.

• Other members see your pseudonym, and whatever you have chosen to fill in. Your location is hidden unless you switch it on. Your age is hidden unless you switch it on. You do not appear to people looking for someone to meet unless you switch that on too.
• Nobody outside sees anything. There are no public profiles, no shareable links, and every page tells search engines not to index it.
• We can read content when we have to — investigating a report, or dealing with something unsafe. Every time a member of staff reads member content, a record is written of who did it, when, and the reason they gave. We would rather tell you that plainly than let you assume otherwise.

• Cloudflare — hosting, the database, photo storage, sending our email, and protecting the admin area. Effectively all of the infrastructure.
• Migadu — receives email sent to our care@, hello@ and safety@ addresses.
• Google or Meta — only if you choose to sign in using them. In that case we receive your email address and their account identifier, and nothing else. We never post anything, never read your friends or contacts, and never send them anything about what you do here.

We do not sell your information, and we never will. There is no advertising here.

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits. It sets no cookies, stores no personal data, does not fingerprint your device and cannot follow you to other websites. It records which page was viewed, which means member-area page addresses are counted — but they cannot be connected to you.

While your account exists. When you delete it we delete your profile, photographs, hugs, hug requests, matches, messages, prompt answers, blocks and your email address, immediately and for good. Deletion is not a flag on a row — the rows go.

Two things survive, and you should know both. Records of moderation decisions and the staff audit log are kept so that safety decisions remain reviewable; they reference an account that no longer exists. And email already delivered to your inbox is yours, not ours, and we cannot recall it.

Depending on where you live you may have rights to see a copy of your information, correct it, delete it, take it elsewhere, or object to how it is used. We do not ask which country you are in before honouring these — write to care@freehug.me and we will do it. Deleting everything you can do yourself, in seconds, from your settings.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to your local data protection authority.

freehug.me is for adults. You must be 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect anything from anyone younger, and if we discover an account belongs to someone under 18 we delete it.

Our infrastructure runs on Cloudflare's global network and our database is hosted in the Asia-Pacific region. If you are outside that region, your information is transferred and stored there. Our providers operate under standard contractual terms covering such transfers.

If we change this in a way that matters, we will tell members by email rather than quietly updating the date at the top.