Who we are
2016Chat is a mobile app for nearby social discovery and messaging. The app is operated by an individual developer (a sole trader), referred to in this policy as "the Operator", "we", "us", or "our".
For the purposes of UK and EU data protection law, the Operator is the "data controller" for personal information processed through 2016Chat.
- Operator: Josh (sole trader), United Kingdom
- Privacy contact: privacy@2016chat.com
Who this applies to and where
2016Chat is available to people in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area (EEA), the United States, and other regions. Your local data protection law applies to you automatically: if you are in the UK or EEA, UK GDPR / EU GDPR rights apply; if you are in California, the CCPA/CPRA applies. This policy is written to cover all of these. Region-specific rights are described in the sections below.
Minimum age (13+) and younger users
2016Chat is intended for people aged 13 and over. The app asks for your date of birth during sign-up and blocks anyone under 13 from creating an account. The service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If we learn that we hold information about a child under 13, we will delete it.
If you are between 13 and 17, please use 2016Chat with the involvement of a parent or guardian where appropriate. We apply extra care to users under 18: we minimise the data we use about them, we do not use their data for behavioural advertising (we do not run advertising at all), and we do not surface age-restricted (for example, nightlife) recommendations to under-18 accounts.
Information we collect
We only collect what we need to run the service. The main categories are:
- Account information — your email address (for email/password sign-in, or supplied by Apple or Google when you use social sign-in), a unique account identifier, your chosen username, and your account status.
- Profile information — the display name, username, short bio, and profile photo you choose, and whether your profile is Public or Private. New accounts start Public, and you can change this at any time. When your profile is Public, this information is visible to other signed-in users and you may be shown to people nearby on Discover. When it is Private, you are not shown on Discover; your name, username and photo can still be found by someone who searches for your name, so that people who know you can ask to chat, and your bio and city are visible only to people you have a one-to-one chat with (not to someone whose chat request you removed, or whom you blocked).
- Date of birth / age — collected at sign-up to confirm you meet the minimum age and to apply age-appropriate protections.
- Precise location — if you grant location permission, your device's GPS location is used to power nearby discovery and location-based content. Your precise location and your location history are stored privately and are only accessible to you (and to our backend systems that operate the feature). Raw location history is kept for up to 12 months and is then deleted automatically (see Retention).
- Approximate location — a deliberately coarsened version of your location (rounded to roughly a 1 km area) and your general city. This approximate location is what other discoverable users may see for "people nearby" features — never your exact position. On Discover, people near you are shown only to people aged 18 or over, and only people aged 18 or over are shown there (our servers check the date of birth you gave at sign-up); if you are under 18, or your age is unknown, you are not shown there and do not see that card.
- Messages and content — the messages you send in direct and group chats, which are visible to the members of those chats, and any content you submit (such as your profile photo).
- Derived interest signals — to personalise suggestions, the app works out a broad interest category from the messages in your chats — both the ones you send and the ones you receive — on your device (for example "food", "nightlife", or "events"). Only the resulting category and the matched keyword are stored under your account, under the account of the person whose app did the reading. The text of your messages is not stored or sent for this purpose.
- Suggestion cards in chats — in a chat that has been going for a while — never a chat request, and never a chat that mixes people under 18 with people 18 or over — 2016Chat may post a card suggesting a place or event nearby (never bars or drinks in a chat of under-18s). When it is less sure, everyone in that chat may instead see a suggestion at the top of Discover (for example “You and Sam might meet for coffee today”) with a button to put it in the chat; these suggestions, and whether each was used, are kept with your account until it is deleted. To decide, our servers check new messages for signs of a plan (for example “fancy a coffee?”); when there is one and two or more people are chatting at that moment, an AI model (an open-weight model run for us by OVHcloud in France) reads up to the last 200 messages of the chat — with members’ names replaced by letters and any phone numbers, email addresses, links and street addresses removed — and reports whether people are planning to meet, what, when and where, and whether the mood is right; the model’s judgement (never the text) is kept as an app activity event under the account of the person whose message prompted it. Our servers also check members’ ages (from the date of birth given at sign-up) and members’ approximate locations. So that suggestions get better without anyone being asked, after a card is posted our servers also work out: whether you replied within a few minutes, whether the chat mentioned the suggested place, how busy the chat was in the hour before and after, whether you hid the chat or left it, and — from your location history — whether you were at the suggested place or event afterwards, and whether people from the chat were there together. Only these results are stored (for example “replied: yes”, “was there: likely”), as app activity events under your account for up to 90 days; message text and locations are never copied into them. Plan cards (when Ask is on): instead of a single place, the card may be a plan to vote on. In a group it shows two or three places and three times; each person taps a place and a time, and can change their vote until everyone has voted or it is two hours before the earliest time, when the most votes win and everyone in the chat gets one notification; then each person can say I’m in or Can’t make it. In a one-to-one chat it shows one place and time. Everyone in the chat can see who voted for what and who is in. To pick places fair for everyone, our servers use the rough last known location of each person in the chat from the last 24 hours; nobody is shown anyone else’s location, only the places, their own walk and the longest walk for anyone (never whose). The same AI model also reads the chat (in the same way, names replaced) to suggest the plan’s heading, the day and the times. Each plan, every vote and every change of vote are kept with the chat; your votes are deleted when you delete your account.
- Activity and usage data — in-app activity used to operate and improve the app, its features and its recommendations: which screens you open, which cards and places you view, tap or save, how long each card stays on your screen and whether you scroll past it, and aggregate behaviour counters. In your first three days, what you look at and tap on Discover also changes the order of the cards you have not reached yet, straight away, on your phone; we record how often that happens. The same is recorded across the rest of the app: which chats, requests, messages and cards in a chat, Ask answers, search results, saved places and plans come on your screen, for how long, whether you tap them, and how far down each screen you scroll. Only which item it was is recorded (for example a chat or message ID), never the words of a message. These records are linked to your account and carry coarse context only (such as city, hour, day, and platform), never your exact location or message text.
- Before you sign in — so we can see where people get stuck before an account exists, the app records a few steps before you sign in: that the app was opened, that the welcome screen was shown, which sign-in button you tapped, how far you got in sign-up, and any error you were shown. These are recorded against a random ID the app creates on your device — not your device’s own identifier — and carry no name, email or location. If you go on to create an account, that ID is linked to it, so the records are deleted with your account.
- Searches — the words you type into any search bar in the app, exactly as typed, including searches for places and for other people by name or username, together with the results you were shown, which result you tapped and what you did with it, how long the search took, and which example search the search bar was suggesting or you tapped. When you search Discover with two or more words, an AI model reads the words to work out what you are looking for (for example “open now”, “cheap” or “within walking distance”), and we also keep what it understood. If you search again within a few minutes (for example “cheaper ones”), the search you made just before is read with it, and we record whether the new one followed on from it. For some searches (a question such as when a shop closes, or a search that asks for a time, a price or a distance) an AI model also writes a short answer shown above the results, from the places that were found, and we keep that answer with the search. If you are 18 or over, about a day after a Discover search our servers also work out, from your location history, whether you were at one of the places that search showed you in the following 24 hours. Only the result is stored (for example “was there: likely”, which place, and how many hours later), as an app activity event under your account; your locations are not copied into it, and because the app only records your location while it is open, no sign of you is recorded as “unknown”, never as “did not go”. We keep them, linked to your account, to understand what people look for and to improve search and recommendations. The people you recently opened from Search people are also listed on your phone only, so you can find them again; you can clear that list at any time.
- Other people you interact with — when you look at someone's profile, tap on them in search results or on the Discover feed, or tap to message them, we record which account it was (its account ID) alongside your own activity. We use this to understand how people find and connect with each other and to improve suggestions.
- Cards you send into chats — you can send any card from Discover into your chats, and the people in that chat can see it. A weather or forecast card shows them the name of the city it was for and the weather at the time you sent it, so it tells them roughly where you were; it never includes a point on the map. A busy-area card shows a busy place that was near you and how busy it looked, never who was there. A news card includes a link to the article. A weather, forecast or busy-area card that someone sends on keeps the time you first sent it.
- Cards you share outside the app — when you send a card (a place, event, stay or spot, or a weather, forecast, news or busy-area card) to WhatsApp, Messages, or another app, we create a link for it and keep: the card itself, that you made the link, which option you used (WhatsApp, Messages, Copy link or More), which app you picked from your phone’s share menu, and how many times the link was opened, previewed or opened in the app. A point on the map for where you are is never part of the link: a place card carries the place’s address, not where you were. A weather or forecast card names the city it was for and shows the weather and the day and time you sent it, and a busy-area card shows a busy place that was near you, so anyone who opens the link can see roughly where you were then; to show that time as your phone did, the link also keeps your phone’s time zone. A news card’s link includes the link to the article. The link works for up to 12 months. When your account is deleted, the record that you made the link is removed; the link itself keeps working because it may already be in someone’s chat.
- People who open a shared card — if you open a card someone shared with you, and you have 2016Chat, the app opens it and adds it to your Saved list as “Sent to you”. If you don’t have the app, the card opens as a web page (share.2016chat.com). That page records, without cookies and without storing any identifier on your device: that it was opened, your device type (iPhone, Android or computer), which app’s browser it opened in (for example Instagram or WhatsApp), your approximate country and city as worked out from your connection (your IP address itself is not stored), which buttons you tapped, whether you allowed location, and how long the page was open. If you tap “Get there”, your browser may ask for your location to show how far away the place is; that calculation happens on your device and your location is never sent to us. When a link is pasted into an app such as WhatsApp or iMessage, that app fetches it to draw a preview, and we record which app it was.
- Invites that start a chat — In your first days you can tap Invite next to someone in your contacts who is not on 2016Chat yet. Before your messaging app opens, 2016Chat keeps a record of the invite: who sent it, and a one-way code made from that person’s number with a secret key (not the number itself, and never their name). It is kept for 30 days and then deleted automatically, and is deleted sooner if you delete your account. If the person you invited joins in their first 7 days, from your link or by confirming the same number in the app, the two of you are put in a chat straight away, each invite works once, and blocks are respected. On Android, Google Play passes the invite through the install so this happens by itself; on iPhone the person taps the link again once they have the app. The invite link also records which existing user invited them, as below.
- Referral / invite information — if you join after a friend shares an invite link, we record which existing user invited you (their username and your new account) so we can understand how 2016Chat grows by word of mouth. This is stored privately, is not shown on your profile or to other users, and does not involve accessing your contacts or address book.
- Your phone number (optional) — if you choose to let friends who have your number find you, you confirm your number with a code sent by text through Firebase Authentication (Google). We then keep only a one-way code made from your number with a secret key, plus its last four digits — not the number itself — and remove the number from your sign-in details straight away, so a phone number is never used to sign up or sign in. It is never shown to other users. It is deleted with your account; to have it removed sooner, email privacy@2016chat.com.
- Your contacts (optional) — 2016Chat only looks at your contacts if you tap “Find people” under People in your contacts and then allow it on your phone. The app then sends the phone numbers in your contacts — never names, emails or anything else — to our servers, which check them against people who have chosen to be found by their number. The numbers are used for that check only and are not stored or logged; while the permission is on, the app checks again at most once a day. Who was found is kept on your phone only, and shown under People in your contacts and at the top of your chats. The first time you do this, the people it finds may get one notification that you are on 2016Chat. You can stop at any time by turning off the contacts permission in your phone settings.
- People near you, for new accounts — In your first 7 days, the top of your chats can show up to four people to start a chat with. People in your contacts who are on 2016Chat come first (see Your contacts), then people near you: public accounts that had the app open within about 3 miles in the last day. To pick them, our servers use the approximate location on your profile and your date of birth, so under-18s are only ever shown other under-18s and adults only other adults; anyone whose age is unknown is never shown. Only a name and profile photo are shown, never a distance or a place. If your profile is public, you may be shown to new people near you in the same way, to at most 5 new people a day. Starting a chat from here is an ordinary chat request. If you have allowed contacts, any spaces left show people in your contacts who are not on 2016Chat yet, with an Invite button. Their names and numbers are read and kept on your phone only and are not sent to us for this. Invite opens your own messaging app with your link written in, and you choose whether to send it; 2016Chat never sends anyone a message itself.
- Chat codes and chat requests — every account has a chat code, shown as a QR code and a link (2016chat.com/m/…), that lets someone start a chat with you — even if your profile is private. We store your current code, when it was made, and whether you have turned it off. It stays the same until you make a new one; the old one is deleted when you do, or when your account is deleted. A chat that anyone new starts with you — with your QR code or link, from Discover, from search, or because they have your number — always waits as a request until you start it. This cannot be switched off. We record how the request reached you (for example, that your QR code was scanned), when you first saw it and whether you started the chat or removed it. The person asking cannot see whether you have read a message until you start the chat. They are told when you start the chat, and are not told if you remove it; someone you removed cannot ask again. To stop one person sending requests to large numbers of people, we count how many new people each account asks in a day. Codes themselves are never recorded in analytics or with your searches; we record only that a code was shown, shared, scanned or used. If you scan a code in the app, your camera is used on your device only while the scan screen is open — no image is stored or sent to us. The web page behind a code link records its visits like the rest of this website, without the code.
- Notification token — if you enable notifications, a device messaging token so we can deliver chat notifications. It is stored privately and cleared on a best-effort basis when you sign out or request deletion. A chat notification shows the sender's name and a preview of the message, and on some devices the sender's profile photo, in the same way as most messaging apps — so message content can appear on your lock screen, depending on your device settings. You can change what notifications reveal, or turn them off entirely, in your device settings at any time.
- Device, diagnostic, and security data — technical information needed to keep the service reliable and secure, including app integrity (App Check) signals and rate-limiting records used to prevent abuse. If the app crashes, a crash report (the error details, your device model, and operating-system version) is sent to us through Firebase Crashlytics so we can find and fix problems. These reports are used only to keep the app stable, are not used to track you, and are not linked to your identity.
We do not ask for or intentionally collect special-category data (such as health, religious, or political information). Please do not put such information in your profile or messages if you do not want it processed.
Why we use your information, and our legal basis
Under UK/EU GDPR we must have a "lawful basis" for each use. Ours are:
- To provide the service you ask for — creating your account, showing nearby people and places, and delivering your chats. Legal basis: performance of a contract with you.
- Location and notifications — using your device location for nearby features and sending push notifications. Legal basis: your consent, given through your device's permission settings, which you can withdraw at any time in your device settings.
- Finding people you know — checking the phone numbers in your contacts, and letting people who have your number find you. Legal basis: your consent, given by confirming your number and through your device's contacts permission; you can withdraw it at any time by turning the permission off in your device settings, or by emailing privacy@2016chat.com to have your number removed.
- Safety, moderation, and security — handling reports, blocking, automated and manual moderation, preventing spam, fraud, and abuse, and protecting the service and its users. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in keeping the service safe (and, where relevant, our legal obligations).
- Improving the service and personalising recommendations — using activity data and derived interests to make suggestions more relevant and to improve features. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in operating and improving the product. You can limit this by limiting your in-app activity, and you can object (see Your rights).
- Understanding how 2016Chat grows — recording which existing user invited a new user, to measure word-of-mouth growth. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in understanding and growing the service. We do not access your contacts or address book for this.
- Support and legal compliance — responding to your requests and complying with applicable law, lawful requests, and dispute handling. Legal basis: legitimate interests and legal obligation.
Automated decisions about your account
To protect users at scale, an account may be automatically suspended if a high number of different users report it within a set period. This is designed to be hard to trigger and is always reversible. If your account is suspended and you believe it was a mistake, you can ask us to review it by emailing support@2016chat.com, and a person will review your appeal. We do not use automated decision-making with legal or similarly significant effects without offering this human review.
Meet
In a chat where everyone is 18 or over, anyone can ask for a place to meet. To suggest spots that are fair for everyone, our servers use the rough last known location of each person in the chat from the last 24 hours. Nobody is shown anyone else’s location or journey, only the spots, and each person sees only their own walking time. A Meet card in a group shows who has tapped “I’m in”.
Live location
In chats where everyone is 18 or over, you can turn on live location. It is off unless you turn it on. While it is on, the people in that chat when you turned it on can see exactly where you are, and nobody else, including anyone added to the chat later. It turns off when you arrive at the chat’s Meet spot, after one hour, or when you turn it off, and keeps working with the screen locked or the app in the background until then. Your shared location is deleted within 15 minutes of turning off. When you arrive, or are a few minutes away, the others get a short line in the chat and a notification.
When two or more of you arrive at the same Meet spot, each of you gets a private “Been together” memory of the place (the place, who you met and when), visible only to you until you delete it or your account. “On my way” puts one line in the chat saying roughly when you will arrive; where you are is used for that once and not kept.
Run route and Walk loop
The route is planned by Google’s Routes API, which our servers ask with where you start, the places you chose to pass and the distance. While a run or walk you started is going, the app uses your location (including with the screen locked) to count your distance and time; this stays on your phone until the run ends. Each run you finish is kept on Your runs (its date, time, distance, each km’s time and its route line), visible only to you, until you delete your account. A run you send into a chat shows its distance, time and pace and the shape of its route, with everything near where it began or ended removed by our servers first.
Ask, the chatbot
If you use Ask, we keep everything in it so we can learn from it and improve 2016Chat: every question and answer word for word, photos you send to it, voice clips when you hold the Ask button to talk (the words are written down by an open-weight speech AI, Whisper, run by OVHcloud), what Ask looked up to answer and how long it took, and what you tap in Ask (including thumbs up or down, copy, try again and reports, which links and sources in its answers you open (the website’s name only), what you add from the +, and which of Ask’s notifications you open). Our servers also add a short record to your app activity of each answer (how long it took, which AI wrote it and which look-ups it used) and of what Ask did for you later (a background search finishing, a reminder sent, a price drop, a plan in a chat settling), never the words. It is kept under your account, shown only to you in the app, and we may read it to improve Ask and 2016Chat. Taking a chat off your list hides it; it is still kept. It is deleted when you delete your account.
Before your first message, Ask asks once for your OK to send what you type to the AI companies named below. To answer, Ask can look at your runs (their dates, distances and times, never their route lines), your saved places and, if you allow location, places, events, weather, news and bikes near you. If you are under 18, Ask follows stricter rules and each part of its answers is checked by an AI safety screen before it is shown; if any part is flagged, the whole answer is replaced and the flagged part is never shown. Ask remembers a few short things you tell it about yourself (for example that you are vegetarian) to help in later chats; it never keeps health, religion, sexuality or politics this way, nor anything about other people. They are kept until you delete your account; to get a copy of them, or to have them removed sooner, email privacy@2016chat.com. Ask may also show a follow-up question from a recent chat at the top of Discover. When Ask’s own cards are switched on, Ask may also make cards for your Discover by itself, a few times a day: it looks things up as you (places, events, weather, news and bikes near you and, only after you have given Ask your OK, your plans, saved places, runs, what Ask remembers about you and the first names of people you have chatted with recently, never your messages) and sends what it found to the AI companies named under Third-party services to make each card. A card may suggest a message to someone you chat with; nothing is sent unless you tap Send, and it goes as your own message. If you are under 18, cards follow Ask’s stricter rules, are checked by the AI safety screen, never show pubs, bars or clubs, and only suggest messages to other under-18s. Each card, what it was made from, and whether you saw it, how long you looked at it, what you tapped and whether you reported it are kept until you delete your account. Ask can also run a longer search for you in the background, such as flights or hotel prices, or research a question (Research something: it searches the web many times and writes a report with its sources); the search, its results or report and whether you opened them are kept the same way, and you get a notification when it is done. With Think longer, the AI works the answer out before writing it; its working-out is kept with the answer. Ask can set reminders for you (once or repeating, such as a morning round-up of the weather and what’s on); each is sent as a notification at the time you chose, and a reminder that asks Ask to do something uses where you were when you set it. Your reminders, when each was sent and what it said are kept until you delete your account, including ones you stop (in Ask, Your chats, then Reminders). Ask can also make small mini apps for you (for example a training plan with ticks or a quiz). Each one runs inside Ask with no internet connection and no access to your phone; it is kept with the chat, every version of it too, and you can report one from the app. What you do inside a mini app stays on your phone and is not saved. A mini app can show live information (the weather, events, places, bikes or news near you): the app looks it up the same way Ask does and hands it to the mini app while it is open; the mini app itself still has no internet connection. If you are 18 or over and a mini app Ask made for you would help anyone nearby (for example splitting a bill), Ask may share a separate copy with people in your area: the copy is rewritten without your names, amounts, dates or places, checked by the AI safety screen and a second AI check before anyone sees it, and never says who it was made for; your own mini app stays private. Mini apps about your own life, health, money or other people are never shared. People near you can use, keep and report shared copies; a report takes the copy off at once while we look at it. If you open a shared copy we count you once in its “Used by” number, never showing who. Shared copies stay for the area; which one came from your mini app is kept privately and deleted when you delete your account. For a flight or hotel Ask found, you can ask it to watch the price: our servers search the same thing again once a day until the day of travel (only what is searched goes to Duffel or liteAPI, as above) and send you a notification if it gets cheaper; each watch and every price it saw are kept until you delete your account. You can also send a flight or hotel into a chat as a card. From the + in Ask you can also add a file (a PDF, Word document or text file: the file and the words read from it are kept), one of your chats (Ask reads its latest messages, up to 300, including what the other people in it wrote, with their first names, and keeps what it read), your phone’s calendar for the next two weeks (only when you pick My calendar and your phone allows it; the events it read are kept), a recording to take notes on (the recording and the words in it are kept; the words are written down by Whisper, run by OVHcloud) or a photo of a page to read (Scan a document). Shopping in Ask (when it is switched on): Ask can find products to buy from shops on Shopify. The search words, any price or size you give and your country are sent to Shopify; the products found are kept with the Ask chat or card like the rest of Ask. You buy on the shop’s own checkout, shown inside the app; 2016Chat never sees your card or payment and is not the seller. Products that may earn 2016Chat money are marked Ad. If you are under 18, Ask never shows alcohol, tobacco or vapes, gambling, knives or adult products. Ask also uses the gender you gave at sign-up as a light first guess (for example which clothes to suggest). Ask can also watch a product’s price for you (Tell me if it drops): our servers check it with Shopify every 6 hours for up to 60 days (only the product, the size you picked and your country are sent) and send you one notification, and with Ask’s cards on a card on Discover, when it drops; each watch and every price it saw are kept until you delete your account. You can send a product or one of Ask’s cards into a chat. A product goes with its name, price, shop and photo, never your size or the price you are waiting for. A card from Ask goes as a copy without anything about you: no message drafts, private mini apps, timelines, checklists or buttons, and a card made from your own things (your runs, plans, saved places or chats, or what Ask remembers about you) cannot be sent at all. A product or card for adults only (for example alcohol or pubs) only goes to chats where everyone is 18 or over, which our servers check from the dates of birth given at sign-up. A product or one of Ask’s cards can also be sent to other apps (WhatsApp, Messages, Copy link): it goes as a link to the same checked copy that goes into a chat, which anyone with the link can open, and nothing for adults only can be sent this way. A mini app Ask made for you can be sent into a chat too, but never as it is: our servers make a separate copy without your names, amounts, dates or places, checked the same way as copies shared near you (the AI safety screen and a second AI check), and only that copy goes; a mini app about your own life, health, money or other people stays private. Ask’s cards may also mention UK bank holidays coming up where you are; nothing about you is sent to get them (they come from GOV.UK: contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0). Ask is AI and can make mistakes.
My plans, the calendar
My plans keeps your plans under your account, shown only to you: plans you add yourself (what you type or say, and the day, time and place you give), plans from your chats and plans from Ask. When a plan card in a chat is set, it is added to My plans for everyone who is in. Our servers also read new messages in your chats that mention a day or a time, with the same open-weight AI run in France by OVHcloud that makes plan cards, to add a plan you have agreed, change one when its day or time changes, or, when it is not sure, ask you first with one tap; it never posts anything in the chat, and you can undo any change it makes. If you tap Book on a hotel or flight Ask found, My plans asks you once whether you booked it. When you hold the mic on New plan, the recording is turned into words by Whisper, run by OVHcloud, and read by that AI to fill in the plan; the recording is not kept. Your phone’s own calendar is shown on My plans only if you choose Show it there and your phone allows it: it is read on your phone, never changed and not stored by us; once you have chosen Show it, the next 60 days of it are also sent with each question you ask Ask so it can answer about your plans, and are not kept. Reminders: never more than two for a plan (the morning of, or the day before a trip, and when it is time to leave), and you can turn them off for any plan. When you name a place for a plan, our servers ask Google Places for it, with your rough location so the nearest one comes first, and you confirm it with one tap (or keep it as words). To work out when to leave, on the day of a plan our servers use your rough last known location from the last 24 hours and the plan’s place to ask Google’s Routes API for walking, bus and train, and driving times (with live traffic), and MET Norway for the weather there. Your plans, the questions My plans asked you and your answers are kept until you delete your account; a plan you cancel is kept marked as cancelled. We also record what you tap on My plans, never a plan’s name, place or time.
Right now
Right now is the card at the top of Discover with the most useful thing at that moment: when to leave for a plan, rain before a plan, a plan coming up, a run or walk going on, or a search Ask is working on. It is worked out on your phone from your plans, your run and Ask’s searches, which are already kept as described above; nothing new is sent to us to make it. Your choices on Settings › What it shows are kept on your phone only. We record which kinds of moment were shown and what you tapped on them (for example “leave now, Get there”), never a plan’s name, place, time or who is going. The 2016Chat widget, if you add it to your home screen, shows the same moment and opens Ask with one tap: the app copies the moment’s words (never who is going) into your phone’s own widget storage, which stays on your phone. On Android, during a time to leave or a search Ask is running, a quiet notice with buttons shows the same thing; it never makes a sound. On iPhone, during a time to leave, a run or walk, or a search Ask is running, it shows as a live panel on the lock screen and in the Dynamic Island, drawn by your phone from what the app gives it. Right now and the widget learn which kinds of moment you tap, so the ones you use come first; those counts are kept on your phone only. From 10pm to 7am only what must be seen now shows, and for under-18s nothing at all except their own run or walk. On the lock screen, which anyone can see, the widget and live panel never show who is going, and for under-18s never a plan’s name or place. We record whether the widget is on your home screen, the offer to add it being shown, accepted or turned down, and what you tap on it.
Ready for you
For your first three days, the top of Discover shows “Ready for you” with your first name: three things near you, picked on your phone from what Discover has already found (so nothing extra is looked up about you), refreshed in the morning, afternoon and evening. Under-18s are never shown bars, pubs or anything that starts after 9pm. Make it a plan adds it to My plans (described above), and Undo removes it. With Ask on, a question for Ask is written for you by the same open-weight AI that runs Ask (in France), from the names of the places and events near you, the weather, the time and the kinds of card you have tapped; never your name, your messages or your plans. What was picked and which you have done are kept on your phone only. We record what you tap on it (for example “Make it a plan” on an event), never a place’s or event’s name.
International data transfers
2016Chat's database is hosted in the European Union, and the backend functions that serve the app run in the European Union too. Some processing still happens in the United States — for example providers such as Google, Apple, Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, NewsData.io and Resend, and a small number of background functions that must run alongside the storage they read. Where personal information is transferred outside the UK/EEA, it is protected by appropriate safeguards such as the providers' Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, together with their own technical and organisational measures.
How long we keep information (retention)
- Raw location history — kept for up to 12 months, then deleted automatically. We keep it this long so the app can learn the places and times that suit you and make its recommendations genuinely personal; a few days is not long enough to learn anything useful. Deletion is enforced by the database itself rather than by a scheduled clean-up, so it happens on time regardless of how busy the service is.
- Account and profile data — kept for the life of your account. When you request deletion, your account enters a 30-day grace period (so you can change your mind by signing back in), after which private personal data is deleted or anonymised. See the Account Deletion page.
- Messages — chat history may remain visible to the other members of a chat. When your account is deleted, your identity in shared chats is anonymised.
- Operational data — short-lived caches and rate-limit records expire automatically.
- Shared-card links — kept for up to 12 months, then deleted automatically. What happens on a shared card’s web page is kept like the rest of our usage analytics (below).
- Usage analytics and searches — the records of how you use the app and what you search for (never message text, never your precise coordinates) are deleted from our live database automatically after 90 days. A copy is kept in our private analytics store (Google BigQuery, in the EU) so we can understand how the app is used over time; it stays linked to your account.
- My plans — your plans, the questions My plans asked you and your answers are kept until you delete your account. Your phone’s own calendar is never stored by us.
- Safety, security, and legal records — kept only for as long as needed for safety, fraud prevention, dispute handling, and legal compliance.
Where we no longer need information to identify you, we may keep it in anonymous or aggregated form.
Your rights (UK and EEA)
If you are in the UK or EEA, you have the right to: access your information; have inaccurate information corrected; have your information deleted; restrict or object to certain processing; data portability; and withdraw consent (for example, by turning off location or notifications in your device settings) at any time without affecting earlier processing.
To exercise any of these, email privacy@2016chat.com. You can also delete your account from within the app (Profile → Delete account).
If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, you have the right to complain to your data protection regulator. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk. In the EEA, you may complain to your local supervisory authority.
Your rights (California)
If you are a California resident, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, to request access and deletion, to correct inaccurate information, and to not be discriminated against for exercising your rights. We do not sell your personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. To make a request, email privacy@2016chat.com.
Security
We use technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including app-integrity verification (App Check), encryption of data in transit, strict access rules that keep sensitive data (such as exact location, email, and notification tokens) private to you, and rate limiting to resist abuse. No system can be guaranteed perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and to respond appropriately to any incident.
Cookies and the website
This website (2016chat.com) uses no cookies and no third-party scripts, and stores nothing on your device.
Website visits. When you open a page on this website, or use one of its links (such as “Download the app”, the App Store and Google Play buttons, 2016chat.com/get or an invite link), our server records the visit so we can see how people find 2016Chat and make it better. It is worked out from the request your browser already sends, and records: the page or link, and where a link sent you; the website you came from and any campaign tag in the link (for example “?src=reddit”); your approximate location (country, region and city) and time zone, estimated from your IP address; your type of device, operating system and browser, including whether it is an app’s built-in browser; and your browser’s language. To tell visits apart without cookies, your IP address and browser details are combined with a secret and the date into a one-way code that changes every day and cannot be turned back into your IP address. Your IP address itself is not stored. Visit records are kept for 90 days and then deleted automatically. We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the website and the app; you can object by contacting us. The website is hosted by Cloudflare, which handles these requests for us.
Pages for cards shared from the app (share.2016chat.com) record visits and taps as described under “People who open a shared card” above — without cookies and without storing anything on your device. The 2016Chat app stores some data on your device (such as sign-in state and cached content) so the app can function.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. We will change the "Last updated" date above, and where changes are material we will take reasonable steps to make them known.
Contact us
- Privacy: privacy@2016chat.com
- Support: support@2016chat.com
- Legal: legal@2016chat.com