Privacy Policy

When you contact us through the app or website, we store the subject, response email, message, submission time, status, and whether it came from the app or website. The app also attaches its version, build, current baby or pet mode, session identifier, device type and model, operating system, and, when signed in, your account identifier, account email, and display name. This technical context helps us investigate your request.

To enforce short-term and daily message limits, the server stores an account-scoped identifier containing your Firebase account identifier when you are signed in, or a one-way identifier derived from the request IP address when you are signed out. It does not store the raw IP address in the support request or rate-limit record.

Support requests are available only to authorized administrators and may be retained as correspondence while needed to respond, prevent abuse, maintain support records, or meet legal obligations. Deleting your Pickle account automatically removes the account-linked response email, message, technical context, internal notes, and account identity from prior signed-in support requests. A content-free anonymized record may remain for operational counts or legal obligations.

The app can be used as a guest. Your name decisions, favorites, collections, custom names, filters, preferences, and feed progress are stored in a local SQLite database on your device. A guest country choice or one-time skip is stored separately on the device.

If you do not create an account, this local profile information is not associated with a Firebase account and may be lost if you delete the app or its data. When regional trend contribution is enabled, the limited aggregate activity described below can leave a guest device without creating an account.

Signing out switches Pickle to a separate guest profile. Account picks, activity totals, and core preferences can be restored from the account later, while feed queue and position are intentionally discarded and start fresh. The account database is removed only after every pending or quarantined account-owned change has safely reached Firebase. If that cannot be confirmed, including while offline, an isolated local copy and cleanup marker remain on the device and Pickle explains that syncing will retry when the same account signs in again. Pickle excludes its SQLite database directory from iOS app backups and disables Android app-data backup to reduce unintended copies.

If you create an account, Firebase Authentication processes your name, email address, password credentials, account identifier, email-verification state, and authentication information. The app never receives or stores your plain-text password. Pickle records the country you select so it follows your profile to other devices, along with the versions and acceptance time of the Terms and Privacy Policy accepted during registration.

When cross-device sync is enabled, name decisions, favorites, collections, collection membership, custom names, saved filters, default baby or pet mode, baby last name, card-display choice, active filters, and cumulative swipe activity components are stored in Google Firebase services under your account identifier. Signed-in Today and All time activity combine the account components from its devices; guest activity remains device-only. Historical activity lost before this feature was introduced cannot be reconstructed.

If you choose to pair with a partner, the app stores the pairing group, invite status, display names, and names that both partners liked. Pairing is optional. QR scanning uses the camera only after permission is granted, and scanned invite data is used to join the pairing group.

If you are signed in and allow notifications, the app creates a random installation identifier and stores it with a push-notification token, your account identifier, and your device platform in Firebase. This information is used only to deliver optional partner-match notifications through Apple or Google push-notification services.

You can turn notifications off in Settings or deny notification permission. Turning notifications off or signing out requests removal of the app’s registered push token and retries that request after a temporary network failure while the same account remains available. Deleting your account removes its registered push tokens as part of server-side account cleanup. Apple or Google may retain delivery records according to their own policies.

The match-notification choice is stored on this device under the account identifier so an opt-out survives sign-out without changing another device. Analytics and regional-trend choices are also device-scoped and are not restored from account sync.

You choose the country Pickle uses for initial origin-filter suggestions and country-level app-user trends. Account choices are stored with the Firebase profile so they follow the account to other devices; guest choices are stored only on the device. Guests can skip the country step, in which case Pickle shows overall trends and does not ask again automatically. You can change the choice in Settings. Pickle does not send an IP address to a location provider, request device location permission, or use GPS coordinates for these features.

When Improve regional name trends is enabled, the app uploads daily aggregate counts such as impressions, likes, dislikes, maybes, favorites, and detail views from guest and signed-in profiles. A random source identifier rotates every 30 days and is sent only over encrypted transport. Current-format trend quota and receipt records do not store your Firebase account identifier. For duplicate prevention and abuse limits, the server stores secret-keyed one-way identifiers derived from the rotating source and a coarse network prefix: /24 for IPv4 or /64 for IPv6. It does not store the raw source identifier or full request IP address in those records.

Cloud infrastructure automatically creates security and operational request logs that can contain the request IP address, request time, user agent, request path, response status, and related metadata. Pickle’s current default Cloud Logging bucket retains those request logs for up to 30 days. Access is limited through project permissions, and the logs are not used to build name-interest profiles.

Regional trend contribution starts enabled after the first-use notice in every region unless you turn it off in Settings. It is a first-party statistical feature, is not used for advertising or individual profiling, and does not depend on Google’s advertising consent system. Country results are shown only after a minimum activity threshold is reached and do not identify an account or guest source.

The app uses Firebase services, including Analytics, Crashlytics, and App Check. These services may process device and app information, approximate location derived from IP address, app interactions, diagnostic information, crash stack traces, and integrity signals according to Google’s service terms and privacy practices. Pickle does not attach names searched or viewed, email addresses, partner codes, or profile fields to crash reports.

After the first-use notice, pseudonymous Firebase usage Analytics uses the country you selected to choose its initial setting. If you selected a country outside the EEA, United Kingdom, and Switzerland, Analytics starts enabled only after the separate privacy-region check also resolves outside Europe. If you selected a country in that European consent region, skipped the country step, or the privacy region is unresolved, Analytics starts disabled. A versioned choice you make through Help improve Pickle in Settings overrides that default in either direction and remains on this device. Advertising storage, advertising user data, and ad-personalization signals remain denied.

After the first-use notice, Firebase Crashlytics diagnostics run automatically to detect crashes and stability problems and are not controlled by Help improve Pickle. Turning Help improve Pickle off stops future Firebase Analytics collection and resets the app’s local Analytics identifier. Turning Improve regional name trends off immediately stops new event recording, removes pending name-activity uploads and rotates the local source identifier; an already in-flight request may finish. Previously combined popularity totals cannot be separated from other users’ totals, and provider-controlled analytics or crash data already sent may remain for the provider’s retention period.

The initial release of Pickle does not display advertisements. It does not initialize Google Mobile Ads for ad serving, make ad requests, present Google’s advertising consent form, or request iOS permission to track activity across other companies’ apps and websites.

The dormant advertising implementation remains in the app so a future update can restore ads only after the release configuration, disclosures, consent controls, and store declarations are updated. The current release performs only Google’s limited consent-information request, without GPS, as an additional safeguard for the initial Firebase Analytics setting and any future advertising requirements. Regional trend contribution does not depend on that request, and the request is not used to serve or personalize ads.

Information is transmitted only as needed to operate the features described in this policy. Providers include Google Firebase for authentication, cloud storage and sync, profile-country storage, App Check, Analytics, Crashlytics, and push delivery; Google’s User Messaging Platform for the limited privacy-region check described above; and Apple push-notification services on iOS.

These providers process information under their own terms and privacy practices and may process it in countries other than your own. Through applicable terms and agreements, Pickle requires providers that receive user data to protect it to the same or an equivalent standard required by this policy and applicable law. We do not sell personal information for money, and the initial release does not share information for targeted advertising.

Where data-protection law requires a legal basis, Pickle processes account, sync, partner, selected-country, and requested support information to provide the service you ask for. Pickle relies on legitimate interests in operating, protecting, understanding, and adapting the service for security, abuse prevention, crash diagnosis, country-level suggestions requested through your selection, and the disclosed first-party statistical processing used to create aggregate regional trends. Where applicable law provides a statistical or audience-measurement exception, Pickle relies on it only for that limited trend processing. Firebase usage Analytics remains separate and starts disabled in the European consent region. You can object to or withdraw optional product processing at any time through Settings without affecting earlier lawful processing.

Google, Apple, and their subprocessors may process information in the United States and other countries, where privacy protections may differ from those where you live. Pickle will not be offered in a jurisdiction that requires a transfer mechanism unless the developer has completed the applicable provider terms, data-processing agreements, and required safeguards. Provider privacy notices describe their locations and safeguards in more detail.

Information is used to provide local name discovery, save and synchronize your choices, support partner matching, prevent abuse, maintain security, improve the name catalog and product experience, and calculate aggregate popularity trends.

The app does not sell your personal information for money. Deidentified aggregate popularity information may be displayed to other users, but countries with insufficient activity are suppressed.

You can use core discovery features without an account. A first-use notice summarizes important privacy practices before a guest profile begins, followed by an optional country step that can be skipped. The country choice can be changed in Settings. Help improve Pickle starts enabled only when a selected country and the privacy-region check both resolve outside the European consent region; a European or missing country starts disabled. You can explicitly turn Analytics on or off in Settings in any region. Improve regional name trends starts enabled after the notice in every region and can be turned off at any time. Turning either feature off takes effect immediately. Signed-in accounts keep cross-device sync on so important choices are not silently stranded on one device. You can also share a snapshot of locally loaded profile data, sign out, clear saved data, or permanently delete your account.

The initial release has no advertising, ad-personalization control, or iOS tracking request. Those controls would return only in an update that restores advertising.

Account deletion requires password reauthentication in the same flow. Pickle shows deletion as complete only after the Firebase Authentication account, synced user documents, partner connection, partner matches and invitations, push registrations, account-linked rate limits and upload receipts, and identifying support content have been removed. After confirmation, the app signs out and removes that account’s local database from the device. A minimal deletion-job record may remain temporarily for retry and completion accounting, while deidentified aggregate popularity totals may remain because they are not linked back to an account.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to request access to or a copy of your personal information, correction, deletion, portability, restriction or objection to processing, and withdrawal of consent. You may also have rights to opt out of sale, sharing, targeted advertising, or certain profiling; to use an authorized agent; to appeal a denied request; and to receive equal service without unlawful discrimination for exercising a privacy right. These rights are subject to applicable exceptions.

Use the in-app controls for immediate choices, account deletion, and the locally loaded data snapshot. For any other privacy request, use Contact us in the app or on the Pickle website and describe the right you want to exercise. We may ask for information reasonably necessary to verify your identity or an agent’s authority. If you are not satisfied with the response, you may appeal through the same contact method and may complain to the privacy or data-protection authority where you live.

Local information remains until you remove it, delete the account through the app, clear app data, or uninstall the app. Signing out removes the account-specific local database only after all account-owned changes have synced; pending, failed, or quarantined changes keep an isolated copy until the same account can retry. Feed progress is discarded on clean sign-out. Pickle configures the database directory to be excluded from ordinary iOS and Android app-data backups.

Synced account data remains until it is deleted or is no longer required to operate the service. Account deletion performs cloud cleanup before displaying completion, with a retryable deletion job available if processing is interrupted. Identifying support correspondence is anonymized as described above.

Current-format pseudonymous telemetry quota and duplicate-prevention records contain no Firebase account identifier and expire after 45 days. Account deletion removes older account-linked compatibility records that may remain during the same retention period. Deidentified aggregate trend totals are irreversible and remain because they can no longer reasonably be attributed to an account or guest source.

Analytics, crash, privacy-region, and push providers retain information according to their own retention policies. Data that they control cannot necessarily be removed through Pickle’s account-deletion feature.

Reasonable technical safeguards are used, including Firebase access rules, App Check protection for regional telemetry submissions, pseudonymous abuse limits, coarse regional aggregation, and minimum reporting thresholds. Other cloud callables remain subject to Firebase Authentication, authorization, validation, and rate limits; broader App Check enforcement is a release requirement. No storage or transmission system can be guaranteed completely secure.

This app is intended only for adults and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly seek personal information directly from children. If you believe a child has provided personal information, contact us so we can investigate and delete it where required.

This policy may be updated as the app changes. A revised effective date will be displayed here. We will provide additional notice or request renewed consent when required for a material change.

The person or entity identified as the developer or seller in Pickle’s App Store and Google Play listings operates Pickle and is the controller or business responsible for the processing described in this policy, except where a provider acts independently under its own terms.

For privacy questions or requests that cannot be completed through Settings, use Contact us in the app or on the Pickle website. That form provides a working response channel and routes privacy requests to the operator identified in the applicable store listing.