Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

Account and cosmic profile

We process your name, email, account identifiers, security and verification state, public Explorer nickname, date and place of birth, optional birth time, and the gender selection used for your private cosmic profile. Birth information is not automatically published in Dating.

Horoscope, Games, and Profile activity

We store content delivered to your account, sharing choices, canonical quiz runs, scores, timing, per-question result snapshots, leaderboards, history, preferences, reminders, account recovery, and deletion state.

Purchases and membership

Store billing is not currently enabled. When billing launches, Google Play and the configured purchase service may provide product identifiers, localized offer details, purchase and renewal events, trial or grace-period state, cancellation, refund, store country, and an Alter account identifier used to reconcile your Alter+ entitlement. Alter does not receive your full payment-card details. Administrator-assigned test or courtesy access is recorded separately and is not a paid transaction.

Dating profile and interactions

If you enter Dating, we process the information you explicitly choose for that experience, including display name, photos, bio, prompts, pronouns, gender identity, relationship intent, who you want to meet, age and distance preferences, resolved locality, likes, passes, matches, messages, delivery state, blocks, reports, unmatches, and moderation outcomes.

Age assurance

On supported Android installs, Alter processes Google Play Age Signals together with a server-verified Play Integrity token, an install identifier hash, and your account birth date to determine adult eligibility and prevent replay. When the jurisdiction or account does not provide an age signal, Alter uses verified email and the immutable account birth date as the disclosed fallback. Alter does not request identity-document or selfie images for this flow.

Current location in Dating

With foreground permission requested inside Dating, the device may provide current coordinates to AlterApi. The server resolves them to a locality, country, region, timezone, and coarse location cell, then discards the raw coordinates. Other users receive only a distance band such as under 5 km or 5–15 km, never precise location.

Photos, messages, and safety evidence

Profile and chat photos pass file validation and safety processing. Reports retain the reported item and limited relevant context. Moderators are not permitted to browse unrelated private conversations. Message content, orientation, exact birth data, verification documents, and raw location are not used for advertising, product analytics, or recommendation ranking.

Optional Photo Intelligence

If you separately choose Photo Intelligence, Alter may send an in-memory analysis copy of a newly uploaded, safety-approved profile photo to OpenAI. The copy is made from Alter's trusted metadata-stripped WebP, preserves aspect ratio, is limited to a longest edge of approximately 1024 pixels, and does not replace or reduce the quality of the photo shown to other members. Alter sends the OpenAI request with store=false.

Photo Intelligence looks only for broad, non-sensitive visible context such as activities, scenes, objects, photo usefulness, and possible interests from Alter's fixed interest catalog. It is instructed not to infer attractiveness, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, health, disability, politics, wealth, social class, intelligence, trustworthiness, or personality from appearance. Suggestions do not prove an interest and are not guarantees of identity, compatibility, intent, or relationship outcome.

Safety moderation is separate and continues whether or not you choose Photo Intelligence. During the initial release, granting consent does not automatically analyze older approved photos. You may confirm or remove a suggestion and may withdraw Photo Intelligence consent at any time. Withdrawal stops new enrichment, cancels pending work, suppresses Photo-AI suggestions and matching evidence, and retains only records required for safety, audit, or law.

Matching V2 and optional Horoscope or Quiz data

Matching V2 processes Core Dating information you provide or create in Dating: your own and accepted relationship goals, preferences and dealbreakers, confirmed interests, private compatibility answers, approximate distance, recent Dating activity, and ordinary profile completeness. Alter stores recommendation runs, eligibility and explanation codes, directional and reciprocal recommendation indices, limited component summaries, exposures, interaction metadata, and minimal context for a content-specific Like. Private compatibility answers are not shown to another member or to routine administrators.

Core Dating works without Horoscope or Quiz and keeps at least 85 percent of the matching contribution when every optional source is available. Astrology Matching and Quiz Personalization require separate explicit choices. With Astrology Matching, Alter may use stored Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, and Mercury sign placements for placement affinity; it does not use Rising signs unless reliably available and does not use daily horoscope or numerology values. This is interpretive entertainment, not scientific proof of relationship success. With Quiz Personalization, Alter derives broad, durable topic evidence from qualifying recent completed Quiz activity. It does not use Quiz scores, correctness, answer choices, response speed, difficulty, or outcome.

Optional matching data does not determine inherent member value. Withdrawing an optional consent removes that provider's future contribution while Core Dating continues. Withdrawing purpose-wide Matching Core consent follows the Dating profile and discovery effects described when that consent is presented.

Diagnostics and optional product analytics

The current app does not send mobile crash diagnostics or product analytics to Sentry or PostHog. AlterApi and its Azure hosting retain privacy-limited operational logs needed for security, availability, and support. A later disclosed app release may add essential mobile diagnostics and optional, opt-in product analytics; session replay remains disabled.

2. How we use information

• Authenticate, secure, recover, support, and delete your account.
• Generate and deliver requested cosmic content and preserve canonical game history.
• Provide authorized test or courtesy Alter+ access now, and reconcile Google Play purchases after billing launches, without changing game scoring, Dating rank, or safety access.
• Apply Dating eligibility, mutual preferences, coarse-cell and distance rules, blocks, reports, active state, compatibility, and profile-completeness rules.
• Persist messages before delivery, synchronize conversations, and send generic notifications that omit message content.
• Screen media, investigate reports, enforce standards, prevent fraud and abuse, support appeals, and meet legal child-safety obligations.
• When you separately consent, create and let you review broad, non-sensitive interest suggestions from newly uploaded, safety-approved Dating photos.
• When you accept the versioned Matching V2 bundle, calculate deterministic, reciprocal Core Dating recommendations and log limited exposure and interaction metadata needed to deliver, audit, and fairly rotate those recommendations.
• Only when separately enabled by you, add a bounded Horoscope placement-affinity or qualifying Quiz-topic contribution. Unavailable optional information returns its weight to Core Dating.
• Operate, measure, diagnose, and improve Alter using privacy-limited aggregate information.

3. Service providers and sharing

We do not sell personal information. We disclose only the information needed for providers to perform services for Alter or when required to protect users, comply with law, or complete a lawful business transfer.

• Microsoft Azure: hosting, database, private media, realtime delivery, monitoring, email, and configured content-safety processing.
• Google Play: app distribution, Age Signals and Play Integrity for age assurance and anti-abuse, and, after billing is enabled, subscription management, refunds, and aggregate store reporting.
• Purchase service: after it is configured, subscription offer delivery, purchase reconciliation, entitlement state, and subscription support.
• Qualified child-safety services: PhotoDNA or another approved hash-matching service when configured and legally available.
• Diagnostics and product analytics providers: Sentry or PostHog may be configured only in a later disclosed release and only within the limits described above. Neither receives mobile data from the current app.
• OpenAI: optional, separately consented Photo Intelligence processing of a bounded metadata-stripped image copy with provider storage disabled in the request. OpenAI does not receive Alter credentials, raw location, messages, or the queue job's member profile.
• Other place, astrology, and AI providers: server-side processing needed for a request, without exposing provider credentials to the app.

Providers may process information in countries different from yours. Alter uses contractual, technical, and access safeguards appropriate to the service and information involved.

4. Your choices and rights

• When optional product analytics is available, enable or disable it in Profile. Disabling it stops future optional capture and resets the device analytics identity.
• Deny or revoke foreground location permission. Dating availability or distance features may then be limited.
• After Google Play billing launches, manage or cancel Alter+ through Google Play and restore or reconcile eligible purchases inside Alter.
• Edit supported Account or Dating fields, pause or remove your Dating profile, block or report another user, and request an appeal.
• Choose whether to enable Photo Intelligence, confirm or remove its interest suggestions, and withdraw that separate consent without disabling mandatory photo safety screening.
• Choose Astrology Matching and Quiz Personalization separately, change Astrology influence between Off, Light, and Important, or withdraw either optional purpose without disabling Core Dating.
• Request access, correction, export, restriction, objection, or deletion where applicable law provides those rights.

5. Retention and deletion

We retain information only while it is needed to provide Alter, protect users, reconcile purchases, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, satisfy legal obligations, or preserve the integrity of shared records.

• Account deletion hides the account immediately and provides the existing seven-day recovery window.
• After that window, private single-user Account, Dating profile, media, location, and private-content records are deleted or scheduled for deletion. Shared game and required audit records are anonymized where deletion would break integrity.
• Removed or unmatched Dating conversations are retained for up to 90 days for safety handling, then purged unless an active report or legal hold requires limited continued retention.
• Reports retain only the reported item and limited context required to investigate. Active reports, appeals, fraud records, charge records, and legal holds may have different necessary retention.
• Immutable store transaction facts may be retained as required for accounting, fraud prevention, disputes, and legal compliance even after access is revoked.
• Provider-controlled data follows the provider agreement and applicable deletion request process.
• Photo Intelligence observations and suggestions are removed, deactivated, or reduced to legally required audit records when consent is withdrawn, the source photo is deleted, or the account-deletion process completes.
• Matching V2 recommendation, exposure, and non-authoritative interaction records are deleted or anonymized after 180 days unless a safety or legal hold applies. Minimal Like context follows the retention of its authoritative Like and is never used to reconstruct deleted media.

6. Security, changes, and contact

Alter uses HTTPS in transit, provider-supported encryption at rest, scoped credentials, access controls, audited sensitive operations, private media storage, and least-privilege service access. Alter data is not end-to-end encrypted because the server must process information to provide the service and enforce safety.

No security method is perfect. Please report a suspected privacy or security issue without including passwords, government-ID images, or unnecessary message content.

We may update this policy as Alter, providers, or legal requirements change. We will update the effective date and provide additional notice when required.

Alter privacy contact: support@alter-app-lab.com
Mailing address: Astoria, New York 11106, United States