Privacy Policy
Percep2 puts you in a chat with people around you. To do that it has to know roughly where you are — and nothing more than that. This page says exactly what we collect, why, how long we hold it, and how to make it go away.
Last updated 16 August 2026 · Applies to the Percep2 mobile app and percep2.com
1 · Who is responsible
The data controller for Percep2 is Rafael da Silva Vergaças, an individual developer established in Malta. Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that means the buck stops here: decisions about what gets collected and why are made by one person, and you can reach that person directly at privacy@percep2.com.
There is no data protection officer, because the scale of processing does not require one.
2 · What we collect
Everything below is collected because a specific feature needs it. Nothing is collected to profile you, to sell, or to feed an advertising network.
| What | Where it comes from | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | You, at sign-up | Logging in, the verification code, password resets. It is not shown to other users. |
| Password | You, at sign-up | Stored only as a salted hash. We cannot read it and cannot recover it for you. |
| Display name | You | What other people in a chat see. It does not have to be your real name. |
| Date of birth | You, at sign-up | Confirming you are old enough to use the app. |
| Gender, country of origin, bio, profile picture | You, optionally | Your public profile inside the app. All optional, all editable, all removable. |
| Approximate location | Your device, with your permission | Working out which area chat you belong to. See section 3 — this is the part that matters. |
| Messages you send | You | Delivering them to the chat, and showing sent / delivered / read state. |
| Chats you create | You | The chat name, its centre point and its radius, so people nearby can find it. |
| Push notification token | Your device, with your permission | Sending you a notification when someone messages you. Revocable in your phone's settings. |
| Blocks, hidden chats, account type | You, as you use the app | Remembering your choices so the app behaves the way you set it up. |
| Messages to Help & Support | You, when you write in | Answering you. |
| Server logs | Automatic | Keeping the service running and diagnosing failures. Short-lived and not used to build a profile of you. |
We do not use advertising SDKs, third-party analytics, or tracking pixels, and we do not sell or rent personal data to anyone, for any price.
3 · How location is used
This is the one people ask about, so it gets its own section.
Your device gives the app GPS coordinates when you grant location permission. The server uses them to decide which areas you are in. Coordinates are turned into a geohash — a coarse grid cell covering the area around you — and it is the cell, not the coordinate, that decides which area chats you land in.
You are placed in two of them at once: a local cell roughly a kilometre across, and a much larger one covering your country. Both are named after the place they cover, so you always know how wide the room you are speaking in is.
Your device also asks its own operating system to turn your coordinates into a place name — the district and country — the first time an area chat is created where you are. That lookup happens on your phone, and only the resulting name is sent to us, never as part of your profile.
Coordinates are used once more, to work out which nearby chats to show you and how far away they are. Distances are calculated from a chat's centre point, not between users.
Your most recent coordinates are stored on your account so the app knows where to place you when you reopen it. They are never shown to other users. Nobody in a chat can see your position, your address, your distance from them, or a pin on a map. The only thing anyone can infer is that you are somewhere inside the same area as the conversation.
Location is only read while you are using the app. Percep2 does not track you in the background, and it does not keep a history of everywhere you have been — only the last known position, which is overwritten each time.
You can switch it off at any time in your phone's settings. The app cannot place you in an area chat without it, so that part of Percep2 stops working — but revoking the permission is always yours to do, and we delete the stored coordinates when you delete your account.
4 · Why we are allowed to
GDPR requires a lawful basis for every piece of processing. Ours:
- Performance of a contract — your account, your messages, and the location matching that puts you in the right chat. Without these there is no app to provide, and providing it is what you signed up for.
- Consent — device location access and push notifications. Both are granted through your operating system's permission prompt and can be withdrawn there at any time, without losing your account.
- Legitimate interests — blocking, moderation, abuse prevention, security logging, and keeping the service up. The interest is a usable and safe app for everyone in it; we have weighed that against your privacy and kept the data involved to a minimum.
- Legal obligation — where we are required to keep or disclose something by law.
5 · How long we keep it
Percep2 is built around conversations that expire. That is a product decision first, but it is also a privacy one: the less that is stored, the less there is to lose.
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Messages in Open Chats | 7 days, then deleted automatically |
| Messages in Closed Chats | 30 days, then deleted automatically |
| Private messages | 30 days, then deleted automatically |
| Open Chats themselves | They expire two hours after creation unless converted to a Closed Chat |
| Account data and profile | Until you delete your account |
| Last known coordinates | Overwritten on each use; deleted with your account |
| Push notification token | Until you sign out, revoke the permission, or delete your account |
| Support messages | Until your account is deleted |
| Server logs | A short operational window, then rotated out |
Deletion of expired messages is automatic and runs on a schedule — it is not something anyone has to remember to do.
6 · Who else touches it
A small number of service providers process data on our behalf, under contract, and only to do the job they are there for:
- Amazon Web Services — hosting, database, file storage, and outbound email (verification codes and password resets).
- Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) — delivering push notifications to Android devices.
- Apple (APNs) — delivering push notifications to iPhones.
- Expo — the push notification service that routes a notification to the right device token.
Other people using Percep2 see what you choose to show them: your display name, your profile picture and bio if you set them, and the messages you send in a chat. Anything you write in an area chat or an Open Chat is visible to everyone in that area — which, for your country's area chat, means everyone in the country using Percep2.
We will disclose data to authorities only where we are legally required to, and only to the extent required.
7 · Where it is stored
Your account, messages and files are stored in the European Union, in AWS's Frankfurt region (eu-central-1).
Push notification delivery necessarily involves Google and Apple infrastructure, which may process the device token and the notification text outside the EU. Those transfers rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. A push notification contains the sender's display name and the message preview, which is why turning notifications off is a meaningful privacy choice and not just a cosmetic one.
8 · Your rights
If you are in the EU or the UK, you have the right to:
- ask what we hold about you, and get a copy of it;
- have inaccurate data corrected — most of it you can edit yourself in Account Settings;
- have your data erased (see section 9 — you can do this yourself, immediately);
- restrict or object to processing based on legitimate interests;
- receive your data in a portable, machine-readable format;
- withdraw consent for location or notifications at any time, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it.
Write to privacy@percep2.com and we will respond within 30 days. There is no charge.
If you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to your national data protection authority. In Malta that is the Information and Data Protection Commissioner. We would rather you told us first, but it is your right either way.
9 · Deleting your account
You can delete your account yourself, from inside the app, without asking anyone's permission and without waiting. It is immediate and it cannot be undone.
Full instructions, and exactly what gets erased →
10 · Security
Traffic between the app and the server is encrypted in transit with TLS. Passwords are stored as salted hashes and are never readable, by us or by anyone who obtained the database. Access to production systems is restricted and protected by multi-factor authentication.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will notify the supervisory authority within 72 hours and tell affected users directly.
11 · Age
Percep2 is not intended for children. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. If we learn that an account belongs to someone younger, we will delete it.
If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has signed up, write to privacy@percep2.com and we will remove the account.
12 · This website
percep2.com sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and does not track visitors. There is nothing here to consent to, which is why you were not asked. The page makes no requests to any third party at all — the typefaces are served from this domain, not from a font network, so no other company learns that you visited.
13 · Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with it, and material changes will be announced by email and on percep2.com before they take effect. Continuing to use Percep2 after that means you accept the updated policy.
14 · Contact
Privacy questions, rights requests, or anything on this page that reads as vague: privacy@percep2.com.
General support: support@percep2.com, or Help & Support in the app menu, which goes to the same place.