Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 27, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes Our policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of Your information when You use the Service and tells You about Your privacy rights and how the law protects You.

We use Your Personal Data to provide and improve the Service. We collect, use, and disclose Your information as described in this Privacy Policy and, where required by applicable law, only where We have a valid legal basis to do so, including Your consent (where consent is required).

Bool is a social application for groups. You use it together with the other members of Your Group, and much of what You put into it is shown to them and to the members of other Groups. The section "What Other Users Can See" below explains exactly which parts are visible to whom, and We suggest reading it first.

Interpretation and Definitions

Interpretation

The words whose initial letters are capitalized have meanings defined under the following conditions. The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.

Definitions

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy:

  • Account means a unique account created for You to access Our Service or parts of Our Service.

  • Affiliate means an entity that controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with a party, where "control" means ownership of 50% or more of the shares, equity interest or other securities entitled to vote for election of directors or other managing authority.

  • Application refers to Bool, the software program provided by the Company.

  • Company (referred to as either "the Company", "We", "Us" or "Our" in this Privacy Policy) refers to 8Burgs LLC, the operator of Bool.

  • Content refers to text, images, photographs, voice recordings, messages, answers to prompts and other information that You post, upload or otherwise make available through the Service.

  • Country/State refers to: New York, United States.

  • Device means any device that can access the Service, such as a computer, a cell phone or a digital tablet.

  • Group means a set of Users who use the Service together under a shared profile in order to be matched with other Groups.

  • Match means the state reached when two Groups have each expressed interest in the other, which opens a shared chat between them.

  • Personal Data (or "Personal Information") is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual.

    We use "Personal Data" and "Personal Information" interchangeably unless a law uses a specific term.

  • Service refers to the Application.

  • Service Provider means any natural or legal person who processes the data on behalf of the Company. It refers to third-party companies or individuals employed by the Company to facilitate the Service, to provide the Service on behalf of the Company, to perform services related to the Service or to assist the Company in analyzing how the Service is used.

  • Usage Data refers to data collected automatically, either generated by the use of the Service or from the Service infrastructure itself (for example, the time a message was sent).

  • User means any individual who accesses or uses the Service.

  • You means the individual accessing or using the Service, or the company, or other legal entity on behalf of which such individual is accessing or using the Service, as applicable.

Collecting and Using Your Personal Information

Types of Data Collected

Personal Data

To create and use an Account, We collect:

  • Your phone number. Signing in to Bool requires a phone number and a one-time code sent to it by SMS. The phone number is the only credential the Service uses. We do not ask for a password, and We do not ask for an email address.

  • Your profile details. These are the details You enter on Your own profile: Your first name or display name, Your age, Your gender, Your city, and, optionally, Your college. Age is chosen from a fixed set of options beginning at 18; city and college are free text.

  • Your profile photographs and the photographs You add to a Group's profile.

  • Your answers to the prompts shown on Your profile and on Your Group's profile.

We do not collect Your postal address, Your precise or approximate device location, Your payment details, or Your contacts. The city on Your profile is a value You type or select Yourself; it is not derived from Your Device.

Content You Create in the Service

Using the Service creates Content, which We store on Our behalf in order to operate it:

  • Messages. The text of messages You send in a Group chat, together with who sent them, which Groups the chat is between, and when they were sent.

  • Photographs and voice messages that You send in a chat, including a visual waveform generated from a voice message so it can be drawn on screen.

  • Reactions You add to a message.

  • Your Groups and Your membership of them, including the Groups You have left or been removed from, how each membership ended and when. We keep this so the Service can show You Your own history.

  • Your matching activity: which Groups You have expressed interest in, which suggestions Your Group's leader has sent or approved, and when a Match was made.

  • Read state: when You last opened each chat, which is what marks a conversation as read. This is stored per person and is not shown to anyone else.

  • Blocks: the people You have chosen to block.

  • Reports You submit, described under "Reports and Safety" below.

When You delete a message in a chat, it stops being shown to anyone but is not immediately erased from Our systems, because the surrounding conversation may still refer to it. It is removed together with the rest of Your data when You delete Your Account, subject to the exception described under "Reports and Safety".

Usage Data

Usage Data is collected automatically when using the Service.

Usage Data may include Your Device's Internet Protocol address (IP address), the type of Device and mobile operating system You use, the version of the Application, the dates and times of Your requests, and other diagnostic data recorded by Our servers and those of Our Service Providers as part of ordinary server logging. We use it to operate the Service, to diagnose faults, and to detect and prevent abuse.

We do not use Usage Data to build advertising profiles, and We do not sell it.

Information Collected While Using the Application

While using Our Application, in order to provide features of Our Application, We may collect, with Your prior permission:

  • Photographs from Your Device's photo library, when You choose a photograph to add to Your profile, to a Group's profile, or to a chat. We receive only the photographs You select. The Application resizes and compresses a photograph on Your Device before uploading it, and does not read the location information some cameras record in a photograph file.

  • Audio from Your Device's microphone, when You record a voice message in a chat. The microphone is used only while You are actively recording a voice message.

  • Permission to save to Your Device's photo library, when You choose to save a photograph You have been sent in a chat. This permission lets the Application write that photograph to Your library; it is not used to read Your library.

  • Permission to send You notifications, described under "Push Notifications" below.

You can enable or disable access to any of this at any time through Your Device settings. Declining a permission disables the feature that needs it and nothing else.

Push Notifications

If You allow notifications, Your Device is issued a push token, which We store and use to send notifications to that Device. A token identifies a Device rather than a person; if a Device is used to sign in to a different Account, its token is reassigned so that the Device stops receiving notifications intended for the previous Account.

Notifications tell You about new messages, new suggestions and Matches, and changes to Your Group's membership. A notification about a new message contains the text of that message, together with the sender's name and the Group's name, so that it can be read on Your lock screen. To deliver a notification, this information is passed to the Expo push notification service and from there to Apple's or Google's notification service, which delivers it to Your Device. If You would prefer message text not to be handled this way, You can turn off notifications for Bool in Your Device settings, or configure Your Device to hide notification previews on the lock screen.

We remove a push token when You sign out, and when the push service tells Us the Application has been uninstalled from that Device.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies

The Application does not use cookies, advertising identifiers, analytics software development kits, or similar tracking technologies, and We do not track You across other companies' applications or websites.

Two features of the Application display web content inside it: the bot check described under "Bot and Abuse Protection", and this Privacy Policy and Our Terms and Conditions, which are shown as web pages inside the Application. Neither is used to track You.

Use of Your Personal Data

The Company may use Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • To provide and maintain Our Service, including to operate the matching and messaging features and to monitor the usage of Our Service.

  • To create and manage Your Account: to register You as a user of the Service, to sign You in, and to give You access to the functionality available to a registered user.

  • To match Groups: to show Groups to other Groups, to record expressions of interest, and to open a chat between two Groups that have Matched.

  • To deliver Your Content to the people You send it to, and to notify them that it has arrived.

  • To keep the Service safe: to detect, investigate and prevent abuse, spam, automated sign-up attempts and breaches of Our Terms and Conditions, to act on reports We receive, and to enforce limits such as the cap on how quickly messages can be sent.

  • To contact You: to send You SMS messages containing sign-in codes, and push notifications about activity in Your Groups. We may also contact You about material changes to the Service or to these policies, and about security matters, where necessary or reasonable.

  • To respond to You: to attend to and manage Your requests, questions and bug reports.

  • To comply with Our legal obligations and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

  • For business transfers: We may use Your Personal Data to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about Our Service users is among the assets transferred.

  • To improve the Service: to understand which features are used and where the Service fails, and to fix and improve it. Where We can answer such a question without Personal Data, We do.

We do not sell Your Personal Data, We do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and We do not use Your Content to serve You advertisements.

What Other Users Can See

Bool is used together with other people, so some of what You provide is shown to them by design. Specifically:

  • Your profile — Your name, photographs, age, gender, city, optional college and Your answers to prompts — is visible to the other members of Your Group, and to members of Groups that can see Your Group.

  • Your Group's profile is visible to other active Groups in the same city, and to any Group that Yours has a suggestion or a Match with. This is how Groups find each other.

  • Your messages, photographs, voice messages and reactions in a chat are visible to every member of both Groups in that chat, not only to the person You are replying to.

  • Actions taken through Your Group are visible to Your Group. When You express interest in another Group, the other members of Your Group are told that You did so.

  • Your Group's leader — the member who created it — can send and approve suggestions on the Group's behalf, remove members, and dissolve the Group.

  • Your phone number is never shown to other Users. It is used to sign You in and is not displayed on Your profile or in a chat.

  • Your read state and Your blocks are private. Other Users are not told when You have read a message, and a person You block is not told that You blocked them.

Blocking a person stops the two of You from seeing each other's messages within a shared chat, and stops each of You receiving notifications about the other. It does not remove either Group from the Service or undo a Match.

Photographs and other files You upload are held in private storage and are served only to Users who are permitted to see them; they are not published at public web addresses.

Please treat anything You put into a Group profile or a chat as something You are willing to have seen by everyone in that Group and in any Group it Matches with, and remember that other Users can take a screenshot or otherwise copy Content You share.

Sharing of Your Personal Data

We may share Your Personal Data in the following situations:

  • With other Users: as described under "What Other Users Can See" above.
  • With Service Providers: with the providers listed below, who process data on Our behalf and under contract in order to run the Service.
  • For legal reasons: as described under "Disclosure of Your Personal Data" below.
  • For business transfers: We may share or transfer Your Personal Data in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of Company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of Our business to another company.
  • With Affiliates: We may share Your Personal Data with Our affiliates, in which case We will require those affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy. Affiliates include Our parent company and any other subsidiaries, joint venture partners or other companies that We control or that are under common control with Us.
  • With Your consent: We may disclose Your Personal Data for any other purpose with Your consent.

Service Providers We Use

We rely on a small number of providers to operate the Service. Each processes Personal Data on Our behalf, for the purpose described, and not for its own purposes:

  • Supabase hosts Our database, Our authentication system and Our file storage. Your Account, Your profile, Your Groups, Your messages and Your uploaded photographs and voice messages are stored there. See the Supabase Privacy Policy.

  • Twilio delivers the SMS message containing Your sign-in code. It receives Your phone number and the code for that purpose. See the Twilio Privacy Notice.

  • Cloudflare provides the bot check that runs before a sign-in code is sent, as described under "Bot and Abuse Protection". See the Cloudflare Turnstile Privacy Addendum.

  • Expo operates the push notification service that forwards Our notifications to Apple and Google for delivery to Your Device, as described under "Push Notifications". See the Expo Privacy Policy.

  • Apple and Google distribute the Application and operate the notification services that deliver notifications to Your Device. Their handling of Your information is governed by their own privacy policies.

Retention of Your Personal Data

The Company will retain Your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use Your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with Our legal obligations (for example, if We are required to retain Your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce Our legal agreements and policies.

Where possible, We apply shorter retention periods and/or reduce identifiability by deleting, aggregating, or anonymizing data. Unless otherwise stated, the retention periods below are maximum periods ("up to") and We may delete or anonymize data sooner when it is no longer needed for the relevant purpose. We apply different retention periods to different categories of Personal Data based on the purpose of processing and legal obligations:

  • Account Information

    • Your Account, profile and profile photographs: kept for as long as Your Account exists. Deleting Your Account removes them as described under "Delete Your Personal Data".

  • Content

    • Messages, chat photographs and voice messages: kept for as long as the chat exists, so that the members of both Groups can read their conversation. A message You delete stops being shown immediately.
    • Membership history, including Groups You have left: kept for as long as Your Account exists, because the Service shows it back to You.

  • Usage Data

    • Server logs (IP addresses, access times): up to 24 months for security monitoring and troubleshooting purposes.
    • Application usage statistics: up to 24 months to understand feature adoption and service improvements.

  • Safety records

    • Reports of abuse and the message snapshots attached to them: up to 24 months after the report is resolved, so that repeated behaviour can be recognised.
    • Push tokens: until You sign out, the Application is uninstalled, or the Device is used with a different Account.

We may retain Personal Data beyond the periods stated above for different reasons:

  • Legal obligation: We are required by law to retain specific data.
  • Legal claims: Data is necessary to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
  • Safety: Data is necessary to investigate abuse or to prevent someone We have removed from returning.
  • Your explicit request: You ask Us to retain specific information.
  • Technical limitations: Data exists in backup systems that are scheduled for routine deletion.

You may request information about how long We will retain Your Personal Data by contacting Us.

When retention periods expire, We securely delete or anonymize Personal Data according to the following procedures:

  • Deletion: Personal Data is removed from Our systems and no longer actively processed.
  • Backup retention: Residual copies may remain in encrypted backups for a limited period consistent with Our backup retention schedule and are not restored except where necessary for security, disaster recovery, or legal compliance.
  • Anonymization: In some cases, We convert Personal Data into anonymous statistical data that cannot be linked back to You. This anonymized data may be retained indefinitely for research and analytics.

Transfer of Your Personal Data

Your information, including Personal Data, is processed at the Company's operating offices and in any other places where the parties involved in the processing are located. This means that this information may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of Your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ from those of Your jurisdiction. Our Service Providers operate internationally, and Your information is stored and processed in the United States.

Where required by applicable law, We will ensure that international transfers of Your Personal Data are subject to appropriate safeguards and, where relevant, supplementary measures. The Company will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that Your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of Your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place, including the security of Your data and other personal information.

Delete Your Personal Data

You have the right to delete or request that We assist in deleting the Personal Data that We have collected about You.

You may edit Your profile, Your photographs and Your answers at any time from within the Application, and You may leave a Group at any time.

The Application also lets You delete Your Account outright, from the settings screen. Deleting Your Account:

  • removes Your profile, Your profile photographs and Your identifying details;
  • removes Your memberships, including Your history of past Groups;
  • removes the messages You have sent;
  • removes any Group You created, together with that Group's photographs, its chats and its suggestions, because a Group cannot continue without its leader; and
  • removes Your sign-in, so that Your phone number is no longer associated with an Account.

Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone. Signing in again with the same phone number creates a new, empty Account.

You may also contact Us to request access to, correct, or delete any Personal Data that You have provided to Us. Please note, however, that We may need to retain certain information when We have a legal obligation or lawful basis to do so, including the exception described under "Reports and Safety".

Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where You live, You may have the right to request access to the Personal Data We hold about You, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or request that We restrict certain processing, to withdraw a consent You have given, and to receive a copy of certain data in a portable form. Where the Service itself provides a way to do one of these things, using it is the quickest route; otherwise, contact Us using the details at the end of this Privacy Policy and We will respond within the period required by the law applicable to You.

We will not discriminate against You for exercising any of these rights. If You are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom and You believe We have not handled Your Personal Data properly, You also have the right to lodge a complaint with Your local supervisory authority.

Disclosure of Your Personal Data

Business Transactions

If the Company is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, Your Personal Data may be transferred. We will provide notice before Your Personal Data is transferred and becomes subject to a different Privacy Policy.

Law Enforcement

Under certain circumstances, the Company may disclose Your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g. a court or a government agency).

Other Legal Requirements

The Company may disclose Your Personal Data in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to:

  • Comply with a legal obligation
  • Protect and defend the rights or property of the Company
  • Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service
  • Protect the personal safety of Users of the Service or the public
  • Protect against legal liability

Security of Your Personal Data

The security of Your Personal Data is important to Us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. While We strive to use commercially reasonable means to protect Your Personal Data, We cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Traffic between the Application and Our servers is encrypted in transit. Access to each record is enforced by Our database rather than by the Application alone, so that a User can read only the profiles, Groups and chats they are entitled to see. Uploaded photographs and voice messages are held in private storage and reached only through short-lived authenticated links.

Your messages are not end-to-end encrypted. They are encrypted in transit and stored on Our infrastructure in a form We are technically able to read, which is what allows Us to act on a report of abuse. Please bear this in mind when deciding what to send.

Bot and Abuse Protection

When You request a verification code to sign in, We use Cloudflare Turnstile to confirm that the request comes from a person rather than an automated system. This protects the Service from abuse and prevents fraudulent charges for messages We would otherwise be billed for. Turnstile runs invisibly and requires no action from You.

Turnstile collects signals including Your IP address, TLS fingerprint, User-Agent and the site identifier of the Application. Cloudflare states that the purpose of collecting these signals "is not to identify, profile or target any individuals but solely to detect and block bots". This processing is described in the Cloudflare Turnstile Privacy Addendum.

We also limit how many messages a single Account can send in a short period, in order to prevent flooding.

Reports and Safety

The Application lets You report a message, a person or a Group, and lets You send Us a bug report. A report tells Us who submitted it, what was reported, the reason You selected and anything You chose to add.

When You report a message, We store a copy of that message's text as it stood at the moment You reported it. We do this because a sender can delete a message, and without a copy the deletion would destroy the evidence before anyone could review it. A message snapshot taken in this way is retained even if the message is later deleted, and may be retained after the sender deletes their Account, for as long as is necessary to review the report, to act on it, and to recognise repeated behaviour.

Reports are readable only by Us. Other Users cannot see whether they have been reported or who reported them.

Children's and Minors' Privacy

The Service is not directed to, and We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from, anyone under the age of 18. You must be at least 18 years old to use Bool, and the Application does not offer an age below 18.

If You are a parent or guardian and You believe Your child has provided Us with Personal Information, please contact Us. If We become aware that We have collected Personal Information from anyone under the age of 18, We will close the Account and take steps to remove that information from Our servers as soon as reasonably possible.

Links to Other Websites

Our Service may contain links to other websites that are not operated by Us, including links inside Content posted by other Users. If You click on a third-party link, You will be directed to that third party's site. We strongly advise You to review the Privacy Policy of every site You visit.

We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third-party sites or services.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update Our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify You of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

We will let You know via a prominent notice on Our Service, prior to the change becoming effective, and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact Us

If You have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or wish to exercise any of Your privacy rights, You can contact Us:

  • By email: bool@8burgs.com