Privacy Policy

Who we are

Perch is operated by Perch Dating, LLC, a Missouri limited liability company (“Perch”, “we”, “us”). We are the controller of the information described here, including for the purposes of the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR. Our address and email are in clause 18.

Perch is offered in the United States and the United Kingdom. Before the app is available in the United Kingdom we will appoint a representative there under Article 27 of the UK GDPR and publish their details in clause 18, and you will be able to contact them about anything in this policy.

What we collect

When you create an account and build a profile, you give us:

• Your email address — how we identify your account and reach you;
• Your first name — shown on your profile;
• Your city — shown on your profile, and used to introduce you to people within reach of you;
• Your bio — whatever you choose to write about yourself;
• Your photographs — the pictures you upload to your profile;
• Your identity verification — a photograph of your government-issued identity document and a selfie, which our identity verification provider compares on our behalf. We receive only the result of the check and a reference number.

We also hold the messages you exchange with other members, anything you send us when you contact support or report someone, and reports other members make about you.

We ask for your city as text. We do not collect GPS or precise device location, and we do not track your movements. Your IP address, which we record as described in clause 4, indicates only a general area.

Identity verification involves biometric processing: our verification provider measures the face in your selfie and compares it with the face in your document. We ask for your explicit consent before this happens, and you cannot be verified without it. The provider does this on our behalf and under contract; neither we nor the provider use your face data for anything else, and the document images, the selfie and any face data derived from them are deleted within 30 days of verification. The images, the name and date of birth on your document, and the face data never reach us. We keep only the fact that you were verified, when, and a reference number from the provider. Apart from this, we do not create face templates, faceprints or any other biometric identifier from your photographs, and we do not allow the companies that store or review photographs for us to do so.

Your answers and your feedback

Two other sets of information matter more to Perch than they would to an ordinary app, because they are what the matching runs on.

Onboarding answers

The questions we ask when you join, and your answers to them. These describe what you are looking for and what matters to you, and they are the main input to which introductions you are offered.

Match feedback

What you tell us after an introduction — what worked, what did not, what you would change. We use it to reason about your later introductions, and it also helps us understand which introductions work in general.

What we collect automatically

When you use the app or the site, our systems record technical information: the device and operating system you are on, the app version, your IP address, crash and error reports, and a record of how you use the Service — when you open it, what you tap, which introductions you act on.

We use this to keep the Service working, to fix what breaks, to understand what is and is not useful, and to detect fraud and abuse.

The perch.dating website uses only the cookies needed to make it work. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking pixels on it. Because we do not track you across other sites, we do not respond differently to browser “Do Not Track” signals. Because we do not sell or share personal information, there is nothing for a Global Privacy Control signal to opt you out of; if that ever changes, we will honour it.

How we use it

We use what we hold to:

• create and run your account;
• build your profile and show it to the people we introduce you to;
• choose which introductions to offer you, using your answers, your profile and your feedback;
• improve how the matching itself reasons, so that later introductions are better than earlier ones;
• let you message and interact with the people you match with;
• keep members safe: reviewing reports, investigating conduct, detecting fake accounts, fraud and abuse, and enforcing our Terms;
• answer you when you contact us;
• send you service messages about your account and your introductions;
• keep the Service running, secure and free of defects; and
• comply with the law, and establish or defend legal claims.

Our legal grounds (UK and Europe)

If you live in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, the law asks us to say which legal ground we rely on for each use. We rely on:

• performing our contract with you — to create and run your account, build your profile, choose and offer introductions, and let you message your matches;
• your explicit consent — for the biometric face comparison used to verify your identity, for the onboarding answers that reveal your sexual orientation, religion or beliefs, health, or racial or ethnic origin (“special category” information), and for any marketing email. You can withdraw consent at any time by deleting the answers, unsubscribing, or closing your account;
• our legitimate interests — to keep members safe, detect fraud and fake accounts, enforce our Terms, improve the matching, keep the Service secure, and answer you. Where we rely on this ground we have checked that our interest is not outweighed by your rights, and you can object under clause 12;
• legal obligation — to comply with the law and respond to lawful requests.

Choosing introductions for you involves profiling: we use your answers, profile and feedback to predict who you may be compatible with. It does not produce a decision with legal or similarly significant effects on you, and you always decide whether to meet anyone.

We do not use your photographs in advertising or marketing without asking you first and getting your separate consent.

What other members see

Your first name, your city, your bio and your photographs are shown to members we introduce you to. That is what a profile is.

Your email address is never shown to other members. Neither are your onboarding answers, your feedback on matches, anything you send to support, or anything from your identity verification.

Anything you put in your profile or send in a message can be seen, saved or screenshotted by the person who receives it, whatever our rules say. Please treat your profile as public to the people you meet on Perch.

Who else we share it with

Outside the app itself, we share information in four situations.

Service providers

Companies that run parts of the Service for us: identity and age verification, hosting and cloud storage for our servers and your photographs, email delivery for account messages, crash and error reporting, and customer support tooling. They act on our instructions, may use the information only to provide their service to us, and are bound by contract to protect it.

Safety and the law

We disclose information where we reasonably believe we must, to comply with a law, a subpoena, a court order or a lawful request from a public authority, and where we reasonably believe it is necessary to investigate a breach of our Terms, to prevent fraud, or to protect the safety of any person. Where a member is reported for serious misconduct, we may share the report and the relevant account information with law enforcement.

Professional advisers

Our lawyers, accountants and insurers, where they need it and under a duty of confidence.

A change of ownership

If Perch is merged, acquired, or its assets are sold, information may pass to the acquirer as part of that transaction. We will tell you before your information becomes subject to a materially different privacy policy.

We do not sell your information

If that ever changes, we will say so here first, give you notice, and provide a working way to opt out before anything is shared.

How long we keep it

We keep your information while your account is open, and delete or anonymise it after you close it, save where we need to keep something longer. The reasons we would are:

• a legal obligation to keep a record;
• an unresolved dispute, claim or investigation;
• enforcing a ban, so that somebody removed for harming other members cannot immediately return under a new account;
• a safety report, kept so that a pattern of conduct across several reports is not lost; and
• backups, which are overwritten on their own schedule rather than individually edited.

In practice: identity document images, selfies and any face data derived from them are deleted within 30 days of verification; we delete or anonymise your account information within 30 days of you closing your account; backups are overwritten within 35 days; safety reports and moderation records about an account are kept for six years from the last report, which is the period within which most legal claims must be brought; and the hashed identifiers used to enforce a ban are kept for as long as the ban lasts.

Messages you have already sent to another member remain in that member’s copy of the conversation, in the same way an email you have sent stays in the recipient’s inbox.

How we protect it

We encrypt information in transit and at rest, restrict access to those who need it to do their job, and review our security arrangements as the Service grows.

No service can promise perfect security, and we do not. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Your choices

• Edit your profile at any time in the app. Changing your bio, city, photographs or name updates what other members see.
• Turn off notifications in the app or in your device settings. We will still send messages that are essential to your account.
• Unsubscribe from any marketing email using the link in it.
• Delete your account in the app. This removes your profile from the Service and stops further introductions, and we then handle the underlying data as set out in clause 9.

Your privacy rights

Wherever you live, and regardless of what your local law requires, you may ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and what we do with it;
• give you a copy of it in a portable form;
• correct anything inaccurate;
• delete it; and
• limit how we use it, where deleting it outright is not what you want;
• object to a use we base on our legitimate interests, or to any marketing; and
• withdraw consent you have given, without affecting what was done before you withdrew it.

Write to hello@perch.dating from the email address on your account, or contact us at the address in clause 18. We will respond within one month, and will tell you if we need longer. We may need to confirm it is really you before we act, and we may decline a request where the law allows us to — for instance, where deleting something would interfere with a safety investigation. If we decline, we will tell you why.

We will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.

If you live in the United Kingdom, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. If you live in the European Economic Area, you can complain to the data protection authority in your country. We would ask that you give us the chance to put it right first.

California residents

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA, you have the rights in clause 12, and we must set out what we collect in the categories the statute uses. In the twelve months before the date at the top of this page, we collect:

• Identifiers — your email address, your first name, your account identifier, your IP address and device identifiers;
• Personal information under Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80 — your name and email address, and your government identity document, which our verification provider handles on our behalf and we never receive;
• Biometric information — the face comparison our verification provider performs between your selfie and your document, on our behalf; it never reaches us and is deleted within 30 days as clause 9 explains;
• Commercial information — none, as Perch is free and we take no payments;
• Internet and network activity — how you use the app and the site, and crash and error reports;
• Geolocation — the city you type. We do not collect precise geolocation;
• Audio, visual and similar information — the photographs you upload;
• Inferences — conclusions our matching draws from your answers and feedback about who to introduce you to; and
• Other information you provide — your bio, your onboarding answers, your match feedback, and your messages.

We collect these from you, and generate the inferences ourselves. We use them for the purposes in clause 5 and disclose them to the recipients in clause 7. We do not sell personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing for you to opt out of.

Some of what we collect is sensitive personal information under California law: your government identity document and the biometric comparison used to verify it, and onboarding answers that reveal your sexual orientation and, if you choose to answer, your religion or beliefs. We ask for your explicit consent before verification and before those questions, and questions that are not needed to make introductions can be skipped. We use this information only to provide the Service you have asked for — that is, to verify members and make introductions — and for the permitted purposes in § 1798.121. We do not use them to infer characteristics about you for any other purpose.

You may use an authorised agent to make a request, if you give them written permission and we can verify it. Under California’s “Shine the Light” law, we confirm that we do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes.

Other US states

Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana and a growing number of other states give their residents rights over personal information. We extend the rights in clause 12 to every member wherever they live, so you do not need to work out whether your state has passed a law yet.

Where your state gives you a right to appeal a decision we make on a privacy request, you may appeal by replying to our response or writing to hello@perch.dating. We will respond within the period your state’s law allows and, if we maintain our decision, tell you how to raise it with your state Attorney General.

We do not use personal information for targeted advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it for profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects about you. Choosing which people to introduce you to is not a decision of that kind.

Several of these states require your consent before we process sensitive information such as biometric data, sexual orientation, religion or health. We ask for that consent during onboarding, before verification and before the questions that need it, and you can withdraw it by deleting the answers or closing your account. Withdrawing consent to verification means closing your account, because every member must be verified. If you live in Illinois, the consent we ask for before verification is the written release required by the Biometric Information Privacy Act, and the retention schedule in clause 9 applies to your biometric information.

Children

Perch is for adults. The Service is not directed to anyone under 18, we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and holding an account requires you to be 18 or over.

If we learn that we hold information about a minor, we delete it and close the account. If you believe a minor is using Perch, tell us at hello@perch.dating and we will act on it.

Where your information is held

Perch operates from the United States, and your information is stored and processed there by us and by the service providers in clause 7. If you live in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, that means your information is held outside your country, where privacy law differs. We apply this policy, and the UK GDPR and EU GDPR as they apply to us, to your information wherever it is held; our contracts with service providers require them to protect it; and you keep every right in clause 12. You can ask us for more detail about these safeguards at any time.

Changes to this policy

We will update this policy as the Service develops or as the law requires. When we make a material change — particularly one that widens what we collect or who we share it with — we will update the date at the top of this page and give you notice in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Contact

Privacy questions, and requests under clause 12, should go to:

Perch Dating, LLC
117 S Lexington Street, Ste 100
Harrisonville, MO 64701
hello@perch.dating