Privacy Policy

Who we are

FomoMate (“we”, “us”) runs fomomate.com, a place for Non-Resident Indians to find people who share a city, a language or where they are from. We decide how the information described here is used, and we are responsible for it. You can reach us at privacy@fomomate.com.

What we collect

• From Google, when you sign in. Your name, email address, profile picture and an account ID. Sign-in runs through Auth0, so we never see your password.
• Your profile. Whatever you choose to fill in: your name, a photo, your city, LinkedIn, Instagram, a mobile number, and any extra details you add yourself. Your name and city are required on your own profile, and the rest is optional.
• Your visibility choice. Whether “Show me in discovery” is on.
• If you run an organisation. Its name and settings, the email address you sign in with, the invitation links you make, and its API key. We keep the key only in a scrambled form that cannot be turned back into the key.
• If an organisation added you. What its list held for the profile fields above, and any notes it keeps about its own people.
• Technical records. Our hosting provider keeps short-lived request logs, such as an IP address, the browser and the page asked for, to run the service and protect it from abuse.

Before you add something

Your profile shows what you put on it to everyone who can see it. A detail you add can say something about your ethnic origin, religion or beliefs. A mobile number is for your private groups alone: only the people in a private group with you see it, never the public. Every other row on your profile has an eye beside it that keeps that one to yourself; then nobody else sees it: a kept name calls you Anonymous, a kept city takes you off the map. Add these only if you are comfortable with that. Putting them on a visible profile is your choice to make them public, and you can remove them at any time. Please do not add anything about other people.

How we use it

• To run your account, your profile and your groups. We need this to give you the service you signed up for.
• To show your profile, your city on the map and the groups you are in to the people allowed to see them, as far as your visibility setting allows. You control this, and you can change it at any time.
• To keep the service working and secure, and to stop misuse. This is in our legitimate interest and yours.
• To meet a legal obligation, if one ever applies.

We do not use your information for advertising. We do not sell it or rent it, and we do not make automated decisions about you beyond suggesting people you have something in common with.

Who can see what

• A visible profile can be seen by anyone on the internet, whether signed in or not. That covers the map, search, Explore and your profile page, and search engines such as Google can list that page.
• A hidden profile is off the map, out of search and out of Explore, and its page opens only for you. Your groups are kept.
• A profile private to an organisation can be seen only by that organisation’s people and administrators.
• Your email address is never shown on your profile. If you help run an organisation, its other administrators can see the email address you sign in with.
• FomoMate’s administrators can open any record, including hidden ones, to run and protect the service.

Organisations

An organisation, such as an association, a bureau or an alumni group, can bring a list of its people to FomoMate. It is responsible for having the right to share those details with us. People it adds are private to it unless it chooses to list them publicly. Which organisation added somebody is never shown publicly. Notes an organisation keeps about its people are shown only to its own administrators.

An organisation can send you a link. You can use it to claim the profile it made for you, which makes the profile yours to edit, hide or delete. Or you can join the organisation with your own profile. You can belong to one organisation at a time, so we ask before a link moves you from one to another.

If an organisation added you and you would rather not be there, ask the organisation to remove you. You can also write to us at privacy@fomomate.com and we will remove you.

Groups

A private group is a circle you make yourself, such as close friends or a team, by name. It holds its name, who is in it, the events posted to it (a title, a time, a place, a note, and what it takes to be on) and each member’s answer, In or Out, with when they gave it. Only the people in a group can see any of that; to anybody else the group does not exist. People join through a link that whoever made the group can reset at any time, or by an invitation one of its people sends: an invitation holds who asked whom, and when, until you join or decline it; the group sees whom it has asked. Your name and photo are shown to the group from your profile. A public group is a business’s, and open: its name, its city and its website can be seen by anybody, signed in or not. Anybody signed in can open one, see its events and who answered them, and join it; the people who joined are listed to each other, and only the business posts. You can leave at any time.

You can leave a group at any time, and whoever made it can remove you or delete the whole group, which removes its events and every answer with it. Deleting your profile does not delete the groups you made; delete those first if you want them gone.

Services we use

These companies handle information on our behalf, and only to provide their service:

• Auth0 (Okta): sign-in.
• Google: sign-in with your Google account, and Google Maps Places for cities. The city picker on the profile form loads from Google in your browser. When a city arrives typed, for example in an organisation’s list, our server asks Google for it, and sends only the city as written.
• MongoDB Atlas: the database that stores profiles, groups and events.
• Vercel: hosting, and the request logs mentioned above.
• Esri (ArcGIS): the map images. Your browser loads them from Esri, which sees your IP address.

These providers may handle information outside your country, including in the United States. Where the law requires it, those transfers are covered by the providers’ standard contractual clauses or an equivalent safeguard.

Cookies and storage in your browser

We use one essential cookie that keeps you signed in, plus short-lived cookies while you sign in. Auth0 sets them, and they are encrypted. We use no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.

Your browser also keeps a few things on your device to make the app easier to use. These are the people and places you opened recently, and an unsaved profile form in the tab you are using. It also keeps a scrambled tag of who is signed in, so one person’s history is not shown to the next. None of this is sent to us. Signing out clears your history. An unsaved form stays in that tab until you close it or someone else signs in there.

How long we keep it

• Your profile is kept until you delete it. “Delete my account”, at the foot of your profile, removes your profile and your photo, immediately.
• Not removed by that: an organisation you run, which you delete from its Settings, and your sign-in record at Auth0. Write to us and we will remove that record.
• Records an organisation added are kept until the organisation removes them or deletes itself.
• Request logs are kept by our hosting provider for a short period, and then deleted.
• Backup copies, where they exist, are deleted within 30 days.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can:

• See your profile at any time, and ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you.
• Correct it on the edit screen.
• Hide it with the eye beside your photo.
• Delete it with “Delete my account”.
• Object to how we use your information, or ask us to limit it.
• Withdraw a choice you made, such as being visible, by changing it.

For anything you cannot do on the site, write to privacy@fomomate.com. We answer within one month, and we may ask you to confirm the request comes from you. If you are in India, you may name someone to exercise these rights for you if you die or cannot act yourself. You can also complain to your data protection authority. Examples are the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK, your national authority in the EU, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, and the Data Protection Board of India.

Security

Information travels encrypted between your browser and our servers. Our providers also encrypt it while it is stored. Only the people who run FomoMate can reach the database. No service can promise perfect security. If a breach puts your information at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Children

FomoMate is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information about anyone younger. If you believe a child has a profile, write to us and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change affects how your information is used or who can see it, we will say so on the site before the change takes effect.

Contact

Questions, requests and complaints about privacy: privacy@fomomate.com.

A message you send FomoMate from inside the app (the Contact button) goes through EmailJS with the name, email and words you type into it, so that we can reply. The app itself emails nobody.