Last updated October 22, 2026

Privacy Policy

Gotcha is built so there’s as little about you as possible to collect, leak or hand over. This policy explains what the Gotcha app and joingotcha.com collect, why, and what you control. Gotcha is made by Joeckel Design & Development.

The short version

• We never store your ID or selfie. Our verification provider deletes them after the check.
• Other members only see the nickname you choose. Never your email, phone number, real name or photo.
• We never sell or rent your data, and there are no ads, ad trackers or data brokers.
• You can delete your account in the app at any time.

What we collect

• Sign-in: your email address or phone number, whichever you sign in with, and the sessions on your devices.
• Profile: the nickname you choose, your side (women’s or men’s), your area and your birth year.
• Verification result: whether you passed, the date, your side, your birth year and a reference number from our verification provider. Not your name, document details, ID images or selfie.
• Membership: whether your subscription is active and Apple’s transaction reference. Apple handles payment; we never see your card.
• What you post: posts, replies and photos you add, and the reports and blocks you make.
• Notifications: a push token if you allow notifications.
• Security: your IP address, used to limit abuse such as repeated sign-in attempts. Abuse counters keep only a one-way scrambled (hashed) form of it, never the address itself.
• Waitlist: your email, the side you’re joining, your city and state, which phone you have (iPhone or Android), the kind of device you signed up on, and the link that brought you.

How we use it

• To sign you in, verify you, show you your side and area, and run your membership.
• To check posts and replies against our rules before they appear, and to handle reports and removal requests.
• To send sign-in codes, reply notifications and, for the waitlist, an email when Gotcha launches in your area.
• To keep Gotcha secure and stop abuse.

We don’t use your data for advertising, and we don’t build profiles of the people members post about.

Who processes it for us

• Stripe Identity runs the ID and selfie check, then deletes the images and document details.
• Anthropic provides the AI that checks posts, replies and photos before they’re published. Under its commercial terms, this content isn’t used to train its models.
• Microsoft Azure (United States) hosts our servers, database and photos, encrypted at rest.
• Apple handles subscriptions and push notifications. Expo relays push notifications.
• Twilio sends sign-in codes by text. Resend sends emails.

Who can see what

• Members on your side in your area see your posts and replies with your nickname. Members on the other side can’t see them at all.
• Nobody else sees your email, phone number, birth year or verification details.
• A small number of Gotcha staff can access what’s needed to moderate and support the app.

Legal requests

We disclose information only when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, such as a valid subpoena or court order, or to prevent serious harm. Because we don’t keep ID images, names or document details, there is very little about you we could ever provide.

How long we keep it

• Account data is kept while your account is open and erased when you delete it.
• When you delete your account, posts and replies you didn’t delete stay up without your name, shown as “Former member”, so other members’ conversations still make sense. Delete them first if you want them gone.
• Sign-in codes expire within 15 minutes. Abuse-prevention counters reset within a day and never hold your IP address, phone number or email in readable form.
• Waitlist entries are kept until we launch near you or you ask us to remove them.

Your choices and rights

• Delete your posts, replies or entire account in the app.
• Turn notifications off in your iPhone settings.
• Email support@joeckel.design to ask for a copy of your data, a correction or deletion. Depending on where you live, including California and other states with privacy laws, you have these rights by law, and we honor them for everyone. We won’t treat you differently for using them.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and at rest. Sign-in codes and session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes. Screenshots and screen recording are blocked on screens with posts. No system is perfectly secure, and if a breach affects you, we’ll tell you as the law requires.

Adults only

Gotcha is for people 18 and older. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone younger, and posts about minors are not allowed.

The website

joingotcha.com has no ads, no ad or social-media tracking pixels and no cookies. To see which pages are useful, we count visits ourselves: the page you viewed, the site that sent you, how long you stayed and how far you scrolled, your time zone and screen size. It uses a random visit number that’s erased when you close the tab, never follows you to other sites and never reads what you type. Fonts load from Google Fonts. None of this applies to the Gotcha app.

Changes and contact

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we’ll tell you in the app first. Questions go to support@joeckel.design.