Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 18, 2026

Gio Labs, LLC (“Kin,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates the Kin mobile application. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our app.

1. Information We Collect

Information You Provide

• Username (pseudonym) you choose during signup
• Real name (optional, if you add it in Settings)
• Phone number (optional, if you opt into phone verification for the ✓ verified badge or to enable Find Friends by contacts)
• Notification email address (optional)
• Bio text (optional, if you add it in Settings)
• Posts, replies, reactions, and other content you create
• Saves and bookmarks of other users’ posts
• Reports you submit about other users’ content
• Mute and block lists, follow and follower relationships you create
• Phone-number contacts you choose to share via Find Friends. Numbers are hashed on your device before being sent; raw phone numbers from your contacts never leave your device.

Information Collected Automatically

• Device location (GPS), read with your permission only when you tag a place on a post, to suggest nearby place names
• Device push notification token, used to send you notifications about answers to your posts, messages, and moderation alerts
• Device information — platform (iOS or Android), operating system version, app version, build number, and over-the-air update identifier — collected once per cold launch to help us diagnose compatibility issues
• Crash reports, performance metrics, and diagnostic event logs (including a small amount of user-interaction breadcrumbs leading up to a crash) used to detect and fix bugs

2. How We Use Your Information

• To show your posts to the friends you've chosen, and theirs to you
• To attach a place name to a post when you choose to tag one
• To send you email and push notifications about activity on your posts
• To verify your phone number (if you opt in) so a ✓ verified badge can appear next to your name
• To match hashed phone contacts you share against the hashed phone numbers of other Kin users for Find Friends
• To enforce our community guidelines (moderation, bans, appeals), including automatic content scanning before posts are published
• To detect and recover from crashes, latency, and other technical problems
• To understand which app versions are in active use so we can troubleshoot version-specific issues

3. How We Share Your Information

Your username, real name (if provided), avatar color, and posts are visible only to the Kin users you have connected with. Posts are never public, and answers are private between the two people exchanging them.

We share data with the following third-party services:

• Supabase (database hosting and authentication) — stores all app data, including your profile, posts, location history, moderation records, and the device information described in Section 1
• Sentry (crash and performance monitoring) — receives crash logs, performance metrics, breadcrumb logs of recent user-interaction events, and your Kin user identifier so we can correlate errors with the affected account
• OpenAI (content moderation) — receives the text of each post and reply for automated policy-violation scanning before publication. No user identifiers, phone numbers, emails, or location data are sent with this content
• Twilio (SMS delivery) — receives your phone number if you opt into phone verification, in order to send the one-time verification code
• Resend (email delivery) — receives your notification email to send you reply and moderation notifications
• Expo (push notifications and app updates) — receives your device push token to deliver notifications, and serves over-the-air JavaScript updates of the Kin app
• Nominatim / OpenStreetMap and Google Maps Platform (reverse geocoding) — receive GPS coordinates to generate human-readable place labels; no user identifiers are sent
• Cloudflare (web hosting for gioapp.net) — receives IP addresses and standard web-server logs when you tap a gioapp.net link
• Apple App Store / Google Play (app distribution)

We do not sell your personal information. We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the safety of our users.

4. Location Data

Kin uses location sparingly. Specifically:

• When you tag a place on a post, Kin takes a single location reading to suggest nearby place names
• Location is never collected in the background or on a timer
• A place you attach to a post becomes part of that post and is stored on our servers (hosted by Supabase)

You can revoke location permission at any time through your device settings — everything except place suggestions works without it.

5. Data Retention

• Your posts, replies, and profile data are retained as long as your account is active
• If you delete your account, your data is hidden immediately and permanently deleted after 30 days
• Place tags you attach to posts are retained with the posts themselves
• Moderation reports and appeals are retained for enforcement purposes

6. Your Rights

• You can view and edit your profile information in the app’s Settings
• You can delete your account from Settings, which removes all your data after a 30-day grace period
• You can mute other users to hide their content from your feeds
• You can request information about your data by contacting us

7. Children’s Privacy

Kin is not intended for children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that we have collected such information, we will delete it promptly.

8. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the new policy in the app. Your continued use of Kin after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

9. Contact Us