Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

• Your legal first and last name, date of birth and gender, which you type when you sign up (and which the ID check below compares with your ID), and a unique Display Name you choose at signup. Showing your age on your profile is optional and off unless you turn it on. (Accounts made between September 25 and early October 2026 took these from an ID check instead.)
• A WebAuthn passkey credential (a public key; we never see or store a password, and no biometric data ever leaves your own device or reaches us).
• A real-ID check with our verification provider (Didit), which you do within your first 30 days, any time before that if you want messages and the other features that wait for it, or when we ask because of something posted, said or reported about your account. Didit handles the ID image, and any photo of your face it asks for, under its own privacy practices. We have set Didit to delete them automatically one month after your check and not to use them to train its AI. Didit tells our server the name and date of birth it read; our server compares them with what you typed at signup, and then discards what it read. If the name matches and the ID shows an adult date of birth that differs from what you typed, your account's date of birth is set to the one on the ID; if the ID shows you are under 18, the account is suspended. We do not store the image of your ID or your ID number. We keep only whether the check passed, and a scrambled, one-way code made from your ID number, using a secret key only we hold, so that it cannot be turned back into the number and so that the same ID cannot open a second account. We use the result only to keep children off Connect, to tie messages, For hire, Real Deals and sign-in to our other apps to real people, and to keep out fake and duplicate accounts. Accounts that took the check at sign-up (September 25, 2026 to early October 2026) keep it, and accounts the founder has marked verified by hand have no ID check on record.
• To keep to one account per device and to keep children from trying again with a different birth date: a random token stored in a cookie in your browser, of which we keep only a scrambled, one-way code with your account; a scrambled, one-way code of a browser and device fingerprint (a signature of settings such as screen size and language, made in your browser, never your name or location), kept with your account and compared with others to flag possible duplicate accounts for review; and, if you are turned away at sign-up because of the date of birth you gave, a flag in a cookie for a year and a scrambled code of the fingerprint for 72 hours, so that a different date cannot simply be tried straight afterwards. We do not keep the date of birth that was turned away.
• If you ask to sign in to another Xatheryn app before your ID is verified: a cookie for up to one hour that remembers which app you were heading to (an address only, nothing about you), so we can take you there once your ID check passes.
• If you verify a business: the web address of its website, the email address you used at that website to receive a code, and the EIN you typed, of which we keep only a scrambled, one-way code (made with a secret only we hold, so the number cannot be read back), used only so that two different owners cannot both verify a business on one EIN. We do not check an EIN with the IRS and never show it, and the verified badge says only that the person who claimed the business received a code at an email address on its own website domain.
• If you wait in the Live line because too many people are live, your place in it, until you go live, leave it, or about six hours pass.
• If we ask you to verify your ID because of something posted, said or reported, the short reason and the deadline we gave you, until you verify.
• Your U.S. time zone, as your browser reports it (for example America/New_York). We use it only to switch your account to an adult account at 12:00 AM on your 18th birthday where you are. It is never shown to anyone.
• If you sign up with an invite code from a member or a business (from a link or a QR code), which member or business it was, so that they can be credited. A business owner sees only how many verified adults joined with the business's code and the free advertising days that earned, never who they were.
• Your device's GPS location, used to place you on the map for the Global Lock (local content filtering). Before anything leaves your device, the position is rounded to an area of roughly 5 kilometres (3 miles), and we store only that approximate position. To turn it into a city name, the rounded position is sent to a reverse-geocoding service (BigDataCloud), which may see your IP address. Other people only ever see a coarse, human-readable location label (e.g. "Raleigh, NC"), never your position, and accounts under 18 have no location label at all.
• Anything you choose to post: text, photos, videos, voice notes, your bio, profile song choice, shares/reposts of other people's posts, comments, direct messages, and Real Deals listings, bids and comments. If you use the eye on a Real Deals listing, we keep your private Watching list of which listings you watch; sellers are never told who is watching.
• If you go live (Connect Live, 18 and older): your live title, who it's for (followers or all members), and while you are on air, the video itself, the chat your viewers send, and the flames they tap. The video is stored only while you are live and is deleted when the live ends; chat and flames are kept only in memory and are gone when it ends. A clip you choose to save is made on your own device and saved to your device only; we never receive it.
• A record of notifications caused by your activity (likes, comments, follows, shares, and messages), so the person on the receiving end can see who did what and when. Only the recipient can see their own notifications.
• Family members you link to your account and how they are related to you (for example, mother or brother), once the other person accepts. For accounts created by a parent before 2026-09-17: the parent's government-issued photo ID, held only until reviewed and then permanently deleted, never shown to any other user.
• For hire (18 and older): if you take jobs, your business's service category, services and starting prices, how far you travel, your openings, and, for licensed trades, the license number you type in (we do not verify it), plus the business contact details on your business page. If you request a quote or take a job: the request, the time you pick, the job chat, and the invoice and receipt, which carry the legal names on both people's accounts, the business's contact details, an optional customer business name, the line items and amounts, and how the job was paid (cash, card in person, Venmo, check or other). We never ask for or store card or bank numbers, and no payment passes through us; Xatheryn LLC is never a payee. For each job we also hold the Service Agreement between the two people (the filled-in terms, any deposit, and any change orders), with each signer's legal name from their account and the date and time they tapped "I agree". We record when you accepted the For hire provider or customer promises, and which version. We also keep reviews of finished jobs, each business's count of finished jobs, and For hire reports and their reasons (for example no-show, abandoned job, property damage, non-payment or fake payment).
• If you take For hire jobs in a trade that usually needs insurance: your insurance company's name and phone number, your policy number and the date it runs out, as you typed them. They are shown only to the customer of a job (and to you), never on your public listing, and we do not check them. They are kept while your listing exists and removed when you clear them or delete the business.
• Reports you file against other users' content, and content or account signals that our moderation systems generate about your own activity (see Section 4).
• If you ask us to take down an intimate image (our Take It Down page, with or without an account): your typed full name (your electronic signature), your email address, whether you are the person pictured or acting for them and who you are to them, the links or description you give, your short statement about why it was shared without consent, whether the person may be under 18, and scrambled (hashed) forms of your email address and IP address, used to spot abuse of the form. If you were signed in, the request is tied to your account. We do not ask you for the image itself.
• When you upload a photo or video: a scrambled fingerprint of the file (a code that cannot be turned back into the picture), stored so that identical copies can be found and removed if the picture is later the subject of a Take It Down request.
• If you tag Echo (our public AI account) in a comment: the comment and Echo's public reply, visible the same as any other comment. See Section 5.
• Push notifications: the subscription token your browser issues for this site, which lets us deliver a notification to that device. We do not ask for an email address or phone number to create your account, so notifications are how we reach you about replies, safety and your account, and we remind members who have them off to turn them on. The reminder is remembered in your browser only (when you last pressed "Not now"). The token is tied to your account and that browser, and is deleted automatically once your browser reports it as expired or unsubscribed. You can turn notifications off in your browser at any time.
• A record of each time you accept the Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy: which version, when, and a scrambled (hashed) form of your IP address and your browser type, kept so we can show what you agreed to. We cannot turn the hashed address back into your IP address.
• Standard technical data generated by using any web service, for example, the fact that a request was made and roughly when, to the extent our hosting infrastructure logs it for security and reliability.
• The country your connection comes from, as reported by our network provider (Cloudflare) from your IP address. Xatheryn Connect is only available in the United States, so each request is checked against it and blocked if it comes from outside the United States. We don't store this country.

2. Children's privacy

Xatheryn Connect is for people 18 and older. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. We ask for a date of birth at sign-up and check it against an ID within the first 30 days or when we ask (Section 1). If we learn, from an ID check, a report, or anything else, that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will suspend it, and we may delete the personal information we hold about that person, except for what we must keep to deal with a safety report, and keep a minimal scrambled record of the device so that it cannot be used to open another account until that person is 18. A parent or guardian who believes a child has an account can contact the site administrator, and we will act on it. We do not show targeted advertising based on personal information to any account we know belongs to a minor.

3. Advertising

The Media (photo/video) feed reserves a slot for an ad every 6 posts, and pages may also show ads served by Google AdSense. When an ad is served, Google may collect your IP address, device and browser information and cookies, as described in Google's own privacy policy. We do not load the ad network for any account we know belongs to a minor (under 18), and we will not knowingly direct targeted advertising based on personal information at one. Signed-out visitors and adults may see ads. You can manage Google's ad personalization at adssettings.google.com.

4. Automated moderation and how we use your information

We use your information to operate the product: show you and others local content within your selected radius, let people find and follow each other, enable messaging, and operate the Real Deals marketplace. Content you post or send may be evaluated by a combination of deterministic rules and a self-hosted AI content classifier operated on infrastructure we control, to detect policy violations such as threats, harassment, spam, or prohibited marketplace conduct; that evaluation happens on our own infrastructure and is not sent to a third-party AI vendor. An automated decision from this system can result in content being blocked, flagged for human review, or, in limited safety-critical cases, an account restriction, before any person reviews it; you may request human review of such a decision as described in the Terms of Service. We do not sell your data to third parties, and we do not use the content of your private messages for any purpose other than delivering them and, where applicable, the moderation and safety review described here.

For an account that has not yet verified its ID, what it writes in public (posts, comments, its bio, live chat) is also read by a simple automatic check for a statement, about the writer, that they are under 18 (such as their age or school year). If it finds one, the account is asked to verify its ID within 48 hours; nothing is kept of what was written for this, only that the check was asked. Accounts that have verified their ID are not checked this way, and private messages are not read for it.

The same Hall Monitor checks cover For hire: business listing text and service names, quote requests, the filled-in parts of Service Agreements and change orders, job chat messages, invoice lines and notes, and reviews are all scanned before they are saved or shown.

5. Echo (public AI account)

Echo is a public AI account, not a private companion or 1:1 chat assistant. Echo does things other people can see: it posts a daily news and weather roundup from its own account, it may leave one comment of its own on a public post, and it replies publicly when you tag it in a comment. Those replies are ordinary comments, visible to anyone who can see that post, and are stored like any other comment. Echo's replies are written by an AI that runs on our own infrastructure, and they are not screened by our automated moderation system before they appear; they can be wrong, blunt or use strong language, and you can report one like any other comment. When you tag Echo, the words of your comment, the post it is on, and a few facts from your account (your bio, your gender and relationship status if you set them, your Top 5, your profile song and your five most recent personal posts) are given to Echo so it can reply, and Echo may look your question up in Xatheryn Search. You can hide swear words for yourself under Echo settings in the account menu. Tagging Echo requires following its account and is rate limited. Echo's weather content uses the coordinates saved on your account, sent to the National Weather Service to retrieve a forecast for your area; we do not send them your name, handle, or message.

We may adjust Echo's behavior configuration at any time; doing so does not change how your conversation data itself is stored, retained, or protected as described in this policy.

6. Who can see what

• Your Display Name, legal name, posts, and follower/following lists are public.
• Your precise location is never shown to anyone, only the coarse label, and only to the extent you choose to show one. The location you save is rounded to an area a few miles across before it is stored, so we do not keep your exact position.
• Pictures and voice notes you send in direct messages are private to the people in that conversation. They are not on any public address and are not kept in your browser's or our network's shared cache. Our administrators and moderators can see them only while reviewing a report.
• Xatheryn Search: if you have verified your ID (the check in Section 1), your posts, your profile (your Display Name and bio), your business pages, and your lives open to all members (only while on air) are sent to Xatheryn Search, our own search engine, the moment you post, edit or delete them, and appear in its results. Search shows your Display Name, never your legal name, and never your location, email, or phone number. Opening a post, profile, or live from Search requires signing in to Xatheryn Connect. A business page is also sent when the business itself has earned the "Verified owner" badge (an EIN and an email at its own website domain), even if its owner has not verified an ID. Never sent to Search: your posts or profile if you have not verified your ID, anything from an account that is under 18 or whose age we don't know, direct messages, comments, voice notes (they expire), followers-only lives, and anything else that is erased and not kept. If someone 18 or older mentions an account under 18 in a post, that account's Display Name is removed from what Search receives. When you delete something, or your account is deleted, it is removed from Search right away, and in every case within minutes. Xatheryn Search is run by us on our own servers; this is not sharing with a third party.
• Private messages are only between people who have each verified their ID. A conversation with someone who has not verified is closed to new messages from either side; it is kept, and stays readable to you. Until you verify, you cannot be messaged and you cannot message anyone, and your posts and profile are not in Search.
• For hire: a listing shows the business's category, services, starting prices, rating, count of finished jobs and reviews (reviews show no reviewer name), and whether a license number was provided (shown as "License # provided", not the number itself). Quote requests, job chats, invoices and receipts, Service Agreements and change orders are visible only to the two people on that job, never on any public page. The Service Agreement shows each person's legal name to the other. While a report has frozen a job's records, our administrators can also see them. On an invoice or receipt, each person's legal name and the business's contact details are shown to the other person on that job. A business page in Xatheryn Search may include its For hire category and service names, never legal names or anything about jobs. For hire is only for people 18 and older, and nothing from an account under 18 is ever shown in it.
• Family links you and the other person have accepted may be shown on your profiles, including how you are related when a family member is in your Top 5.
• A parent's ID image from the former parent-created account process is visible only to the site administrator reviewing it, and only until that review is complete.
• A report you file, and its contents, are visible only to the site administrator or a moderator reviewing it, not to the person you reported.
• A Take It Down request, and what is written in it, is visible only to the administrators and moderators handling it, and to you through the private link we give you. The person whose photo or video was removed is told that it was removed after a request under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, and never who made the request.

7. Data retention

We retain your account information and content for as long as your account is active, and for a reasonable period afterward as needed to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and maintain security logs. When you delete a specific post, comment, or message, we remove it from normal display immediately; a residual copy may persist for a limited time in backups or moderation/audit records before being purged in the ordinary course. A deleted post or profile is also removed from Xatheryn Search (see Section 6). Live video is not kept after a live ends. When you delete your account (Settings, Delete account), it and the content, messages, follower lists, passkeys and history tied to it are permanently deleted as soon as you confirm from the email we send you, and are removed from Xatheryn Search. This cannot be undone. Copies in our backups are purged in the ordinary course. We keep only what we are permitted or required to keep (for example, a moderation record tied to a safety incident, or records needed for a pending legal matter), and a record that the account was deleted. Deleting an account waits while a report against it is open, or while it has an unfinished For hire job or a Real Deals listing that is active or in a pending sale.

ID check: we keep neither the image of your ID nor your ID number. Our verification provider (Didit) is set, by us, to keep the image of your ID and any photo of your face for one month after your check and then to delete them automatically and permanently; its own privacy policy also applies. We keep that the check passed, and the scrambled one-way code of your ID number, for as long as your account exists. The name, date of birth and gender you gave at sign-up stay on your account for as long as it exists.

Take It Down requests: we keep the request and what we did about it, including your name, email address and what you wrote, for one year after we decide it, and then permanently erase those personal details. We keep a shorter record without your name or contact details, for as long as we need to show that we followed the law: when the request arrived, what was decided and when, and a scrambled fingerprint of what was removed so that the same file cannot be uploaded again. A photo or video removed after a request is deleted from our servers and we ask our network provider (Cloudflare) to clear its cached copies. The exception is a photo or video of a person who may be under 18: the law requires us to keep it, so we keep the file, hidden from everyone except our staff, and do not delete it. We also keep a report about it, with its saved evidence.

For hire jobs are kept only briefly. Connect keeps reviews and each business's count of finished jobs. Everything else about a job (the quote request, the job chat, and the invoice and receipt) is deleted 24 hours after the job closes, whether it was paid, closed unpaid, declined or cancelled. The Service Agreement and change orders are part of those records. We remind both people before that happens. If an invoice is not marked paid within 30 days, the job closes as unpaid and then follows the same 24-hour deletion. Evidence freeze: if either person reports the other during a job or before its records are deleted, that job's Service Agreement, change orders, chat, and invoice or receipt are kept for 30 days from the report (visible only to the two people and our administrators), and then deleted in the normal way. The business and the customer are responsible for keeping their own copies (Save as PDF, Print or Share) for their records and taxes. A review slot a customer never uses is deleted after 30 days, and a quote request nobody answers is closed after 7 days and then deleted like any other closed job.

8. Data security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect your information, including passkey-based authentication instead of passwords. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected users and any applicable regulator as required by law.

9. Your choices and rights

You can narrow your discovery radius, change your profile at any time, and delete your account yourself from Settings (we email a confirmation link to the address you enter, and you must confirm with your passkey first). To take something out of Xatheryn Search, delete it; editing it updates Search too. A user aged 13-15 who blocks a linked parent will have their account automatically suspended rather than deleted, reversible from that parent's Settings. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal information, which may include the right to know what we've collected about you, the right to request deletion or correction, the right to obtain a portable copy of your data, and the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell personal information) or of targeted advertising. You may exercise any of these rights by contacting the site administrator through the app; we will not discriminate against you for exercising them.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the product changes. We will update the date at the top of this page when we do, and for material changes we will make reasonable efforts to provide additional notice (for example, an in-app notification) before the change takes effect.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy, or requests to exercise a privacy right described above, can be sent to Xatheryn LLC through the site administrator in the app.