Privacy Policy

Draft v0.2 — 13 July 2026 — for legal review, not yet in force

This policy explains how Known handles your personal information, as required by the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA"). It is written to be read, not skimmed — it is short because we collect little.

Responsible party: Known Dating (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2026/574467/07 ("Known", "we"), Unit 5 Bedford Mews, 0A Bedford Street, Vredehoek, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa. Information Officer: Milan de Kock — admin@knowndating.co.za.

1. The unusual thing about Known — read this first

On most apps, you write your own profile. On Known, a trusted friend (your matchmaker) writes your profile and shares information about you. This means:

  • Your matchmaker gives us personal information *about you* — your name, age, photo, and their description of you. They confirm to us that they have your permission before doing so, and your profile is not visible to anyone until you have reviewed and approved it. If your matchmaker materially changes it later, it is hidden again until you re-approve. You can see, correct, or have removed anything they write about you at any time.
  • You give us information about *yourself* when you set your Dating Mandate — your boundaries, availability, and preferences.
  • Matchmakers see information about the singles they serve, and other matchmakers' singles, only as needed to arrange introductions. There is no public directory. Singles are never browsable by other singles or by the public.

2. What we collect

Account information (from you): name, email address, optional phone number, and password (held by our authentication provider — we never see it).

Profile information (written by your matchmaker, with your permission): first name, age, gender, general area (never your address), one photo, and your matchmaker's endorsement of you.

Invite details (from the friend who invites you, before you join): when a matchmaker invites someone to Known, we hold the first name, WhatsApp number, endorsement and profile answers (the first thing they'd tell someone about you, what you're doing now, what you always end up talking about) the matchmaker entered, so the invite can be sent and the profile is ready the moment the friend arrives. The link stops working after 14 days, and we delete these details from unaccepted or withdrawn invites.

Dating Mandate (from you): who you are open to meeting (gender, age range), how important faith is to you, your dating intention, whether you have children and whether you would date someone with children (both optional), availability windows, approved date formats, dealbreakers, and any private notes to your matchmakers.

Special personal information. Some of what Known processes is "special personal information" under POPIA §26 — specifically information about your religious beliefs and your dating preferences (who you are interested in meeting). This can come from you (your Dating Mandate) or from your matchmaker (the faith and life summary they write, and faith-related content in their endorsements). We process it only with your explicit consent, which we ask for — and record — during onboarding, before any of it is collected, and only for the purpose of arranging introductions consistent with your stated boundaries. You may withdraw this consent at any time (see section 7).

Activity information: matchmaker-to-matchmaker chat messages, date details, the short logistics messages you and your date can exchange around a confirmed date, network nudges (which person you asked your matchmakers to look into, and when — your matchmakers are emailed about these), your post-date feedback (shared with your matchmaker only in the summary form you choose), any safety reports you make, and any product feedback you send us through the in-app feedback button (seen by the Known team only).

What we do not collect: no GPS tracking, no contacts upload, no analytics or advertising trackers, no ID numbers, no payment details. We use only the essential session cookie that keeps you signed in — no tracking or advertising cookies.

3. What we use it for

  • Arranging introductions and dates within your boundaries — the service itself.
  • Sending you the emails the service needs: invites, date cards, changes to a date, feedback requests. These are service messages.
  • Occasionally telling you about Known itself and offers from our partners — for example, a discount at a coffee spot for your next date. You can opt out of these at any time, and partners never receive your personal information — offers come from us, not from them. *[Attorney: confirm POPIA §69 direct-marketing mechanics — whether an opt-out suffices for existing users or partner offers need opt-in consent, and the required opt-out wording in each message.]*
  • Safety and moderation: reviewing reports, enforcing our terms, and keeping records of safety incidents.
  • Legal compliance.

We do not sell or rent personal information to anyone, and we do not use your information to train AI models.

4. Who sees what

  • Your matchmakers see your profile, your mandate (including private notes you address to them), and summaries of your date feedback that you choose to share.
  • Other matchmakers see your profile and enough mandate information to judge compatibility — never your private notes or feedback.
  • Other singles whose mandates are mutually compatible with yours, within your matchmakers' trusted network, can see your first name, your matchmakers' signed endorsements of you, the profile notes your matchmakers wrote (why you're worth meeting, who would suit you, your faith and life summary), your preferred first-date formats, and your dating intention — never your photo, age, surname, location, or contact details. They cannot contact you; they can only ask their own matchmaker to look into an introduction.
  • Your date sees your first name, photo, and the details on the date card. Your surname, email, and phone number are not shared unless you share them. After a date, you can each choose to share your phone number — it becomes visible only if you both opt in, and both choices are recorded.
  • Administrators (currently the founding team) can access records to run the pilot and handle safety reports — when needed, that includes chat messages, private notes, and reports. We look only when the job requires it.
  • When you remove a matchmaker, their access to your profile, mandate, and notes ends immediately.
  • If you act as a matchmaker: other matchmakers can see your name, your suburb/area, your optional photo, who invited you to Known, how many singles you matchmake for, and connections you have in common — so people can recognise the real you and spot impostors. The phone number you provide is shown, partially masked, with a WhatsApp link, only to matchmakers you send connection requests to. None of this is shown to singles browsing or to the public. When someone joins through an invite link you created, we tell you their name and email, for the same reason.
  • If you link a couple account (matchmaking together with your partner): everything on your matchmaker side becomes visible to your partner — your singles' profiles and mandate details, your chats with other matchmakers, your vouches and dates — and everything they do is visible to you. You both confirm this explicitly before the link goes live, you appear to others as the couple (for example "Milan & Dannile"), and either of you can unlink at any time, which ends the sharing going forward. Your logins, emails, and passwords stay separate.
  • Nobody else. No public pages, no search engines, no data brokers.

5. Our service providers (operators)

We use a small number of providers to run Known. Each processes personal information on our instructions:

  • Supabase — database, authentication, and photo storage (hosted in the EU, Ireland region).
  • Vercel — application hosting (EU, Dublin region).
  • Resend — sends our transactional emails (United States).

Because Resend is in the United States, some information (your email address, first name, and date notification text) is transferred outside South Africa. We only do this as permitted by POPIA §72 — Resend is bound by contractual data-protection obligations that provide an adequate level of protection.

6. How long we keep it

  • Account, profile, and mandate data: for as long as your account is active.
  • Honest note about how deletion works during the pilot: closing your account blocks all access to it immediately, but the data is not erased automatically. To have it deleted, email admin@knowndating.co.za and we will delete your profile, mandate, photo, and chats. We may retain safety reports and the minimum records needed to enforce bans (POPIA §14 permits retention required for lawful purposes). A self-serve delete button is on our roadmap.
  • Backups cycle out on our providers' standard schedules (roughly 30 days).

7. Your rights under POPIA

You may at any time, free of charge:

  • Access — ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you (§23).
  • Correct — fix anything inaccurate, including anything your matchmaker wrote about you (§24).
  • Delete — ask us to delete your account and personal information (§24), subject to the safety-record retention in section 6.
  • Object / withdraw consent (§11(3)) — withdrawing consent must be as easy as giving it, so: email admin@knowndating.co.za and we will stop processing your special personal information without you having to delete your account. In the app, pausing matchmaking stops all new introductions and hides you from matching (your stored data remains until you ask for deletion), and removing a matchmaker ends their access immediately.

During the pilot, exercise these rights by emailing admin@knowndating.co.za — we will respond within 30 days at the latest. Because an access request in a dating app is itself a way to fish for information, we will verify your identity before disclosing anything, and we may refuse or redact parts of a response that would reveal another person's personal information — for example, the identity of someone who filed a safety report.

If you believe we have mishandled your information, you may also complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): complaints.IR@inforegulator.org.za · https://inforegulator.org.za.

8. How we protect it

Encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS) throughout; EU-hosted database with access restricted to the operating team; role-based access in the app so matchmakers only see what section 4 describes; signed, HTTP-only session cookies. Photos are stored in private cloud storage and served only through expiring signed links. Messages and notes are protected in transit and by access controls; encryption of message content at rest is planned. No security is perfect; if a breach ever compromises your information, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA §22 requires.

9. Children

Known is for adults 18+ only. We do not knowingly process information about anyone under 18, and we remove such accounts when found.

10. Changes

We will notify you in-app or by email of material changes to this policy. The version and date at the top always reflect the current text.