Privacy Policy

What we collect

When you apply to Rovana, we collect:

• Identity information — your full name, date of birth, email address, phone number, and a photo. We collect these to verify you’re a real adult human and to surface you to other members.
• Identity verification data — a selfie and three-pose liveness video, processed by our verification partner Persona. Persona returns a verification result (verified, failed, or pending review). We retain the result and a Persona inquiry ID; Persona retains the underlying biometric data per their own retention policy.
• Intake answers — twelve questions covering cities you’ve lived in, languages you speak, your current life context, what kind of connections you’re looking for, your professional field, communities you’ve been part of, and what kinds of people you tend to click with. Some answers are visible to other members; others are visible only to Rovana’s curator for matching purposes.
• LinkedIn data (optional) — if you connect LinkedIn, we receive your profile name, headline, and company affiliations. We use this for context during application review. You can decline to connect LinkedIn without affecting your application.
• Photo metadata — when you upload a photo, we run face detection (Google Vision API) to confirm a single human face is present. We don’t run face recognition or identity matching against external databases.

After you’re approved as a member, we additionally collect:

• Messages you send to other members through Rovana. Messages are private to you and the recipient; Rovana retains them for safety review purposes.
• Trip declarations — if you tell us about an upcoming trip, we store the destination city and dates.
• Engagement signals — which proposals you saw, which you accepted, which conversations led to in-person meetings (when you mark them).
• Authentication tokens and session data — to keep you signed in across visits.
• Push notification tokens — if you enable push notifications on your device, we store the token to deliver notifications. You can disable push at any time in settings.

We do not collect or store your messaging content from outside Rovana. We do not track you across other websites. We do not sell or share your data with advertisers. We do not use your information to train AI models for any purpose other than directly serving Rovana’s matching and conversation features.

Why we collect it

We use your information to:

1. Verify you’re a real adult human. Real-name + photo + identity verification is core to Rovana being a curated network, not an anonymous one.
2. Match you with other members. Our curator and our matching engine use your intake answers, location, and engagement history to surface introductions we think you’d find valuable.
3. Deliver introductions and conversations. Push notifications, content-light emails, and in-app messaging require some of your data to function.
4. Keep Rovana safe. Reports, blocks, and operator review of conduct concerns require us to retain enough information to investigate.
5. Improve the matching engine. When you mark a conversation as “would meet again” or “not quite a fit,” that signal helps tune how we match future pairs. Your individual feedback is private to operators.
6. Comply with law. When legal process compels disclosure, we comply, but we contest overbroad requests.

We don’t use your information for advertising, behavioral targeting, sale to third parties, or any purpose not listed above.

Legal basis (GDPR users)

If you’re in the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland, our legal basis under GDPR Article 6 is:

• Contract performance for delivering the core service (matching, messaging, account management).
• Legitimate interests for fraud prevention, safety review, and improving the matching engine.
• Consent for optional features (LinkedIn connection, push notifications, marketing emails — none of which you receive without explicit opt-in).
• Legal obligation for tax, accounting, and law enforcement compliance.

You can withdraw consent for optional features at any time without affecting your account.

Who we share it with

We share information with the following processors. None of these are advertisers or data brokers.

We may also disclose information when legally required (subpoena, court order, regulatory inquiry), to protect the safety of members or the public, or in connection with a business transfer (acquisition, merger, asset sale). In a business transfer, the acquirer assumes the obligations of this privacy policy.

Where your data lives

Rovana’s application servers are hosted on Vercel in the United States. Our database is hosted on Neon in the United States. If you’re outside the US, your data is transferred to the US for processing under Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) where required.

How long we keep it

When you delete your account, we immediately remove all personally identifiable information from our database — your name, email, phone, photos, intake answers, and any other field that could identify you. What remains is an anonymized account shell linked only by an internal ID, retained for safety and audit purposes per the retention table above. Threads and messages you sent stay visible to the other party but are attributed to “Former member” rather than to you. Some records (audit logs, financial records, identity verification results) are retained longer where law requires.

Your rights

Regardless of where you live, you can:

• Access your data — see what we have. Settings → “Download my data.”
• Correct your data — most fields are editable directly in the app at Settings → “Edit profile.”
• Delete your data — Settings → “Delete my account.” Cascade rules above apply.
• Object to specific processing — email hello@rovana.app.
• Withdraw consent for optional features — toggle in Settings.

If you’re in the EU, EEA, UK, Switzerland, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, or one of the other US states with privacy legislation, you also have:

• Right of portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format (the export endpoint above is JSON, which qualifies).
• Right to restrict processing — pause our use of your data while we investigate a dispute.
• Right not to be subject to automated decision-making — Rovana’s matching engine ranks proposals, but Rovana’s curator reviews and approves every introduction surfaced to members. Automated ranking is not automated decision-making in the GDPR sense.
• Right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority.

California residents specifically have the right under CCPA/CPRA to:

• Know what categories of personal information we collect.
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. We do not sell or share personal information. We’ve never received a payment for member data and we never will.
• Limit use of sensitive personal information (we treat your data as sensitive by default).
• Non-discrimination for exercising privacy rights.

To exercise any right, email hello@rovana.app. We’ll respond within 30 days (45 days for complex requests under CCPA).

Children

Rovana is for adults 18+. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we discover an underage account, we delete it.

Security

We use industry-standard practices: encrypted connections (TLS 1.3), encrypted storage at rest (AES-256), bcrypt password hashing, JWT-based session tokens, hardware-key 2FA for operator access. Identity verification data is processed by Persona and never stored on Rovana’s servers. We don’t store your raw selfie or liveness video.

We’re not perfect. If we discover a breach affecting your data, we’ll notify you within 72 hours of discovery (GDPR Article 33), provide details on what was exposed and what we’re doing, and offer guidance on protective steps you can take.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we do, we update the “Last updated” date and notify members of material changes via email at least 14 days before the change takes effect. If a change reduces your rights, we’ll seek explicit opt-in consent rather than rely on continued use.

Contact

Email hello@rovana.app for any privacy-related question or request. The Rovana team is small — usually you’ll hear back within a few days.

For legal process: Rovana, Inc., legal@rovana.app.