effective version 2026-10-20
This Privacy Policy explains how Bisrat Zerihun, an individual doing business as potluk (operating as "potluk", and referred to here as "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, shares, and retains your information when you use the potluk mobile application and related services (the "Service"). It is incorporated into our Terms of Service; by accepting the Terms you also accept this policy.
The short version: we collect what we need to seat you at a table of compatible people and help that table hang out in real life. We do not sell your personal information, we do not run ads, and we do not share your information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
Account information. Your mobile phone number (used for sign-in verification), your name, date of birth (to verify you are 18 or older), profile photo, city, and timezone.
City, not GPS. When you pick your city during onboarding, the app searches Apple Maps for it as you type and once more when you pick one, to place you in a metro area. We store the city name Apple returns. We do not collect precise location, we do not track your location in the background, and the app does not request continuous location permissions.
Content you create. Your conversations with En, messages in your group chats, voice notes (the audio recording and a transcript, generated on your device where it supports that and otherwise by Apple's or Google's speech service), photos you upload, the venue names you type into a plan, which are searched against Apple Maps, RSVPs and hangout activity, and reports you file.
When you were last active. We record when you last used the app and when you last opened your table, so En knows when to check in, so tables are only offered to people who are still around, and so we don't notify you about a chat you already have open.
Information we derive. To match you into a table, we extract signals from your conversations with En (things like interests, personality, values, and what you're looking for), turn them into short written summaries, and compute numerical representations (embeddings) of those summaries. AI features also generate content derived from your inputs: your table's name and the line that describes it, En's summary of what it heard at the end of a session, and hangout titles and places suggested from a message. A model we run ourselves reads the text of group messages to spot a plan being made.
Device and usage information. A push notification token, device model and OS version, product analytics events (screens and actions, associated with your account ID), crash and error reports (associated with a random installation ID that is not your account ID and that you can rotate in Settings; our crash tooling scrubs emails, phone numbers, tokens, and one-time codes before anything leaves the device), server logs, and the IP address and browser or device identifier recorded with your acceptance of the Terms and with a data-export request.
Your calendar, only to write to it. When you add a hangout to your calendar, the app asks your permission, lists your calendars to find one it can write to, and creates the event there. We do not read your existing events and nothing from your calendar reaches us.
What we do not collect: precise or background location, your contacts, your calendar events, advertising identifiers, and biometric identifiers. We do not create or store face templates, faceprints, or voiceprints, and we do not use your photos or voice notes to identify anyone.
We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not train our own or anyone else's foundation models on your content.
En is software. Your conversations with En, automated screening checks on messages and on photos you upload, and the extraction of matching signals from your sessions are processed by OpenAI acting as our service provider. The written summaries derived from your signals (not your raw messages) are sent to Voyage AI to compute matching embeddings. Before a table is offered to you, OpenAI is also sent an excerpt of your first and most recent En session, alongside the same for the other proposed members, and its answer can rule that table out. Both providers process this data under terms that prohibit them from using it to train their models.
If we add or change AI providers, we will update this policy and the in-app disclosure before the change applies to you.
AI-generated content (your table's name and description, En's end-of-session summary, suggested hangout details) is derived from your inputs and those of your table. If something AI-generated about you is inaccurate or you object to it, delete it where a delete control exists, or contact us at support@potluk.social and we will review it and, where appropriate, remove it.
To keep tables safe, messages and voice-note transcripts are checked by automated tools as they are delivered, and flagged content is hidden from the table immediately afterwards; profile photos and hangout photos are checked before they are stored. A small set of categories — sexual content, sexual content involving minors, graphic violence, and threatening harassment or hate speech — is blocked at the message layer, and a photo in one of those categories is refused at upload. Content flagged as severe, and any report you file, can be escalated to human review.
Content suggesting that someone may be at risk of self-harm is flagged for human review rather than hidden, so the people at your table still see it.
These tools are imperfect: they can miss harmful content and occasionally flag harmless content. Where United States law requires it, we report apparent child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
Outside of automated screening and the review of reports and safety escalations, humans at potluk do not read your conversations.
Your table. Members of your group see your profile (name, photo, city), the one thing you said you would bring, your messages, voice notes, photos you share with the group, and AI-generated group content such as your table's name and description.
Anyone you send an invite link to. An invite link shows your first name and the thing you are bringing, on a page anyone with the link can open, including the services that draw link previews in messaging apps.
Service providers. We use a small set of vendors to operate the Service, each limited to what their role requires:
Safety and legal. We may disclose information to comply with law or legal process, to report apparent child sexual abuse material to NCMEC, to cooperate with law enforcement where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to prevent harm, and to protect the rights, property, or safety of potluk, our members, or the public.
Corporate events. If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to this policy.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We have not done either in the preceding 12 months.
We keep your information while your account is active. Some data has shorter lifetimes: a data export you request stops being downloadable after 24 hours, an En session in progress is held for a couple of hours while it runs, and dismissed nudges are cleared after 30 days. When you delete a message for everyone, it leaves your table's chat and its text is erased, unless someone has reported it or it was flagged for safety review, in which case we keep it for that review. Server logs and encrypted backups age out on a rolling basis.
We may retain limited records longer where required by law — for example, records of your acceptance of the Terms, safety reports and enforcement records, and information subject to a legal hold.
You can delete your account any time from Settings. When you do:
Residual copies clear from backups on a rolling basis after deletion.
Depending on where you live (including under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, and similar state laws), you may have the right to know what personal information we hold about you, to access it in a portable format, to correct it, to delete it, and to not be discriminated against for exercising those rights.
You can exercise deletion and part of access and portability directly in the app (see section 8). For anything the in-app controls do not cover, email support@potluk.social from the address you give us, and we will answer by hand after checking the request against your account phone number. You may use an authorized agent where the law allows; we will ask the agent for proof of authorization.
Because we do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, there is nothing to opt out of under those provisions. We also do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes that require a right to limit under the CCPA.
potluk is offered in the United States, and your information is processed there.
If we deny a request, you may appeal by replying to our decision; if your appeal is denied, you may contact your state attorney general.
Categories of personal information we collect: identifiers (phone number, name, account ID); characteristics such as age; audio and visual information (photos, voice notes); coarse geolocation (city); internet or network activity (product interaction, diagnostics, IP address); inferences (matching signals derived from your En sessions); and other personal information you choose to include in your content.
Sources: you, your device, and other members of your table (for example, group photos they upload). Purposes: as described in section 2. Disclosures for a business purpose: to the service providers listed in section 5. Sale or sharing: none. Retention: as described in section 6.
Content you write may include information you consider sensitive. We use it only to operate the Service and for safety as described in this policy, not to infer characteristics for advertising.
Your data is encrypted in transit. Database access is governed by row-level security policies, and our internal services run with least-privilege credentials. Files you upload live in private buckets that only signed-in members can read. Crash and analytics pipelines are scrubbed of direct identifiers where feasible.
No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of your information. If you believe you have found a security vulnerability, email support@potluk.social.
The Service is for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor, we will terminate the account and delete its information. If you believe a minor is using the Service, email support@potluk.social.
When we make material changes to this policy, we bump its version, tell you in the app that it has changed, and ask you to review and accept the updated policy before you continue using the Service. The current version is always available in the app and at https://potluk.social/privacy.
Privacy questions, rights requests, and safety reports all reach us at support@potluk.social.