Privacy Policy

• Your account: your email address and password (stored by our sign-in provider, never in plain text), and the display name you choose for connections. If you continue with Google, Google shares your name, email address and profile picture with us.
• Your chats with Ruvalu, including your answers to the welcome questions.
• What Ruvalu learns from those chats: short notes about what you're looking for, what you can offer and where you're headed, plus questions it may ask later. Each note has a privacy level, and you can edit or delete any of them.
• Your town, if you add it in About you or tell Ruvalu where you live: just a town and state or region, kept as a private note so Ruvalu can answer local questions. You can change or remove it any time. We never store your precise location. Ruvalu also uses it, by default, to favour introductions to people near you when an introduction is worth meeting in person: it compares only the rough distance between two members' towns (from a town-centre point, never an address), together with each of your choices under Who should Ruvalu introduce you to (how far for meeting in person, and whether phone or video is fine). Introductions that work by phone or video don't depend on distance. Your town and that distance are never shown to other members and never sent to the AI that judges matches. Remove your town any time and distance stops counting.
• Feedback about Ruvalu: when you tell Ruvalu what you'd like Ruvalu to do, or what isn't working for you, Ruvalu may keep a short note of it, reworded so it doesn't include your name or personal details. These notes aren't part of what Ruvalu knows about you, are never used for matching, and are never shown to other people.
• Matching activity: whether matching is on, the suggestions made for you and your answers to them, and, if you answer it, whether a connection helped. Only Ruvalu sees that answer, never the other person; it helps make better introductions.
• Connections: messages in the shared conversations you open with people, and when you last read them.
• Calls: if you make or join a call, when it started and ended, who was in it, whether it was voice or video, and whether you've turned calls off for a conversation. Never the audio or video itself.
• Safety: people you've blocked and reports you've made.
• Usage and error records: how many AI requests your account makes (with token counts and estimated cost, used for daily limits and running costs), and technical error logs that help us fix problems.

• to have Ruvalu reply to you and remember what matters to you;
• if you turn matching on, to find people who could genuinely help each other;
• to keep people safe, review reports, and prevent abuse;
• to count how often Ruvalu refers someone to crisis support, as a plain number with no names or message text, for the yearly safety report some states require;
• to enforce daily limits and keep running costs in check;
• to fix bugs and improve how well Ruvalu understands people;
• to see what people want from Ruvalu: our admins see a weekly summary of the feedback notes above, grouped by theme with counts of how many people raised each one, but not who said what.

Everything Ruvalu learns about you has one of three levels:

• Private: Used only to help find good matches, never shown to anyone.
• Shareable: Used only to help find good matches, never shown to anyone. Choosing this yourself also lets Ruvalu use a personal topic it would otherwise keep out of matching.
• Introducible: Used to help find good matches. Ruvalu may also mention it in your shared conversation, but only after you both agree to connect.

Sensitive things — like health, money, family, relationships, faith, sexuality, or politics — are kept out of matching unless you mark them Shareable or Introducible yourself.

Nothing is used for matching while matching is off. If you save it as Private yourself, Ruvalu keeps it out of matching too. Only you can make something Introducible.

Chats with Ruvalu can include sensitive information. US state privacy laws, including the one where we're based, count these as sensitive: your mental or physical health (including a condition or diagnosis), religious beliefs, sex life or sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origin, citizenship or immigration status, financial account details, having been a victim of a crime, and precise location. We don't collect genetic, biometric or neural data. Some US state privacy laws call this "sensitive data" and require your consent before it's used, so we ask everyone for it, wherever they live: when you create an account, or once when you next open the app. We record that you agreed, when, and which version of the wording you saw.

With your consent, sensitive information you share is used only:

• to reply to you: Ruvalu's AI provider (Google's Gemini service) reads your messages to write each reply;
• to remember what matters to you, as short notes you can see, edit or delete in What Ruvalu knows;
• for matching, only if you turn matching on and only for notes you've marked Shareable or Introducible yourself. Sensitive things — like health, money, family, relationships, faith, sexuality, or politics — are kept out of matching unless you mark them Shareable or Introducible yourself.
• to keep you safe: if a message mentions suicide or self-harm, Ruvalu shows support options (see the safety protocol).

We never sell it, use it for ads, or use it to make decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects. We don't collect your precise location: if you share where you are, Ruvalu keeps only the town.

You can withdraw your consent at any time in About you › Plan & account › Sensitive information. Ruvalu then stops chatting and matching for you until you agree again, and turns matching off. To remove what's already saved, delete notes in What Ruvalu knows or delete your account.

Matching is off until you turn it on in Connections, and you can turn it off any time. While it's on, Ruvalu compares what you're looking for and what you can offer with other people who have matching on, and an AI model helps judge whether two people are a good fit.

To find likely fits quickly, the needs and offers Ruvalu may use for matching are also turned into number summaries (called embeddings) by the same Google Gemini service. They stay on our servers, are never shown to anyone, and are deleted when you turn matching off or delete your account.

A suggestion explains, from your own side, how meeting this person could help you. It doesn't reveal anything about the other person. If you both say yes, a shared conversation opens where you can see each other's display names. Your email address is never shared. In that conversation, Ruvalu may mention things you've marked Introducible, and it replies when one of you asks it to.

Where calls are available, either of you can start a voice or video call from that conversation, and either of you can turn calls off for it. Calls are carried by Stream (see section 7) and pass through its servers so they work on any network. Calls are never recorded or transcribed, by us or by Stream. We keep when a call started, who was in it and how long it lasted, to apply call limits and track running costs, never what was said or shown. Blocking or reporting someone ends any call with them straight away.

We may email you when Ruvalu suggests someone, when you're introduced, and when you get a new message. To stop these emails, turn off Email me about introductions and messages in About you › Plan & account, or use the unsubscribe link in any of them. Account emails, like password resets, still arrive.

Feedback you send from the app reaches us by email. It includes your account email, so we can reply, plus the page you were on and your browser type.

• You can see everything Ruvalu has learned in What Ruvalu knows.
• People you connect with see your display name, your messages to them, anything Ruvalu mentions from your Introducible notes, and your voice and video during any call you join with them.
• Our admins can open a person's account in our internal tools to check quality, investigate problems and handle safety reports. That includes your email, what Ruvalu has learned, and the chat messages each note came from. Every time an admin opens a person's details, asks Ruvalu about them or re-runs Ruvalu's learning for them, it's recorded in an access log. Admins can also see suggestions and safety reports, and keep internal notes.

We use a small number of providers to run Ruvalu:

• Supabase hosts our database and handles sign-in and account emails.
• Resend delivers our emails, both account emails and notification emails. It receives your email address and the message we're sending.
• Vercel hosts the website and app, and keeps short-lived request logs.
• Google (Gemini API) is the AI behind Ruvalu. It processes your chats to write replies and learn what matters to you, the notes used to judge matches, and shared-conversation messages when someone asks Ruvalu for help there.
• Your browser or phone turns speech into text if you tap the microphone. That happens in the browser (Chrome uses Google's speech service, Safari uses Apple's); Ruvalu never receives the audio, only the text you send.
• BigDataCloud looks up your town name if you tap Use my location in About you. Your browser sends it a rough position (rounded to about a kilometre) and your IP address, once, straight from your device. We never receive or store the position, only the town name you choose to save.
• OpenStreetMap (Nominatim) turns a town you save into a rough town-centre point, so distance can count in introductions. Only the town name is sent, from our servers, with nothing that identifies you. We keep the point rounded to about 2 km.
• Stream (getstream.io) carries voice and video calls between people who've been introduced, where calls are available. It receives your account id and first name, and the call audio and video pass through its servers while the call is happening. Calls are not recorded or transcribed.
• Google sign-in, if you choose to continue with Google.
• Cloudflare Turnstile checks that sign-ups and sign-ins come from a real person and not a bot.
• Stripe processes Pro payments. We keep your subscription status, not your card details.

These providers handle data on our behalf under their own terms, and may process it in the United States and other countries. We don't sell your information or share it for advertising.

We keep your sign-in session and a few small app settings in your browser so you stay signed in and get updates smoothly. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies.

We keep your information while you have an account. You can edit or delete anything Ruvalu has learned at any time. When you delete your account from About you › Plan & account, we permanently delete your account, chats, what Ruvalu learned, your feedback notes, suggestions, connections and their conversations (for both people), and blocks. An active Pro subscription is cancelled at the same time.

A few records are kept without anything that identifies you:

• usage counts and costs, including when calls happened and how long they lasted, so we can track running costs;
• error logs, with your account details removed;
• safety reports, with names removed, so they can still be reviewed;
• our admin access log, with your account removed;
• totals from matching runs;
• weekly summaries of feedback about Ruvalu, which never say who said what.

Stripe keeps its own payment records as the law requires.

Your data travels over encrypted connections. Database rules make sure each person can read only their own information and the shared conversations they're part of, and admin tools are limited to admin accounts. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password.

Ruvalu is for people 18 and older. Everyone confirms they're 18 or older before using it; we ask for a yes, not your date of birth, so we hold no more about you than we need. AI companions like Ruvalu may not be suitable for some minors. If you believe someone younger is using it, please let us know and we'll close the account.

• See, fix or delete what Ruvalu knows in What Ruvalu knows.
• Choose a privacy level for each note.
• Turn matching on or off in Connections.
• Turn notification emails off in About you › Plan & account, or use the unsubscribe link in any of them.
• Withdraw your consent to sensitive information in About you › Plan & account.
• Block or report anyone you've been suggested or connected with.
• Delete your account at any time.

Depending on where you live, privacy laws give you the right to confirm whether we process your personal data and to access it, correct it, delete it, and get a copy you can take elsewhere; to opt out of its sale, targeted advertising, or profiling for decisions with legal or similarly significant effects (we do none of these); and to withdraw consent. We offer these rights to everyone. To use one, write to help@ruvalu.com from the email on your account. We'll answer within 45 days and won't treat you differently for asking.

If we turn down a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer with "Appeal" in the subject. We'll tell you the outcome and our reasons within 60 days. If you're still not satisfied, you can contact your state's Attorney General.

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. See also our Terms of Service.