Privacy

Who's responsible for your data

Near, the iPhone app and this site, is run by Gabriel Fernandes Pereira (CNPJ 54.909.636/0001-80), Brasil, who decides what happens to your personal data. For anything about privacy, including your rights, write to the address at the bottom of this page. A person answers.

What we store

You sign in with Apple or your email and a password, and you can connect both to your account in Settings. From Apple we get a user ID, plus your name and email if you choose to share them; with email we keep your address and a scrambled form of your password, never the password itself. After that, only what you add yourself:

• Your display name, profile photo, and the birthday and short bio if you fill them in.
• Your posts: photos and videos, captions and, if you keep it on, the place they were taken. Archive a post and only you can see it until you bring it back; delete it and it's gone, with its comments.
• Your stories: the photo or video, and which friends have watched it. Your friends can see a story for 24 hours, then it expires and is deleted. With Near Spark, your expired stories stay in an archive only you can see, and the ones you pin to your profile as Highlights stay visible to your friends.
• Your messages with friends: the text, photos, videos, voice messages, GIFs and stickers, when you sent it and when it was read. Unsend a message and it disappears for both of you.
• Your voice messages: recorded in the app and stored on our servers and Cloudflare. Only the two people in the conversation can hear one, and if you unsend it, it disappears for both of you.
• Your comments on your friends' posts: words, a photo, a GIF, a sticker or, with Near Spark, a voice comment. A photo or a voice comment is stored on our servers and Cloudflare.
• Who your friends are and when you added each other, and anyone you've blocked.
• Reports you send us about a post, a story, a comment, a message or a person. A reported story or message (a voice message too) is kept for up to 7 days, even after it expires or is unsent, so we can review it. Our moderation team opens it, and the photo of a reported comment, through short-lived links.
• Feedback you send from the app: what you typed, with the app version, iOS version and phone model, so we can read it and fix things. It is deleted with your account.
• Notifications: a short list of what your friends did (a friendship, a comment on your post, a birthday, a new post), kept 60 days. If you allow push notifications, your phone's device token, so we can reach it. Your time zone, so a birthday arrives in the morning. Each kind has its own switch in Settings.
• Near Spark: Apple is the payment processor. We receive a transaction ID, the product, the dates and whether your subscription is active, never your card details. While it's active, a small spark shows after your name wherever it appears in the app, so anyone who sees your name can tell you have it.

How “nearby” works

Near doesn't use your location to find friends. While the app is open, your phone shares a random code with phones in the same room over the local network. The code changes every ten minutes, expires after fifteen, and is never kept beyond that. Someone next to you sees your name and photo. Nobody further away sees anything.

Permissions and what they're for

iOS will ask you for these. Each one does exactly one thing:

• Local network: finding the friend next to you.
• Camera and photo library: photos and videos for your posts, stories and messages, and your profile picture. Near only adds to your photos when you ask it to save a story, or a photo or video from a chat.
• Microphone: the sound in the videos you record, your voice messages and your voice comments.
• Notifications: a new friend, a comment on your post, a friend's birthday, a friend's new post. Nothing else, ever. Asked only once you have a friend.
• Location, only while using the app: naming the place of a post. You can edit or remove it before posting. Near never tracks you in the background.

On your phone

Near keeps a copy of your friends' photos and videos on your phone so they open instantly instead of downloading twice. It's a cache: it stays inside the app and goes when you sign out, delete your account or delete the app. A post you save as a draft stays only on your phone too: it's never uploaded or included in your iCloud backup, it waits for you if you sign out, and it goes when you delete your account or the app. The photos and videos you post are stored without location data: the EXIF and GPS tags are stripped.

GIFs and stickers

Searching and browsing GIFs and stickers goes straight from the app to KLIPY, a third-party GIF service, not through our servers. KLIPY receives your search words, your phone's IP address and a pseudonymous ID derived from your account, not your name or email. A GIF or sticker you send is a link to KLIPY's copy, not a file we store: whoever sees it loads it from KLIPY, so KLIPY sees their IP address too. Unsend the message and the link disappears for both of you. What KLIPY does with this is in its privacy policy.

Who sees what

Your posts and stories are visible to your friends only. A comment, whether words, a photo, a GIF, a sticker or a voice comment, is visible to anyone who can see the post it's on, which includes the post author's friends, who may not be your friends; they see your name and profile photo with it. A message, voice messages and GIFs included, is visible only to the two people in it. A story is visible to your friends for 24 hours. Who watched a story is shown only to the person who posted it. With Near Spark, your expired stories stay in an archive only you can see, and the Highlights you pin to your profile are visible to your friends. Your friends also see how many posts and friends you have, and which of your friends they know too; the rest stay a number. There is no public profile, no search and no explore page. Apart from a comment on a post they can see, your name and profile photo are the only things a stranger can see, and only while you're both in the same room with the app open. Block someone and neither of you sees the other again.

Where it lives

Your data is stored with Supabase, a hosting provider, and reaches your friends through them. Photos, videos, voice messages and voice comments are stored and delivered by Cloudflare. Apple handles signing in with Apple and Near Spark payments: we only receive a transaction ID and the status of your subscription, never your card details. Emails from Near and from this site go out through Resend. None of them may use your data for anything else, and nobody else gets it. We don't sell data, don't show ads, and don't run any analytics or tracking SDK. GIFs and stickers are the exception: your phone talks to KLIPY, a third-party GIF service, directly, under its own privacy policy.

Deleting everything

Settings → Privacy & security → Delete account signs you out and deletes your account 30 days later. Until then nobody sees you: your profile, posts, stories and comments are hidden from your friends, and nobody nearby can find you. Changed your mind? Sign back in before the date and everything is as you left it. After that, your account, photos, videos, posts, stories, messages, comments and friendships are deleted for good, and if you signed in with Apple, Near also gives up its access to your Apple Account. Nothing of yours stays on your friends' phones or ours. We email you when it's scheduled, a few days before, and once it's done. If you tell us why you're leaving, we keep the answer without your account, only to make Near better. If you'd rather, write to us and we'll do it for you.

This website

The waitlist keeps your email and language so we can write once when Near launches, plus a short welcome. The contact form keeps what you typed so we can reply. The site sets no cookies and runs no analytics. It remembers your language in your browser, nothing more.

Your rights

You can see, change and delete everything Near has about you from the app, at any time. If you want a copy of your data, or think we hold something we shouldn't, write to us. A person answers. Near is for people 13 and older, and we don't knowingly keep data from anyone younger.

Changes

If this page changes, the date at the top changes with it. Anything that matters, we'll tell you in the app.