Privacy policy
1. Who we are
Parels is an app for Android (iPhone follows later) for capturing things the people around you say ("parels", quotes), sharing them in groups and talking about them in messages. Parels is provided by Damian Schilder ("we"). We are the controller of your personal data in Parels and on parels.app. Questions, requests or complaints about privacy: parels.app@gmail.com.
2. What data we process
| Data | What for | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| Account: email address; your password (we only store an unreadable hash); if you turn on two-step verification, its secret; for each device you are signed in on, a sign-in session (when you signed in and last used the app there, with the IP address and the type of device and app); the language of the app (Dutch, English or Spanish) | Signing in and staying signed in, securing your account, emails about your account (confirmation, sign-in code, password reset), in your language | Only us. Other users don't see your email address. |
| Profile: username, display name and, if you add them, a bio and profile photo | Showing your profile and letting people find you | Other Parels users |
| Date of birth | Only to check that you are 16 or older | Nobody else, not even other users |
| Quotes: the quote, the context you add, who you quote (a user or a name), the group and the visibility (pending, private or public) | The core of the app | Depending on the visibility: the quoted person, the members of the group, people tagged in the quote, or (if the quoted person makes it public) their followers or all Parels users. A quote still waiting for the quoted person is seen only by its author and the quoted person. The author, the quoted person and the group's owner keep seeing a quote in the group, also after a block or a report (section 3). |
| Groups: name, description, group photo, members and their role, invite code, and who the owner removed from the group | Making groups work. The owner can remove quotes and members from the group; someone who was removed cannot rejoin. | The members of the group. Whoever has the invite code sees the group's name, photo and number of members before joining. Who was removed from the group is recorded only by us. |
| Group invites: who invited whom to which group, until the invite is accepted or declined; and, if you declined, that you did | Letting members invite people to a group in the app. A decline counts for 30 days: during that time a new invite to that group does nothing. | The person invited, with who invited them. The members of the group only see that someone has been invited, not by whom and not whether they declined. Nobody is told that you declined; that is recorded only by us. |
| Messages: in a chat between two people or in a group's messages: who wrote which message, when and in which conversation, the text, and for a quoted message who is quoted and the context; for each conversation, how far you have read it | Sending and showing messages; counting unread messages, and not sending a push notification for a conversation you have already read. You can only start a chat with someone you share a group with or who follows you while you follow them. | The people in that conversation. A chat between two people, and the messages in an encrypted group, are end-to-end encrypted: we store only ciphertext, and see only who wrote when in which conversation (section 5). In a group without encryption the members can read the messages, and so can we, as with the group's quotes. How far you have read: only you; nobody sees whether you read a message. |
| What you do in the app: who you follow and who follows you, likes, "I was there" in groups (who marked which quote), saved quotes, tags (who tagged whom in which quote, and whether that person accepted), in-app notifications, your settings (such as private account and notification preferences) | The social features of the app | Follows: other users, as the app shows them. A like: the quote's owner (the quoted person, or the author when the quote names someone without an account) gets a notification with your name; the app shows everyone else only the number of likes. "I was there": your name, shown to the members of the group, except to someone you blocked or who blocked you; the quoted person counts as there automatically, and nobody gets a notification about it. A tag: once the person tagged accepts it, everyone who can see the quote, as a link to their profile; until then only the author, the quoted person and the person tagged. Saved quotes and settings: only you. |
| Blocks and reports (of a quote, profile, group or message), and which quotes you reported | Fighting abuse and enforcing the community rules; a quote you report is hidden for you straight away, except a quote about you or in a group you own (you must be able to decline or remove those) | Only us. People you block are not notified; people you report don't see that it was you. |
| Push notifications: your phone's push token, its platform (Android or iOS) and the language of the app on that phone (Dutch, English or Spanish), only after you switched push notifications on in the app (Settings → Notifications → Turn on notifications) and while your phone allows notifications for Parels. The app asks first, also on phones that allow notifications by default (Android 12 and lower). A push notification contains a short sentence in that language with the display name of whoever did something, never the text of a quote or a message, plus the account ids of that person and of you and, if it is about a quote or a message, the id of the quote or the conversation, so the app opens the right screen when you tap it. | Delivering push notifications | Us and the push service (Google; on iPhone, Apple) |
| Encryption keys: the public keys of your account and your devices; your device list (a random id per device, no name or model, and when each was added or removed); notices when your keys change (a device added or removed, a new security key); group keys encrypted for each device of each member, and for each group key who created it | End-to-end encryption (see section 5). From the device list and the notices, the other members can see when an unknown device turns up for someone. | The members of your encrypted groups see your public keys, your device list, those notices and who created which group key. An encrypted group key can only be opened by the device it is meant for. |
| Technical data: IP address, time and technical details of every request to our servers, and a log of sign-ins, sign-outs and password resets (with your email address and often your IP address) | Security, preventing abuse, fixing outages | Only us and our hosting providers |
| Emails to us: what you write to parels.app@gmail.com, with your email address | Answering questions, requests, reports and complaints | Only us |
Only on your phone. Some things the app keeps on your phone and never sends to us: your sign-in and your encryption keys (in the phone's secure storage), which security codes you compared, the code and the list of groups you locked on that phone, your recent searches, and the theme, look and colour you chose. Android's backups don't include them. Uninstalling the app removes them; deleting your account in the app also wipes your encryption keys and group locks on that phone.
Error reports. This version of the app sends no error reports: no error reporting service is connected.
We don't sell your data, don't show ads and don't track you across other apps or websites. Parels contains no advertising or analytics software.
3. When you quote someone
A quote attributes words to someone: the source ("bron"). That means we also process data about that person.
- If the source is a Parels user, they stay in control: they can accept the quote, keep it private, make it public, decline it or delete it. Only the source can make a quote public. Nobody but the two of you sees a quote outside a group until the source accepts it. The other members see a quote in a group straight away if the source auto-accepts quotes in that group (it is on by default, and the source can choose differently per group); if it is off, only after the source accepts it.
- If the author edits a quote the source has already accepted, the source gets a notification about it in the app, and so does everyone who accepted a tag in it.
- Whoever you tag in a quote is asked first, and decides whether the quote appears under Tagged on their profile. Only once they accept do the others who can see the quote see the tag, as a link to their profile. In a group you can only tag members, and a tag ends when that person leaves the group.
- The author and the source always see a quote, and the owner of a group sees every accepted quote in that group, also when someone has blocked the other or the quote has been reported. That way the source can always decline or delete a quote about them, and the owner can remove a quote from the group.
- If you quote someone without an account, you store their name as text. That person can ask us to remove a quote via parels.app@gmail.com.
- People who are quoted can also block and report in the app.
4. Legal basis
| Purpose | Legal basis (GDPR, Article 6(1)) |
|---|---|
| Your account, profile, quotes, groups, group invites, messages, follows, likes, "I was there", saves, tags and in-app notifications | Performance of the contract: our terms of use (point b) |
| Data about people who are quoted | The legitimate interest of the user and of us in capturing and sharing quotes (point f). As a safeguard, a quoted user decides whether a quote becomes public. |
| Age check using your date of birth | Legitimate interest: Parels is not meant for people under 16 (point f) |
| Push notifications | Consent: push notifications only start after you switch them on in the app, and only while your phone allows notifications for Parels; you switch them off again in the app (Settings → Notifications) or in your phone's settings (point a) |
| Security, technical logs, fighting abuse, reports and moderation | Legitimate interest in a safe service (point f) and, where they apply, legal obligations such as the Digital Services Act (point c) |
5. End-to-end encryption (encrypted groups and chats)
Quotes and messages in encrypted groups, and every message in a chat between two people, are end-to-end encrypted on the phone app: they are encrypted on your device and we store only ciphertext. Who quoted whom, who wrote to whom, when and in which group or chat is not encrypted. If you lose your recovery key and all your devices, encrypted quotes and messages are gone.
- Likes, "I was there", saves, tags, group invites, the group's name, description and photo, and who is a member of a group are not encrypted either.
- The keys needed to read are only on the members' devices. We cannot read, recover or hand over encrypted quotes or messages. If you report one, we see only your description, never its text.
- Everyone in the group can read the text. In the app you can't copy the text of encrypted quotes, and on Android the app blocks screenshots and screen recordings of them. On an iPhone an app can't prevent screenshots, and taking a photo of the screen always works: anyone in the group can still pass the text on.
- Our server keeps track of who is a member of a group. When someone joins, including someone the server itself would add (for example after an attack on our servers), everyone in the group sees that person as a new member, and from then on they can read new quotes, not older ones. If you don't know a new member, ask the group's owner who it is.
- You check that a key really belongs to someone by comparing your security code together (in the group's member list). When a member's key changes or a device is added for someone, the app tells you. For that, the members of your encrypted groups see your public keys, your device list and when your keys change.
- If you delete your account, the group keys you created keep only your random account id and the random id of the device you made them on (no name or other profile data), so the remaining members can still check their older group keys.
6. Who else processes your data
Part of the work is done by service providers. Supabase, Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging), Resend and Cloudflare process data on our behalf under their standard data processing terms. Our support email runs through Gmail under Google's own terms: a free Gmail account comes without a processing agreement.
| Party | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase (Supabase, Inc.) | Database, accounts, storage of profile and group photos, server functions | Servers in Frankfurt (Germany, EU) |
| Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) | Delivering push notifications on Android, only after you switched them on in the app | Worldwide, including the United States |
| Apple Push Notification service (Apple) | Delivering push notifications on iPhone, once Parels is available there, only after you switched them on in the app | Worldwide, including the United States |
| Resend (Resend, Inc.) | Sending emails about your account | Sent from Ireland (EU); account data and email logs in the United States |
| Gmail (Google) | Our mailbox parels.app@gmail.com: the emails you send us and our replies | Worldwide, including the United States |
| Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc.) | Serving the parels.app website | Worldwide network |
When data goes to the United States or another country outside the European Economic Area, this is based on an adequacy decision (such as the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework) or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
You download Parels from Google Play (and later from the App Store); Google and Apple are responsible for that themselves, under their own privacy policies. Otherwise we only share data with others when the law requires it, or when it is needed to protect the safety of users.
7. How long we keep data
- For as long as your account exists.
- When you delete your account (in the app: Profile → the gear at the top right (Settings) → Delete account at the bottom, or via parels.app/account-verwijderen), we delete your account, profile, profile photo, keys, the quotes you wrote and the quotes of which you are the registered source, the messages you sent and how far you had read each conversation, as well as your follows, likes, "I was there" marks, saved quotes, tags, blocks, group invites (the ones you received and the ones you sent), notifications, push tokens, sign-in sessions and what the sign-in log holds about you. Groups you created remain for the other members; the longest-standing member becomes the owner.
- When you leave a group, the quotes you wrote stay in it for its members; your "I was there" marks in it are deleted. When the owner deletes a group, its quotes (with their likes, tags and "I was there"), its messages and its invites are deleted with it.
- A message stays until its sender deletes it (the others then see "Message deleted", without the text), its group is deleted or its sender's account is deleted. Messages you wrote stay in a group you leave, as your quotes do.
- A group invite lasts until it is accepted or declined, and ends earlier when it no longer applies: a block between the person invited and whoever invited them, the owner removing the person invited from the group, that person joining with the code, or the group being deleted. Its notification goes with it. That you declined is kept for as long as the group and your account exist; after 30 days it no longer has any effect.
- The group keys you created in encrypted groups keep only your random account and device ids after your account is deleted, for as long as the group exists (see section 5).
- Quotes that only name someone as text are not linked to an account and are therefore not deleted automatically. Ask us if needed.
- Reports (who reported what, why, the reported content as it was at the time, including a copy of a reported profile or group photo and the text of a reported message in a group without encryption, and what we did): 12 months after we handled them; then they are deleted automatically. They are kept for that time even if you delete your account, so we can deal with abuse and recognise repeat offenders.
- A sign-in session ends when you sign out, and otherwise after 90 days in which you haven't used the app on that device; you then sign in there again.
- A push token disappears when you sign out or delete your account, and otherwise as soon as the sign-in session it was registered with ends, or the push service tells us it is no longer valid.
- Technical logs, including the log of sign-ins, sign-outs and password resets: at most 7 days, then they are deleted automatically.
- Backups: deleted data disappears from them once those backups are overwritten (usually within 7 days).
8. Your rights
You have the right to access, correct and delete your data, to restrict its processing, to object, and to data portability, and you can withdraw any consent at any time.
- In the app: edit your profile, edit or delete your quotes, delete your messages, delete your account, choose which notifications you get, and switch push notifications on or off for this phone. How to delete some of your data without deleting your account: parels.app/delete-data.
- By email to parels.app@gmail.com, for example for a copy of your data. We cannot read encrypted quotes and messages and therefore cannot include them; they can only be read in your app.
- We reply within one month. We may ask you to confirm that the request really comes from you.
- You can lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) or the data protection authority in your own country.
9. Age
Parels is for people aged 16 and over. When you create an account we ask for your date of birth; people under 16 cannot create an account. Your date of birth is not visible to other users. If an account turns out to belong to someone under 16 anyway, we delete it.
10. Security
Connections to our servers are encrypted (TLS), the database only returns what your account may see, encrypted groups and chats between two people are end-to-end encrypted, and you can turn on two-step verification. No system is perfectly secure: if you find a security problem, please report it to parels.app@gmail.com. If a data breach puts you at risk, we report it to the Dutch Data Protection Authority and, where needed, to you.
11. Changes
When we change this policy, the date at the top changes. We tell you about important changes in the app.
12. Contact
Damian Schilder, by email only: parels.app@gmail.com.