Privacy Policy

Data controller

The data controller of this app is Orçun Özdemir, a natural person. You can send your requests under the Turkish Personal Data Protection Law (KVKK) to destek@slooin.com; your request is answered within 30 days at the latest.

1. Which of your data we process

Your e-mail address - today the PRIMARY identifier of your account. It is used when you sign up and sign in, and the verification code is sent there.

Where you live: country, and in Türkiye also province and district. Asked when you create your account; never read from your device, you choose it yourself. It is not shown on your profile and is never shown or passed to other users; it is included in your "Download my data" file. Purpose: to suggest popular places in your province when your location can't be reached (location permission off or location unavailable), and to know in which regions to improve the service.

Sponsored suggestions: cards labelled "Sponsored" are paid promotions by businesses and are always shown with that label. Sponsored suggestions based on where you live are made ONLY with your explicit consent (Settings › Privacy › Sponsored suggestions for my area; off by default, you can withdraw it at any time, and each grant and withdrawal is recorded with its date). Without your consent, a sponsored card is chosen by the province and district you are in right now, and your location is not stored for this. Which sponsored card you saw or tapped is not recorded against you; only a one-way hash derived from your identity is kept so that the same ad is counted only once for you per day, and it is deleted the next day. Businesses only see daily totals of views and taps and the total number of check‑ins at the place during the campaign. None of your personal data is passed to businesses. If you tap the link on a sponsored card, the business's page opens in the in-app browser; that page is governed by the business's own privacy policy and Slooin sends no personal data to it. Link taps are also counted only as totals.

If you advertise (as a business): the place details and photos in your application (shown publicly on the place page once the ad goes live) and the payment record (Apple/Google transaction number). Apple or Google takes the payment; your card details never reach us. A promo video and link you add to your ad are shown to users while the ad runs; the video is deleted no later than 90 days after the ad ends or the application closes. If you advertise an event or a brand, the event name, date and location, or the brand name and logo, are also shown publicly with the ad.

Your name, username, date of birth, bio and profile photos.

Your location - in three different ways: when you search for a place, add a place or check in, your device location is sent to the server but NOT STORED; the check-in record stores the place's own location, not your exact location, and when the check-in turns into a memory (after 1 hour or as soon as you tap "I left") that is deleted too, and only the place you were at remains (full details below, in section 3).

The content of the messages you send and receive: text, photos, videos (up to 60 seconds), voice messages (up to 5 minutes; microphone access is only requested when you press the microphone) and locations you share (only when you send one, the point you choose). Photos, videos and voice messages in a chat can only be seen/heard by the two people in the conversation; when a message or conversation is deleted, or on blocking, the related files are permanently deleted by an hourly cleanup.

Your friendship data: whom you follow, whom you exchanged chat requests with, whom you blocked.

Your device's notification token, so that we can send you notifications.

Your notification preferences (which notifications you receive, quiet hours at night) and, for quiet hours, your device's time zone. Session records of the devices you signed in from: device type, IP address and last activity time; you can view and close them one by one under Settings → Account and security → Active sessions. Your appearance (theme) preference is stored only on your device and never sent to the server. Your recent searches in Explore (up to 8) are also kept only on your device, separately for your account, and never sent to the server; you can clear them any time. The same applies to the people you recently viewed in people search (up to 8).

Verified profile application (optional): the category you apply in (person, business, brand), display name, your Instagram or website link if given, the verification code given to you and the selfie you take with that code. Only a moderator sees the selfie and compares it by eye with your profile photo; no automated face recognition is used and no ID document is requested. The selfie is deleted after the decision; the application is kept for 1 year after the decision and deleted immediately if you delete your account. For your subscription we keep the transaction ID reported by the store, the platform and the period end date (your payment details stay with Apple or Google); these are deleted 1 year after the subscription ends.

Reports you filed or reports filed about you. If you attach a photo, video or document (PDF) to a report, the file is stored with that report and seen only by the moderation team; it is never shown to other users.

The ratings you give to places (Bad / Good / Great). Everyone sees only the totals; which rating you gave is visible only to you. Your check-in photos also appear in the photo area of that place, under the visibility rule you chose.

Your moments: the photo or video of up to 15 seconds you take on the spot and, if you have checked in, the place tag. A video also records sound if you have allowed microphone access; microphone access is only requested when you switch to video mode, never for photos. For each moment you choose who can see it: "Friends" (the default) or "Everyone" - a moment set to "Everyone" can be opened by anyone in the app even if your profile is private, and people you have blocked can never see it. After 24 hours a moment leaves the strip and only you can see it: its photo or video and place stay in your moments archive until you delete it or your account. Who viewed your moment, when, and which emoji they left on it is recorded; only you see that list, and it is deleted after 24 hours. An emoji you leave on someone else’s moment is seen only by that moment’s owner; a reply you write goes to them as a chat message. You can delete a moment yourself at any time.

Share link: when you share a memory with the Share button, a link like slooin.com/paylasim/… is sent. Anyone who receives it can see, without the app, the username, profile photo, place (district, province), date, note and first photo. The page only opens for public memories of non-private profiles; a live check‑in (where you are right now), private profiles and friends-only posts are never shown. The page is closed to search engines; if you delete or hide the post, the link stops working. If you boost your post (sponsored), a memory meeting the same conditions is shown with a “Sponsored” label in the feed of people in your chosen area who don’t follow you; the card is the same as a normal post card (username, profile photo, place, note, photos), but friends you tagged aren’t shown. If you delete or hide the post, or make your profile private, it stops being shown right away. If you report a sponsored ad, your report (reason, any note, date) is kept with your account and deleted 1 year after it has been reviewed; only the moderation team sees it, your identity isn’t shown to the advertiser, and that ad isn’t shown to you again.

2. For what purpose - and on which legal basis

KVKK article 10 requires the legal basis to be stated alongside the purpose of processing. The basis of each purpose is written separately.

Setting up your account and verifying your e-mail address. Legal basis: performance of a contract (KVKK art. 5/2-c) - without an account no function of the app works.

Letting you discover places and people nearby (location and check-in). Legal basis: performance of a contract (KVKK art. 5/2-c). The only thing Slooin does is let you check in to a place and see who is there; without processing location the app does not work, so location is not an "extra feature" but the service itself.

Letting you message. Legal basis: performance of a contract (KVKK art. 5/2-c).

Preventing and investigating abuse (harassment, fake accounts, inappropriate content) - report records, the moderation audit trail, account status records and request-cap counters. Legal basis: legitimate interest (KVKK art. 5/2-f): being able to protect users from harassment and abuse.

The consent you give by tapping "Continue" when creating your account is written to the database as a record of proof: that you read the privacy notice and accepted the processing of your location data, together with the text version and the time of consent (two records: aydinlatma and konum_rizasi). This record does not replace the legal bases above - it is kept on top of them so that we can show retrospectively what was disclosed to you.

Choosing sponsored suggestions based on where you live. Legal basis: explicit consent (KVKK art. 5/1). Consent is not a condition of the service; if you do not give it, no feature of the app is restricted. From 17 October 2026 this permission is called “Sponsored suggestions for you” and also covers your age group: if an advertiser picks age groups, your age group (18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55+), calculated from your date of birth, is used only for this matching; your date of birth and age group are never passed to advertisers. Age-targeted ads are not shown to people who haven't given permission. The earlier area-only permission did not cover this, so it was switched off and is asked once again.

Creating the sponsored ad, verifying payment, showing the ad and reviewing live ads. Legal basis: performance of a contract (KVKK art. 5/2-c).

3. Location in particular

Your device's location is used in THREE different ways; it is important not to mix them up.

When searching for places: to show places nearby, your device location is SENT to the server with every place search. This location is NOT STORED - it is used only to answer that query and is not written anywhere in the database.

When adding a new place: to verify that you are really near the place you want to add, your device location is sent (you must be within ~200 metres). This location is NOT STORED either - it is used only for this proximity check. The only thing stored is the location of the added place, not your location at that moment.

When you check in: your device location is sent only to verify that you are within about 1 km of the place, and it is NOT STORED. While the check-in is ACTIVE, the record stores the place's own location, not your exact location; it only carries the "here right now" information. The check-in automatically turns into a memory after 1 HOUR (or as soon as you tap "I left"), and this location is DELETED too (set to null in the database) - only the place you were at remains. Because the clean-up job runs every 10 minutes, this information is kept for at most about 1 hour 10 minutes.

Who can see your live check-in ("here right now") is determined by the presence level you chose for the check-in: Public - NOT everyone in the app, only those who have a live check-in at the same place at that moment or your mutual follows see it. Followers only - only your mutual follows see it. Hidden - nobody sees it; the check-in stays only in your own history.

After the check-in turns into a memory (after the location is deleted), the visibility of the memory is a SEPARATE three-level setting and there is no "live at the same place" condition: Public - everyone in the app sees it (active accounts, blocking excluded). Followers only - only your mutual follows see it. Nobody - only you see it on your own profile.

When you choose Hidden, your identity is visible to nobody - except moderation. But there is one exception: you are included in the public "how many people are here" counter (density) of the place you are at, REGARDLESS of your presence level. So your identity stays hidden, but the counter increases with your presence - in a quiet place, when the counter goes from 0 to 1, someone there can infer that "somebody is here".

4. Moderation access

When you receive a report or are being reviewed on suspicion of abuse, our moderation team can read your profile, your check-ins and your message contents. This applies even if your presence level is hidden.

Every moderation access is recorded: who looked at which of your records, and when, is kept in an audit trail. This trail accepts ONLY ADDITIONS - the record is created server-side, and there is no way for a moderator to delete or alter their own access record. Access is used only in the context of a report or a review, not for casual browsing. Records are kept for 2 YEARS (see section 6).

On the day we wrote this line the audit trail contained no records - there has been no moderator access so far. This does not mean the mechanism is not in place; it is set up and working, it has simply not been needed yet.

5. Transfer abroad

The servers of Supabase (database and file storage) are in Germany (eu-central-1 region). All your personal data is kept outside Turkey, within the borders of the European Union.

The servers of the Expo Push API (notification delivery) are in the United States of America. When a notification is sent, your device's notification token, whom it is sent to, and the name of the person who triggered the notification pass through here (for example 'Deniz sent you a message'). The text of the message is never added to the notification, but another person's name is also personal data and is part of this transfer.

Verification e-mails (sign-up, sign-in and account deletion codes) are sent by Resend Inc.; its servers are in Ireland (eu-west-1 region, European Union). Only your e-mail address and the code sent pass through here; the code expires within 10 minutes.

The map base is provided by Apple Maps on iOS and Google Maps on Android. While the map is drawn, the coordinates of the region visible on screen go to this provider; your identity, account or check-ins do not. The web version has no real map, so this transfer does not happen there.

slooin.com and the moderation panel are hosted on Cloudflare, Inc. (servers worldwide, including the United States); when you visit the site, your IP address and browser details pass through this infrastructure. In the app, when you request a sign-in, sign-up, password reset or account deletion code, a one-way (irreversible) hash of your IP address and email address is kept for 2 hours to prevent abuse, then deleted.

Legal basis of the transfer: all five transfers are necessary to provide the service, so they rest on the same basis as in section 2 - performance of a contract; notification delivery and abuse protection additionally fall under legitimate interest (preventing abuse of the service).

We want to say this openly: KVKK article 9 requires, besides a legal basis, a transfer mechanism for transfers abroad (an adequacy decision, standard contract, undertaking or explicit consent). The Personal Data Protection Board has no adequacy decision covering these countries and we do NOT have a signed standard contract today either. This is an open gap that must be closed before the app is opened to real users. We prefer not to present a mechanism that does not exist as if it did.

6. Retention periods

There is more than one automatic deletion/clean-up rule in force today (not a single rule).

Expired (older than 90 days) account suspension records are automatically deleted from the database every day (full deletion, not archived). There is no copy of these records kept elsewhere today.

In the records kept to compute the daily cap on follow/chat requests, rows older than 2 days are automatically deleted every day.

The location in the check-in record (the place's location; as described in section 3) is deleted automatically when the check-in turns into a memory.

Moderation access records (see section 4) are kept for 2 YEARS. A clean-up job running every day at 04:45 deletes rows older than that. This rule is IN FORCE today.

There is no complete automatic deletion today for your memories (the rest of your check-in history), your messages and reports - they are kept indefinitely. The full counterpart of the "keep only as long as necessary" principle is not yet complete.

Planned (not yet implemented): deleting decided reports 1 year after the decision. There is no automatic deletion job for report records today.

If you block a user: all one-to-one messages and the conversation between you, pending requests and the friendship are permanently deleted. Deletion applies on both sides and cannot be undone; unblocking does not bring the deleted messages back.

If you delete your account: your profile, memories, friends and conversation list are permanently deleted. Messages you sent are not deleted but your sender identity is detached. In reports you filed the identity link is cut; in reports filed about you the identity link is NOT cut, the target identity stays in the moderation record. Your profile and check-in photos are deleted from storage.

View records, emojis left and tags on moments are deleted 24 hours after posting by an hourly cleanup job; the photo or video and place stay in the archive only you can see. This rule is IN EFFECT today.

Since 17 October 2026 sponsored applications don’t ask for or store a phone number; numbers collected earlier were deleted that day.

7. Your rights

You can freeze your account. Your data is not deleted, you become invisible; when you sign in again your account becomes active by itself.

You can delete your account permanently. There is no way back; if you want to return you must create an account from scratch.

You can download a copy of your data: Settings > Download my data. The file is prepared in JSON format and delivered with a link valid for 24 hours; when it expires the file becomes inaccessible and you can download again.

What is NOT in the file: reports filed about you (because they carry the reporter's identity), the moderation audit trail, who blocked you, and the text of messages sent to you. For messages sent to you only with whom, how many messages and when the last one was is included - the sentences on the other side of a conversation are that person's data.

YOU PROTECT THE FILE YOU DOWNLOAD. It contains everything in your account, including your location history; whoever you share it with sees all of it.

How to apply: you can send your requests to destek@slooin.com; your request is answered within 30 days at the latest.