Privacy

We collect what a dating site needs and nothing else. We don't sell it, we don't show adverts, and we don't track you. We never know where you are, only the suburb or town you chose. You can delete everything, yourself, at any time.

Dateclub (dateclub.com) is run from South Africa and is responsible for your information under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Questions and requests go to [email protected].

• Your email address. It is how you sign in. Other members never see it.
• Your profile: first name, date of birth, gender, who you're looking for, the suburb or town you chose, and whatever you add about your job, yourself and your interests. We show your age, never your date of birth.
• Your photo. We resize it and strip the hidden data cameras add (location, device, time) before it is stored.
• What you write and do: messages, Lounge posts, likes, blocks, reports, your chat with Dateclub in Messages, and any feedback you send us. Feedback also records the page you were on, your browser and your window size, so we can reproduce a problem.

Your gender and who you're looking for can say something about your sexual orientation, which the law treats as especially sensitive. We use it for one thing: deciding who sees your profile and whose profile you see. By creating a profile you agree to that.

• Sign-in requests: the email address, the time and the IP address each sign-in email was asked from. This is how we limit abuse of the sign-in form.
• Your signed-in devices: browser type, IP address and when each was last used, so that "Sign out everywhere" works and we can spot a stolen session.
• When you were last active, and whether you're online now. Other members can see this on your profile, and whether you're online on your card in New, Nearby and the likes lists.

• Your phone's location. We never ask for it. We know the suburb or town you picked, and distances are measured from the middle of one area to the middle of another.
• Your contacts, your social accounts or your phone number. We don't ask.
• Advertising or analytics data. There are no adverts, no tracking pixels and no analytics scripts on Dateclub.

• Other members see your first name, age, photo, job, bio, interests, your suburb or town, roughly how far away that is, when you were last active, and the day you joined. You appear in New (everyone, newest first) only to signed-in members where the interest in each other's gender goes both ways, wherever they live; Nearby also keeps to their distance and age range. Anyone you write to, and everyone in the Lounge if you post there, sees your first name and photo and can open your profile. Someone you like can see that you liked them, on your profile and in their Likes you list, just as you see who liked you. Once a conversation is going, each of you can see when the other has read it. Profiles are not public and are not shown to search engines.
• Pausing your profile hides you from Nearby without deleting anything. Blocking someone hides you from each other everywhere.
• Our moderators see photos the automatic check wasn't sure about, Lounge messages and profile names, bios and work lines held for review, reports (including the reported member's email address) and feedback. Our admin tools do not show direct messages.
• Your chat with Dateclub is read only by the Dateclub team, alongside your email address, first name, age, suburb or town and photo, so we know who we're talking to. Replies are signed "Dateclub"; we keep a record of which of us wrote each one. It is not scanned by any automatic check.
• Direct messages are stored on our server so they can be delivered to the other person. They are not end-to-end encrypted, and they are not scanned.

Every photo is checked by software before anyone sees it, and so is every Lounge message and every new first name, bio and work line. Software can approve or reject; anything it is unsure of, and anything that suggests a member is under 18 or in distress, goes to a person instead. A new bio or work line waiting for that isn't shown to anyone else, and they keep seeing your previous one. If you think something was wrongly rejected, email us and a person will look at it.

We use a few companies to run the site. Each gets only what it needs for its job, and none of them may use it for anything else. Some are outside South Africa, so your information is stored and processed abroad, mainly in the European Union and the United States.

• netcup hosts our server and database, in Germany, in the European Union.
• Cloudflare sits in front of the site, so every request (including your IP address) passes through it. It also runs the bot check on the sign-in form and stores photos and our encrypted backups.
• Resend delivers our emails, so it handles your email address and the emails themselves. Our message notifications never contain the text of a message.
• Anthropic checks each photo you upload, using its Claude model. It receives the image and nothing else: not your name, email or profile. It also checks a Lounge message, or your first name, bio or work line, when our first check is unsure, and receives only that text.
• TypeSafe does the first check of every Lounge message, and of your first name, bio and work line each time you change them. It receives that text and nothing else.

We don't sell or rent your information to anyone. We would hand information to the police or a court only when the law requires it.

We set one cookie, which keeps you signed in. It can't be read by scripts and is only sent over a secure connection. Cloudflare may set a security cookie of its own to tell people from bots. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, which is why you weren't asked to accept any.

• Your account, profile, photo, messages, likes and your chat with Dateclub: until you delete your account.
• Lounge messages: 30 days, then deleted automatically.
• Checks of your name, bio and work line: we keep a record of what was checked and the result for 30 days, then delete it. A check still waiting for a person is kept until it's settled. The records go with your account.
• Photos: a rejected photo is deleted immediately. A photo you replace or remove is deleted too.
• Signed-in devices: until you sign out, or 400 days after you last used that device.
• Sign-in request records: 7 days, then deleted automatically, and at once if you delete your account. The links and codes themselves stop working after 15 minutes, and we store them only in scrambled form.
• Backups: the database is backed up every night, encrypted with a key that is not kept on the server. Backups are deleted after 14 days, so deleted data is gone from them within that time.

• See and correct it. Everything on your profile can be changed from the Me screen. For a copy of everything we hold about you, email us and we'll send it.
• Delete it. Me → Delete my account (it is also at the bottom of Me → Privacy & safety). If you can't do it yourself, ask us, for example in your chat with Dateclub in Messages, and we'll delete it for you in exactly the same way. It happens at once and can't be undone. It removes your profile, photo, likes, Lounge posts, reports, feedback, your chat with Dateclub, your sign-in records, and your conversations, for both people in them.
• Turn off emails. Me → Notifications. Sign-in emails are only sent when someone asks for one.
• Object or complain. Tell us first and we'll try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa, at inforegulator.org.za.

Dateclub is for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly hold information about anyone younger, and we remove any account we find belongs to a child. If you think someone here is under 18, please report the profile.

When this page changes we update the date at the top. If a change affects what happens to your information in a way that matters, we'll tell members before it takes effect.

More on how we look after members is on the safety page.