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 and star sign, 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, confessions and replies to them, 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. Dateclub opened inside Telegram counts as one of these devices.
• 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.
• The daily quiz, if you play it: which answer you picked for each question, whether it was right, how long you took, and your score.
• This or That, if you vote: which of the two you picked each day.
• Your Telegram connection, if you make one: the numbers Telegram uses for your account and for your chat with our bot, when you connected, and which alerts you've switched on. Never your Telegram name, username or phone number.

• 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, star sign, 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. If you finish the daily quiz and have an approved photo, members see your first name, photo, score and time on that day's board, and the day's winner is named the next day on the quiz and in the Lounge. If you vote in This or That, members who picked the same that day and can see you in New may see you on its list, and someone viewing your profile who has voted on at least three of the same days sees how often the two of you picked the same. Nobody is shown which way you voted on a day they picked the other side, and the totals are counts only. A confession is shown to members without your name or photo, and so are your own replies under it; nothing members can see links it to you, and blocking someone doesn't hide it from them, because that would give you away. A reply you write under someone else's confession shows your first name and photo, and members who can see it 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, confessions and replies, and profile names, bios and work lines held for review, reports (including the reported member's email address) and feedback. To judge a report or a held item, they can also see that member's record with us: their profile and photos and what our checks said about them, their Lounge posts from the last 30 days, reports made by and about them, the browser type of their signed-in devices (not the IP address), and counts such as how many chats they started, how many got a reply and how many members blocked them. A confession is anonymous to members, not to us: when one is held or reported, our moderators see who wrote it. They do not read direct messages, with one exception: when you report someone from a chat, you can choose to include it, and then they see a copy of the last 50 messages between you and that person, as they were when you reported.
• 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. Nobody at Dateclub reads them, unless one of the two people in a chat includes it in a report (see Our moderators).

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, a confession or a reply to one, or your first name, bio or work line, when our first check is unsure, and receives only that text (for a reply, also the confession it answers).
• TypeSafe does the first check of every Lounge message, confession and reply to one, and of your first name, bio and work line each time you change them. It receives that text and nothing else (for a reply, also the confession it answers).
• Telegram only if you connect it, from Me → Notifications. Telegram Messenger Inc. then receives the alerts we send you: a member's first name and that there is something new, when Dateclub has replied, that someone new likes you, how many new messages the Lounge has, or how many new replies your confession has. Never the text of a message, never a photo, never your email address. Telegram knows which of its accounts is yours; we only hold its number. Copies of those alerts stay in your Telegram chat, which is Telegram's to keep. Tapping an alert opens Dateclub inside Telegram and signs you in as yourself, which is why connecting Telegram needs you to be signed in here first, and why disconnecting it signs those Telegram sessions out.

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.
• Confessions: 7 days after posting, then deleted automatically, with every reply under it and what our checks said about them. You can delete your own sooner.
• Quiz answers and scores: 30 days, then deleted automatically.
• This or That votes: 180 days, then deleted automatically.
• A chat included in a report: the copy is kept while the report is open and for 30 days after we close it, then deleted automatically. It goes at once if either of you deletes their account.
• 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, and so is your photo when you delete your account. Deleting it also clears the copies Cloudflare keeps to show it quickly; if Cloudflare can't be reached, we keep trying until it confirms.
• Signed-in devices: until you sign out, or 400 days after you last used that device.
• Your Telegram connection: until you disconnect it (Me → Notifications, or /stop in the chat), block the bot, or delete your account. The connect links themselves work for 10 minutes and are stored only in scrambled form.
• 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, confessions and replies, quiz scores, This or That votes, reports, feedback, your chat with Dateclub, your sign-in records, and your conversations, for both people in them.
• Turn off emails and Telegram alerts. 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.