Privacy Policy
Version 2026-09-09
1. Who is responsible for your data
Vouch is operated by an individual developer in the United Kingdom, who is the data controller for the information described here. Contact: seandnewmanuk@gmail.com.
2. What we collect
Because you have an account:
- your phone number, and the date it was verified — this is how you sign in;
- a username and, if you give them, a display name, a short bio, and a profile picture;
- optionally, a city you choose as your default.
Because you use Vouch:
- the businesses you recommend and any comment you write about them;
- the questions you ask, including their text and any place or category you attach;
- the answers you write, and any contact details you include in an answer;
- your friend connections;
- your notification settings.
From your device:
- a push notification token and the platform (iOS or Android), so we can send you notifications. You can turn notifications off, per type, in the app.
Technical and diagnostic:
- limited information used to rate-limit sign-in attempts and reports, which prevents abuse of the SMS and reporting systems;
- error reports when the app crashes or misbehaves;
- usage analytics about which screens are used, so we can tell what is worth building.
If a place you search for is one we do not hold, we record the words you typed for that place — not the rest of your search — so we know which areas people are asking for. This is stored with a pseudonymous marker, not with your name or account.
3. If you answer as a guest, with no account
If you answer a shared question without creating an account, we store the answer, the name you give, and any phone number or email address you choose to provide. Contact details are optional; the answer works without them. They are visible to the person who asked, so that they can follow up.
We do not create an account for you, and we do not use guest contact details to market anything.
4. Who can see your information
Your content is shown to your friends and to their friends — two connections from you. This boundary is enforced by the service, not by the app on your phone.
⚠ The exception you should understand: a question shared by link is readable by anyone holding that link, including people with no account. If you share a question outside Vouch, treat it as public.
Your phone number is never shown to other users. It is used for sign-in, and to connect you with people who already have your number in their contacts if you both choose that.
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell your data. We use these services to run Vouch, and your data passes through them:
| Service | What it does | What reaches it |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | hosting, database, sign-in | everything stored, at rest |
| Telnyx | sends sign-in codes | your phone number |
| Expo | delivers push notifications | your push token and the notification text |
| Anthropic | interprets what you type when you ask for something in plain language | the text of that request |
| Sentry | error reporting | technical diagnostics, which can include limited context about what you were doing |
| PostHog | usage analytics | which screens are used, and when |
| Vercel | hosts the public web pages | requests to those pages |
We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to deal with a report of illegal content.
6. About the plain-language search
When you type what you are looking for — "a plumber in Hackney" — that text is sent to Anthropic to be turned into a structured search. The text of your request is sent; your name, phone number and account are not. The result is shown back to you so you can see how it was understood, and correct it.
7. How long we keep it
We keep your account information for as long as your account exists.
When you delete your account, your profile, phone number, friend connections and private content are deleted. Recommendations and answers you contributed are kept without your name attached, because other people asked questions that were answered on the strength of them.
⚠ We are describing this precisely rather than calling it "deletion", because that is what happens.
Reports of content, and the records needed to show we handled them, are kept after the reported content is gone — that is the point of a compliance record.
8. Your rights
You have the right to ask for a copy of your data, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to how we use it, and to complain.
You can delete your account yourself in the app. For anything else, email seandnewmanuk@gmail.com.
If you are unhappy with how we handle a request, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk), the UK's data protection regulator.
9. Children
Vouch is not for children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we will remove it.
10. Changes
We may change this policy. The version identifier at the top of this page changes when we do.
11. Contact
seandnewmanuk@gmail.com