Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Adopted Adults is a community where members host one another for free, hosted stays. The Service is operated by Adopted Adults LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company, of 112310 Baxter Ct, Chaska, MN 55318-1503, United States, which is the controller of the personal information described in this Policy. For privacy questions or requests, contact hello@adoptedadults.com.

2. Information We Collect

Information you give us:

• Account: email address, password, your date of birth (used to confirm you are 18 or older), and, if you provide it, your mobile phone number (used to text you important account messages, like a visit request).
• Profile: your name, profile photo, short bio, what you do, languages, interests, and the general location (city and state) you choose to display.
• Listings: your home and adoption details, house rules, and the photos and videos you upload.
• Messages and Content: the messages you send, including photos or videos shared in chat, and the reviews and reports you submit.
• Support: information you provide when you contact us.

Identity verification: Verification is performed by a third-party provider (currently Didit) using a government-ID scan, a liveness selfie, and a face match. The face match uses biometric information, which some laws treat as a special category of data. It is collected for one purpose only, confirming that you are the person on the identity document you presented, so that members can trust who they are letting into their home. The provider shows you its own notice and asks for your consent before anything is captured, and it processes and retains that data under its own privacy terms. We never receive or store your raw identity document, your selfie, or any biometric identifier derived from them. What reaches us is only the result: a pass or fail, a verified badge, and a reference identifier. If you would rather not complete a biometric check, you can keep using the Service without a verified badge, though you will not be able to confirm a stay.

Information collected automatically: basic device and log information, general app usage, and error diagnostics from our error-monitoring provider (configured not to collect personal identifiers). We use session cookies or tokens to keep you signed in.

Location: the general area (city and state) you select for your profile and listings, refined through a maps provider's address lookup. We store an approximate area, not precise or continuous GPS location.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Operate the Service: accounts, listings, matching, messaging, requests, stays, and reviews.
• Verify identity and keep the community safe, including the recommended video call and preventing fraud, abuse, and ban evasion.
• Automatically screen uploaded images and videos for harmful content before they become visible.
• Automatically check profiles, listings, and messages sent through the Service for safety and authenticity problems, such as requests for money, attempts to move a conversation off the platform, sexual or threatening content, and accounts that are not genuine. Anything flagged is reviewed by a person before we act on it. We do this because members meet one another in real homes, and responding only after harm is reported is not enough. These checks run on our own systems. We do not send your messages to an outside company to screen them.
• Send transactional messages and, with your consent where required, product updates and marketing, which you can opt out of at any time.
• Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms.
• Maintain, troubleshoot, and improve the Service.

For members in the EEA or UK, our legal bases are performance of our contract with you, legitimate interests in operating and securing the Service, your consent (for marketing and where otherwise required), and compliance with legal obligations.

4. What Is Public, and What Is Shared Only After a Stay Is Confirmed

• Public to other members: your first name, general area, profile photo, bio, listings, and reviews.
• Shared only after a stay is confirmed: your full name and exact address are shared with the other member only after a stay is confirmed through the Service.

5. How We Share Information

• With service providers who help us run the Service (identity verification, video calling, maps and address lookup, automated photo screening, push, email and text-message delivery, payment processing, hosting, storage and backup, and error monitoring), only as needed to perform their services.
• With other members as necessary to arrange and complete stays, as described in Section 4.
• For safety and legal reasons: to investigate reports, enforce our Terms, protect members, respond to lawful requests, or comply with the law.
• In a business transfer: in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.
• With your consent.

We do not sell your personal information. Where you have given us permission, we share limited advertising measurement data with Meta so we can understand which advertisements bring people to Adopted Adults: an identifier for your app installation and the fact that you reached a step such as creating an account or having an adoption approved. We never share the contents of your messages, your photos, your date of birth, or your exact address for advertising. If you have not given permission, nothing is shared for advertising, and you can withdraw permission at any time in Settings.

6. Third-Party Providers

We rely on trusted providers, currently including identity verification (Didit), video calling (Daily), address lookup (Mapbox), the map on Explore (Google Maps), automated screening of uploaded photos and videos (Sightengine), automated review of listings and profiles submitted for approval (Anthropic), delivery of push notifications to your phone (Apple and Google), email delivery (Resend), text-message (SMS) delivery (Twilio), payment processing (Stripe), advertising measurement where you have permitted it (Meta), hosting, database, and file storage (Supabase and Vercel), encrypted off-site backup of uploaded photos (Cloudflare), and error monitoring (Sentry). Each processes data under its own terms. This list may change as the Service evolves.

7. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use essential cookies or tokens to keep you signed in and to operate the Service. We do not use third-party advertising cookies on our website. In our mobile apps, where you have given permission, we use advertising identifiers provided by your phone to measure which advertisements bring people to Adopted Adults. You can turn this off at any time in Settings, and on an iPhone you can also refuse it when your phone asks. Where required, we will present a cookie or consent banner appropriate to your jurisdiction.

8. Data Retention

We keep your information while your account is active and as needed to provide the Service. After you delete your account, we delete or de-identify your information within a reasonable period, except where we must retain certain records for legal, safety, dispute-resolution, or backup purposes. For example, we may keep limited records of a safety removal to enforce our ban-evasion measures.

9. Your Choices and Rights

• Access and update: view and edit your profile and listings in the app at any time.
• Privacy settings: control what is shown and the notifications you receive.
• Marketing: opt out through your settings or the unsubscribe link; you may still receive service-related messages.
• Delete: delete your account at any time in settings.

Depending on where you live (California, other U.S. states, the EEA, or the UK), you may have additional rights, such as to access, correct, delete, or port your data, or to object to or restrict certain processing. To make a request, contact hello@adoptedadults.com. We will verify your request and respond as required by law, and will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.

If you are in the EEA or the UK and you think we have handled your information badly, we would like the chance to put it right, so please contact us first. You do not have to. You can complain directly to your own data protection supervisory authority at any time, and in the United Kingdom that is the Information Commissioner's Office.

10. Text Messages (SMS)

If you add your mobile number, we use it to send transactional text messages, such as letting you know when a member asks to visit you. We do not send marketing or promotional texts to this number.

Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to opt out, or HELP for help. Opting out of texts does not close your account; we may still send you essential service messages by email or in the app.

We do not sell your mobile phone number or your text-messaging consent, and we do not share them with third parties or affiliates for their own marketing. We share your number only with the messaging provider that delivers these texts for us (currently Twilio), solely to send them.

11. Security

We use reasonable, industry-standard measures including encryption in transit, row-level access controls so members can reach only data they are permitted to, and least-privilege system access. No method is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

12. Children

The Service is for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we will delete it.

13. International Users and Transfers

We are based in the United States and may process and store information in the United States and other countries where we or our providers operate. For EEA and UK members, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Policy. For material changes we will give reasonable notice, by email or in the app. The effective date above shows when it was last updated.

15. Contact

Questions about this Policy: hello@adoptedadults.com.