Privacy Policy — Happenous

1. Who we are

Happenous is an app for Android and iPhone that helps people post real plans, called Activities, and meet the people who join them. It is operated by Cosmonus Private Limited, a company registered in India with its registered office at 10, Nagavalli Amman Street, Avadi 600054, India (“Happenous”, “we”, “us”).

For the personal data described here, we are the Data Fiduciary under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (the “DPDP Act”). This is also the privacy policy we publish under rule 3(1)(a) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (the “IT Rules”). It covers the Happenous app and this website, and it forms part of our Terms of Use.

A few words have particular meanings in Happenous. An Activity is a plan someone has posted, and its Host is the person who posted it. The Crew is the people the Host accepted. A Buddy is someone you have a mutual, accepted connection with. Check-in is entering the Host’s code at the meeting point. A Moment is a photo or video posted after an Activity by someone who was there.

2. The short version

We collect what it takes to run your account and to put people in the same place at the same time.
Nobody else using Happenous can see your email address, phone number, date of birth or gender, and you choose who can see your profile.
We remove the details embedded in photos and videos, including where they were taken, before we store them.
Until a Host accepts you, an Activity shows only an approximate area. We don’t store your device’s location on our servers unless you turn on Nearby Buddies, and even then we never show anyone where you are.
Moments are visible only to the people who checked in to that Activity.
Chat messages are deleted automatically after 180 days.
We don’t sell personal data, we don’t show advertising, and there is no analytics or tracking software in the app or on this website.

The rest of this policy is the detail. Where the app does something differently from what you might expect, we say so.

3. What we collect

When you create an account

Your email address, and your phone number in international format if you choose to give one. You sign in with your email address; a phone number can’t be used to sign in, and we don’t currently verify it. You can verify your email address from Settings, with a code we send you.
A password of at least 12 characters. We store it only as a one-way hash (Argon2), so nobody at Happenous can read it.
A username we generate for you, which you can change.
Your agreement to our Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy: which version you accepted, and when.

When you set up your profile

Your name, as you want it shown.
Your date of birth. We use it to confirm you are 18 or over, and we won’t set up a profile for anyone younger. It is never shown to other people.
Your gender, if you choose to give it: male, female, non-binary, or prefer not to say. It is optional, never shown on your profile, and used only to understand, in aggregate, who is using Happenous.
Your city, chosen from a list, and at least three interests. These decide what the app suggests to you.
If you want, a bio of up to 250 characters and a profile photo.

When you use the app

Activities you host: the title, description, category, meet-up, start and end times, Crew size, requirements, media policy, who can find it, the approximate area and exact meeting point you place on the map, and an optional cover photo. We also record which version of the Host Code you accepted, and when.
Requests to join: your confirmation that you meet each requirement, any note you add for the Host, and whether you were accepted, declined or waitlisted.
Crews and check-ins: which Crews you are in, when you checked in, and whether you left.
Activities you save.
Buddy requests and connections, and the people you block.
Reports you make, with the reason and any details you write.
Reviews you write and receive: three yes-or-no answers and an optional written note.
Recognition badges, worked out automatically from your check-ins and hosting.
Moments you post: photos and videos, a caption, the people you tag, and an optional place name and position.
Chat messages you send, including photos, and when you last read each conversation — this is how “Seen” works.
Your notification settings, and the notifications we show you in the app.

From your device

For each sign-in, a session record: when it started and when it expires. The credential that keeps you signed in is stored hashed.
Your device’s platform (Android or iOS), the app version, and when it was last used. If you turn on push notifications, the push token that lets us reach that device.
Whether you allowed location access, and at what precision — not your location itself (see Location).
Your IP address reaches our servers with every request, as it does with any internet service. We don’t store it against your account. Our limits on sign-in, sign-up and password reset hold it in memory for about a minute, to slow down password guessing, and our hosting provider may keep standard server logs (see Who we share it with).

We don’t collect your contacts, your other social accounts, anything from Apple Health, Health Connect or any other fitness app, or anything from your photo library other than the photos you choose to upload.

4. Location

Your device’s location

If you allow it, the app reads your device’s approximate position and sends it with your request when you look at For You or Nearby, so we can find Activities near you and sort them by distance. We use it to answer that request and don’t save it. If you don’t allow location access, we use the centre of the city you chose instead. If you drag the Happening map to another area, the app searches around the middle of the map instead — a point on the map, not where you are — and that isn’t saved either.

The app keeps the last position on your phone for up to 12 hours, so it doesn’t have to ask each time you open it, and deletes it when you sign out. If you chose to use your location, it reads it again, without asking, when you open Happening or Home, so that what you see follows where you are; if you chose your city instead, it doesn’t read it at all. On our side we store only whether you allowed location access, unless you turn on Nearby Buddies (below). Happenous never tracks your position in the background, and never shows anyone where you are.

Nearby Buddies

Nearby Buddies is off until you turn it on. When it’s on, the app sends your approximate position while it is open — when you open it, and every few minutes while you use it, never in the background. We round it to about 3 km before we store it, keep only the latest one, stop using it once it is half an hour old and delete it within the hour after that, and delete it at once if you turn Nearby Buddies off. We use it only to tell your Buddies who also turned it on that you’re within 10 km of them, and to tell you the same about them. Nobody is shown how far away you are, in which direction, or where. A Buddy you’ve blocked, or who has blocked you, never sees you. When you bump into a Buddy, we keep that you did, and when, for 7 days.

You can pause Nearby Buddies for an hour, three hours or the rest of the day: while it is paused nobody sees you, you see nobody, and we delete your position and store none. If you say you’re free now — for chai, a walk or anything — we keep that with your position for up to three hours, and your Buddies in range see it on your face; it goes when your position does. If you hide from a Buddy, we keep that you did until you undo it in Settings: neither of you sees the other, and they aren’t told.

Where an Activity is

A Host places two locations on every Activity: an approximate area, shown to everyone who can see the Activity, and the exact meeting point. The exact meeting point is shown only to the Host and to the people the Host has accepted into the Crew. If you leave the Crew, you lose access to it straight away. Searches for Activities near you only ever use the approximate area.

Moments

When you post a Moment you can add a place name and a position. They are visible only to the people who checked in to that Activity — the same people who can see the Moment.

Maps

The Activity screen draws a small map using tiles from a third-party map provider (Esri, ArcGIS Online). Your phone downloads those tiles directly, so the provider receives your IP address and the map area being shown — the area around the Activity, not around you.

Our staff

Our administrators can see an Activity’s exact meeting point when they need to for safety reasons. Every time one does, it is recorded in an audit log.

5. Photos and videos

You can upload a profile photo (JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 5 MB), a cover photo for an Activity you host, up to eight photos or videos for a Moment (videos up to 50 MB), and one photo per chat message. We check what each file actually is when it arrives, and refuse anything that isn’t a supported image or video. We don’t accept HEIC photos yet.

Before we store a photo or video, we remove the details embedded in it: where and when it was taken, the camera or phone that took it, and any comments, captions or tags it carries. The only thing we keep is which way up a photo goes, so it isn’t shown sideways. We don’t change the picture itself. If we can’t read a file well enough to do this, we refuse it rather than store it as it came.

Your profile photo is seen by anyone who can see your profile or your name (see Who can see what), and next to your name in search results, Crew lists and chats.
An Activity’s cover is seen by anyone who can see the Activity.
Moments are seen only by the people who checked in to that Activity. If the Host set the Activity to “no participant photography”, nobody can post Moments from it.
Chat photos are seen by the people in that conversation.

One thing you should know: each file is served from a web address containing a long random identifier. The app shows a Moment or chat photo only to the people allowed to see it, but anyone who gets hold of that address directly — because someone copied and shared it, for example — can open the file.

The camera is used only to scan QR codes. Nothing it sees is recorded or stored.

6. How we use it

To create your account, sign you in and keep it secure — your email address, phone number, password hash, sessions and device records.
To show your profile to other people — your name, username, photo, bio, city, interests, badges and review totals.
To suggest Activities — your interests, your city and, if you allow it, your device’s position at the time.
To run Activities — hosting, requests, the Crew, the meeting point, check-in, reviews and Recognition.
To let you talk to your Crew and your Buddies, and tell you when something happens — chat and notifications.
To confirm you are 18 or over — your date of birth.
To keep people safe — reports, blocks, the written notes on reviews, and moderation records.
To understand, in aggregate, who uses Happenous — how many people finish signing up, which cities they are in, and the spread of ages and genders. Our staff see these as counts, never as a list of people.
To comply with the law and respond to lawful requests.

We process your data with your consent, which you give by creating an account and using the features described here, and for the legitimate uses the DPDP Act allows — including using information you gave us for the purpose you gave it, and complying with the law. You can withdraw your consent at any time (see Your rights). Withdrawing doesn’t affect what we did before, and some features can’t work without the data they need.

We don’t use your data for advertising, we don’t sell it, and we don’t make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects. The only automatic ranking in Happenous is the order in which Activities are suggested to you.

7. Who can see what

What	Who can see it
Your profile: name, username, profile photo, bio, city, interests, badges, how many Buddies you have, your review totals (once you have three reviews), and the Activities you host	It depends on the setting you choose under Settings, Privacy. Public: anyone, including people who aren’t signed in. Buddies: your Buddies see all of it. Anyone else signed in to Happenous sees only your name, username and photo, so they can ask to be your Buddy. Private: only you see all of it. Your Buddies see your name, username and photo. Nobody else can find you in search or open your profile, though you can still send Buddy requests yourself. Whatever you choose, people you have blocked, and people who have blocked you, can’t see your profile or find you.
Your name and photo where you already are with people	Shown whatever your profile setting: on an Activity you host, to the Crew of an Activity you are in, to people you are in a conversation with, and to people who checked in to the same Activity (for reviews and Moments). A Buddy request you send shows your name and photo to the person you sent it to.
Your email address, phone number, date of birth and gender	Only you, and our staff where their role requires it.
Activities you host	Whoever you let find them: everyone, or only your Buddies. The exact meeting point: only you and your accepted Crew.
Activities you have joined	Not listed on your profile. The Crew list is visible only to the Host and the Crew; everyone else sees a count.
Your note on a request to join	The Host.
Moments	The people who checked in to that Activity. People you tag are told.
Chat messages	The people in that conversation — the Crew, for an Activity’s chat, or you and your Buddy. If a message is reported, our moderators; and, for a safety investigation, our trust and safety staff (see Our staff and moderation).
Individual reviews	Nobody. Totals appear on a profile only after three reviews. The written note is never shown to the person reviewed or to any other user; it is kept for our moderators.
Reports you make	Never shown to the person you reported. You can see that you made a report, not what was decided.
People you block	The person isn’t told. Any Buddy connection between you ends.
Who your Buddies are	Only you. Other people see only the number.

8. Our staff and moderation

Happenous staff use an internal console. Each person has a role — support, moderator, trust and safety, operations or administrator — and sees what that role requires. Staff can:

see account details, including email address and phone number, to answer support requests;
read reports and the content they are about — for a reported message, that includes up to five messages before and after it in the same conversation, so a moderator can understand the exchange;
when investigating a safety concern — a report, a safety case, or a risk to someone’s safety — read a whole conversation, including an Activity’s Crew chat or a chat between Buddies, and the photos, videos, voice notes and documents in it. Only trust and safety staff and administrators can do this; each time, they must write down why, and the opening is recorded in the audit log against them. They don’t see locations you shared;
review Moments, and remove or restore them;
see an Activity’s exact meeting point, which is logged every time;
see aggregate statistics about who uses Happenous.

Every moderation action — pausing, blocking or deleting an account, locking or removing an Activity, removing or restoring a Moment, closing a report — requires the staff member to write down a reason, and is recorded in an audit log against them. When we lock or remove an Activity, its Host is told why.

10. How long we keep it

What	How long
Chat messages	Deleted automatically 180 days after they were sent, together with any photo they carried.
Chat messages you remove, and every message you sent if you delete your account	Hidden from everyone at once, and deleted 30 days later. Photos in them are deleted at once.
A message named in a report that is still open	Kept, with any photo in it, until the report is closed, then deleted on the schedule above.
Moments you remove, or a moderator removes	Hidden from everyone at once. Kept, with their files, so the decision can be reviewed. We don’t yet delete them on a schedule.
Reports and the moderation audit log	Kept, including after they are resolved: the pattern across reports is how moderators protect people.
Reviews	Kept, as part of the totals shown on profiles.
Password-reset and verification codes	Stored hashed. Each one works once and expires within minutes.
Your device’s last position	On your phone only, for up to 12 hours, and cleared when you sign out.
The email address and phone number you registered with, after you delete your account	Kept separately for 180 days after deletion, because the IT Rules (rule 3(1)(h)) require us to keep the information you gave to register for that long, and then deleted automatically. Nobody using Happenous can see them, and they aren’t shown in the app, to our support staff or in any export. We use them only to answer a lawful request, such as an order from a court or an authorised government agency.
Everything else in your account	For as long as your account exists. See Deleting your account.

Where the law requires us to keep information for longer — for example, the IT Rules require us to preserve information we have removed, and the records linked to it, for 180 days for investigation — we keep it for that period and use it for nothing else. Where we haven’t set a fixed period, we keep data only for as long as your account is active or we need it for the purposes in this policy.

11. Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app, under Settings, Your data, Delete your account. You confirm by typing DELETE and with your password, or with Google if you joined with Google. Without the app, email us from the address you signed up with (see Delete your account). This is what happens, all at once:

your name is replaced with “Deleted user”, and your bio, profile photo, date of birth, gender, city and interests are erased;
your username, email address and phone number are removed from the account and released, so they can be used again. Your email address and phone number are then kept separately for 180 days, as the IT Rules require, and deleted after that (see How long we keep it);
the Moments you posted are deleted with their photos and videos, and you are removed from Moments other people tagged you in;
every message you sent disappears from the conversations it was in, and is deleted 30 days later; photos in your messages are deleted at once;
your Buddy connections, the people you blocked, saved Activities, notifications and their settings, badges, and records of your devices and push notification tokens are deleted;
Activities you host that have not started are cancelled, and everyone in the Crew or waiting on a request is told. You are removed from Crews you joined for Activities that haven’t happened, and their Hosts are told a place has opened up;
every device you were signed in on is signed out, and the account can no longer be used;
your profile is no longer available to anyone.

Some records stay, attached to an internal identifier rather than to your name, because other people’s records depend on them or the law expects us to keep them: Activities that already happened or were under way, and your check-ins at them; reviews you wrote and received, which are part of other people’s totals; reports you made and reports about you; the moderation audit log; a message or photo named in a report that is still open, until the report is closed; and a Moment our moderators removed, which we preserve as the IT Rules require. Lines in a conversation that said you joined or left a Crew stay in that conversation.

Our staff can also delete an account — for example, after a serious breach of the Terms of Use. Everything above happens then too: the same deletion, the same records kept for the same reasons. What differs is only who asked for it, and that we keep our own note of why we did it. If your account was deleted by our staff and you want to know what was kept, write to our Grievance Officer (see Contact and grievances).

12. Your rights

Under the DPDP Act you have the right to:

Get a summary and a copy of the personal data we hold about you. Settings, Your data, Export my data gives you, straight away, everything your account holds: your profile, including your contact details, date of birth, gender and city; your agreement to these documents; interests and location permission; Activities you hosted and saved, and your Host Code acceptances; requests to join, Crews and check-ins; Buddy connections and blocks; reports and reviews you wrote, and the totals of reviews about you; badges; the Moments you posted and were tagged in; your conversations and the messages you sent; notifications and their settings; sessions, devices, and password-reset and verification requests. The file lists what it leaves out, and why: passwords, session and push tokens, and other codes, because they are credentials; reports and blocks other people made about you, the outcome of reports, and moderation records; individual reviews of you and their notes; and what other people wrote, including the text of their messages. Ask our Grievance Officer if you want any of it. You can also ask us who we have shared your data with.
Correct and update it. Most of your profile can be edited in the app; for anything else, write to us.
Have it erased, by deleting your account or by asking us (see Deleting your account).
Withdraw your consent — for example by turning off location access in your phone’s settings, removing your profile photo, or deleting your account.
Nominate someone to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to. Write to us to do this.
Have your grievances addressed, by our Grievance Officer first, and then by the Data Protection Board of India.

To use any of these rights, use the control in the app where there is one, or write to our Grievance Officer from the email address on your account. We may need to confirm it is you before we act.

The DPDP Act also asks some things of you: give us accurate information, don’t impersonate anyone, and don’t file false or frivolous complaints.

13. Under-18s

Happenous is only for people aged 18 and over. We ask for your date of birth the first time you ask to join or host an Activity and won’t continue for anyone younger, so we don’t knowingly process the personal data of anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will delete it. If you believe a child is using Happenous, please tell us (see Contact and grievances).

14. Security

Passwords, password-reset codes, verification codes and the credentials that keep you signed in are stored only as Argon2 hashes.
The app talks to our servers over encrypted HTTPS connections.
Your session is checked on every request, so signing out, or ending a session from the sessions list in Settings, takes effect immediately. Resetting your password signs out every device.
Sign-in, sign-up and password reset are rate-limited to slow down guessing.
Uploaded files are checked by what they contain, not by their name, and have their embedded details removed, before they are stored.

No system is perfectly secure. If a personal data breach happens, we will tell you and the Data Protection Board of India as the DPDP Act requires, explain what happened, and tell you what you can do.

15. Notifications and email

The app shows notifications of six kinds: requests, Activities, Moments, Recognition, safety and messages. You can turn off any of them in Settings except safety notifications, which tell you about things like an Activity of yours being locked or removed.

If you allow push notifications, the same notifications are also sent to your phone, through Expo’s push service and then Apple’s or Google’s. We store your device’s push token to do this, and stop using a token once it stops working.

We send email only about your account — verification codes and password-reset codes. We don’t send marketing email.

16. Analytics, cookies and this website

The Happenous app contains no analytics, advertising or tracking software.

This website sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads nothing from other companies — even its fonts are served from our own server. The company that hosts it (Google Firebase Hosting) may keep standard server logs, such as IP addresses and the pages requested, for security and to keep the site running.

17. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when the app changes, and keep it describing what the app actually does. The date at the top says when it last changed. When you create an account we ask you to accept this policy and our Terms, and record which version you accepted. If a change materially affects how we use your data, the app will ask you to accept the new version before you carry on; if you don’t want to, you can still export your data or delete your account. We will also remind you of this policy and our Terms at least once a year, as the IT Rules require.

18. Contact and grievances

Our Grievance Officer handles questions and complaints about your personal data and about content on Happenous:

Name: Sri Gokul Krishnan (LinkedIn)
Email: hello@cosmonus.com
Post: Cosmonus Private Limited, 10, Nagavalli Amman Street, Avadi 600054, India

We will acknowledge your complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 15 days of receiving it.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India. Under the DPDP Act you need to have raised the grievance with us first.