Privacy Policy
Last updated September 30, 2026
Circle is a social app for making plans with people you know. This policy describes what the Circle apps and service collect, why, who else sees it, and what you can do about it. It is written to match what the software actually does.
1. Who we are
Circle is operated by THE CIRCLE APP LLC, 1167 Abbey Pl NE, Washington, DC 20002-3415, United States. That entity is the controller of the personal data described here.
Privacy questions and requests: support@thecircleapp.us.
2. Information you give us
When you create an account. Your name, a username, your email address, your date of birth, and a password. You may also give a phone number, a gender, a profile photo, a short bio, and links to your Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Snapchat profiles. Organisation accounts give a business name instead of a date of birth.
When you use Circle. Events you create or join, Circles you create or belong to, connections and follows, direct messages and event chat messages, photos and videos you send, interests you select, places you save, the radius you set for each place, RSVPs, and reports you file.
Private tags. Notes you attach to another person’s profile are stored against your account and that person’s identifier. They are visible only to you.
3. Information collected automatically
Notification tokens. If you allow notifications, we store a push token for each device you sign in on, along with whether that device is an iPhone or an Android phone.
Presence. Whether you are currently online, and when you were last active.
Error reports. If the app or the service hits an error, a technical report goes to Sentry. It is configured not to attach personal information, and no performance traces are collected.
We do not use advertising or tracking SDKs. There is no ad network, no attribution SDK, no advertising identifier, and no cross-app tracking in Circle.
4. What we do not collect
We do not read your address book. Circle has no contacts permission on either platform. The “add from phone contacts” button opens your phone’s own Contacts app; nothing is read and nothing is uploaded.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
5. Location, in detail
This is the part people ask about, so it is set out plainly.
Circle never reads your device location. The app does not ask for location permission on either platform, and nothing in it reads where your phone is.
Location in Circle comes from places you choose:
- Places you save to your profile. You pick each one from Google Places search. We store the coordinates Google returns for that place and the radius you set, and use them to match events to you.
- Places hosts set on events. The host picks the place from Google Places search. We store its coordinates and use them to show the event on a map and to measure distance to your saved places. The address is shown to people who can see the event.
In both cases the coordinates describe the place, not your device.
6. What other people can see
Other signed-in Circle users can see: your name, username, profile photo, business name, your age (worked out from your date of birth), bio, whether your account is private, your verification status, your social links, the names of places you have saved and not marked private (the name only, not the coordinates or radius), and when you joined.
When you connect with someone, Circle may suggest a Circle to both of you based on interests and places you share. That suggestion can name a place you have both saved, even if one of you marked it private.
Your date of birth, gender, phone number, and email address are not shown to other users.
Content you post is visible according to where you post it: events to their audience, Circle messages to that Circle’s members, direct messages to the person you sent them to.
7. Photos, videos, and files
Files you upload are stored in Google Cloud Storage. Images are resized and re-encoded before storage.
Every image you upload is sent to Google Cloud Vision for safety screening before it is stored. Video is not screened.
Uploaded files, including images sent in direct messages, are served from web addresses that contain a random identifier. Those addresses are not guessable, but they are not access-controlled either: anyone holding the exact address can open the file. The one exception is evidence attached to a report, which is private and only reachable by moderators through a short-lived link.
8. Content safety
Public text, meaning event text, profile text, and public tag names, is sent to Google Cloud Natural Language for moderation screening. Direct messages and Circle chat are deliberately excluded from this and are not screened.
When someone files a report, a copy of the reported content, for example the text of the reported message or the title of the reported event, is stored with the report so moderators can act on it. Moderators can read reported content.
9. Notifications
If you allow them, we send push notifications through Apple’s and Google’s push services for things like connection requests, event invitations, messages, and event reminders. Each notification is also stored in your in-app notification list. You can turn individual notification types off in the app.
A push token identifies a device, not a person. If you sign in to a device that was previously used by someone else, the previous account’s token record for that device is deleted so that notifications do not follow the device to the wrong person.
10. Who your information goes to
We use the following service providers. They process data on our instructions.
| Provider | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud and Firebase | Account data, all app content, uploaded files, push tokens | Hosting, database, file storage, authentication, push delivery |
| Google Cloud Vision | Images you upload | Safety screening before storage |
| Google Cloud Natural Language | Public text you post | Safety screening |
| Google Places and Maps | Location searches you type, place identifiers | Place search and map display |
| Sentry | Technical error reports | Diagnosing crashes and failures |
| Firebase Authentication | Your email address | Account verification and password reset emails |
We also disclose information where we are legally required to, where it is necessary to investigate a violation of our terms, or to protect someone’s safety.
11. Where your information is held
Circle runs on Google Cloud. Your account data, content, and uploaded files are stored in the United States.
12. How long we keep it
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| In-app notifications | Deleted after 30 days |
| Event chat groups and their messages | Deleted 48 hours after the event ends |
| One-time codes for password reset | Expire within minutes |
| Account, profile, messages, events, uploaded files, reports | Kept until you delete your account |
| Deactivated accounts | Kept until you delete your account in the app or ask us to delete it |
13. Deleting your account
You can delete your account from Settings in the app, or by emailing support@thecircleapp.us from the address on your account. See the deletion page for what is removed, what may remain, and how to ask without having the app installed.
Deleting is permanent. Deactivating, which hides your account until you sign in again, is the reversible option.
14. Your rights
You can update your profile information in the app at any time. You can delete your account from Settings in the app, or ask us to delete it, as set out in section 13. You can also withdraw permissions like notifications, camera, and photos at any time in your device settings.
For any other privacy question or request, email support@thecircleapp.us. We will verify that the request comes from you before acting on it.
15. Children
Circle is for people aged 18 and over. We ask for your date of birth at sign-up to check this. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has created an account, email support@thecircleapp.us and we will remove it.
16. Security
Passwords are stored hashed, never in readable form. Sign-in tokens are held in your device’s secure keychain rather than ordinary app storage. Access to production data is limited to people who need it.
No service is perfectly secure. Please use a password you do not use anywhere else.
17. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and tell you in the app before the change takes effect.
18. Contact
THE CIRCLE APP LLC
1167 Abbey Pl NE
Washington, DC 20002-3415
United States