Account basics: your phone number, first name, date of birth, and gender. Profile details you choose to add: photos, nationality, languages, interests, and what you're hoping to find. Verification data: a selfie used once to confirm you match your profile photos — this is biometric data and is handled with extra care, described below. Location: your device's coordinates, used only to compute which Circle and proximity band you fall into. Usage data: things like which Circles you've joined and basic app activity, so features like matching and moderation work.
We do not ask for your exact home address, national ID number, or financial details to use Seylo.
We never show your exact coordinates to anyone, including other users. Other people only ever see a safe, approximate label — like "< 1 km away," "Within 4 km," or "Same city" — never your exact distance, a map pin, a street, or a building. Your device's most recent coordinates are kept only for as long as your account is active — each new location update overwrites the last, so this is never a history or timeline of where you've been — and are deleted along with the rest of your account data if you delete your account. Raw coordinates are not shared with third parties.
Your verification selfie is used only to confirm a match against your uploaded photos at the moment you verify. It is never shown to other users and is not used for any purpose beyond that one-time check. Because this is biometric data, we do not store it at all — it is compared in memory for the moment verification takes and then discarded, not written to any database or file storage. Taking this selfie is optional in the sense that nothing forces the camera open without your action, but completing it is required to unlock verified-only features — starting the liveness check is how you give consent to this one-time comparison; closing the camera before it completes withdraws that consent and nothing is kept.
To operate core features: matching you into relevant Circles, showing your profile to others, and delivering messages. To keep the community safe: verifying accounts, detecting scam or harassment patterns, and acting on reports. To improve the app: understanding, in aggregate, how features are used. We do not use your data to sell you anything outside Seylo, and we do not sell your personal data to third parties.
Other users see only what your profile is set to show — never your phone number, exact location, or verification selfie. We share data with service providers who help us run the app (for example, cloud hosting and SMS delivery for verification codes), bound by contracts to protect it and use it only for that purpose. We may disclose information if required by UAE law or a valid legal request.
Under the UAE's Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), you have the right to: access the personal data we hold about you; correct it if it's inaccurate or incomplete; request its erasure; restrict or object to certain processing; and request a portable copy of it. Profile edits and deletion are available directly in the app at any time. For anything else — a full data export, or a question about how a specific right applies to you — contact [email protected]; we aim to respond within 30 days. Deleting your account removes your profile from the app; some information may be retained briefly where we have a legal or safety obligation to do so (for example, records related to an active abuse report).
Some of the infrastructure that stores and processes your data — cloud hosting and file storage — runs outside the UAE. Where that's the case, we use providers that maintain recognized security and privacy safeguards, and we only transfer what those services need to do their job (for example, hosting the app backend, or storing uploaded photos). We do not transfer your data to a third party for that party's own purposes.
We keep your data for as long as your account is active, plus a limited period afterward to handle safety reports, disputes, and legal obligations. Verification selfies are not retained at all, per Section 4.
We use industry-standard measures — encrypted connections, encryption of message content at rest, access controls, and secure storage — to protect your data. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat this seriously, especially for sensitive categories like location and biometric data.
Seylo is not for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data from minors, and we verify date of birth at signup to help enforce this.
If we make material changes to how we handle your data, we will let you know before they take effect.
Privacy questions or data requests can be sent to [email protected].