Privacy Policy

1. Overview

1.1 This Privacy Policy explains how Affini App, LLC (“Affini,” “we,” “us”) collects, uses, and shares information when you use the Affini web-based platform (the “Platform”), whether as an individual Affini Member or as a host of an Affini Community. Privacy is the foundation of how Affini works: the Platform is built so that your individual profile answers feed the matching algorithms, not other people’s screens. This Policy describes that design, along with its limits, in plain language.

1.2 The Platform is offered to users in the United States who are at least 18 years old.

1.3 Throughout this Policy, an “Affini Community” means a group’s space on the Platform, which you join by invitation or by a host’s approval, and an “Affini Member,” or simply a “member,” means a person with their own Affini account. A group may also have its own membership, rules, and processes outside Affini. Where we refer to those, we say so.

2. Our Core Privacy Design

2.1 Your card is what people see. Your member card, meaning your name, photo, headline, and general location, is visible to the hosts of Affini Communities you join or request to join, and to Affini Members you match with. Hosts can also see your account email address and your membership status, so they can verify and contact their members. Our Host Terms permit hosts to use this information only to run their Affini Community, and prohibit marketing, solicitation, sale, and sharing.

2.2 Everything else is engine-only. Other profile answers and matching inputs, including your structured selections and open-text responses, are read only by the matching engine, except as described in Sections 2.4, 4.5, 5.1, and 6.7. They are not visible to other members or hosts, and not displayed anywhere in the Platform except to you.

2.3 What a match reveals. When you are matched, the other Affini Member sees your member card. We do not share match reasons, compatibility explanations, common ground, or any of your underlying answers. Section 6 sets out in full what we share and with whom.

2.4 Our team’s access is restricted by design. We designed our systems to restrict human access, including by Affini personnel, to individual matching inputs. Access or disclosure beyond this design occurs only if required by law or a legal investigation, as necessary to investigate and respond to security incidents (Section 6), or when you ask us to review a screening decision.

3. Information We Collect

3.1 Account and card information: information you provide to us, including your name, email address, password (stored in hashed form), birth month and year (used only for verification and for age-based matching preferences where offered, and never displayed to hosts or other members), a profile photo and a short headline if you choose to add them, and your general location (currently your U.S. state). Your name, photo, headline, and general location make up your member card, as described in 2.1; the photo and headline are optional. The headline is short and is never used to match you. We also store any contact links you choose to add, meaning links to profiles you already maintain elsewhere.

3.2 Profile and matching information: your answers to profile questions, including your goals, background, interests, values, and personality answers, given as structured selections and open-text responses, and refresh answers over time. Answers that describe you as a person are stored once at the account level and used by every Affini Community you join, so editing one updates it everywhere. Community-specific answers, such as your goals or intent within an Affini Community and responses you give in connection with those goals, stay with that Affini Community. Your headline and photo are set once at the account level and used in every Affini Community you join.

3.3 Match feedback: your responses to post-match feedback prompts, used internally to improve the service.

3.4 Community information: the Affini Communities and events you belong to, your membership status, your matches, and your check-ins to Affini Community events.

3.5 Usage and device information: log data, IP address, browser and device type, and similar diagnostics, collected automatically from your device when you use the Platform.

3.6 Host information (hosts only): organization name and host account activity. If we introduce paid host plans, payment information will be processed by our payment processor and we will not store full card numbers.

3.7 Communications: messages you send to us, such as support requests.

3.8 We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. We do not collect biometric identifiers, and we do not use facial recognition on profile photos.

4. How We Use Information

4.1 To operate the Platform: create your profile, generate matches, form sub-groups when a host uses grouping, and support the ongoing operation of your Affini Communities, such as periodic prompts to refresh your answers. When a host uses grouping, we may also use the sub-group compositions of that Affini Community’s recent groupings to reduce how often the same members are placed together.

4.2 To improve matching: train, tune, and evaluate our matching algorithms. We do not use your content to train general-purpose AI language models, and our AI service providers are contractually barred from training their models on it. Your answers do inform our own matching, which is what the Platform is for. Section 5 describes how your open-text answers are processed.

4.3 To process open-text answers: we use AI language-model technology to interpret open-text responses for matching purposes, as described in Section 5.

4.4 To communicate with you (primarily using your email address): service announcements, match notifications, and, with your consent where required, product updates.

4.5 To secure the Platform: detect, investigate, and prevent fraud and security incidents. We also use automated systems, including AI, to screen open-text profile entries for content that violates our guidelines, such as threatening, abusive, or discriminatory content. Flagged text in a matching field temporarily holds the profile from matching until the member revises it; flagged card content, such as a headline or photo, is withheld from display until it is revised. If you ask us to review a screening decision, authorized Affini personnel will read the flagged text so we can resolve your request. They see only the text that was flagged, and we keep a record of the review.

4.6 To comply with law and enforce our terms.

4.7 To analyze usage in aggregate and improve the product.

4.8 We do not sell your individual personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own advertising or marketing. We do not use your profile answers for advertising.

5. AI and Data Processing

5.1 Affini’s matching uses algorithmic and AI systems. Structured answers are scored algorithmically. Open-text answers are processed using AI language-model technology, which may include third-party AI service providers acting as our processors, to represent their meaning for matching.

5.2 In practice this means reducing what you write to standardized keywords, such as a skill, an interest, a professional field, or a goal, which are what the matching algorithms compare. Your sentences themselves are not shown to anyone or compared directly.

5.3 We never derive keywords from your writing about health, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or your own age or gender, and never about other people you mention. That includes indirect signals such as where you or your family are from. The languages you speak are recorded only if you select them yourself; we do not infer them from your writing. Your headline is not used for matching. It appears on your card and is screened before it is displayed, but no matching keywords are taken from it.

5.4 Background information used in matching comes from the structured questions you answer yourself and the preferences you set for yourself. As we refine our matching, we may also derive background information from your open-text answers to improve match quality, for example your education or occupation, subject to the sensitive category restrictions described in Section 5.3.

5.5 Our agreements with AI service providers restrict them from using your data to train their own models. Where practical, we process open-text answers using AI models hosted within our own infrastructure, so that your text does not leave our systems. If we use third-party AI providers, we remove account identifiers, such as your name and email address, from open-text content before it is sent to them.

5.6 Matching does not use background characteristics such as age, gender, or life stage in settings where that is not legally allowed, such as recruiting, investing, or paid services. Otherwise, background characteristics are used only for mutual connections, meaning friendship, collaboration, and shared activities, and only through preferences members set for themselves.

5.7 AI outputs are intended solely to suggest potential connections. They are probabilistic in nature and are not used to make legal or similarly significant decisions about you.

6. When We Share Information

6.1 With other Affini Members: your member card (name, photo, headline, and general location) and your Affini Community membership, and, when matched, the match itself together with any contact links you have added, as described in 6.2. We do not share match reasons or any of your underlying answers. If you take part in a group event, the Affini Members in your group learn who is in their group and may see your card. At an in-person table or in an online breakout room, you may simply meet without cards being shown. When you check in to an Affini Community event, other Affini Members in that event’s grouping may be notified that their matches are attending, to encourage them to join.

6.2 Contact information and contact links: we never give your email address or phone number to another member without your explicit consent, and our screening is designed to catch contact details written into a profile answer and to hold the profile from matching until it is revised. Separately, you may add links to profiles you already maintain elsewhere, such as a professional or social profile. If you add them, the Affini Members you match with can see and open them. Adding a link is your choice, it applies to the people you match with rather than to one person, and you can remove it at any time. Opening someone else’s link does not give them yours, and we do not tell you who has opened yours. Once you and another member are in contact directly, whatever you exchange with them is between you and them. It is no longer handled by Affini, and this Policy does not govern it.

6.3 With your host: your member card, your account email address, your membership status within that host’s Affini Community, and aggregate community analytics. Dashboard analytics are aggregate-only, and never include your individual answers. Segments of fewer than 5 members are hidden, and dashboard panels are withheld entirely for Affini Communities with fewer than 10 active members. Current metrics reflect the Affini Community’s active membership, while previously generated aggregate reports may continue to include former members within aggregate totals. For Affini Community events you attend, your host may add you to a grouping and form sub-groups within it, for example breakout rooms or table seating, and will see the resulting sub-group compositions, meaning who is grouped with whom, solely to run the activity, and never your answers or match reasons.

6.4 With a host you ask to join: if you discover a new Affini Community through the Platform and request to join it, we share your member card, meaning your name, photo, headline, and general location. Your request includes your account email address, which the host sees so they can verify your request and run their community’s own membership process. If the host approves your request, you become a member of that Affini Community, and the host may also ask you to complete the community’s own membership process. We keep declined-request records only as long as needed to run discovery and to keep aggregate discovery statistics accurate.

6.5 As aggregated or de-identified insights: we may create aggregated or de-identified insights, for example trends in the activities, goals, and interests of Affini Communities, and may share these with community hosts, event organizers, and planners. These insights are designed so that they do not identify you, including by suppressing segments smaller than 5 members. We do not attempt to re-identify de-identified data, and our Host Terms prohibit hosts from doing so.

6.6 With service providers: vendors that host our infrastructure, process payments, send emails, provide analytics, or provide AI processing, in each case under contracts limiting their use of your information to providing services to us.

6.7 If required by law, or for security incidents: we may disclose information, including individual matching inputs, if required by law or a legal investigation, and we may access individual matching inputs as necessary to investigate and respond to security incidents affecting the Platform or our users. Any such access by authorized personnel is limited to what is required.

6.8 Business transfers: if Affini is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to this Policy or a successor policy with similar protections, and we will provide notice of any material change. If the successor’s practices would differ materially from this Policy, we will notify you before the transfer takes effect, so that you can delete your account first.

6.9 With your consent: in any other case, only with your explicit consent.

7. Retention and Deletion

7.1 We retain your information while your account is active. If you delete your account, it is hidden immediately and you have a 30-day grace period to restore it. After the grace period we permanently delete or de-identify your personal information, except that we may retain: (a) information needed to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements; (b) de-identified or aggregate data that no longer identifies you; (c) limited log records retained for security for up to 12 months; and (d) a minimal safety record, being a hashed identifier and any block records, so that removed or blocked accounts cannot evade a block by deleting and re-registering.

7.2 Keywords that express your goals within a particular Affini Community are deleted when your membership in that Affini Community ends. Keywords about your interests are part of your profile and are used across your Affini Communities. They remain until you edit or delete the answer they came from, ask us to remove them at [email protected], or delete your account. Because they are part of your profile rather than of any one Affini Community, an interest keyword can outlast the answer it came from where that answer was given inside an Affini Community you have since left.

7.3 If you leave an Affini Community but keep your account, your profile remains in your account for use in other Affini Communities. The answers you gave inside that Affini Community, including anything you wrote there, are deleted within 30 days after your membership ends, subject to the exceptions in Section 7.1; answers stored at the account level are unaffected. That Affini Community’s host retains only the prior aggregate analytics already generated, and your individual information no longer appears in the host’s current dashboard analytics. If a host removes you from an Affini Community, your profile and your other memberships are unaffected, but we keep a record of the removal for that Affini Community so it can be enforced if you attempt to rejoin. We may also consider removal records across Affini Communities to enforce our terms and protect members, for example where a member has been removed for conduct reasons by more than one unrelated Affini Community.

7.4 Sub-group compositions from a host’s groupings remain available to the host for 12 months after the event is archived, after which they are deleted. A composition records names and group assignments only, never your answers or match reasons. If you delete your account, your name is removed from stored compositions. If a host has taken a copy out of the Platform before then, that copy is governed by the Host Terms.

8. Security

8.1 We use administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect your information, including encryption in transit, access controls, and logging of access to sensitive data. Profile photos are stripped of embedded metadata, such as camera and location details, when uploaded. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and regulators as required by applicable law.

9. Your Choices and Rights

9.1 Access, update, or correct your profile at any time in your account settings.

9.2 Delete your account and associated personal information. Section 7 describes timing and exceptions.

9.3 Opt out of non-essential emails via the unsubscribe link in those messages.

9.4 Request a copy of your information, or ask us questions, at [email protected]. We may need to verify your identity before we act on a request. If we deny a request you make under this Section, you may appeal by replying to our response or writing to [email protected], and we will respond to the appeal.

9.5 Depending on your state of residence, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act or similar laws in other states, including rights to know, delete, correct, and non-discrimination for exercising your rights. We honor such requests as required by applicable law. We do not sell or “share” personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA.

10. Cookies, Local Storage, and Analytics

10.1 We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies. Those set on the Platform are necessary for it to function; our public website also stores a small preference marker described in 10.5.

10.2 Authentication (first-party, Affini). Session and sign-in cookies, and similar browser storage, that keep you logged in. Duration: for the life of your session or sign-in period.

10.3 Security (Cloudflare, our infrastructure provider). Cloudflare may set cookies that protect the Platform from bots and abuse, for example __cf_bm, and cf_clearance after a security challenge. These contain no cross-site tracking identifiers and typically expire within about 30 minutes.

10.4 Payments. The Platform does not currently process payments. If we introduce paid plans, our payment processor may set cookies used for fraud prevention and payment security on checkout pages, and we will update this Policy before that happens.

10.5 For Platform analytics we use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless. It sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser, and does not fingerprint or track you across sites. We do not use advertising cookies, and no cookie on the Platform is used to track you across other websites. Our public website stores a small marker in your browser’s local storage when you dismiss our cookie notice.

10.6 You can control or delete cookies in your browser settings. Blocking the necessary ones may prevent the Platform from working.

10.7 We honor universal opt-out signals such as Global Privacy Control where applicable law gives them legal effect. Because we do not sell or share personal information, such a signal does not change what we do with your information.

11. Children

11.1 The Platform is for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have collected personal information from someone under 18, we will delete it. If you believe someone under 18 has provided us information, contact us at [email protected].

12. Geographic Scope

12.1 The Platform is intended for users located in the United States. We do not currently offer the Platform in other countries, and this Policy is not intended to address privacy laws outside the United States. If you access the Platform from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative, and your information will be processed in the United States.

13. Changes to This Policy

13.1 We may update this Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you, for example by email or in-platform notice, at least thirty (30) days before the changes take effect. We will not apply materially different practices to previously collected information without your consent where required by law.

14. Contact

14.1 Affini App, LLC, [email protected].

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