Privacy Policy.

This policy describes what Encore collects, how it's used, and what control you have. Plain English only. No dark patterns.

Encore is operated by Michael Edelstein, a sole proprietor based in New York ("Encore," "we," "us"). If you have a question about this policy, write to admin@encoreconnections.com.

What this website collects

Encore is currently in pre-launch. Most people interact with us only through the waitlist form on this site. If you've signed up to the waitlist, here is exactly what we store about you:

• Your email — required, used to invite you when Encore opens in your area.
• Your city — required, used to decide which neighborhoods we open in first.
• Your NYC neighborhood — optional, helps us plan launch density at the block level.
• Your name — required, used to address you in launch emails.
• How you heard about us — optional, helps us understand which channels work.
• A referral code — generated automatically so you can invite friends. If you signed up through a friend's link, we also record their code so they get credit.
• Your age attestation — a checkbox confirming you are 18 or older.
• Your marketing-email consent — a checkbox recording that you opted in to receive launch updates and product emails from Encore. Stored alongside the timestamp of your signup so we can show, if challenged, exactly what you agreed to and when.
• Your browser's user-agent string — captured once at submission for abuse review only. Not used to track you across sessions or sites.
• An anonymized hash of your IP address — held briefly so we can rate-limit signup attempts and stop bots. We do not retain the raw IP.

By opting in via the marketing-email checkbox, you consent to receive launch updates, product news, and occasional marketing emails from Encore. Every email we send will include an unsubscribe link. You can unsubscribe at any time without losing your spot on the waitlist. To be removed from the waitlist entirely, write to admin@encoreconnections.com and we'll confirm and delete your record.

We do not currently sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. If our practices ever change, we'll notify you in advance and provide an opt-out as required by applicable state privacy laws (including California's CCPA right to opt out of sale and sharing).

We retain waitlist entries until you ask us to delete them or you create a full Encore account, at which point your waitlist row is converted into your account.

The site uses no third-party analytics, no advertising trackers, and no cookies beyond what's strictly required to render the page. Nothing about your visit is shared with Google, Meta, or anyone else.

What we collect when you use the Encore app

The sections below describe what we'll collect once you have downloaded the Encore mobile app and created an account. They do not apply to waitlist signups on this website.

When you use the Encore app, we store:

• Your account email and password. The password is hashed — we never see it in plaintext.
• Your profile: name, age, photo, city, bio, gender, looking-for preference, height, country of origin, heritage, favorite venues, interests.
• Your check-ins: the venue you selected, the date, the time window you chose, and an optional note. At the moment you submit a check-in, we also capture your device's GPS coordinates and timezone. These are used only to compute a confidence score for whether you actually were at the venue — a trust signal, not a tracker. We don't read your location at any other time, and we don't share your coordinates with other users.
• Likes and matches: the people you indicated interest in, and who indicated interest in you.
• Messages sent between matched users.
• Device push token, so we can send notifications about new matches, overlap nudges, and gentle reminders. You can disable notifications in your device settings at any time.
• Basic analytics events (e.g. "a user submitted a check-in") — never the content of messages, photos, or profile fields.

What we don't do

• We don't track your location in the background.
• We don't build shadow profiles of non-users.
• We don't scan or share the content of your messages.
• We don't use your photos for facial recognition or to train AI models.

Who can see what

Encore has a two-tier visibility model. It's the heart of how the product works, so we want it to be unambiguous:

• Aggregated counts are public. Anyone using Encore can see "3 people were here tonight" for a venue — never names, never profiles, never which 3.
• Specific profiles only appear to people you actually overlapped with. When you and another user check in at the same venue on the same date, and your gender-interest preferences match on both sides, you appear to each other as a "potential match." The visible fields are your name, age, and avatar. Exposure is mutual and bounded — it is triggered only by real, shared overlap, never by browsing.
• Your check-in history is private to you. Encore never publishes a list of every place you've been. An individual overlap is what produces visibility, never your timeline.
• Your likes are private until they're mutual. One-sided likes never reach the other person. When both sides like, a match is created and both users are notified.
• Your messages are visible only to you and the person you matched with.

Third-party services we use

• Supabase hosts our database, storage, and authentication. Your account and app data live there.
• Google Places resolves venue names when you search or view a venue. We send the venue search text you type; Google returns matching candidates.
• Expo Push Notifications forward our notifications to your device.
• Sentry receives anonymous crash reports when something goes wrong in the app — device identifier and stack trace, no personal data.
• PostHog receives anonymous product-usage events so we can improve the app. Events are tagged with your user ID but never include profile content, messages, or photos.

Data retention

• Your account and all associated data are retained while your account is active.
• When you delete your account (Settings → Delete account), we permanently remove your profile, check-ins, likes, matches, messages, and photos from our database and storage. This happens within minutes and cannot be undone.
• Our database backups may retain account data for up to 30 days before final purge.

Your rights

• Access: you can view everything we store about you by opening your profile and settings.
• Correction: you can edit your profile at any time via Settings → Edit profile.
• Deletion: you can delete your account immediately via Settings → Delete account. A typed confirmation gate prevents accidental deletion.
• Portability: email us for a copy of your data in JSON format.
• Block & Hide: you can block another user (mutual — they cannot see you, you cannot see them) or soft-hide a match (removes it from your list without notifying the other person). Both controls are available from any chat thread.
• If you live in the EU, UK, or California, you have additional rights under GDPR / UK GDPR / CCPA. Write to admin@encoreconnections.com to exercise them.

Children

Encore is for adults only. You must be 18 or older to use it. If we learn a user is under 18, we delete their account.

International data transfers

Encore is operated from the United States. If you use the app from outside the U.S., your information is transferred to the U.S. and processed there. We use industry-standard safeguards to protect data in transit and at rest.

Changes

If we update this policy, we'll notify users in-app before the changes take effect. The "Last updated" date above always reflects the current version.

Contact

Questions or requests about your data: admin@encoreconnections.com