Privacy Policy

Last Updated: March 23rd, 2026

At Spicy Friends, we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website and use our services. By accessing or using Spicy Friends, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the terms outlined in this policy, please do not use our site.

1. Information We Collect

We may collect personal information from you in a variety of ways, including:

Registration Information: When you register for an account, we may collect personal information such as your email address, date of birth, profile picture, and any other details you choose to provide.
Profile Information: You may provide additional information for your profile, including preferences, interests, and relationship status.
Communication: Any messages or communications you send through our site.
Usage Data: We may automatically collect information about your device and how you interact with our website, which may include your IP address, browser type, pages visited, and time spent on our site.
User Content: Images and other content you upload to our platform for profile pictures, messaging, or other features.

1.1 Age Verification

We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 18. If we learn that a member is underage, we will delete their account immediately. Users must be of legal age to use our services.

1.2 Payment and Supporter information

If you purchase Supporter access or otherwise make a payment through the Service:

Interac e-Transfer and similar methods: We do not receive or store your online banking login or full bank account details. Your financial institution (and Interac’s network, where applicable) processes the transfer. We may receive limited payment metadata needed to match your transfer to your account—for example, the sender name or note your bank displays, the amount, date, and the reference message or identifier you are instructed to include.
What we keep: We retain transaction records (such as amount in CAD, term length, profiles covered, status of verification, and related support correspondence) for account management, Supporter feature access, fraud prevention, and legal and tax compliance.
Linked profiles: If you pay for Supporter access that includes linked member profiles, we process information necessary to apply benefits to those accounts as you select.

2. How We Use Your Information

We may use the information we collect for various purposes, including:

To provide, maintain, and improve our website and services.
To personalize your experience on our site.
To communicate with you, including responding to your inquiries and sending you updates and promotional content.
To monitor usage and analyze trends to improve our services.
To enforce our terms, conditions, and policies.
To process Supporter payments, verify e-Transfers (or other permitted payment methods), grant or remove Supporter access for the purchased term, and handle refunds in line with our Terms of Use.
To process and analyze uploaded content (including images) for safety, security, and compliance purposes.
To detect and prevent inappropriate or harmful content through automated screening.

2.1 Automated Content Processing

We use automated systems and machine learning to:

Proactively identify potentially problematic content for human review
Detect and prevent spam, scams, and other harmful activities
Screen uploaded images for safety and compliance purposes
Flag potential violations of our community guidelines

2.2 Session Replay and User Behavior

To troubleshoot technical issues and improve the user experience, Spicy Friends uses session replay and analytics tools (such as Sentry). This allows us to see a visual reconstruction of your interactions with our service, including clicks, scrolls, page refreshes, and navigation paths.

Privacy Guardrails: Our implementation is configured to automatically mask and redact sensitive information. We do not record passwords, payment details, or specific text inputs in private fields.
Purpose: We use this data solely to identify bugs, fix crashes, and understand how users navigate our platform to make it more intuitive. This data is not used for cross-site advertising or sold to third parties.

We do not sell or rent your personal information to third parties. We value your privacy.

We may share your information with:

Service Providers: We may engage third-party companies and individuals to facilitate our services or provide services on our behalf, such as hosting, customer support, analytics, and content moderation. Payment-related activity may involve your financial institution, Interac (or comparable payment networks), and email or communication providers we use for payment instructions or receipts; they process information according to their own policies. This includes sharing uploaded images with third-party services for automated content screening (such as nudity detection) to maintain platform safety. In addition we use service providers for session replay and user behaviour monitoring see 2.2. These service providers are obligated to protect your information and use it only for the specific services they provide to us.
Legal Requirements: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to a court order.

4. Your Rights and Choices

You have the right to access, modify, or delete your personal information at any time. You can do this through your account settings or by contacting us directly.
You may opt-out of receiving promotional communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions in the emails we send you.
You may choose to limit the information you provide when creating a profile, but this may impact your experience on the site.

4.1 Legal Requests and Law Enforcement

We will not share your data with law enforcement or government agencies unless required by a valid court order. We:

Reject requests from law enforcement that lack proper legal authorization
Will notify you if we receive a legal request for your information (unless prohibited by law)
Will object to requests we believe are improper or overly broad
May preserve account data when legally required, but only for the duration specified by law

5. Security

We strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, including:

All data transmission between you and our servers is encrypted using HTTPS
Database and Media backups are encrypted at rest
Data is backed up daily and stored in multiple secure locations

However, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we implement industry-standard security measures, we cannot guarantee absolute security. When we share content with third-party processors, we ensure they maintain appropriate security measures and data protection standards consistent with this policy.

6. Data Retention

Your profile becomes immediately inaccessible to other users when you delete your account
Account deletion is processed within 30 days of your request
Deleted data may persist in encrypted backups for up to 60 days until those backups are rotated/overwritten.

Exceptions:

Content in group conversations may remain (but without identifying information)
Data may be preserved longer if required by law enforcement with proper legal authorization

7. Third-Party Links

Our website may contain links to third-party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these websites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit.

8. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page with an updated effective date. We encourage you to review this policy periodically for any changes.

8.1 "Do Not Track" and Opt-Out Settings

While we respect your privacy, please note the following regarding browser-based signals:

Do Not Track (DNT): Some browsers transmit "Do Not Track" signals. Because there is currently no universal standard for how these signals should be interpreted, Spicy Friends does not currently alter its practices in response to DNT headers.
Service Providers: We work with service providers like Sentry to collect the session and usage data described in Section 2.2. This collection is essential for the security and stability of our platform.
Your Choice: If you prefer not to have your session recorded for analytical purposes, you may use browser extensions that block common analytics and tracking scripts, or contact us at [email protected] to discuss your data privacy options.

9. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at [email protected].