Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

When you submit a registration or sign-in request, we collect: (a) your chosen display name, (b) your WhatsApp phone number normalized to international E.164 format, (c) a masked display representation of your phone number (for example, +1•••••••0199), (d) server-keyed cryptographic HMAC-SHA256 digests of your phone number and client IP address for rate limiting and safety enforcement, and (e) the timestamp and version of your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Cloudflare Turnstile is used to prevent automated bot abuse.

2. Manual WhatsApp Verification & Administrator Review

New registrations begin in pending_verification status and cannot access member discovery or reveal any member’s phone number. To verify ownership, you open WhatsApp via the Verify My Number on WhatsApp button and send the pre-filled message containing your unique random registration reference (WV-XXXXXXXXXX) from your own WhatsApp account to our designated verification number.

Authorized administrators review pending registrations using masked phone numbers by default and confirm that the matching registration reference arrived from the registered WhatsApp number before approving or rejecting the account. When strictly necessary to verify sender ownership, an authorized administrator may inspect the full E.164 phone number; every inspection, approval, rejection, suspension, and reinstatement is recorded in an internal administrator audit log (admin_audit_logs) that stores moderator identity, action type, registration reference, and optional note — never raw phone numbers.

3. Sessions & Browser Storage

Approved member sessions use an HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=Lax cookie (__Host-wv_session) valid for 30 days on a rolling basis. Administrator sessions use a separate HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=Strict cookie (__Host-wv_admin) valid for 12 hours. Only SHA-256 digests of session tokens and verification secrets are stored in our database. We never store phone numbers, session tokens, or secrets in browser localStorage or sessionStorage.

4. Random Discovery & Single-Use WhatsApp Handoffs

WhatsApp Vibe has no public member directory or phone-number search. Discovery is restricted to active, administrator-approved accounts and reveals only a matched member’s display name (capped at 15 discoveries per 24 hours). A single-use wa.me chat link is generated only when an active member explicitly initiates a chat handoff within the daily limit (up to 5 handoffs per 24 hours).

5. Retention Schedule & Housekeeping

Automated background maintenance enforces the following retention windows:

• Pending verification challenges (verification_challenges): Expire after up to 7 days if unapproved; plaintext phone numbers on challenges are scrubbed to NULL immediately upon approval, rejection, consumption, superseding, or expiry, and completed/expired challenge rows are deleted after 14 days.
• Profile completion tokens (profile_completion_tokens): Single-use, expire after 10 minutes, and are purged after 24 hours.
• Webhook deduplication IDs (processed_webhook_messages): Purged after 7 days.
• Sessions & failed login counters: Expired or revoked member/admin session records are purged after 7 days; administrator failed login rate-limit counters expire after 15 minutes and are purged after 24 hours.
• Discovery match records (discovery_matches): Matches older than 90 days that are not linked to a safety block or report are purged automatically.

6. Self-Service Account Deletion & Retained Safety Hashes

Signed-in members can permanently delete their account at any time using Delete My Account & Scrub Phone Number inside the app. Deleting your account immediately:

• Revokes all active member sessions and unused match handoffs;
• Replaces your display name with Deleted User and marks your profile deleted;
• Erases your plaintext phone number (phone_e164 = NULL) and profile HMAC pointer (phone_hmac = NULL) from the users table.

Safety & anti-abuse records retained after deletion: To prevent quota resets, harassment evasion, and ban circumvention across re-registration, we retain non-reversible server-keyed HMAC-SHA256 digests (never plaintext phone numbers) in: (1) phone_restrictions for a 24-hour re-registration cooldown (or permanently if banned for Terms violations), (2) prior blocks records (blocker_phone_hmac and blocked_phone_hmac) so blocked members can never be matched with each other again, and (3) prior reports records (reporter_phone_hmac, reported_phone_hmac, report reason/details, and linked match ID) for community safety enforcement.

7. Contact

For privacy or safety inquiries, contact support@novaqueens.name.ng.