Privacy Policy

Last updated: 22 August 2026

PLNS is an app for making spontaneous plans with your friends. This policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, and the control you have over it. It applies to the PLNS iOS app and the plns.app website.

The short version. We collect what we need to run the app — your account details, the plans you post, and — only if you turn them on — your location and contact matching. Your address book is never uploaded: phone numbers are scrambled on your device before anything is sent. We do not sell your data and we do not run third-party ad networks. You can delete your account and everything in it from inside the app.

1. Who we are

PLNS is operated by the developer of the PLNS app. For any privacy question, or to exercise any right described below, contact privacy@plns.app.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

What	Why we need it
Account details — email address, name, username, and password (or your Apple ID if you use Sign in with Apple)	To create and secure your account and let friends find you
Date of birth — asked once, when you create your account	To check you are old enough for PLNS. See section 12
Profile — profile photo, bio, interests	So friends recognise you
Contacts — only if you ask us to check them, and only as scrambled, one-way values computed on your device. Your address book itself is never uploaded	To show you which people you already know are on PLNS. See section 5
Your phone number — only if you opt in to being found by it, and stored only as a scrambled value	So friends who already have your number can find you. See section 5
Content you post — plans, events, check-ins, photos, videos, comments, and the audience you choose for each	To show your posts to the people you shared them with
Messages — direct messages and group chats	To deliver them to the people in the conversation
Reports — content or accounts you report to us	To review and act on safety reports

Information collected automatically

Location — only if you grant location permission and turn on location sharing. Used to show nearby friends, tag check-ins, and show approximate distance to friends. See section 4.
Push notification token — a device identifier from Apple that lets us deliver notifications you have opted into.
Usage events — a record of what you do in the app: screens and compose sheets you open, posts you create, edit or delete, plans you show interest in, RSVPs, check-ins you join, messages and friend requests you send, searches you run, profiles you view, onboarding steps you finish, the location sharing toggle, and blocks and reports you submit. These events are stored with your account ID attached, not anonymously, so we can follow one account through a flow and see where it breaks, and they are also sent to Google Analytics for Firebase with your account ID as a parameter. Each event records the action, the ID of the item involved and, where one applies, the ID of the other account (for example whose profile was viewed). Events do not include the contents of your messages, posts, or searches.
Technical data — app version, device model, and OS version, recorded with error reports.

3. How we use your information

To operate the app: showing your feed, delivering messages, and running RSVPs.
To send notifications you have opted into — a friend posting a plan, an invitation, a comment on your post, or an occasional reminder. You can turn any of these off in the app or in iOS Settings.
To keep PLNS safe: reviewing reports, enforcing our Terms, and blocking abuse.
To improve the product: we analyse the usage events described above, which are tied to your account rather than anonymous, to see which flows people complete and which they abandon.

We do not use your information for third-party advertising, and we do not sell or rent your personal information to anyone.

4. Location

Location is optional. PLNS asks for location permission during onboarding and you can decline; the app works without it.

Your location is only written to our servers while Share my location is switched on in your settings. Turn it off and we stop storing it.
Location is used to show approximate distance to friends who are also sharing, to attach a place to a check-in, and to surface nearby activity.
Distance is only shown when both people have location sharing on.
The PLNS app collects location only while you are using it. It does not collect your location in the background.

Nearby-friend alerts

While location sharing is on, our servers periodically compare the most recent location you shared against those of your friends who have also turned sharing on. If you are within about a mile of each other, we may send you both a notification that the other is nearby. To be clear about what this means:

This comparison runs on our servers on a schedule, not only while you have the app open — so the location you last shared is processed even when you are not using PLNS.
Only locations updated within the last 30 minutes are considered.
It only ever compares you against people you are already friends with.
Each pair of friends receives at most one such alert every six hours.
Turning off Share my location stops this entirely and removes you from the comparison.

5. Contacts and phone numbers

PLNS can show you which of the people you already know are on the app. This is optional, it stays off until you ask for it, and it works in two directions that you turn on separately.

Checking your contacts

Nothing happens until you tap Check my contacts and grant the iOS contacts permission. If you decline, the rest of the app works normally.
Your address book is never uploaded. The phone numbers in it are converted on your device into scrambled, one-way values that cannot be turned back into a phone number, and only those scrambled values are sent to us.
We use them to look for matches and answer with the PLNS accounts they belong to. The scrambled values from your address book are not written to our database — they are used to answer the question and then discarded.
Names, email addresses, and every other detail in your address book stay on your device. We never read them, never store them, and never contact anyone in your contacts on your behalf.

Letting friends find you

Separately, you can turn on Let friends find me by phone number and enter your own number. Unlike the check above, this one does store something: your number is scrambled the same way, and we keep the scrambled value so that when someone who already has your number checks their contacts, we can tell them you are on PLNS.
We store only the scrambled value, combined with a secret held on our servers. Your actual phone number is not stored, is never shown on your profile, and is never given to anyone.
It is kept until you switch the setting off or delete your account. Turning it off under Profile → Settings → Finding You deletes the stored value and you stop being findable this way.

6. Who can see what you post

Every plan, event, and check-in has a visibility setting you choose when you post it:

Public — visible to anyone on PLNS, and to anyone you send a share link to, including people without the app.
Friends — visible to people you are friends with.
Circle — visible only to the members of the circle you picked.
Private — visible only to you.

Your profile — name, username, photo, and bio — is visible to other signed-in PLNS users so friends can find you.

7. Who we share information with

We share information only with the service providers that run the app for us:

Google Firebase (Google LLC) — authentication, database, file storage, notifications, and hosting. This includes Google Analytics for Firebase, which receives the usage events described in section 2 with your account ID attached.
Apple — Sign in with Apple and push notification delivery.
Google Places — when you search for a place to attach to a post, your search text is sent to Google to return matching places.

We may also disclose information if we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to protect the safety of our users.

8. How long we keep it

Plans and check-ins expire on their own and are archived automatically.
Messages and events are kept until you or another participant deletes them.
Account information is kept until you delete your account.
The scrambled value of your phone number, if you opted in to being found by it, is kept until you turn that setting off or delete your account.
Usage events are kept while they are useful for understanding how the app is used. Our copy is deleted when you delete your account; the copy held by Google Analytics for Firebase is subject to Google's own retention period.
Safety reports are retained after resolution so we can spot repeat behaviour.

9. Deleting your account

You can delete your account from Profile → Settings → Delete Account inside the app. Deleting your account removes your profile, plans, events, check-ins, comments, notifications, and friend connections, along with your date of birth, your usage events, and the scrambled phone-number value if you had one stored. Messages you sent may remain visible to the other people in a conversation. Backups are purged on a rolling schedule.

You can also email privacy@plns.app to request deletion.

10. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete your personal information, and to object to or restrict how we use it. Email privacy@plns.app and we will respond within the time your local law requires.

If you are in California, we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising any privacy right.

11. Security

Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit. Access to your data is governed by server-side security rules that restrict each account to the content it is allowed to see. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep your information protected and to fix problems quickly when we find them.

12. Children

PLNS is for people aged 13 and over. We ask for your date of birth when you create an account and an account cannot be created with a date of birth that makes you younger than 13.

Your date of birth is used for that check and nothing else. It is not shown on your profile, is not visible to other PLNS users, and is not used to target anything at you. It is stored in the part of your account that only you can read, and it is deleted when you delete your account.

We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, email privacy@plns.app and we will remove it.

13. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change we will update the date at the top of this page and notify you in the app before the change takes effect.

14. Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints: privacy@plns.app