Privacy Policy
Last updated: 18 October 2026
Activo is an app for adults (18+) to find people to do activities with. This policy explains what information the Activo app and this website collect, why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it. We've written it to match exactly what the app does.
In short
- We collect what the app needs to work: your account details, your profile, the activities you post, the messages you send in the group chat for activities you join, and the reviews you leave after you meet.
- Your location is rounded to about 2 km before we store it. Your exact location is shared only if you choose to share it live with your group during an activity, and only with them, for as long as you share it.
- We don't sell your data, show ads, or use analytics or tracking tools.
- You can delete your account in the app at any time. Some records are kept for safety reasons, and we explain which ones below.
1. Who we are
Activo is run by Integ House Ltd, 192 Haydons Road, London SW19 8TR, United Kingdom. Integ House Ltd is the controller of your personal data, which means we decide how and why it's used.
For anything about your data, email info@activobuddy.com. For urgent safety concerns about another user, use the report button in the app or email safety@activobuddy.com.
2. What we collect and why
We only collect what you give us in the app, plus what's needed to keep you signed in and keep Activo safe.
| Information | What it is | Why we need it |
|---|---|---|
| Account details | Email address, password (we store only a secure hash, never the password itself), display name | To create your account, sign you in, and show your name to people you interact with |
| Date of birth | Your full date of birth, given when you sign up. It can't be changed afterwards. | To check you're 18 or over |
| Profile (optional) | Gender, a short bio, a home area, and how far you're willing to travel | To complete your profile. These aren't shown to other users. |
| Activities and skill levels | The activities you do, your skill level in each, and any notes about your skill or availability | To show you how well each activity matches your level |
| Activity posts | What, when and roughly where, a title and description, skill level, how many people can join, whether it's public or private, whether it repeats every week, and, for rides and runs, an optional route distance, elevation gain and whether it's a trip away from home | So other people can find your activity and ask to join, or so the people you invite can |
| Location | A place you search for, or your location if you tap “Use my current location”. The app only asks for your location when you tap, and your phone lets you choose whether to share a precise or an approximate location. Either way, it's rounded to about 2 km on your phone before it's sent, and stored at that precision: we never receive your precise location. If you've allowed location, the app also sends your location, rounded the same way, when you open Home, to show how far away activities are. When you search for a place, your phone's built-in map service (Apple's or Google's) looks it up. Any place name you type is stored as you type it. The one exception to rounding is live location sharing, below. | To place your activities and show people how far away activities are |
| Requests to join | Which activity you asked to join, whether the request was accepted or declined, and whether you later left the activity or the host removed you | To connect you with the person running the activity and the others going |
| Invitations and weekly groups | Who invited whom to an activity or a weekly group, and whether they accepted. For a weekly activity, the group's name, its usual details and its members. If you create an invite link, we keep only a scrambled form of it, never the link itself. The people you can invite directly are worked out from activities you've already done together; we don't store a separate list. If an activity is split into sides, which side each person is on. | So you can organise private activities and regular games with the same people |
| Messages | The text messages you send in an activity's group chat, or in a weekly group's chat, once you're in it | So you can arrange to meet and keep in touch |
| Reviews | After an activity you were on has taken place, each person on it can review each other person on it once, within 14 days: a rating from 1 to 5, whether their skill level was as they stated, higher or lower, and an optional comment of up to 500 characters. We store it with who wrote it, who it's about, which activity it was for, and when. A review can't be edited or deleted once it's sent. | So people meeting someone new can see how others found them, and to confirm stated skill levels (shown as “Peer Verified”) |
| Live location sharing (optional) | During an activity you're on, you can choose to share your precise location live with the other people on it. You're asked every time; starting a session shares nobody's location until they choose to. While you share, your phone sends its location regularly, including with the screen locked, and shows that it's doing so (the location indicator on iPhone, a notification on Android). Activo never asks for “Always” location access. Sharing stops when you stop it, leave the activity, the organiser ends the session, or after 4 hours (18 hours for long rides of 50 km or more and trips away from home). We keep only your latest position, never a route or history, and delete it 5 minutes after it was recorded, or straight away when you stop. We also record who took part in the session and when, without any locations. | So a group can see where everyone is during a ride, run or other activity, and regroup safely |
| Reports and blocks | Who you report or block, the reason, and anything you write in a report | To keep people safe and act on bad behaviour |
| Profile photo (optional) | A photo you choose from your library, and the results of our safety checks on it | To show on your profile, once it has passed our checks (see section 5) |
| Activity photo (optional) | A photo you add to an activity you post, chosen from your library, and the results of our safety checks on it | To show on your activity, once it has passed our checks (see section 5) |
| Notifications | A list of what's happened on your activities (for example, someone asked to join, your request was accepted, someone left, an activity is full or was cancelled, live location sharing started, or you can now leave a review), whether you've read each one, and which chat messages you've read. If you turn on push notifications, a token your phone gives us so we can send them, and your notification settings. A push notification shows only a person's name and the activity's title, never the text of a message or anyone's location. | To tell you about activity that involves you, in the app and, if you choose, on your phone's lock screen |
| Sign-in and account status | Sign-in tokens that keep you logged in for up to 30 days, and whether your account is active or suspended | To keep you signed in, and to enforce suspensions |
| Server records | Technical records of requests to our servers: your internet (IP) address, your device or browser type, the address requested, the result and the time taken. For a search, the address requested can include the rounded search location. When something goes wrong with a photo, these can include your user ID. | To run the service, fix problems and prevent abuse |
We don't collect: your contacts, your camera or microphone, advertising identifiers or other device identifiers (apart from a push notification token, if you turn notifications on), background location (except while you're sharing live location, above), or analytics about how you use the app. We don't take payments. When you search near a place, we use that location to work out distances and don't store it with your account. It can appear in our server records (see above) for up to 90 days.
3. Our legal bases
UK and EU data protection law (the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR) requires a legal basis for each use of your data. These are ours:
| What we do | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account, profile, posts, requests to join, messages and in-app notifications | Performing our contract with you (our Terms) |
| Using your location, rounded to about 2 km, when you tap “Use my current location”, and to show distances on Home if you've allowed location | Performing our contract with you. Your phone's location permission lets you control whether the app can read it. |
| Sending push notifications to your phone | Your consent, which you give through your phone's notification permission. You can turn them off in the app or in your phone's settings at any time. |
| Sharing your precise location live with the people on an activity | Your consent, given each time you start sharing. You can stop at any time. |
| Checking you're 18 or over | Performing our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in keeping under-18s off Activo |
| Showing reviews, ratings and Peer Verified activities to other users | Our legitimate interest in safety and trust between people who are meeting someone new |
| Handling reports and blocks, moderating, and suspending accounts | Our legitimate interest in keeping people safe |
| Keeping reports and blocks after an account is deleted | Our legitimate interest in keeping people safe and stopping banned users from returning |
| Screening photos for harmful content | Our legitimate interest in keeping people safe |
| Preserving and reporting child sexual abuse material | Legal obligation |
| Keeping the service secure and fixing problems | Our legitimate interest in running a secure, working service |
| Responding to your privacy requests | Legal obligation |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, you have the right to object. See section 9.
4. Who can see your information
Other Activo users
- Your display name appears on your posts and conversations, and in the list of who's going, which only the host and the other people on that activity can see. Everyone else sees only how many people are going.
- Your public activity posts are visible to anyone signed in to Activo, unless you've blocked each other. Private activities and weekly groups are never shown in the feed or search: only you, the people you invite and the people on them can see them. This includes any photo you added, once it has passed our checks, the location rounded to about 2 km, any place name you typed, and how far the post is from the viewer.
- Your profile photo, once it has passed our checks, is shown to other signed-in users, for example on activities you host and on your profile. So are your rating, number of reviews and how many activities you've completed.
- An activity photo is seen by anyone who can see the post. Only add a photo you're happy for those people to see.
- Your messages are seen by the people in that activity's or weekly group's chat while you're both in it. People who join later don't see earlier messages, and people who leave don't see new ones. Chats stay open after the activity, so people can keep in touch; a cancelled activity's chat becomes read-only.
- Sides, if the host splits an activity into sides, are seen only by the people on that activity.
- Your live location, if you choose to share it during an activity, is seen only by the other people on that activity who are also sharing.
- Your email, date of birth, gender, bio and home area are not shown to other users.
- When you block someone, they aren't told. Neither of you will see the other's posts, messages or live location. Two people who have blocked each other can't both be accepted onto the same activity.
Reviews
- Reviews about you can be seen by anyone signed in to Activo while your account is active, unless you've blocked each other, together with your average rating and any activities you're Peer Verified in. Each review shows the display name of the person who wrote it.
- A new review stays hidden until you've both reviewed each other or the 14 days are up, so neither of you can read the other's review before writing your own. You can see a review you wrote on that person's profile, even before it's revealed.
- If a review about you is unfair or breaks our rules, you can report it in the app or by emailing safety@activobuddy.com. If a moderator upholds the report, the review is removed and shown to nobody.
Our moderators
When a report is made, our moderators see the names of the people involved, the post or review it's about, the reason, what the reporter wrote, and how many reports there have been about that account. They can't see your email, date of birth, location or messages. If a reported activity has a photo, they can see that photo. The person you report is never told who reported them.
Nobody else
We don't sell your data and we don't share it for advertising. We only disclose it to anyone outside Activo when the law requires us to (see section 5), or to the service providers in section 6 who run Activo for us.
5. Photo screening and child safety
You can add a profile photo, and a photo to each activity you post. Every photo is checked the same way before anyone else can see it:
- Known child sexual abuse material. Each photo is compared against lists of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) using Microsoft PhotoDNA. Our servers turn the photo into a digital fingerprint that can't be turned back into the image, and only that fingerprint is sent to Microsoft to check against fingerprints of known abuse images. The photo itself is never sent to Microsoft. PhotoDNA doesn't judge what a photo shows; it only detects matches.
- Harmful content. Each photo is then checked by Amazon Rekognition for nudity, violence, disturbing content and hate symbols.
A photo that clearly breaks these rules is rejected, deleted and flagged to our moderation team. A borderline photo is held back, so it isn't shown, and flagged to our moderation team.
If a photo matches known child sexual abuse material, it is never shown to anyone. We keep a secured copy as evidence, suspend the account automatically, and report the material to the appropriate authority as the law requires. We don't tell the account holder why their account was suspended.
6. Service providers and international transfers
A small number of companies process data on our behalf. They may use it only to provide their service to us:
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | Hosts our servers, database and files | London, UK |
| Amazon Web Services (Rekognition) | Checks photos for harmful content | London, UK |
| Amazon Web Services (CloudFront) | Delivers approved photos quickly | Global network, including outside the UK |
| Amazon Web Services (SES) | Sends account emails, such as the confirmation that your account was deleted | London, UK |
| Expo (650 Industries) | Passes push notifications from our servers to Apple's and Google's notification services. It receives your phone's push token, the notification's title and text (a name and an activity title), and the IDs needed to open the right screen. | United States |
| Apple (Apple Push Notification service) and Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) | Deliver push notifications to iPhones and Android phones | Global networks, including the United States |
| Apple (Apple Maps) and Google (Google Maps) | Show the map while you're using live location sharing: Apple Maps on iPhone, Google Maps on Android. They receive the map area you're viewing and your phone's internet address, not anyone's shared position. | Global networks, including the United States |
| Microsoft (PhotoDNA) | Checks a digital fingerprint of each photo against known child sexual abuse material. The photo itself isn't sent. | UK or the European Economic Area, which UK law recognises as giving adequate protection |
Your data is stored in the UK. Where a provider processes it outside the UK, we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement or an adequacy decision. You can ask us for details.
7. How long we keep it
We keep your information for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account, it happens immediately and can't be undone:
- Removed straight away: your date of birth, gender, bio, home area, profile photo (unless it has to be kept as evidence, see section 5) and password. Your name becomes “Deleted user”, and your email address is replaced so it can't be linked back to you.
- Posts: your active posts are cancelled and no longer shown to anyone. We keep the cancelled records, including the rounded location.
- Activity photos: removed straight away, unless one has to be kept as evidence (see section 5).
- Activities and skill levels: removed from your profile. We keep the records, including any notes you wrote, for 30 days.
- Messages: kept, so the people you talked to still have their conversations. Your messages show as from “Deleted user”. In a one-to-one chat nobody can reply; in a group chat the others can carry on.
- Reports and blocks: kept, for safety, so a person who was reported or blocked can't simply start again. They're no longer linked to your name.
- Pending requests to join are withdrawn, and you're taken off any upcoming activity you'd joined. We keep records of past requests.
- Invitations and weekly groups: your invitations are removed and you leave every weekly group. Weekly groups you created are deleted, along with their invite links.
- Live location: any position you were sharing is deleted straight away.
- Reviews you wrote: kept, so the people you met keep their history, and shown as from “Deleted user”. 30 days after you delete your account, they're no longer linked to it at all.
- Reviews about you: hidden from everyone as soon as you delete your account, and deleted 30 days later.
- Notifications: your notifications, push token and notification settings are deleted straight away. Notifications about something you did are removed from other people's lists too.
We email you to confirm the deletion, and then don't keep your address. We keep a record that the account was deleted, when, and whether you or we did it, without your name or email address.
How long we keep records after that
- Reports and blocks: up to 2 years after the account is deleted. We keep them longer only if they're part of an ongoing safety matter.
- Activity photos: deleted when the activity is cancelled, or when its time passes without anyone joining. If someone joined, the photo stays with the activity as part of their record of it until you or a moderator remove it, or you delete your account. We keep one longer only while a report about that activity is open or it's part of an ongoing safety matter.
- Deleted photos disappear from the app straight away. Copies can remain, visible to no one, in our storage's recovery copies for up to 30 days and in our delivery network's cache for up to 24 hours.
- Posts, activities and messages: kept without your name while they're part of other people's records (for example, a conversation they're still in), and deleted once they're no longer needed for that, no sooner than 30 days after your account is deleted.
- Reviews: kept, because they're a record of meetups that happened. Reviews you wrote are no longer linked to you 30 days after you delete your account (see above). Reviews about you are deleted 30 days after you delete your account. If your account is part of an ongoing safety matter, or a review about you is the subject of a report, we keep it for as long as that requires, and it's never shown to other users. A review a moderator removes is hidden from everyone, and kept only as part of the report.
- Notifications: deleted 90 days after they were created, read or not. A push token is deleted when you sign out on that phone, when the phone stops accepting notifications, or when you delete your account.
- Invitations: deleted 90 days after the activity. Invite links stop working when the activity starts or when the host withdraws them, and are then deleted. Sides are deleted with the activity.
- Live location: your latest position is deleted 5 minutes after it was recorded, and straight away when you stop sharing or the session ends. The record of who took part in a session, and when, holds no locations and is deleted 30 days after the session ends.
- Server records: 90 days.
- Suspended accounts: kept for as long as the suspension stands.
- Evidence of child sexual abuse material: kept as the law requires.
8. Security
- Data between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit.
- Passwords are stored only as a secure hash.
- On your phone, sign-in tokens are kept in the device's secure storage (Keychain on iPhone, Keystore on Android).
- So the app works offline, it keeps a copy of your own profile and posts on your phone for up to 24 hours, and a short list of recent activities near you, without locations. All of this is cleared when you log out or delete your account.
- Only authorised moderators can use our moderation tools, and only for the reports described in section 4.
No system is perfectly secure. If a data breach puts you at risk, we'll tell you and the regulator as the law requires.
9. Your rights
Under UK and EU data protection law, you have the right to:
- Access your data and get a copy of it
- Correct it if it's wrong. You can edit your profile and activities in the app; to change your email address, contact us.
- Delete it. You can delete your account in the app; see section 7 for what we keep afterwards and why.
- Restrict how we use it, or object to uses based on our legitimate interests
- Take it with you in a machine-readable format (portability)
- Withdraw permission for location at any time in your phone's settings
To use any of these rights, email info@activobuddy.com from the address on your account, so we know it's you. We'll reply within one month. This is free, unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.
Deleting your account without the app
In the app, go to Profile → Delete my account and enter your password to confirm. If you can't use the app, email info@activobuddy.com from the address on your account with the subject “Delete my account”, and we'll delete it as described in section 7.
10. Activo is for adults only
You must be 18 or over to use Activo. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up, and you can't create an account if you're under 18.
If you think someone using Activo is under 18, report them in the app with the reason “Suspected minor”, or email safety@activobuddy.com. We treat these reports as urgent. If we find an account belongs to someone under 18, we suspend it so it can no longer be used or seen.
11. Complaints
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, please tell us first at info@activobuddy.com, so we can try to put it right.
You can also complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. If you live in the EU, you can complain to the data protection authority in your country. The European Data Protection Board lists them.
12. This website and cookies
- No cookies, analytics or tracking. activobuddy.com doesn't set cookies or use analytics or tracking tools. Our fonts are hosted on our own site, so visiting doesn't send your details to any font service.
- Invite links. An invite link from the app (activobuddy.com/i or /g) carries its code after the #, which your browser never sends to our servers; the page uses it only to open the app.
- Hosting. Like any website, the server that delivers our pages processes your internet address and browser details in order to send you the page and protect the site from abuse.
- Waitlist. When you enter your email to get early access, it's currently saved only in your own browser, on your device. It isn't sent to us. You can remove it by clearing this site's data in your browser settings.
13. Changes to this policy
We'll update this policy when what we collect or how we use it changes, and change the date at the top. If a change matters, for example a new kind of data or a new service provider, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.