Privacy Policy

Effective 9 August 2026

Read this before signing up. chud works by showing other people your screen time. Once a day, your daily total and your profile photo are shown to the friends you have accepted. Sharing your data with other users is the purpose of the app, not a side effect of it.

Information we collect

Apple or Google account: Used to create and sign you in, through our authentication provider Clerk. We receive and store your email address and a stable user ID. If you use Apple's Hide My Email, we only ever see the relay address. We never see your Apple or Google password.
Display name: The name you choose during setup. It is shown to your friends, to anyone you send or receive a friend request from, and to any chud user who has your email address or phone number saved in their contacts.
Profile photo and reactions: Photographs of you, taken with your camera inside chud. A profile photo is required and is shown to your friends beside your number. You can also send a reaction, a photo taken in the moment, to a friend after a drop, and they can send them to you. chud has no option to upload from your photo library and never requests access to it. Every image is captured live in the app. Images are stored privately and are served only through short-lived links to people entitled to see them.
Screen Time data: A single daily total, read through Apple's Screen Time framework with your permission. We never receive per-app or per-category data — not which apps you used, not their names, not their categories. iOS does not give third-party apps your exact total; it only reports when your usage crosses a threshold. Every number in chud is therefore a lower bound accurate to roughly five minutes, which is why each one is shown with a trailing +.
Date of birth: Collected once during setup solely to confirm you are at least 13. It is never shown to anyone and is never returned by any part of the app another user can see.
Phone number (optional): If you add one, it is stored as part of your account and used so that people who have your number in their contacts can find you.
Contacts: If you allow it, email addresses and phone numbers from your address book are sent to our server to check which of them already have chud accounts. We do not store your contacts, and we do not store the results. The check happens in memory and the answer is returned to your device.
Push notification token: An anonymous device identifier from Apple, used to tell you when the drop fires. It identifies a device, not a person, and is deleted when you delete your account.
Blocks and reports: If you block or report someone, we store that record, including any reason you give, so we can act on it and prevent further contact.

Photos

Reactions are deleted when the next drop fires. Both the database record and the image file itself are removed, not merely hidden from view.

Your profile photo is kept until you replace it or delete your account. Replacing it deletes the previous image. Deleting your account deletes your profile photo and every reaction you have ever sent.

Photos are stored in a private bucket. Nothing is publicly readable; every view is a signed link that expires. Only people entitled to see an image are ever given a link to it, and a reaction from someone who is no longer your friend stops being shown to you.

Being found by others

Another chud user can find you if they have your email address or phone number saved in their contacts, or if you share your personal invite link. When they do, they can see your display name and send you a friend request. They cannot see your screen time, your photo, or anything else unless you accept.

How we use your information

To run the daily drop and show your number and photo to friends you have accepted.
To let you and your friends find each other.
To notify you when the drop fires.
To enforce our minimum age and act on blocks and reports.

We do not use your data for advertising. We do not sell it. We do not track you across other apps or websites, and chud contains no advertising or analytics SDKs.

Who your data is shared with

Your friends: People whose friend request you accepted, or who accepted yours, see your display name, your profile photo, your daily screen-time total, and any reaction you send them. This is the app working as intended.
Service providers: Clerk (authentication), Neon (database hosting), Render (server hosting), Cloudflare R2 (photo storage) and Apple (push notifications). Each processes data only to provide their service to us.
Legal requirement: If we are legally required to disclose information, we will.

Where your data is processed

Our servers and database are in the United States. If you use chud from elsewhere, your data is transferred to and processed there.

Retention

Reactions — deleted when the next drop fires, image included.
Profile photo — until you replace it or delete your account.
Screen-time history — 90 days, then automatically deleted.
Account data — until you delete your account.

Your rights

You can delete your account from inside the app, under Settings. Deletion is immediate and permanent: your account, screen-time history, friendships, blocks, reports, device tokens, profile photo and reactions are all erased. There is no recovery, and we do not keep a copy.

To ask a question about your data, email [email protected].

Children

chud is for people aged 13 and over. We ask for your date of birth during setup and refuse to create an account for anyone younger. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the effective date above, and material changes will be surfaced in the app.

Contact

[email protected]