Privacy policy
Do you live in California? Check out our California Privacy Statement, which supplements this Privacy Policy.
Residents of Washington and Nevada, please see our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, which supplements this Privacy Policy.
Hey there! Welcome to Plenty of Fish’s Privacy Policy.
We know reading a privacy policy might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but hear us out. We put a lot of effort into making this policy as clear and engaging as possible, because we actually want you to read it! Think of us as your digital wingmate, here to guide you through the ins and outs of what data we collect, and why and how we use it. So get cozy, grab your beverage of choice, and let’s dive into the world of personal data together.
This Privacy Policy applies from July 19, 2024. The previous version of this Privacy Policy, available here here, applies until then.
1. Who We Are
2. Where This Privacy Policy Applies
3. Data We Collect
4. How We Use Data
5. How We Share Data
6. How Match Group Companies Work Together
7. Cross-Border Data Transfers
8. Your Rights
9. How Long We Retain Your Data
10. Children's Privacy
11. Privacy Policy Changes
12. How To Contact Us
1. Who We Are
If you live in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the company responsible for your data (the “data controller”) is:
MTCH Technology Services Limited
Plenty of Fish
1 Hatch Street Upper
Dublin 2
D02 PY28
Ireland
If you live outside the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, the company responsible for your data is:
Plentyoffish Media ULC
1133 Melville Street
Vancouver, BC V6E 4E5
2. Where This Privacy Policy Applies
This Privacy Policy applies to websites, apps, events and other services we operate under the Plenty of Fish brand. Whether you're searching for your soulmate, connecting with new friends, joining us at one of our events, or using any of our other awesome services, this Policy has got you covered. For simplicity, we just refer to all of these as our “service” in this Privacy Policy.
If for some reason, one of our services requires its own separate privacy policy, then that policy will be made available to you and that policy -- not this Privacy Policy -- will apply.
3. Data We Collect
It goes without saying, we can’t help you develop meaningful connections without you providing some information about yourself, like basic profile details and the types of people you’d like to meet. Using our service also generates some information, such as when you logged in and how you used the service. We may also collect data from third parties, like when you access the service through an account you have on another platform (e.g., Facebook, Google or Apple) or when you upload information from your account on another platform to complete your profile. If you're interested in all the details, be sure to check out the table below.
| Data you give us | |
|---|---|
| Categories | Description |
| Account Data | When you create an account, you give us basic information for your account to be set up such as your email address, phone number, date of birth and password. |
| Profile Data | When you complete your profile, you share additional details about you, such as your gender, interests, preferences, approximate location, etc. Some of this data may be considered sensitive or special in certain countries, such as details about sexual orientation, health, racial or ethnic origins, or political affiliations. If you choose to provide this data, you consent to us using it as laid out in this Privacy Policy. |
| Content | When you use our service, you may post photos, videos, audio, text and other types of content, such as your chats with other members. |
| Purchase Data | When you make a purchase, we keep the details of the transaction (e.g., what you purchased, the date of the transaction, and the price). The exact data depends on the payment method you choose. When you pay directly with us (rather than through a platform such as iOS or Android), you provide your debit or credit card number or other financial info. |
| Marketing, Survey and Research Data | We sometimes run (i) surveys, focus groups, or market studies for research purposes and (ii) promotions, events or contests for marketing purposes. When you choose to participate, you give us information to process your entry and participation, as well as your responses to our questions and your feedback. |
| Third-Party Data | When you choose to share with us information about other people (for example, if you use the contact details of someone you know for a given feature or if you submit a query or report involving a member), we process this data on your behalf to complete your request. |
| Customer Support Data |
When you contact us, you provide us with information that may be necessary to help address your inquiry. Other people may also submit queries or reports involving you. Finally, our moderation tools and teams can collect additional data as part of their investigations.
Further, we are part of the Match Group family of businesses. Match Group considers the safety and security of members a top priority. If you were banned from another Match Group service, your data may be shared with us to allow us to take necessary actions, including closing your account or preventing you from creating an account on our service. Where legally allowed, we can also receive information about suspected or convicted bad actors from third parties as part of our efforts to ensure our members’ safety and security. |
| Social Media Data | You may decide to share data with us through your accounts on other platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Google or Apple), for instance if you decide to create and log into your account via these platforms or if you decide to upload data such as photos onto our service from these platforms. |
| Data generated or automatically collected | |
|---|---|
| Categories | Description |
| Usage Data | Using the service generates data about your activity, including how you use it (e.g., when you logged in, features you’ve been using, actions taken, information shown to you, referring webpages, ads you interacted with) and how you interact with others (e.g., searching, matching, communicating). We may also receive data related to interactions you had with our ads on third party’s websites or apps. |
| Technical Data | Using the service involves the collection of data from and about the device(s) you use to access our service, including hardware and software information such as IP address, device ID and type, apps settings and characteristics, app crashes, advertising IDs and identifiers associated with cookies or other technologies that may uniquely identify a device or browser. For more information about cookies, see our Cookie Policy. |
| Other data we collect with your permission/consent | |
|---|---|
| Categories | Description |
| Geolocation Data | If you give us permission, we can collect your geolocation (latitude and longitude) from your device. If you decline permission, features that rely on precise geolocation may not be available to you. |
| Face Geometry Data | You may choose to participate in certain of our features like Selfie Verification, that involve the collection of face geometry data, which may be considered biometric data in some jurisdictions. Learn more here about our verification feature and how we process your face geometry data. |
| ID Data | You may provide us with a copy of your government-issued ID to help us check that you’re who you say you are. |
4. Why and How We Use Your Data
The main reason we process your data is to provide our service to you and improve it over time. That includes connecting you with members who might make your heart skip a beat, personalizing your experience, and just helping you make the most of our service. We also process your data to keep you and all of our members safe and secure while using our service. We take this responsibility very seriously and we’re always working to improve our systems and processes to help protect you. And yes, we process your data to show relevant ads – you can control this in your settings. Read on for a more detailed explanation.
For information on how we process personal data through “profiling” and “automated decision-making”, please see our FAQ.
| Purposes for processing your data | Grounds for processing your data |
Categories of data processed
(Those are described in Section 3 of this Policy) |
|---|---|---|
To enable you to use our service, including:
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To enable your purchases on our service, including:
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To operate advertising and marketing campaigns, including:
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To improve our service and create new features and services, including:
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To keep you and other members safe on our service and across Match Group, including:
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To comply with applicable law, establish, exercise and defend legal claims & rights, including:
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The categories of data shared will vary based on the specific circumstances surrounding each obligation, compelling interest or dispute |
5. How We Share Data
Since our goal is to help you make meaningful connections, some of your information is of course visible to other members on the service. We also share data with service providers and partners who assist us in operating the service, with other Match Group companies for the reasons laid out below and, in some cases, for legal and related reasons. Read on for more details.
| Recipients | Reasons for sharing | Categories of Personal Data |
|---|---|---|
| Other members |
You share data with other members when you voluntarily disclose information on the service for others to see (e.g., your public profile).
If someone submits a report involving you (such as a claim you violated our Terms of Use), we may let the reporter know what actions we took, if any, as a result of their report. The same applies if you submit a report involving another member. |
|
| Service providers/partners | We share data with vendors and partners who help us operate, promote and improve our service. They provide us services such as data hosting and maintenance, analytics, customer care, marketing, advertising, payment processing, legal support, and security operations. |
Depending on the service provided by the vendor or partner, it may include:
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| Advertising Partners |
We may publish ads about third-party advertisers’ products and services on our service, and publish ads promoting our own service on third-party sites and apps. To help improve the relevance of these ads, we provide certain info about you to third parties, including advertising partners, or allow them to collect such data from our services (such as via cookies, SDKs, or similar technologies). Some of our advertising partners enable us to transform your email address, advertising identifiers or phone number into an identifier that can’t be used to identify you personally and then use that unique identifier to either exclude you from our marketing campaigns, or to target our ads at an audience that is similar to you in terms of background, interests or app usage.
If you live in the United States, some of the activities described in this section may constitute “targeted advertising,” “sharing,” or “selling” under applicable laws. You have the right to opt-out, as described in Section 8. |
Depending on the service provided by the vendor or partner, it may include:
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| Affiliates | We may share data with affiliates or receive data from them for the purposes laid out in Section 6 of this policy. |
The categories of data will vary based on the reason for sharing, but it may include:
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| Law enforcement authorities | We may disclose your data to: (i) comply with a legal process, such as a court order, subpoena or search warrant, government / law enforcement investigation or other legal requirements; (ii) assist in the prevention or detection of crime; (iii) protect the safety of any person; and (iv) establish, exercise or defend legal claims. |
The categories of data shared will vary depending on the specific circumstances surrounding the request, but it often can include:
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| In the context of merger and acquisition, with our Affiliates or new owner(s) | We may transfer your data if we are involved, whether in whole or in part, in a merger, sale, acquisition, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, bankruptcy or other change of ownership or control. | The categories of data shared will vary based on the type of corporate transaction. It may include the entire organization data or only a specific subset such as Purchase Data. |
6. How Match Group Companies Work Together
Plenty of Fish is part of the Match Group family of businesses.
We may share data about you with our Affiliates and they may share data about you with us, for the reasons laid out below:
- To make all Match Group platforms safer, for instance by making sure that when a bad actor is found on one Match Group platform (for instance ours), they can be banned from all.
- To assist each other in data processing operations, as service providers. This assistance may include processing operations, such as data hosting and maintenance, customer care, marketing and targeted advertising, analytics, finance and accounting, legal support, payment processing, service improvement, data security and fighting against spam, abuse, fraud and other wrongdoings.
- To improve your chances at building significant connections with others, we may make you visible on other Match Group services or allow you to benefit from cross-platform functionalities. We will of course comply with applicable law and, where relevant, notify you of any such opportunity and allow you to agree or to refuse.
- Where and as allowed under applicable law, to better understand how people use Match Group services overall, to personalize your experience across Match Group services and to enhance marketing and advertising campaigns.
- For other legitimate business purposes including corporate / consolidated audit, analysis and reporting.
Learn more about how Match Group companies work together.
7. Cross-Border Data Transfers
Because we operate a global service, the sharing of your data laid out in Section 5 involves cross-border data transfers to the United States of America and other countries that may have different laws about data processing. When we transfer personal data outside of the EEA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or other countries whose data protection laws have been deemed adequate by the European Commission or other competent governmental bodies, we typically rely on what are called standard contract clauses. These standard contractual clauses are commitments between companies transferring personal data, binding them to protect the privacy and security of your data. Contact us for a copy.
8. Your Rights
We want you to be in control of your data, so we want to remind you of the following rights, options and tools available to you. Depending on where you live, you may not have the same rights or they may be named differently. If you have any questions on your rights and how to exercise them, please contact us here.
| Your Rights | How to exercise it |
|---|---|
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Access, Portability or To Know
Right to be informed of the personal data we process about you and/or ask for a copy of it |
You can access and review some data directly by logging into your account. You can also retrieve a copy of your data by following the process explained here. |
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Rectification or Correction
Right to amend or update your personal data where it’s inaccurate or incomplete |
You can update your data directly within the service by simply updating your profile. If you wish to rectify other data, please contact us here. |
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Deletion or Erasure
Right to delete personal data |
You can delete some of the data you provided us directly within the service. You can also close your account as explained here and we’ll delete your data as laid out in this Privacy Policy. In any event, you can always contact us here. |
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Objection (Opt-out) or Restriction
Right to object to us processing personal data or to request that we temporarily or permanently stop processing personal data |
You can directly opt-out from certain of your personal data processing in your account settings. Otherwise you can contact us here should you wish to object to or restrict a data processing we’ve listed throughout this Privacy Policy. |
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Consent Withdrawal
Right to withdraw a consent you’ve given us to process your personal data for a specific purpose |
You can directly withdraw consent you’ve given us either by updating your account setting or removing Device Permissions you’ve agreed to in your device settings (e.g., access to specific types of device data such as phone contacts, pictures, advertising identifiers and location services or consent to receive push notifications). When you withdraw consent, certain services may lose functionality. You can always contact us here for more information. |
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Opt-out of Targeted Advertising, “Sales” and “Sharing.”
If you live in the United States, you may opt out of activities that may fall under the legal definitions of “targeted advertising,” “sales,” or “sharing” under applicable laws |
To opt out, please visit the “Your Privacy Choices” link in the footer of our website and in the Settings menu of the app and adjust the “Do Not Share / Sell” toggle accordingly. Authorized agents may submit opt-out requests on behalf of consumers here. |
For your protection and the protection of all of our members, we may ask you for information to verify your identity or authority to act on behalf of a member before we can answer the above requests. We wouldn’t want someone else to get in control of your data!
Keep in mind, we may reject requests, including if we are unable to authenticate you, if the request is unlawful or invalid, or if it may infringe on trade secrets or intellectual property or the privacy or other rights of someone else. If you wish to receive information relating to another member, such as a copy of any messages you received from them, the other member will have to make a request themselves.
If you are a resident of Virginia, Colorado, or Connecticut, USA, if we deny your privacy request, you may be able to appeal by contacting us, and explicitly referencing “Privacy Request Appeal.” If you have concerns about the result of your appeal, you may contact the attorney general for your state.
In certain countries, including in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the appropriate data protection authority if you have concerns about how we process your personal data. You can find information about your data protection regulator in the European Economic Area here, and in the United Kingdom here. The data protection authority you can lodge a complaint with may be that of your habitual residence, where you work or where an alleged infringement took place.
9. How Long We Retain Your Data
We want the connections you make through our service to last forever, but we keep your personal data only as long as necessary for legitimate business reasons (as laid out in Section 4) and as permitted by applicable law.
If you decide to stop using our service, you can close your account and your profile will no longer be visible to other members. Note that we will close your account automatically if you are inactive for two years.
Following account closure, we delete your data as laid out below:
- To protect the safety and security of our members, we implement a safety retention window of three months following account closure. During this period, we keep your data to investigate unlawful or harmful conducts. The retention of data during this safety retention window is based on our legitimate interest as well as that of potential third-party victims.
- We maintain limited data to comply with legal data retention obligations: in particular, we keep transaction data and imprecise location of purchase for 10 years to comply with tax and accounting legal requirements, credit card information for the duration the user may challenge the transaction, and “traffic data” / logs for one year to comply with legal data retention obligations. We also keep records of consents members give us for five years to comply and evidence our compliance with applicable law.
- We maintain limited data on the basis of our legitimate interest: we keep customer care records and supporting data as for five years in support of our safety efforts, to support our customer care decisions, enforce our rights and enable us to defend ourselves in the event of a claim, profile data and imprecise location of download for one year in anticipation of potential litigation, for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims, and data necessary to prevent members who were banned from opening a new account for as long as necessary to ensure the safety and vital interests of our members.
- Finally, we maintain data on the basis of our legitimate interest where there is an outstanding or potential issue, claim or dispute requiring us to keep data in particular if we receive a valid legal subpoena or request asking us to preserve data (in which case we would need to keep the data to comply with our legal obligations) or if data would otherwise be necessary as part of legal proceedings.
Where and as legally permitted, we may maintain and use data that, by itself, cannot identify or be attributed specifically to you for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to improve our service, create new features, technologies and services, and keep our service safe.
10. Children's Privacy
Our service is restricted to individuals who are 18 years of age or older. We do not permit individuals under the age of 18 on our platform. If you suspect that a member is under the age of 18, please use the reporting mechanism available on the service.
11. Privacy Policy Changes
This policy may change over time. We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to help you build meaningful connections and strive to make sure explanations of our data practices remain up-to-date. We will notify you before material changes take effect so that you have time to review the changes.
12. How to Contact Us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, you have different options below:
If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland:
Online: here
By post:
Data Protection Officer
MTCH Technology Services Limited
Plenty of Fish
1 Hatch Street Upper
Dublin 2
Dublin
D02 PY28
Ireland
For more information on how to contact the data protection officer, please click here.
If you live outside the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland:
Online: here
By post:
Data Protection Officer
Plentyoffish Media ULC
1133 Melville Street
Vancouver, BC V6E 4E5
Well, that's it! You’ve made it to the end of our Privacy Policy. We hope it was as engaging and clear as we tried to make it. Now, let’s get out there and start making some memories! We’re excited to be on this journey with you.