Privacy Policy

JoinUp, by Testcamp Inc. · Last updated: August 11, 2026

JoinUp is an app for organizing spontaneous hangouts ("Joinups") with people you know. This policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and how you can delete it. We have tried to keep it short and honest.

The short version: we collect what we need to run the app — your phone number, your name, the phone numbers you type in to add someone, the Joinups and messages and photos you post, a record of the calls you make in the app, the locations of events you create or view nearby, a record of what the app showed you and what you opened, and a notification address for your phone. If you turn on arrival sharing for a Joinup, the people confirmed for that Joinup can see where you are until it ends. We run no third-party ad tracking. You can delete your account from inside the app; section 7 says what that removes.

1. Who we are

JoinUp is owned and operated by Testcamp Inc. ("we", "us"). We are the data controller for the information described in this policy. You can contact us using the details in the Contact section below.

2. What we collect

Phone number

JoinUp accounts are verified by phone number. When you sign up or sign in, we send a one-time SMS code to the number you provide, using Twilio Verify as our SMS delivery provider. Your phone number is stored with your account and is used for sign-in, for account security, and so people you know can find you if they already have your number. We do not use your phone number for marketing.

Profile information

Your editable display name and your two initials. These are shown to other JoinUp users you interact with — for example, members of your Groups and people in Joinups you join. JoinUp has no profile picture: your avatar is your initials, drawn on your phone.

Location

When you create a Joinup you pick a place for it; that place, including its map coordinates when available, is stored with the event and shown to the people invited. If you grant the app location permission, JoinUp uses your device's location while the app is open to show Joinups near you and to search for venues; the position sent out for a venue search is rounded to roughly 11 metres first. Location permission is optional: if you decline, the app keeps working and simply cannot sort events by distance.

Arrival sharing. For a Joinup you are confirmed for, you can choose to share that you are on your way. While it is on, your position — rounded the same way — is written to our servers and shown to the other people confirmed for that same Joinup, and to nobody else. It stops when the Joinup ends or when you stop it, only one position is kept at a time rather than a history, and each position expires by itself. It updates only while the app is open. It is off unless you turn it on.

JoinUp does not track your location in the background, and never asks for background location permission.

Content you create

Joinups you post, RSVPs, group and community memberships, messages you send in a Joinup's chat or in a conversation, photos you send, and reports you file about someone. Chat messages are visible to the other participants of that chat. When you join a Joinup's chat, your view of its history starts from the point you joined. Messages and photos are protected in transit and by access rules enforced on our servers, but they are not end-to-end encrypted — our servers can read them. Treat a JoinUp chat like any ordinary group chat.

Contacts

You can add people on JoinUp by typing their phone number. You can also let JoinUp look through your phone's contacts to find people you already know — that happens only when you ask for it, and only if you grant the contacts permission. When you do, JoinUp reads the phone numbers in your contacts, turns each one into a one-way code on your phone, and sends those codes to our servers to check which ones have a JoinUp account. The names you have saved never leave your phone. You can decline, and JoinUp works without it.

Device and technical data

If you enable push notifications, we store a notification address for your device so we can deliver them. The notification itself — which can include a sender's first name and the first line of a message — passes through Expo's and Apple's delivery services on its way to your phone. We also keep basic technical logs (such as timestamps and error information) needed to operate and secure the service, and, to stop abuse of the sign-in code, short-lived one-way-scrambled forms of the phone number and network address a sign-in request came from.

Photos you share

If you choose a photo to send in a chat, or set a picture as a community cover, that photo is uploaded to our servers so the people you sent it to can see it. We open your camera or photo library only when you tap to add a photo, and we take only the photo you pick. Photos are stored privately: they can be opened only by someone signed in who is already allowed to see that chat or that community. We do not use your photos for anything else, and there is no profile picture anywhere in JoinUp.

Calls

JoinUp can place voice calls between people who are already connected in the app. During a call we use your microphone so the other person can hear you. We never use your camera, and we do not record or store the call. We do keep a record that the call happened — who called whom, when, and whether it was answered — so both people can see it in their call list. If the two phones cannot connect to each other directly, the audio is passed through a relay service (Cloudflare) so the call still works; the relay passes it through and does not keep it.

How you use the app

We keep a record of what JoinUp put in front of you — which Joinups and places we showed you, where they sat on the screen, and whether you opened or joined them. We use it to get better at choosing what to show you. It holds no message text and no trail of where you have been, and it is not used to follow you into other apps or websites.

3. What we do not do

4. How we use your information

5. Anonymous Joinups

Some Joinups can be posted anonymously. What anonymity covers is who created the Joinup, and it covers it only while the Joinup is still filling up: other people see how many are in, not whose idea it was. When the Joinup locks in, the host’s name is shown to everyone who can see that Joinup, and that cannot be undone. JoinUp tells you this before you post an anonymous Joinup.

Anonymity covers the act of creating a Joinup, and nothing wider. It does not hide the Joinup itself, and it does not hide who is in it: everyone confirmed for a Joinup is a visible member of it, including the person who created it.

6. Who we share information with

We share personal information only with the service providers we need to run JoinUp, and only for that purpose:

These providers process data on our behalf under their own contractual and security obligations. Beyond this, we disclose personal information only if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or security of our users or the service.

7. Retention and account deletion

We keep your information for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account at any time, directly inside the app:

Profile tab → Delete account. Deletion is immediate: Joinups you were organizing that have not yet happened are cancelled, you are removed from the rosters of Joinups that have not yet happened, your profile is anonymized, your phone number is cleared from your account record, and your invites, memberships, and device tokens are removed. Account deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. Messages and photos you have already sent stay in the conversations you sent them to, shown as from “Deleted user”, because other people’s copies of a conversation are not ours to erase.

Not everything is removed. Some information is retained after deletion — for example, records the law requires us to keep, and records needed to handle safety reports about conduct that occurred before deletion.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete your personal information, and to object to or restrict certain processing. The in-app deletion flow covers the most important of these directly. For anything else, contact us using the details below and we will respond within the timelines the applicable law requires.

9. Children

JoinUp is not directed at children. You must be at least 18 years old to use JoinUp, and signup asks for your date of birth to check it. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under that age, we will delete it.

10. Security

Data is encrypted in transit, access to production systems is restricted, and clients can only read data through access rules enforced server-side. No system is perfectly secure, but we design so that the app can only ever see what it is supposed to see.

11. Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Continued use of JoinUp after a change means you accept the updated policy.

12. Contact

Questions about privacy, or requests about your data:

Email: support@joinup.com