Privacy Policy

JoinUp, by Testcamp Inc. · Last updated: September 24, 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, a notification address for your phone, an email address if you add one, and what you ask the AI assistant. 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 through our SMS 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. That matching uses a one-way code of your number made on our servers, not the number itself. We do not use your phone number for marketing.

Email address

You can add an email address to your account, or a school email to join your school’s community. We confirm it with a code we send there, and keep it with your account.

Profile information

Your editable display name, your two initials, and a profile photo if you choose one. These are shown to other JoinUp users you interact with — for example, members of your Groups and people in Joinups you join. If you add no photo, your initials are shown in its place.

Date of birth

We ask for your date of birth when you set up your account, because JoinUp is for adults. We keep it on your account to apply that rule; it is never shown to other people, and it is deleted when you delete your account.

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.

When you arrive at a place during a plan, that arrival is also counted for the business at that place. The business sees a number of different people per day and nothing else: no name, no face, no list, and no day when too few different people arrived.

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

Content you create

Joinups you post, the Joinups you join, group and community memberships, messages you send in a Joinup's chat or in a conversation, the photos, files, polls, places and contacts you send in a chat, 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. Sending a contact in a chat is different: the name and the one number you pick go into that chat.

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, to use as your profile photo or a group photo, or to set as a community cover, that photo is uploaded to our servers so the people meant to see it 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: a chat or community photo can be opened only by someone signed in who is already allowed to see that chat or that community, and your profile photo is shown to the people who see your profile. We do not use your photos for anything else.

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 use your camera only when you take a photo or join a video call, 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 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.

We keep a record of the places you open and save, the Joinups you create, join, leave and turn up to, and when you answer an invitation. We use it to understand how the app is used. Businesses see only totals for their own venue, and only once enough different people have been there that no one person can be picked out of them — never who you are, and never your record.

AI assistant

If you use the AI assistant or an AI suggestion, what you type and the details of the Joinup or place it is about, including how far you are from that place, go to Anthropic, the AI provider that writes the answer. We do not keep your questions or the answers on our servers, only a count of your recent questions.

Identity verification

When JoinUp asks you to verify your identity, which happens before you first host or join a Joinup, the check is run by an identity-verification provider. You take a short video selfie and photograph a government identity document, and those go from your phone to the provider, not to JoinUp. The provider confirms that a live person took the selfie, that the document is genuine and matches the selfie, and that you are 18 or over. Where the check includes screening, the provider also checks the name and date of birth on the document against sanctions and warning lists; that screening is not a criminal-record check. JoinUp never receives or stores your selfie, the document images, or the details read from the document. What JoinUp keeps is the outcome of each step and when it happened, a reference number for the check, which kind of check was run, the verified badge on your profile if you earned one, a short-lived token that brings you back into JoinUp when the check finishes, and a count of the checks started on your account. When you delete your account, we remove those results from your account, ask the provider to delete everything it holds from your check, and keep only a note that the deletion was requested and when, so the check cannot be restored later. Even while your account stays open, the provider keeps what it holds from a check for no more than 2 years after the check. The one exception is an account banned for serious harm: the provider keeps only the face data from that check while the ban stands, and deletes the rest.

Today JoinUp is offered in the United States. If we open JoinUp in another country, we will update this section before anyone outside the United States is asked to verify. The check opens on the provider's own page in your phone's browser, not inside JoinUp, and your selfie and document go to the provider from there. There is no charge to you for the check.

Business pages

If you claim a business page on JoinUp or help manage one, we keep a record of each claim: who made it, when, the verification method used, and the evidence given for it, such as the result of a code sent to a phone number or address already listed for the business, or documents showing that you own or run the business. We also keep a record of which JoinUp accounts manage each page. We use these records to decide, review and protect claims, to resolve disagreements about who manages a page, and to enforce the JoinUp Business Terms, and we keep them while the claim stands and afterwards for as long as those purposes or the law require.

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: other people see how many are in, not whose idea it was.

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

Depending on the feature you use, JoinUp may share information with the following categories of recipients for the purposes described:

Service providers process information for the purposes described above. Destinations you choose process what you send under their own terms and privacy practices. We may also disclose personal information when required by law or when reasonably necessary 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:

Account tab → Settings → Danger zone → 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.

We keep a record that a staff invitation was issued and when; after your account is erased nobody is named in it, and it is deleted twelve months after its last event.

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