Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2, 2026

This policy describes exactly what MySweaty stores, why, and who can see it. It is written to be specific rather than reassuring — where something is stored in a way that has limits, those limits are stated plainly. If a section here ever stops matching what the app actually does, the policy is the thing that is wrong, and we want to hear about it.

1. Information you give us

Everything in this section is typed or chosen by you, or follows directly from a choice you make (such as signing in with Apple or Google). None of it is gathered in the background.

What Why we store it Required?
First name, last name Identifies you to people you connect with. Your last name is stored encrypted (see section 13) Yes
Date of birth Confirms you are 18 or older (see section 12). Stored encrypted, and never shown to anyone Yes
Username Your public handle; must be unique Yes
Email address Sign-in, login codes, password resets Yes
Password Sign-in — stored only as a hash (see section 3) Yes, unless you sign up with Apple or Google
Your Apple or Google account, if you sign in with one Lets you sign up and sign in with one tap instead of a form. We keep a one-way hash of the ID Apple or Google gives us, not the ID itself (see section 6) Optional
Your agreement to the Terms The date and time you accepted the Terms at sign-up, and which version, so there is a record of what you agreed to Yes
City and state Shows you people and groups near you (see section 2) Optional
Search radius How far out your feed reaches, 1–100 miles Optional
Up to two sports Matches you with people who train the same way Optional
Bio Free text shown on your profile Optional
Profile photos Shown on your profile and in feeds (see section 4) Optional
Groups you create The group's name, sport, size, city, description and photos, and — if you add them — its weekly schedule and meeting place. The schedule and the meeting place are stored encrypted Optional
Messages, events, workout invites, RSVPs, reports The content you create in the app (see section 5) Optional

2. Location — we never read your device's location

MySweaty has no ability to access your real location. Not your GPS, not your precise position, not your movements, not in the background.

This is not a promise we are asking you to take on trust. An iOS app is physically incapable of reading your location unless it declares a location permission and you approve the system prompt. MySweaty declares no location permission of any kind, so iOS will never even offer you that prompt. The app contains no location-tracking code to go with it.

What we actually store

When you set your location, you type a city and pick a state. We look that city up in our own reference table of US cities and save the coordinates of the city itself — a single point representing that city, the same point for everyone who picks it.

So if three people in Dallas set their location, all three have byte-for-byte identical coordinates stored against their accounts. Those coordinates describe Dallas. They do not describe any of those three people, their neighborhood, their gym, or their home. They are used for one thing: measuring the rough distance between two cities, so Explore can show you the people and public groups whose city is within the search radius you chose.

Photos cannot leak your location either

Photos taken on a phone often carry hidden GPS coordinates in their metadata. We keep none of it, and this is done twice. The iOS app re-encodes and resizes every photo before it leaves your device. Then our server rebuilds every upload again from its pixels alone, whether it came from the app or the website, and stores only that new file. Camera metadata — GPS coordinates, timestamps, camera model, comments, embedded thumbnails, color profiles — is not carried across, because nothing but the picture is ever read. A file that cannot be rebuilt this way is refused, not stored as it arrived.

Photos stored before the server did this get the same treatment. Every image is checked the first time it is requested, before it is sent to anyone, and is cleaned on the spot if it needs it. An image that cannot be cleaned is not sent.

Group meeting places

A group owner may type a street address as the group's meeting spot, and events and workout invites may carry an address the organizer types. These are addresses of places, entered deliberately by a person. A group's meeting address is converted to map coordinates on the device using Apple's built-in address lookup. That conversion turns written text into a map pin; it does not involve your device's position. While you type an event or invite location, the app suggests matching places from Apple Maps. To do that, Apple receives the text you type and the city on your profile (so the suggestions are near you), not your device's location. Showing a meeting place on a map, or opening it in Maps, also goes through Apple.

A group's weekly schedule, its meeting address and that address's map coordinates are stored encrypted. Group owners control whether the schedule and the meeting place are visible to people outside the group; in a private group they are always members-only.

3. Passwords — we cannot read yours

We do not store your password. We store a one-way hash of it.

The distinction matters, and it is worth being precise rather than saying the usual "your password is encrypted." Encryption is reversible — whoever holds the key can turn it back into the original. Hashing is not. A hash is a one-way fingerprint: your password goes in, a fixed-length scramble comes out, and there is no key and no procedure that turns it back. When you sign in, we hash what you typed and compare the two fingerprints. At no point does your actual password exist in our database.

This means nobody at MySweaty can tell you your password, look it up, or recover it — not an engineer, not support, not anyone with full database access. If you forget it, the only path is to reset it. Anyone who claims to be from MySweaty and tells you your password is not from MySweaty.

The hash is deliberately slow to compute, so even if the database were stolen, guessing passwords from the hashes would be enormously expensive rather than instant. That is protection, not a guarantee, which is why a password you do not reuse elsewhere still matters.

Login codes and resets

Signing in with your email and password on a device we have not seen before emails you a six-digit code. Signing in with Apple or Google does not: Apple or Google has already confirmed it is you, so no code is sent.

We also email a six-digit code to confirm your address when you sign up, to reset or set a password, to connect Apple or Google to an account that has no password, and to delete an account that has no password. That last one matters if you signed up with Apple or Google: there is no password to ask for, so when you delete your account we email a code to your address and the deletion only goes ahead once you enter it.

Every one of these codes is hashed in the same one-way manner as your password and expires ten minutes after it is issued. A code is erased when it is used; a delete-account code is erased along with the account. Requests for new codes are rate-limited.

4. Photos

Photos you upload are stored on our server, on a private disk with no public web address. There is no way to reach an image by guessing a URL, and they are not hosted on a public CDN. Every image request must carry a valid login, so a photo can only be fetched by someone signed in to MySweaty. We also generate smaller copies so that list screens do not download full-size originals.

MySweaty never asks for access to your photo library. When you add a photo, iOS shows you its own picker, and only the specific image you choose is handed to the app. We cannot see anything else in your library.

When you replace or remove a photo, its file and its smaller copies are deleted from our server. One limit we cannot remove: a photo that has already been shown to someone may stay in that person's app or browser cache for a while afterward. That copy is on their device, not on our server, and we have no way to reach in and delete it.

5. Messages and content

Messages you send, group descriptions, event details and RSVPs are stored in our database so they can be delivered and displayed.

To be straightforward about the limits here: MySweaty messages are not end-to-end encrypted. They are stored as readable text on our server. This is what allows messages to sync across devices and be recovered, and it is how most non-specialist messaging works — but it does mean that, unlike your password, message content is technically readable by someone with direct database access, and could be disclosed if we were compelled by valid legal process. If you need guaranteed-private conversations, use a dedicated end-to-end encrypted messenger.

Believe it or not, we do not read your messages. Nobody at MySweaty browses conversations, and nothing scans them. There is exactly one situation in which a person on our team reads message text, and that is a report:

The copy exists so a person can see what was reported and act on it. It is the only message text we look at, and it is kept with the report (see section 10). We do not sell your messages, mine them for advertising, or feed them to any analytics or AI system.

A report about a profile or a group works the same way: it keeps a copy of the username, name and bio, or of the group's name and description, as they were when it was filed. If a report leads us to suspend an account, the date and the reason are recorded on that account, and the person is shown the reason when they try to sign in.

6. Sign-in, device, and activity information

To let you skip the emailed code on a device you have already verified, we keep a small record of that device and trust it for 90 days. It holds only this:

After the 90 days the device has to be verified again. The expired record no longer does anything; it is deleted the next time you verify a browser on the website, or when your account is erased.

MySweaty does not save your IP address, or the identification string your browser or phone sends with each request, to your account, your trusted devices, or your sessions. Your IP address is used only in the moment, to limit repeated sign-in attempts so that accounts cannot be brute-forced. We do not build location profiles, browsing histories or behavioral profiles.

Signing in with Apple or Google

We offer Sign in with Apple and Sign in with Google for one reason: so you can create an account and come back to it with a single tap, without filling in a form or remembering another password. Using either one is your choice; an email address and a password work just as well.

If you use one, Apple or Google tells us who you are by giving us an ID for your account with them, your email address (with Apple, a private relay address if you choose to hide your email), and your name (Apple shares it only the first time). We need the ID for exactly one thing, recognizing you the next time you sign in, and that never requires reading it back. So we do not store the ID itself. We store a one-way hash of it: a fingerprint that lets us tell "same account as before" and cannot be turned back into the ID, even by us. With Apple we also keep one encrypted token, used only to tell Apple to disconnect MySweaty when you delete your account or disconnect Apple.

Activity we record

We record when your account was created and when it was last active (signing in, or changing your profile). We keep those two times for one reason: to see whether people are actually using MySweaty.

We also record when you read a 1:1 message and when you last opened each group chat, so the app can show you what is unread. That is all of it. There is no record of which screens you open, what you tap, or how long you spend.

Cookies on the website

The website uses three cookies, and each exists because the site would not work properly without it:

None of the three is used for advertising or to follow you around the web, and none is shared with anyone. The app itself does not rely on cookies: it stays signed in with a token kept in the iPhone's Keychain. It does receive the first two cookies when it loads photos, because photo requests go through the same part of our server as the website, and simply sends them back with the next photo request.

7. What other people can see

Only signed-in members can see anything below. Your email address and your date of birth are never shown to other users.

Public and private groups

A public group appears on Explore, and its page shows its name, sport, description, photos, city and member list. Its weekly schedule and meeting place are shown to people outside the group only if the owner has switched that on.

A private group never appears on Explore, and it is not listed on its members' profiles. People find it through a link that a member shares. Someone who opens that link without being a member sees only the group's name, sport, first photo and owner, and can ask to join. The description, the other photos, the member list, the schedule and the meeting place are for members.

You can block another member, which stops them from reaching you through the app.

8. What we do not collect

This list is specific because vague privacy claims are worth very little:

MySweaty requests no iOS privacy permissions at all. We run no analytics, crash-reporting or advertising code of our own, and the icons in the app are plain image files.

The app does contain two pieces of sign-in code that are not ours, there so you can sign up without friction: Sign in with Apple, which is part of iOS, and Google's Sign-In library. Neither does anything unless you tap the Apple or Google button. If you do, that company handles the sign-in under its own privacy policy and gives us the details listed in section 6. Google states that its library may also collect a device identifier and usage data for its own analytics when it is used. If you would rather not involve either company, sign up with an email address and a password, and that code is never run.

9. Who else touches your data

We do not sell, rent or trade personal data. The only outside companies that handle it are the service providers that run MySweaty for us — hosting, email, and Apple Maps for place suggestions — and Apple or Google when you choose to sign in with them. Each receives only what it needs to do that job.

We may disclose information if legally required to do so by valid legal process, or where necessary to protect the safety of our users.

10. Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your information for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account at any time: open your own profile, open the menu in the top corner, and choose Delete Account. You will be asked to confirm your password first, or, if you signed up with Apple or Google and so have no password, with a six-digit code emailed to your address. Deleting with an emailed code is done in the app. The website offers the same Delete Account control in the same place, and asks for your password, so it is available to any account that has one.

What happens the moment you confirm

You are signed out on every device and your login tokens are destroyed, so the account cannot be signed into again. Your connections are removed, which takes you out of other people’s connection lists. Your profile can no longer be opened, and you disappear from Explore and from group member lists. Your 1:1 conversations disappear from the other person’s Messages as well as from yours.

Two things are not gone at that moment, and stay until the erasure described next:

What happens 45 days later

Your data itself is erased 45 days after you confirm. We hold it for that window for two reasons, and only those two: so an account deleted by mistake — or by someone who got into your email — can still be recovered, and so that a safety report filed shortly before the deletion still has something to point at while we review it.

At the end of the window an automatic process permanently erases your user record, your photos and the image files behind them (including their smaller copies), every message you sent, your 1:1 conversations, your group memberships, your event RSVPs, the events and workout invites you created along with their cover photos, your notifications, your remembered devices, your blocks, and every remaining login record. This is not a flag marking the row as hidden. The rows are deleted and the files are removed from disk.

What that means for messages depends on where they were sent:

If you would rather not wait the 45 days, email us at the address below and we will run that erasure immediately rather than leaving you in the queue. We will ask you to send it from the address on the account, so that nobody else can hurry your deletion along on your behalf.

The two things that do not disappear

Abuse reports. If you reported someone, or someone reported you, the report and the copy of what was reported are kept. Deleting an account cannot be a way to erase a safety record. What is removed is the link from the report to your account, so the report no longer points at an account of yours. What is not changed is the copy itself. It was taken when the report was filed, and if it quoted your username, your name, your bio or your messages, it still does. The notice of the report that was emailed to our moderation inbox is kept there too.

Groups you started. A group belongs to the people in it, so what happens to one you owned depends on who is left:

In the first two cases the group keeps what you gave it: its name, description, photos, schedule and meeting place. Those belong to the group now. Where the group has a new owner, that owner can change them.

Other things we keep, and for how long

11. Your choices

You can edit or clear your bio, sports, photos and location at any time, from the app or the website. You can leave your location unset entirely. Explore is the one part of MySweaty that needs it: without a location, Explore shows you no one and does not show you to anyone. Your profile, your existing connections, your messages and your groups all work without one. You may request a copy of your data or its deletion by contacting us. Depending on where you live, you may have additional statutory rights over your data; we will honor valid requests regardless of where you live.

12. Children

MySweaty is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account, and we ask for your date of birth at signup and refuse anyone under 18 — see section 2 of the Terms for what that check does and does not verify. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account, report it in the app or contact us and we will remove it.

13. Security

Passwords and emailed codes are hashed one-way. Photos sit on a private disk behind an authentication check. Signing in with a password requires an emailed code on any device we have not seen before; signing in with Apple or Google relies on their verification instead. Sign-in attempts are rate-limited. Our sign-in responses are deliberately written so they cannot be used to work out whether a particular email address has an account.

What is hashed, what is encrypted, and what is neither

These are three different things, and it is worth knowing which applies to what. Hashed means turned into a one-way fingerprint that nobody can turn back, including us. Encrypted means scrambled in the database with a key that only the running service holds: the service can read the value back when it needs to show or use it, and a copy of the database on its own cannot be read. Neither means stored as readable text.

How it is stored What
Hashed (one-way) Your password. Every emailed six-digit code. Your device ID and trusted-browser value. Your Apple or Google account ID.
Encrypted Your date of birth. Your last name. A group's weekly schedule, its meeting address, and that address's map coordinates. The token used to disconnect Sign in with Apple.
Neither Everything else: your first name, username, email address, bio, city and state, sports, messages, group names and descriptions, event and invite details, and reports. Photos are stored as image files on a private disk.

The limit of encryption, stated plainly: it protects against someone who gets hold of the database alone. Someone who had both the database and the service's key could read the encrypted values. Hashed values cannot be read by anyone either way.

No service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise. If we ever discover a breach affecting your data, we will tell you.

14. Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or how we use it, we will update this page and move the date at the top. Material changes will be surfaced in the app rather than quietly published here.

15. Contact

Questions about this policy, requests for your data, or requests for full deletion:

contact@mysweaty.com

MySweaty, LLC