1. What met does
met builds a private picture of where you have been, from photos you already took, and lets you compare it with someone else — but only when you both agree to it. A comparison produces one of four results:
met never asks for Location Services and never tracks where you are now. Everything it knows about your movements comes from photos already in your library.
2. The photo library scan
With your permission, met asks the operating system for two fields per photo:
If you grant limited photo access, only the photos you selected can contribute. Fewer photos simply means fewer crossings; nothing else changes.
3. What stays on your device
Two things are kept on your phone and nowhere else:
- Exact coordinates and exact timestamps of the photos that had them, together with each photo's local identifier. These are used to compute the coarse identifiers described below and to put readable names on places.
- Your account, your connections, your reports and your app settings, in this build.
One honest exception. To turn a location into a readable name such as “Kadıköy, İstanbul”, met asks Apple's own geocoding service. That request contains a coordinate and is handled by Apple under Apple's privacy policy. met does it at most a few times per scan, caches the answer, and never sends the result to our server — the server only ever knows the coarse identifier, not the name. If geocoding is unavailable, the place is labelled “Area 01” and everything still works.
4. What leaves your device
Before anything is compared, each usable photo is reduced to two things: an area and a time bucket. That reduced form is the only history that is ever transmitted.
The area identifier covers roughly 150 metres. Two coarser identifiers accompany it — one at about 1 kilometre and one at city scale — so the wider tiers can be worked out. The time is rounded to the hour, with coarser day, week and month buckets alongside it.
- No coordinate is uploaded.
- No exact timestamp is uploaded.
- No photo, thumbnail or file name is uploaded.
- Your history is never published, and is never shown as a public map.
You can see this for yourself. Settings → What do I share? asks the server what it holds for you and prints the rows back, unedited.
5. What we don't claim
It matters as much what a privacy policy refuses to say. So, plainly:
- Reduction is not encryption. An area identifier names an area — that is precisely what makes a comparison possible. We do not claim it is impossible to reason about which area an identifier refers to. We claim your exact coordinates are never uploaded, which is true.
- A crossing is a possibility, not a fact. It means two coarse histories overlapped in the same area within a time window. It is not evidence that two people saw each other, or that either was at a particular address. met's wording says “may have” throughout, and always will.
- Photos you upload for a discovery profile do leave your phone. They are meant to. That is a different thing from the library scan, and section 9 covers it separately.
- There is no automatic nudity or explicit-content detection in this build. Section 9 explains what checking actually happens.
6. Your account
An account is four things: a first name, a unique username, a birth date and a gender. We do not ask for a phone number or an email address, and we do not use one to identify you.
- Your username is how someone intentionally adds you. There is no directory to browse and no way to search for people you have not been introduced to.
- Your birth date is never shown to anyone. Only your age, derived from it, is ever displayed, and only in Crossed Paths.
7. Comparing with someone you know
A report between two people requires two separate consents from each of you: first you both accept the connection, then you both approve the report. Until that is complete, nothing is compared and nothing is shown.
- A finished report shows place names and dates, because you both chose to see them.
- It shows only intersections. Anywhere just one of you has been is never shown to the other, and never leaves an impression in the report at all.
- Times are shown as hour slots, because hour slots are all met has.
- Either of you can remove the connection, which removes the report.
8. Crossed Paths — optional, and 18+
Crossed Paths is a separate, entirely optional layer for meeting people you have not met. You are not in it unless you deliberately create a discovery profile, and you can skip it forever without losing anything else in the app.
Before a mutual like, another person can see:
- Your first name, your age, one photo and your short line (32 characters).
- How many areas you crossed in — a number, never a place.
- Roughly how close in time you were — a gap, never a date.
They cannot see where those areas are, when the crossings happened, your second photo, your met username, or anyone you have connected with.
After you have both liked each other, and only then, the shared place names and dates open up — for both of you at the same moment. A one-sided like unlocks nothing and is not announced to the other person.
Deleting your discovery profile removes it, your likes and your matches. It does not touch your account, your photo history, the people you have added or their reports.
9. Photos you upload
This is the one place a picture of yours is meant to be seen by other people, and it works differently from the scan.
- You may add at most two photos. Only the first appears on your card; the second opens after a match.
- Every photo you choose is redrawn and re-encoded before it is stored or sent. The output has no container for the original metadata, so the location tag, the device information and the capture date do not travel with it.
- Before a photo is accepted, met checks on your device that a face is present and large enough, that the image is not tiny, and that it is not mostly text — which is how screenshots and posters are turned away. That check uses Apple's on-device Vision framework. The photo is not sent anywhere to be checked.
- met does not run automatic nudity or explicit-content detection. We will not claim a check we have not built. Moderation of that kind is handled by people reviewing reports, so please report anything that does not belong.
10. Messages
A conversation can only exist after two people have chosen each other. There is no anonymous chat, no random chat, and no way for a stranger to message you.
Messages are text only in this version. Either person can block, report or unmatch at any time; blocking closes the conversation, hides both profiles from each other, and prevents further contact anywhere in the app.
11. Notifications and attribution
If you allow notifications, your device is issued a push token which is stored so we can send you a notification. You can revoke this at any time in your device settings.
met also records which campaign or link brought you to the app, using a third-party attribution service. This may include an advertising identifier, a vendor identifier and campaign labels. It is used to understand where installs come from — not to track what you do inside the app, and never joined to your photo history. If you decline the tracking prompt, the advertising identifier is not available and attribution falls back to non-identifying signals.
12. Permissions
- Photo library — the app's core data source. Without it there is no history to compare. Limited access is supported.
- Notifications — optional, and only asked for once you are past the introduction.
- Camera and microphone — requested only if something you open inside the app needs them, such as taking a profile photo or a call. The history scan never uses them.
- Tracking — optional, for install attribution only. Declining costs you nothing in the app.
- Location Services — never requested. met does not have and does not want your live location.
Every permission can be changed at any time in your device's Settings.
13. Your choices
- See what is held. Settings → What do I share? prints every row the server holds for you.
- Delete your derived history. One action removes it from this device and from the server. Your photos are untouched.
- Delete your discovery profile without affecting anything else.
- Delete your account — the account, the history, your connections, their reports and your discovery profile, here and on the server.
- Block and report from any profile or conversation. Blocked people are hidden everywhere in the app.
- Uninstall. Everything stored on the device goes with it.
14. Children
met is not directed to children under 13, or under the age of digital consent where you live, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
Crossed Paths is for adults only. It is available exclusively to people aged 18 and over, checked against the birth date on the account rather than against a tick-box alone. If you believe a profile belongs to a minor, report it — that is one of the report reasons, and it is acted on.
15. Changes to this policy
We will update this policy when the app changes or the law requires it, and we will change the “last updated” date when we do. If a future version of met ever needs to send something that is not described in section 4, this page changes before that version ships — not after.
16. Contact
Questions about this policy, or a request about your data:
support@mettech.com