Privacy policy

Last updated on 6 November 2026.

This policy covers the Akin app and this website. Akin is for adults in Switzerland.

Who is responsible

Akin is provided by Mathieu Urstein, an individual in Lausanne, Switzerland, who runs it alone (“we”) and is responsible for your data under Switzerland’s Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). Write to privacy@akin.social about anything in this policy.

What Akin collects

• When you sign in with Apple or Google: a name, an email address and an account id. Google also offers your profile photo, which Akin doesn’t keep.
• When you join: your first name, your date of birth, the languages you speak, and one you write a request or offer in, a photo if you add one, and where you heard of Akin. If you came from an Apple Ads ad, Apple tells Akin its campaign, ad group and search keyword, whether you tapped the ad or only saw it, and whether you downloaded Akin for the first time or again, without identifying you to the advertiser or tracking you.
• What you tell Akin: your messages in Akin’s chat, your requests and offers, their languages and rough area, and the facts Akin saves about you under About you, among them the city where you live, for matching. Akin takes it from what you tell it or, if you tap Find my city, from your phone’s approximate location: your phone asks Apple for the city’s name, and Akin receives only the name, never your location.
• Your chats: the messages you write to other people, your answers after a chat, and the people you block or report. With each message, whether the automated check blocked it and why, whether you were shown Akin’s line asking you to reach help under it, and, when there is one, a flag for a person at Akin to read and what they decided, all deleted with the message. When someone reports you, their report, the messages it concerns, or your request when they report it, and what Akin wrote to them about you.
• When you report one of Akin’s replies: your reason, and a copy of the reply and of the message it answers. When you report Akin’s introduction in a chat, a copy of it.
• When you tell Akin you are under 18: a copy of that message and of Akin’s reply.
• When a person at Akin bans your account or refuses your request: the statement of reasons Akin emails you, with what was decided, the facts, the rule and how to contest it, and which flagged message it followed, when it followed one.
• The app’s language: which of its languages the app shows you, as your phone sets it, sent each time you open the app, so Akin writes to you in it and we can see whether Akin works as well in each language.
• How you use the app: the steps of joining, when you open the app or a notification, when you share an invite or a request, which weeks you write in your chats, and your answer if Akin asks how you would feel if it disappeared, so we can see whether Akin works; and how much you write to Akin and what Akin’s model calls for you cost, to keep each person within Akin’s limits and Akin’s costs in check.
• Your device: a notification token if you allow notifications, and crash, error and performance data (see below).
• Emails you send us.
• Visits to this website: the address of each page you open, without its query string, and a shared request’s page only as /r, the site you came from, your country, and your device's type, operating system and browser.

Akin removes location data from your photo when you add it, and keeps a blurred copy of it.

What Akin does with it

Running Akin

Akin uses your data to run the service you signed up for: to understand who you want to talk with, find people who fit, send requests, open chats and keep your account. The basis is our agreement under the terms.

Akin’s AI

Akin is an AI built on Claude, by Anthropic. Before its first chat, Meet Akin tells you: “I’m an AI built on Claude, by Anthropic. What you write to me and your profile go to Claude, so I can answer and find people for you.” What you write to Akin, your profile and your photo go to Claude only once you choose Agree and chat with Akin. Claude runs through Anthropic’s own API, which may process what you send outside Europe, and what you send is never used to train AI models.

Sensitive topics

A request or offer can be about a sensitive topic, such as your health or religion. Akin never guesses one and never saves one as a fact about you. A sensitive topic stays inside a request or offer whose card you approve, which is your explicit consent to it being sent, and its details are deleted when you close it, except Akin’s introduction in the chats it opened, a report’s copy, and your chat with Akin, which keeps each message 30 days.

About you

Akin saves what helps it find people for you, filed under About you. Each fact shows in the chat when Akin saves it, and you can remove any of it. Akin uses your profile only to choose who receives a request: nobody else sees it, except the rough area where you live and, when you say yes to a request Akin sent you because of your profile, why Akin thought of you, as What others see says, and a person at Akin matching a request by hand, as Safety says.

What others see

Before a chat, someone who receives your request sees your first name, your blurred photo, your request in your own words, why Akin thought of them, its end date if it has one, its language and a rough area, and nothing else. Nobody ever sees your last name. Once you both say yes, the chat opens and both photos unblur, and Akin introduces you to each other with your request or offer, or, when it sent you someone’s request because of your profile, with why it thought of you, which you read before saying yes. When a request's flexible part differs for someone, such as its place, Akin asks the person who wrote it first, showing them that person's first name, blurred photo and a few words on what differs, such as the rough area where they are or live.

When you share a request or an offer, anyone with its link sees its topic and your words on akin.social while it is open, and never your name or photo. Pausing it hides the page, and closing it takes it down. Your words show as you wrote them, so a name or detail you put in them shows too.

Safety

• Claude checks each photo before anyone sees it, and each request and offer before it is sent. A photo it refuses is never shown.
• An automated check reads every message between people, with the consent you give in the terms, and blocks only clear cases, such as threats, sexual content or anything involving minors. It also flags likely scams to a person without blocking them, and never bans anyone on its own, and holds back a message it can’t read until a person looks at it.
• A person handles each report and flagged message, and can read the messages concerned; for a flagged message, the chat around it too. They deliver it, keep it blocked or remove it, and Akin keeps that decision with the message. For a flagged message, they can also ban its author’s account. For a report of a person, they can also see that person’s photo, unblurred, while the report is open and for six months after it closes. When you tell Akin you are under 18, your matching pauses until a person reads that message and Akin’s reply. Every reading and every view is logged.
• A person at Akin reads each request or offer that Claude holds for review, to approve it, so it is sent, or refuse it, so it never is. Every reading is logged.
• When a notice tells us about a request, an offer or a person, a person at Akin may search requests and offers by their words or link, and people by first name, to find it, and refuse it or ban that person. Every person a search shows, and every reading, is logged.
• A person at Akin may read a request that found nobody, and the requests, offers and About you of the people it could go to, to match it by hand. Every reading is logged.
• If a message suggests a threat to someone’s life or safety, we may tell the police.

These checks protect the people using Akin, which is our legitimate interest and a condition of the app stores.

Crashes and errors

The app sends crash reports, errors and performance data to Sentry, tied to your account id, and recordings of one session in ten and of each error. Every text and image in a recording is masked, so it shows taps and screens but never anyone’s words or photos. Sentry works out a rough location from your IP address and doesn’t keep the address. We use this to fix the app, which is our legitimate interest.

Notifications

If you allow them, notifications go through Expo’s push service and Apple’s. Expo holds a notification only while it delivers it. Akin keeps a copy of each notification it sends to your phone, with its words, until that phone signs out, you turn notifications off or you delete your account. A notification leaves out its topic when the request is sensitive, or when your own request or offer it matched is, so neither shows on your lock screen. A notification of a new message in a chat shows who wrote it and the message's first words, which pass through Expo's service and stay in Akin's copy of the notification. Your iPhone shows them on its lock screen unless you set its previews to show only when it is unlocked.

Where you heard of Akin

Your answer or an Apple Ads campaign, with its ad group and search keyword and whether it was a new download or a redownload, tells us which promotion brought you, so we spend only on what works. Some promotions link to their own address on this website, such as akin.social/reddit, and the App Store link there carries that address's name. We count visits to each address and the App Store's downloads through each only in totals, and never link them to your account. This is our legitimate interest.

Who processes it

These companies process your data for us, under agreements that require them to protect it as we do:

• Convex, Inc. (US) stores the app’s data in the EU (Ireland).
• Anthropic (US) runs Claude for Akin’s AI and its checks, messages between people included, through Anthropic’s own API. Claude may process what you write outside Europe, and what Anthropic keeps is stored in the US, deleted within 30 days, or kept up to two years if its safety systems flag it. Anthropic never uses it for training.
• Google (US) turns your requests and offers, and the facts Akin saves about you, into numbers that let Akin find who fits them, through the Gemini API, outside the EU. For people in the EEA and Switzerland, Google does not use that content to improve its products.
• Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry, US) receives crash and performance data in the EU (Frankfurt).
• 650 Industries, Inc. (Expo, US) and Apple (US) deliver notifications, in the US.
• Resend (US) receives Akin’s email in the EU (Ireland), and sends it.
• Vercel, Inc. (US) hosts this website and counts its visits.

Apple and Google also handle signing in through their own services, and Apple names your city when you tap Find my city, under their own privacy policies.

Switzerland recognises the EU’s protection of personal data as adequate. A transfer to the US or elsewhere outside Europe relies on the Swiss–US Data Privacy Framework where the company is certified under it, and otherwise on the standard contractual clauses in its agreement. Anthropic’s agreement includes those clauses, with a Swiss addendum.

How long it is kept

• Akin’s chat: each message is deleted after 30 days, except the copy a report of one of Akin’s replies keeps, or the copy kept when you tell Akin you are under 18: six months after its case closes, or until you delete your account.
• A photo upload that never became your photo: deleted after a day.
• A photo Claude refuses: deleted at once. Akin keeps only why it was refused, until another photo replaces it.
• Requests and offers: while your account exists. Closing one deletes its sensitive details.
• Chats with other people: while either of you keeps an account.
• A report’s evidence: six months after its case closes, so a decision can still be contested. The report itself, its reason, date and decision, stays while the person reported keeps their account, even once the reporter has deleted theirs, and the whole report goes after those six months once the person reported has deleted their account.
• A statement of reasons: six months after it is sent, the time you have to contest it, or until you delete your account.
• The moderation log, which records who took which action and why, by account id: kept in full.
• A notification’s copy: until the phone it went to signs out or turns notifications off, or you delete your account.
• Crash and performance data: 30 days, in Sentry.
• Emails: 30 days at Resend. We keep a notice, a privacy request and our answer six months after they are settled.
• Website visits: we see them for one month in Vercel's reports.
• Everything else, your profile, About you and your use of the app included: while your account exists.
• Backups: deleted data stays in them until they expire.

Deleting your data

Remove any fact under About you, or close a request, in the app at any time. To delete everything, delete your account under You. This deletes, within a few minutes, your profile, photo, About you, requests, offers, Akin’s chat, the people you blocked and your answers after a chat, and ends Akin’s access to your Apple or Google sign-in. If you ask us by email instead, remove Akin in your Apple or Google settings. The messages they could see, and any flagged for review, stay in the other person’s chat while they keep their account. A report you made keeps its reason, date and decision while the person you reported keeps their account, and a report’s evidence stays for its six months, except a report of one of Akin’s replies, and the copy kept when you told Akin you are under 18, which go with your account.

Deleting your account also withdraws your agreement to Akin’s AI.

Your rights

Under the FADP you can ask us which data we hold about you and to receive a copy, to correct it, to delete it, or to stop processing it. Write to privacy@akin.social, and we answer within 30 days. If you think we have mishandled your data, you can complain to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).

Adults only

Akin is only for people 18 and over. It asks your date of birth when you join and refuses anyone younger.

No tracking, ads or cookies

Akin has no ads and doesn’t track you across apps or websites. The app keeps only what signs you in on your phone, and this website sets no cookies. Vercel, which hosts it, receives each visit’s request, your IP address included, to serve the page. Akin counts the website’s visits with Vercel Web Analytics, without cookies, recording only what “Visits to this website” lists under What Akin collects. Vercel tells visits apart by a code made from the request that changes every day, so a visit can’t be followed from one day to the next, and it drops the query string from each address, such as an ad’s click id.

Changes to this policy

The date at the top of this policy shows when it last changed. We tell you in the app before a change that affects you applies.