Last updated 6 August 2026 · Effective from the date Reality is first released to the public
Reality is a camera-only dating app. Photos are taken in the app, not uploaded from your camera roll. This policy explains what we collect, why, who sees it, and how to get it back or get rid of it.
The short version.
The rest of this page is the detail. If anything is unclear, email support@realitydating.com.au and we will explain it in plain language.
Reality is operated by Jordan Epifania, trading as Reality, ABN 69 356 652 795, a sole trader based in New South Wales, Australia. In this policy "we", "us" and "Reality" mean that operator. "You" means you, the person using the app.
We are the data controller for the information described here. Contact details are in section 16.
Reality is currently offered in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. It is for people aged 18 and over.
We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, and we operate as if we are bound by them regardless of our turnover. If you are in the EU, EEA or UK, section 14 also applies to you.
| What | Detail | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Phone number | Used to create and sign in to your account, by one-time SMS code. We store the number itself, and separately a one-way cryptographic hash of it so that one person cannot hold two accounts. | Yes |
| Email address | Only if you sign in with Apple or Google, or you email us. | No |
| Date of birth | To confirm you are 18 or over and to show your age. Once you finish setting up your account this cannot be changed. | Yes |
| Name and username | Your display name and a unique handle. | Yes |
| Photos | Taken inside the app. You cannot upload from your camera roll. | Yes, at least one |
| Gender, pronouns, who you want to see | Your gender and who you would like to be shown. | Gender: yes |
| Profile details | Bio, height, job, company, school, what you are looking for, relationship goals, star sign, education, family plans, communication style, interests, languages, pets, values, prompts, and the sensitive fields in section 3. | All optional |
| Social handle | An Instagram or similar handle, on paid tiers. | No |
| Messages and notes | What you write to other people in the app. | No |
| Reports and support requests | What you tell us when you report someone or contact support, including the email address you contact us from. | No |
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Location | With your permission, your device's GPS position when you set up your account, used to place you in a region and to calculate distance to other people. We also store an approximate centre point for the suburb or city you say you live in. We do not track your location in the background. |
| Device and app information | Platform (iOS or Android) and app version, attached to each photo you take. Crash and error diagnostics. |
| Usage information | Which screens you open and which features you use, so we can tell what works. Tied to a random identifier, not to your name, phone number or email — see section 5. |
| Push token | An identifier from Apple or Google that lets us send you a notification. Only if you allow notifications. |
| Purchase information | Which subscription or item you bought, when, at what price, and the store transaction identifier. We never see your card details — Apple and Google handle payment. |
| Safety signals | The hashed phone number, phone country code and account history described in section 8, used to detect people evading a ban. |
Australian privacy law treats some categories of information as sensitive and requires your consent before we collect them. On Reality these are all optional profile fields:
We do not have a field for race or ethnicity and we do not ask about it.
Your consent. Filling in one of these fields is you consenting to us collecting it and displaying it on your profile to other users. Leaving it blank has no effect on anything else in the app — you can use every feature without answering any of them. You can clear any of these fields at any time in Edit Profile, and doing so removes it from your profile and from our systems on your next save.
This is the most important section in this policy, so it has its own heading.
| Visible to other users | Never visible to other users |
|---|---|
|
Your photos, display name, username, age (unless you hide it on a paid tier), gender, and every profile field you fill in — including the sensitive ones in section 3.
An approximate distance from you, and your stated city or suburb. Whether you were recently active, if you leave that setting on. Anything you write in a message, a like note or a prompt answer. |
Your phone number, email address, date of birth (only the age derived from it is shown), and exact location or coordinates.
Who you have liked, passed on or blocked. Blocking is silent — the other person is not told. Whether you have reported someone. Reports are confidential. Your subscription tier, purchases, or whether a feature was gifted to you. Your usage of the app, and any diagnostic or safety data. |
Photos you send to someone. If you share a photo with a match, they keep their copy. Deleting your account removes your link to that copy but does not delete it from their gallery — in the same way that deleting a text message on your phone does not delete it from the recipient's phone.
Screenshots. We cannot prevent another user from taking a screenshot. Assume anything you send can be saved.
The table below covers every purpose, the legal basis we rely on (this matters under Australian and European law), and how long we keep the information.
| Purpose | Information used | Legal basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create and run your account; sign you in | Phone number, hashed phone number, email if provided, name, username, date of birth | Performance of our contract with you | While your account is open; erased 30 days after you delete it |
| Show you people, and show you to people | Photos, profile fields, gender, preferences, location, activity | Contract | While your account is open; erased 30 days after deletion |
| Show sensitive profile details on your profile | The fields in section 3 | Your consent | Until you clear the field or delete your account |
| Match you, and let you message matches | Likes, matches, messages | Contract | While your account is open; erased 30 days after deletion |
| Confirm you are 18 or over | Date of birth | Legal obligation; our legitimate interest in keeping minors off the service | While your account is open |
| Prevent one person holding several accounts | Hashed phone number | Legitimate interest in preventing fraud and ban evasion | While your account is open; retained in safety records after deletion — see section 8 |
| Check photos for explicit or violent content | The photo itself, sent to Google Cloud Vision | Legal obligation (online safety law); legitimate interest in user safety | Scan results kept as long as the photo |
| Handle reports, blocks, shadowbans and bans | Reports, moderation decisions, account state | Legal obligation; legitimate interest in safety | Reports expire 30 days after they are made (90 days for reports that someone is under 18, 60 days for "other"); the records themselves are retained — see section 8 |
| Send you notifications | Push token, notification content | Contract; your consent to notifications | Pending notifications expire after 24 hours; token deleted when you delete your account |
| Process subscriptions and purchases | Your user ID, product, price, store transaction ID | Contract; legal obligation (tax and financial records) | Financial records retained for 7 years as Australian tax law requires, even after account deletion |
| Understand how the app is used and improve it | Screen and feature events tied to a random identifier | Legitimate interest in improving the service | Held by our analytics provider under their retention settings |
| Diagnose crashes and errors | Error reports with personal identifiers removed | Legitimate interest in a working app | Held by our error-reporting provider under their retention settings |
| Answer your support requests | Your email address and what you write | Contract; legitimate interest in supporting you | 2 years from the last message on the ticket |
| Comply with the law, respond to police and regulators | Whatever is lawfully required | Legal obligation | As long as required |
On analytics. Our analytics are set up so that identifying details never leave the app: phone numbers, hashed phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, push tokens, display names, usernames, bios, dates of birth, coordinates, photo paths, photo links and message content are all blocked from being sent. Analytics tell us that "someone opened the Store tab", not who.
We do not sell personal information and we do not disclose it for anyone else's marketing. We share it with the service providers below, only so far as they need it to do their job for us.
| Provider | What it does | What it receives | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, file storage, sign-in and server functions | Everything in section 2 | United States |
| Twilio | Sends your one-time SMS sign-in code | Your phone number | United States |
| Google Cloud Vision | Automated check of photos for explicit or violent content | The photo itself | United States |
| Apple (APNs) and Google (FCM), via Expo | Delivers push notifications | Push token and the text of the notification | United States |
| Apple, Google | Sign in with Apple / Google; App Store and Play billing | Email and name if you use them to sign in; purchase records | United States |
| RevenueCat | Manages subscription state across devices | Your user ID, product purchased, price, transaction ID | United States |
| PostHog | Product analytics | Anonymous usage events with identifying details stripped | United States |
| Sentry | Crash and error reporting | Error diagnostics, with email, username and IP address removed | United States |
| Cloudflare | Hosts our website and protects it | Web requests to realitydating.com.au | Global network |
| Resend | Sends support replies | Your email address and the reply | United States |
| OpenStreetMap Nominatim | Turns a place name into a map location when you say where you live | The place you typed, or an approximate coordinate | Europe |
We may also disclose personal information:
Most of our providers are in the United States, and one (Nominatim) is in Europe. That means your personal information is stored and processed overseas.
Before disclosing personal information to an overseas recipient we take reasonable steps to ensure they handle it consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles — through contractual terms with each provider, by choosing providers with published security and privacy commitments, and by limiting each provider to the minimum data it needs. Under Australian law we may remain accountable for what an overseas provider does with your information.
Australia does not have an EU adequacy decision. Transfers of EU or UK personal data to us rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and, for the UK, the UK Addendum. See section 14.
Every photo you promote to your profile is checked automatically by Google Cloud Vision for adult and violent content before anyone else can see it. Photos flagged as clearly in breach are rejected. Borderline photos are held for human review by us. This is an automated safety check for explicit content — it is not face recognition, and it does not identify you.
You can report or block any user from anywhere they appear in the app. Reports are confidential — the person you report is not told who reported them.
We keep the following even after an account is deleted, because deleting an account would otherwise erase the record of the behaviour and let a banned person start again:
We have zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation material. Where we identify or are made aware of it, we remove it, terminate the account permanently, preserve the material and the associated account data, and report it to the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), which is the Australian reporting body, and to any other authority the circumstances require — which may include overseas bodies such as the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Nothing else in this policy or in our Terms limits this. We will disclose whatever those authorities lawfully require, and we will not notify the account holder first.
We may preserve and disclose your information where we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with the law, respond to a valid request from police or a regulator including the eSafety Commissioner, enforce our Terms and Community Guidelines, or protect the safety of any person.
Some decisions on Reality are made or assisted by automated systems. You are entitled to know about them:
None of these produces a legal effect on you or anything similarly significant, and a human reviews any ban. If an automated decision has affected you and you want it looked at by a person, email support.
No system is perfectly secure. If we suffer a data breach that is likely to cause you serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires, and — for EU and UK users — the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours.
| Right | How |
|---|---|
| Access — get a copy of the personal information we hold about you | Email support@realitydating.com.au. We will respond within 30 days. It is free. If we refuse, we will tell you why in writing and how to complain. |
| Correction — fix something wrong | Most of it you can edit yourself in the app. For anything you cannot change — for example your date of birth, which is locked after setup — email support. |
| Deletion — remove your account | In the app: Profile → Settings → Delete Account. See section 12. |
| Withdraw consent — for sensitive fields | Clear the field in Edit Profile. For notifications, turn them off in Settings or in your device settings. |
| Opt out of analytics | Email support and we will exclude your account. |
| Complain | See section 16. |
Anonymity. Australian privacy law gives you the option of dealing with us anonymously or under a pseudonym where that is lawful and practicable. On Reality that is not practicable for your account itself — the service is built on real people meeting real people, and a verified phone number is how we stop one person holding many accounts. You may contact support anonymously about a general question.
You can delete your account at any time from inside the app. Here is exactly what happens:
What survives, and why:
Deleting your account does not cancel your subscription. Subscriptions are billed by Apple or Google, not by us, and only they can cancel one. Cancel in your App Store or Google Play account settings before you delete, or you will keep being charged.
Reality is strictly for adults aged 18 and over. We enforce this in three ways: the date-of-birth picker will not let you select a date under 18 years ago, the database refuses to store one, and your date of birth is locked once your account is set up so it cannot be changed later.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe an under-18 is using Reality, report the profile in the app under "Underage User", or email support@realitydating.com.au. We will investigate, remove the account and delete the information.
The UK GDPR and EU GDPR give you these rights in addition to those in section 11: access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, objection to processing based on legitimate interests, objection to direct marketing (absolute), the right not to be subject to solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects, and the right to withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing already carried out.
Our legal bases are set out per purpose in the table in section 5. Sexual orientation data is special category data under Article 9 and we process it only on the basis of your explicit consent, given by choosing to fill in that field.
Providing a phone number, date of birth, gender and at least one photo is a contractual requirement — without them we cannot provide the service and cannot create your account. Every other field is genuinely optional.
Transfers of your data to Australia and the United States rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, for UK data, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum. You can request a copy by emailing support.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority, or with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
If we change this policy in a way that materially affects you, we will tell you in the app or by notification before the change takes effect, and we will update the date at the top. Continuing to use Reality after that date means the updated policy applies. Older versions are available on request.
Email: support@realitydating.com.au
Email is the fastest way to reach us and is monitored. If you need a postal address for a formal notice, ask and we will provide one.
If you want to complain about how we have handled your personal information, email us first with "Privacy complaint" in the subject line. We will acknowledge it within 5 business days and respond substantively within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner: oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints, or 1300 363 992.
For online safety concerns you can also contact the eSafety Commissioner: esafety.gov.au/report.