Mystery Match Privacy Policy
Version 1.7 | Effective date: 17 May 2026 | Last updated: 6 October 2026
1. Who we are
Mystery Match ("we", "us", "our") is a project building a voice-first connection experience, currently operating from Aarhus, Denmark.
Mystery Match is operated by Franco Augusto Salatino, an individual based in Aarhus, Denmark, acting as data controller for the personal information described in this policy until a legal entity is incorporated. From that point on, the controller's identity will be updated in this policy and existing users will be notified.
Contact: mysterymatchapp@gmail.com Website: mysterymatch.co
This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, who we share it with, and what rights you have under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Danish Data Protection Act.
We care about doing this right. If anything here is unclear, email us and we will explain.
2. What personal data we collect
We collect different categories of data depending on how you interact with us. Today there is one way in: the early-access list for the Mystery Match app on our website (2.1). Until October 2026 people could also apply through a form on our website (2.2) or sign up in our Telegram bot (2.3), and take part in rounds run on Telegram (2.4–2.6). We no longer use these for new sign-ups; the sections below still describe the data we hold from them.
2.1 Early-access list (mysterymatch.co)
If you join the list for the Mystery Match app on our website, we collect:
- Your email address
- The tag of the link that brought you to the site, if it had one (for example, an advertisement), or "landing" if it did not
- When you joined and which version of this policy you agreed to, so that we can show you gave consent
If you joined our earlier waitlist, we may also hold the category you chose then (Romance / Friendship / Open to both).
2.2 Experience application (Tally form)
If you apply to participate in one of our experiences, we collect, through the application form:
- Your first name
- Email address
- Phone number (with country code), used only as a backup contact channel
- Your Telegram handle
- Age
- The age range you would like to be paired within
- The city in Denmark you are closest to
- Gender identification
- What you are open to (Romance / Friendship / Open to both)
- What you are looking for (from a life partner to still figuring it out)
- Your sexual orientation (only asked if you select Romance or Open to both)
- The kind of relationship that works for you — monogamous, open, or not sure (only asked if you select Romance or Open to both)
- Who you are open to matching with
- Whether you would like to have kids, whether you smoke, and whether you drink
- Languages you can hold a real conversation in
- The interests you select from our list
- Five short notes you write about yourself, which are shared with your match during the experience
- A short description of who you are (student, working, visiting)
- A one-sentence answer explaining your interest
- How you heard about Mystery Match, and whether someone invited you
- Whether you know anyone else taking part
- Anything that would be a genuine dealbreaker for you (free text)
- Anything you would prefer to avoid in conversation (free text)
- Your explicit consent given through the four checkboxes on the form:
- that you are 18 years of age or older,
- that you are comfortable recording short voice messages on Telegram,
- that you are OK with the voice messages you record being shared with your anonymous match,
- that you understand we may use anonymized insights from the experience to improve the product.
- By submitting the form you also confirm that you have read this Privacy Policy (the form links to it above the checkboxes).
- Two optional choices, which do not affect whether you can take part:
- whether we may keep your answers so that you can join a later round without applying again (see Section 6),
- whether we may keep your voice messages for research for up to 12 months after your journey (see Sections 2.5 and 6).
Special categories of data. Your sexual orientation and the kind of relationship that works for you are special categories of personal data under Article 9 GDPR. We only collect and process them on the basis of your explicit consent, given via the form, and we use them only to decide who to match you with. They are never shown to your match. You can withdraw this consent at any time (see Section 7).
Free-text answers. Two questions let you write freely: what would be a dealbreaker for you, and anything you would prefer to avoid in conversation. Please do not include information about your health, your religious or philosophical beliefs, or your political opinions in these fields. If you choose to share such information anyway, you are giving us your explicit consent to process it for the sole purpose of matching you well, under Article 9(2)(a) GDPR, and you can withdraw that consent at any time. We delete these free-text answers at the end of the round in which they were used.
Names of other people. If you tell us who invited you, or that you know someone else taking part, we use that name for one purpose only: to make sure we do not match the two of you with each other. If that person does not end up participating, we delete the name once the round ends.
Returning participants. If you have taken part before, we may offer you a shorter form that asks whether you had considered joining again and what would bring you back. We use those answers only to understand and improve the experience.
2.3 Signing up in our Telegram bot
Since September 2026 you can sign up without a form: a link on our website, in an advertisement, in a post, or sent to you by a friend opens our Telegram bot, and the bot asks you what it needs, one question at a time, with buttons. Through the bot we collect:
- Your Telegram user ID and, if you have one, your Telegram username — this is how the bot can message you; it is the only identifier we have for you on this path
- Your first name (Telegram's, or one you type instead)
- The city you are closest to
- Gender identification, and who you are open to being matched with
- Age, and the age range you would like to be paired within
- Languages you can hold a real conversation in
- What you are open to (Romance / Friendship / Open to both)
- What you are looking for (from a life partner to still figuring it out) (only asked if you select Romance or Open to both)
- Whether you would like to have kids, whether you smoke, and whether you drink
- Five interests you pick from our list
- Five short notes about yourself, which are shared with your match during the experience (optional — you can skip any of them)
- The tag carried by the link you used (see "Where you came from" below)
- Your explicit consent, given by tapping one button after reading the same four statements as on the form (that you are 18 or older; that you are comfortable recording short voice messages on Telegram; that you are OK with your voice messages being shared with your anonymous match; that you understand we may use anonymized insights to improve the product), together with a line telling you that we keep your profile to match you until you leave, and a link to this policy. Nothing is saved before that tap.
What we do not ask in the bot. We do not ask for your email address or phone number, and nothing you do in the bot is ever written to an email list. We do not ask for your sexual orientation or the kind of relationship that works for you. We do not ask any free-text questions apart from the optional notes and, if your city or language is not in our buttons, the name of that city or language.
Where you came from. If you arrive from an advertisement, a post in a group, our website, or a friend's invitation, the link carries a short tag that names that channel (for example the name of an advertisement or of a group). We keep that tag with your profile so that we know which channels bring people. It says nothing about you personally and is never shown to anyone.
If you stop halfway. Your answers so far are kept for a short time so that you can pick up where you left off by tapping the link again. If you do not finish, nothing enters the matching pool and the partial answers are deleted as described in Section 6.
2.4 The matching pool
The pool is the list of people who are waiting to be matched. You enter it in one of three ways: by finishing the sign-up in the bot; by tapping a personal link we send you after you applied through the form (in that case the bot shows you your first name, asks you to confirm it is you, and completes your profile with the answers you gave on the form plus anything missing); or by asking for another match after a journey. You leave it at any time by sending /match stop to the bot, and you can come back with /match.
While you are in the pool we also hold:
- Whether our bot can reach you. Telegram tells our bot when you block it or unblock it. We record that, and only that, so that we never pair someone with a person who cannot receive messages — which would waste the other person's time. Nothing else about your Telegram activity is recorded.
- Your matching history. Which pairs you have been part of, so that we never match you with the same person twice, and how many journeys you have started.
- Invitations. You can ask the bot for a personal invitation link. If someone signs up through your link and completes their profile, we record that link between the two accounts (Telegram IDs), and both of you move ahead in the queue for your next match. Your match is never told whether you came through an invitation or who invited you. We count how many people each link brings, in aggregate, to understand how Mystery Match grows.
How pairs are formed. Pairs are formed automatically by our system, once a day. It applies only the criteria you gave us — same city, each of you within the other's age range and open to the other's gender, at least one shared language, compatible category, no clash on the kids question — and among compatible people takes whoever has waited longest, with people who joined through an invitation, or who brought someone in, placed ahead. There is no scoring, no profiling and no prediction about you. See "Automated decision-making" in Section 3.
2.5 Participation (once you are paired)
When the system pairs you with someone and your journey starts, we also collect:
- Voice messages you record during the experience, exchanged through our Telegram bot
- The selections and choices you make within the experience (the prompts you pick, when you respond, your final decision)
- Operational coordination via Telegram (your Telegram ID and handle, messages exchanged with us)
Voice messages are delivered through Telegram. They are stored on Telegram's servers as part of your chat with our bot; we store only the technical references that allow our bot to deliver them between you and your match.
What your match sees. During the experience, your match sees the notes you wrote about yourself, the interests you selected, what you are open to (romance, friendship or both), what you are looking for, and your answers about kids, smoking and drinking — we show these when a journey begins, so that you both know from the start that you are a fit on the things that matter most to each of you. Your orientation, the kind of relationship that works for you, your age range, your city and your free-text answers are never shown to anyone else; we use them only when deciding who to match you with.
Your decision stays yours. At the end of a journey, you each decide separately whether to continue. We never tell your match what you decided, and we never tell you what they decided beyond the outcome for the two of you. If the journey does not continue, you may be offered a short pre-written farewell to send, and the option to be matched with someone new in a later round.
If you and your match both choose to continue. We create a private group chat for the two of you and place there a record of what you shared during the experience — the questions you each chose, the voice messages you exchanged, and the notes you each wrote. It exists so that the connection starts with something rather than with an empty chat.
Once these messages are in that group, they are held by Telegram and by the two of you. We can delete our own copies and the technical references we hold, but we cannot remove messages from a group chat after we have left it. Either of you can delete the group, or individual messages within it, from Telegram at any time.
Voice messages kept for research (only if you opted in). If you ticked the optional research box on the form, or said yes when we asked you after your round, we keep encrypted copies of the voice messages you recorded for up to 12 months after your journey closes, in storage located in the European Union with access restricted to the founding team. We use them for one purpose: to understand how voice conversations develop in Mystery Match — pace, length, how people answer a prompt — so that we can design the product better. We do not use them to identify anyone by their voice, we do not share them, and we do not use them to train AI models. Copies are labelled by pair and side, not by name. If you did not opt in, your voice messages are handled as described in Section 6 (references deleted within 30 days). You can withdraw this consent at any time and we will delete the copies.
Time limits. Each step of a journey has a time limit, which the bot tells you. If you run out of time once, the bot extends it for you automatically and tells you both. If it happens again, the bot closes the journey and tells you both, and each of you can ask to be matched with someone new. This is how the experience works, not a judgement about you, and nobody outside the two of you and us is told. Reporting a problem. At any point during a journey you can report your match, either with the flag under each reveal or by sending /report. You choose a category and an option, and you may add a short note. We record what you chose, your note, who you are and who your match is, and which journey it concerned. Reports go only to the founding team. Your match is never told that you reported them, or what you said. Some reports pause the journey immediately while we look at it; pausing sends no message to anyone. We may act on a report by pausing or closing a journey, by contacting either of you, or by removing someone from Mystery Match.
The same applies to you: someone may report you, and we will not tell you who did, or repeat what they wrote. If we act on a report about you, we will tell you that we did and why, so that you can respond.
Please keep your note to what happened in the journey. Do not include information about anyone's health, religious or philosophical beliefs, or political opinions. If a report describes something that may be a crime, we may need to keep it, and to share it with the police or another authority, if you or we decide to report it to them.
2.6 Surveys and interviews
After an experience ends, we send participants a short voluntary survey about how it went. We sometimes also invite participants to a short voluntary call. If you accept the call, we record it and write a transcript, with your consent asked at the start of the call. We use survey answers and interviews only to understand what worked and what did not.
Recordings and transcripts are stored in our internal repository, with access restricted to the founding team, and are deleted within twelve months. You can withdraw your consent and ask us to delete your recording at any time.
2.7 Website usage
We host our website on Vercel and use Cloudflare for domain and security services. These services may automatically collect technical data (such as IP address, browser type, pages visited) for the sole purpose of delivering the website securely and reliably. We do not run third-party analytics or advertising trackers on our site.
2.8 Cookies
Our website only uses strictly necessary cookies set by our hosting provider (Vercel) and our security layer (Cloudflare), required to deliver the site securely and reliably. We do not use analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies. Strictly necessary cookies do not require prior consent under EU rules.
3. Why we collect it and on what legal basis
| Purpose | Data used | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Invite you to try the Mystery Match app before its public launch, and tell you when it launches | Email, when you joined, policy version (early-access list); category, if you joined the earlier waitlist | Consent — Art. 6(1)(a) |
| Receive and review applications, place you in a round, coordinate logistics, and contact you regarding your participation | Application data, name, email, phone, Telegram messages | Steps prior to entering a contract — Art. 6(1)(b) |
| Keep your application on file between rounds so you can take part later without re-applying | Application data | Consent — Art. 6(1)(a), given through the optional box on the form |
| Sign you up in the bot, keep your profile in the matching pool and pair you | Profile collected in the bot or completed from your application, Telegram ID, matching history | Steps prior to entering a contract — Art. 6(1)(b); consent to keeping the profile given by the button in the bot — Art. 6(1)(a) |
| Avoid pairing anyone with a person our bot cannot reach | Whether you have blocked the bot | Legitimate interest — Art. 6(1)(f) (the other person's time) |
| Move people who invite, or were invited, ahead in the queue, and understand how Mystery Match grows | Invitation link between two Telegram IDs; aggregate counts | Steps prior to entering a contract — Art. 6(1)(b) |
| Know which channel brought you (advertisement, group, website, invitation) | The tag carried by the link you used | Legitimate interest — Art. 6(1)(f) |
| Look into reports, keep participants safe, and recognise repeated behaviour | The category and option you chose, your note, both Telegram IDs and names, the journey concerned | Legitimate interest — Art. 6(1)(f) (the safety of participants) |
| Process sexual orientation and relationship type for matching purposes | Orientation and relationship-type fields | Explicit consent — Art. 9(2)(a) |
| Process any special-category information you choose to share in free-text answers | Free-text dealbreaker and conversation-preference answers | Explicit consent — Art. 9(2)(a) |
| Facilitate the connection experience | Voice messages, notes and selections made within the experience | Consent — Art. 6(1)(a) |
| Study how voice conversations develop, to improve the product | Encrypted copies of voice messages of participants who opted in | Consent — Art. 6(1)(a), given through the optional research box or after your round |
| Understand how the experience worked, through voluntary surveys and interviews | Survey answers, call recording and transcript | Consent — Art. 6(1)(a) |
| Improve the product through analysis of pseudonymised and anonymized experience data | Pseudonymised experience records (pair and side, not name) and aggregated insights | Consent — Art. 6(1)(a), collected through the application form |
| Keep our website secure and functional | Technical data (IP, browser) | Legitimate interest — Art. 6(1)(f) |
| Comply with legal obligations | Any of the above, if required | Legal obligation — Art. 6(1)(c) |
You can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.
Automated decision-making. Since September 2026 pairs are formed automatically by our system, as described in Section 2.4: fixed criteria that you set yourself, then order of waiting, with invitations moving people ahead. Nothing is scored, inferred or predicted about you. Being paired now or later is not a decision with legal or similarly significant effects on you within the meaning of Article 22 GDPR; you can leave the pool at any time with /match stop, and you can always ask us to look at a pairing. The founding team sees every new profile and every pair the system creates, and can step in.
AI-assisted analysis. We may use AI tools to help analyse survey responses and experience data. Before any such analysis, we remove direct identifiers (names, contact details, Telegram handles), and what we keep are aggregated insights. We do not use your personal data to train AI models.
4. Who we share your data with
We use a small number of third-party services ("processors") to operate Mystery Match. We only share what is strictly necessary for each service to function.
| Service | What it does | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Tally.so | Hosts our application form | European Union |
| Loops.so | Holds our early-access list and sends its emails, and sends experience-related emails to people who gave us an email address through the form. People who sign up in the bot are not added to it. | United States |
| Vercel | Hosts our website | United States / European Union (EU regions where available) |
| Cloudflare | Domain, DNS and security layer | Global (EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework) |
| Google (Gmail, Drive) | Email correspondence and storage of documentation assets | United States (EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework) |
| Upstash | Stores the technical state of the experience (names, Telegram IDs, selections) and, if you are in the matching pool, your matching profile as listed in Sections 2.3 and 2.4. Never your email address or phone number. | European Union (managed cloud region) |
| Railway | Runs the service that operates our Telegram bot | United States |
| EU cloud storage (research copies) | Holds encrypted copies of voice messages of participants who opted in to research. We will name the provider here before the first copy is made; until then, no copies exist. | European Union |
Telegram. The experience itself runs over Telegram. When you message our bot, Telegram processes your data — including your voice messages — as an independent service under its own privacy policy, not as our processor. According to Telegram, data of users who signed up from the EEA or the UK is stored in data centres in the Netherlands. We recommend reviewing Telegram's privacy policy at telegram.org/privacy.
We do not sell your personal data. We do not share it with advertisers. We do not use it to train AI models.
5. International transfers
Some of our processors are based in the United States. Where this is the case, transfers are protected by Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission and/or by the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the processor is certified under it.
We choose EU-based regions for storage where the processor offers them.
Telegram operates as an independent service; your use of Telegram, including any related international transfers, is governed by Telegram's own privacy policy.
6. How long we keep your data
| Type of data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Early-access list: email, link tag, when you joined, policy version (and category, from the earlier waitlist) | Until you unsubscribe, from any email we send or by writing to us. After you unsubscribe we keep only your email address, marked as unsubscribed, so that we never write to you again. |
| Application (Tally submission) — if you asked us to keep it | While you remain on our list, so we can place you in a later round without asking you to apply again. If you have not taken part in any round for 12 months, we ask you whether to keep it; if you do not answer, we delete it. You can leave the list and have it deleted at any time. |
| Application (Tally submission) — otherwise | If you took part: up to 90 days after your participation ends, then deleted. If you applied but were not placed in a round: up to 12 months from your application, so that we can offer you a later round, then deleted. Earlier on request in both cases. |
| Profile in the matching pool (signed up in the bot, or completed from your application) | While you are in the pool. If you leave with /match stop, we stop using it for matching immediately; we delete it 12 months after your last activity with the bot, or earlier on request. If you take part in a journey, the pseudonymised record of that journey is kept as described below. |
| Unfinished sign-up in the bot | Up to 30 days, so that you can pick up where you left off, then deleted |
| Personal pool link sent to you after you applied through the form (holds the answers from your application until you tap it) | Until you tap it, or until your application is deleted under the rules above — whichever comes first |
| Whether our bot can reach you, and your invitation link | For as long as your profile exists, then deleted with it. Aggregate invitation counts are kept without identifiers. |
| Reports you made, or that were made about you | 24 months from the report, then deleted. An unfinished report is deleted within a few hours. If a report leads us to remove someone from Mystery Match, we keep the minimum needed to enforce that — their Telegram ID, the date, and the fact of the removal — for as long as the removal stands. |
| Free-text answers (dealbreakers, topics to avoid) and names of other participants you mentioned | Deleted at the end of the round in which they were used (names: only if that person did not take part) |
| Voice message references and experience state | References deleted within 30 days after your journey closes. Voice messages in your own Telegram chat with our bot remain in that chat — you can delete them from your side at any time, and you can ask us to delete the data held on our side. If a group chat was created for you and your match, the copies placed there are held by Telegram and by the two of you and are outside our control — see Section 2.5 |
| Voice messages kept for research (opt-in only) | Up to 12 months after your journey closes, then deleted; earlier on request |
| Survey answers, interview recordings and transcripts | Up to 12 months, then deleted; earlier on request |
| Telegram coordination messages | Retained on the platform for operational continuity; we will remove them from our own channels and storage where reasonably possible upon request |
| Pseudonymised experience records (pair and side, no name or contact details) and anonymized, aggregated insights | Retained for as long as we develop the product (they do not identify you directly; the key linking a pair to a person is deleted with the application data) |
| Records required for legal reasons (e.g. bookkeeping, if applicable) | As required by Danish law |
7. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the following rights regarding your personal data:
- Right of access — to know what personal data we hold about you and to get a copy.
- Right to rectification — to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
- Right to erasure ("right to be forgotten") — to have your data deleted, where applicable.
- Right to restriction — to limit how we process your data in certain situations.
- Right to data portability — to receive your data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
- Right to object — to object to processing based on our legitimate interest.
- Right to withdraw consent — at any time, where processing is based on your consent. Withdrawal does not affect processing already carried out lawfully.
- Right to lodge a complaint — with a supervisory authority (see Section 9).
8. How to exercise your rights
To exercise any of the rights listed above, email us at mysterymatchapp@gmail.com with the subject "Privacy request".
We will respond within one month of receiving your request. For complex requests, we may extend this period by up to two further months and will inform you within the first month if so.
We may ask you to confirm your identity before acting on a request, to protect your data from being released to the wrong person.
There is no cost to exercise your rights.
9. Supervisory authority
If you believe we have not handled your personal data correctly, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Danish Data Protection Authority:
Datatilsynet Carl Jacobsens Vej 35 2500 Valby, Denmark Phone: +45 33 19 32 00 Email: dt@datatilsynet.dk Website: datatilsynet.dk
10. Children
Mystery Match is intended for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you become aware that a minor has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.
11. Security
We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including:
- Encrypted connections (HTTPS) on our website and forms
- Access to our internal tools restricted to the founding team
- Processors selected for their compliance with EU data protection standards
- Voice message references and experience data stored only for the periods stated in Section 6
- Your email address and phone number are never stored in the bot's database; the bot works with your Telegram ID only
- The bot's database is reached only over encrypted connections, from a fixed set of addresses, with credentials held by the founding team
- Research copies of voice messages, where you opted in, stored encrypted in the European Union and labelled by pair, not by name
No system is perfectly secure. If we ever become aware of a breach affecting your personal data that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the Danish Data Protection Authority within 72 hours and affected users without undue delay, in accordance with Articles 33 and 34 GDPR.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this document and, for material changes, notify you by email (if we have your email) or via our website.
What changed in version 1.7 (6 October 2026): new sign-ups now join an early-access list for the Mystery Match app on our website; we no longer take applications through the form or new sign-ups in our Telegram bot. We described what the list collects (your email, the tag of the link that brought you, when you joined and which version of this policy you agreed to), why (to invite you to try the app before its public launch, and to tell you when it launches) and how long we keep it (Sections 2, 2.1, 3, 4 and 6).
What changed in version 1.6 (12 September 2026): we added the ability to report your match from inside a journey, and described what a report records, who sees it, that we never tell the person who was reported, that some reports pause the journey while we look at it, and how long we keep reports (Sections 2.5, 3 and 6).
What changed in version 1.5 (12 September 2026): you can now sign up directly in our Telegram bot, without a form or an email address (new Section 2.3); we described the matching pool — how you enter and leave it, that we record whether the bot can reach you, your matching history, and personal invitation links (new Section 2.4); pairs are now formed automatically by fixed criteria and order of waiting, and we rewrote the automated decision-making paragraph accordingly; we described the automatic time-limit extension and closing of a journey; we stated that links from advertisements, posts and invitations carry a channel tag; and we added the retention rules for profiles in the pool, unfinished sign-ups, pool links and invitation data. Upstash now holds matching profiles (never email or phone) and is listed in its EU region.
What changed in version 1.4 (6 September 2026): we listed four questions the form already asked or now asks (your city, what you are looking for, your preferred age range, and the kind of relationship that works for you); we described more precisely what your match sees at the start of a journey; we added two optional choices — keeping your application between rounds, and keeping your voice messages for research — and the retention rules that go with them; and we stated that your final decision is never revealed to your match.
13. Contact
For any question about this Privacy Policy or about how we handle your personal data:
Email: mysterymatchapp@gmail.com Website: mysterymatch.co
— Mystery Match