Privacy Policy

Effective 1 October 2026

This policy explains what personal data Hello World collects, what it is used for, who receives it, how long it is kept and what you can do about it. It describes the service as it actually works today, including the places where it does less than you might expect.

Who we are

Hello World is run by El Hadji Fadilou Seck, a private individual who lives in the United States. Hello World is not a company. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean that person, who decides why and how your personal data is used and is therefore its “controller” under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR applies to Hello World because it is offered to people in the European Union.

Run by

El Hadji Fadilou Seck

Email

support@helloworldmessenger.com

Phone

+1 405 651 1813

Postal address

11925 SW 30th St, Yukon, OK 73099, USA

No representative in the European Union (Art. 27 GDPR) has been appointed; write to us directly at the address above.

Hello World is being tested: it is available by invitation only, on iPhone, through Apple’s TestFlight, mainly to testers in Senegal and France.

What we collect and why

We collect what you give us, what your use of Hello World creates, some technical information from your phone and, for the test, some information from Apple. The sections after this one explain the features that need more detail.

Your account and profile

When you sign up with the form: your full name, your phone number (with its country code) or email address, your date of birth, a password you choose or a PIN of at least six digits (stored only in a scrambled, one-way form called a hash), a username (made from your name if you do not choose one), your main and second language, an optional bio and invitation code, and your phone’s time zone. Your date of birth is used only to apply the age rules in Children and supervised accounts; it is never shown to other members. If you sign in with Apple, Google or a one-time code instead, we receive the identifier Apple or Google gives us and the details you agree to share there (such as your name and email address), or the phone number or email address the code was sent to; your name and language start from defaults you can change, no password or PIN is asked for, and the app asks for your date of birth the first time you open it. Later, if you choose: a profile photo, a cover image, a chat background, your city and country, your relationship status and your work and education history. We also keep your language and voice settings, whether you are online and when you were last active.

We use this to create and run your account, to show your profile to other people according to your settings, and to translate for you. So that people who have your number or email address in their address book can find you, we also store a fingerprint (hash) of your phone number and email address — see Your address book and finding people.

What you have to give us

To open an account with the sign-up form you must give a full name, a phone number or an email address, your date of birth, a password or a PIN, and your main language; with Apple, Google or a one-time code, only what that route needs (the Apple or Google account, or the phone number or email address that receives the code). Without these we cannot create your account. No law requires you to give them; they are a condition of having an account. Everything else is optional: if you leave it out, only the feature that needs it does not work — without access to your contacts, for example, the app cannot show you which of them already use Hello World.

Messages and conversations

The messages you send and receive: text, photos, videos, voice notes, files, shared locations and contact cards, as well as replies, edits, reactions, pinned messages and when each message was delivered, read or played. We also keep your conversation settings (muted, archived, locked) and a short preview of the last message for your chat list. We store all this to deliver your messages, keep your history on your devices and translate it. When a message is deleted for everyone, we erase it from our server (see How long we keep data); the messages you sent are also erased when you delete your account.

Posts, comments and reactions

The posts and Moments you publish, with their captions, place names, photos and videos and the audience you choose; your likes, comments, reactions, bookmarks and collections. We also record who viewed each post — its author can see that list — and when you mark a post as interesting or not (Automated decisions explains what these marks are used for).

Memories. A Moment you post is kept in your Memories, where you can still open it after it has disappeared for everyone else, unless you turn off “Save Moments automatically” in Memories. We record which Moments you keep, when, and how much space their files use, to show you your Memories and apply your storage limit. Nobody else can see a Moment through your Memories.

Measurements, stores, orders, tontines and meetings

• Body measurements you record for tailoring (height, weight, chest, waist, shoe size and so on), with the visibility you choose and a record of whom you have shared them with and until when.
• Stores and listings: the name, description, category and location of your store (in words and on the map) and your listings with their photos.
• Orders and tailoring requests: the items, amounts, delivery address, notes and status, the measurements you share and any photos. Payment is arranged between buyer and seller outside the app; Hello World does not process payments.
• Tontines and meetings: the name, amount, currency, schedule and members of a savings circle, and the title, place, time, notes and replies of a meeting. These are records only: the app never collects, holds or moves money. Savings circles are switched off: no new savings circle can be started or joined, and those created during the test stay visible to their members.

Hello World Premium

Hello World Premium is a subscription you buy in the app through Apple’s App Store. Apple takes your payment; we never see your card or payment details. When you subscribe, restore a purchase or open the app, your iPhone sends our server the transaction that Apple signed, and Apple’s servers later tell ours when your subscription renews, ends, is refunded or is revoked. From these we keep: which plan you bought, the transaction identifiers Apple uses for it, when it was bought and when it ends or ended, whether it will renew, whether it was bought in Apple’s test environment, and the identifier of your Hello World account that the app attaches to the purchase. We use them to give you what Premium includes and to keep that true. We do not decide your price: Apple shows it in your country’s currency.

Settings, interests, reports and blocks

Your privacy, notification, translation and display settings and your camera presets; the interests you choose; the people you block; and the reports you make about a post, a Moment, a comment, a message, a conversation, a flash, a person, an offering, a shop or an ad, with your reason and note. Reports are recorded and reviewed promptly by the operator, and they may lead him to remove the content or take action on an account. When a comment, a person, an offering or a shop is reported, a copy of what was reported (the words, the name, the description) is kept with the report, so that it can be reviewed even if it is changed or deleted afterwards. While a report on a conversation is open, a message deleted for everyone in that conversation is kept as evidence until 30 days after the report is resolved.

Devices and security records

For each phone you use: a random identifier created by the app, the model, the iOS and app versions, the tokens used to deliver notifications, and the IP address it last connected from. For security: your sign-in sessions (with the IP address that opened or closed them), the one-time codes you request (with the IP address that asked), and a log of sensitive actions such as profile changes, data exports and account deletion (with the IP address, device information and the values changed). We use these to keep you signed in, deliver notifications, prevent abuse and investigate problems. Our server also keeps technical logs, for 14 days.

From Apple, for the test

Because Hello World is distributed through Apple’s TestFlight, Apple gives us, in App Store Connect, information about testers: your name and email address, information about your device and your use of the test builds (such as your iPhone model, your iOS version, the builds you installed and how often you opened them), crash reports, and the feedback and screenshots you send through TestFlight. We use it to run the test and to fix problems.

If you ask us for an invitation

Our website has a form for asking to join the test. It asks for your email address and, if you care to give it, your name, and it records which language of the page you asked on so that we answer you in that one. Nothing else is kept: no IP address, and no cookie — the public pages of our website set none at all. Your address is used to send you an invitation, or to tell you we cannot invite you yet, and for nothing else: you are not added to a mailing list, and we do not use it to work out whether you are already a member. Two emails go out when you ask: one to us, with what you wrote, and one to you, saying we have it. A person reads these and sends the invitations by hand; nothing is automatic.

Why we are allowed to use your data

If you are in the European Union or the European Economic Area, the GDPR requires a legal basis for each use of your data. Ours are:

• Providing the service you asked for (performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR): your account and profile, messages, calls, posts, flashes, translation, delivery of media and notifications, stores and orders, tontine and meeting records, the measurements you choose to share, Parental controls, Memories, and Hello World Premium once you subscribe. Asking us for an invitation on our website falls here too, as a step taken at your own request before any contract exists.
• Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), for what you switch on yourself: access to your contacts, your location, notifications, the camera, the microphone and your photos (each asked for by iOS), the voice sample you record in “My voice”, and letting Hello World AI Tools process your data to find and fix problems and to help us review reports (see Who we share data with). You can withdraw your consent at any time (see Your rights); this does not affect what was done before.
• Our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)), which we have weighed against your rights:
  • keeping Hello World secure and preventing abuse (security records, IP addresses, the audit log, reports);
  • keeping a small test group safe, by announcing each sign-up to our administrator accounts and adding members to their contacts (see Your address book and finding people);
  • running the test and finding and fixing faults: crash reports, diagnostics and feedback, and the information Apple gives us about testers (read with the help of Hello World AI Tools only for people who allowed it);
  • applying our age rules, from the date of birth you give us (see Children and supervised accounts);
  • filtering slurs, sexual content involving children and incitement to self-harm out of names, usernames, bios, captions, comments, group names and shop descriptions before they are published (private messages and flashes are not filtered);
  • helping members find the people they know: matching address books, showing you which of your contacts already use Hello World and telling them when you join (see If you are in a member’s address book);
  • offering suggestion cards in chats (see Suggestions in your chats);
  • limiting how often sponsored content is shown and counting it; showing authors who viewed their posts.
  You can object to any of these uses (see Your rights).
• Legal obligations (Art. 6(1)(c)): when the law requires us to keep or disclose data, for example in answer to a valid court order.

Wherever you live — in Senegal or in the United States, for example — we use your data for the same purposes and in the same way, and you have the rights described in this policy, in addition to any your local law gives you.

Translation and other AI features

Translation is at the heart of Hello World. To translate, the text of your messages, the captions and comments on posts, product listings and your voice notes are processed by AI models — speech recognition, translation and speech synthesis — that run on our own server in France. We do not use your content to train AI models; a third-party AI service may use what it processes for us only as its terms for our account allow. (Separately, with your permission, we use Hello World AI Tools — AI services we operate and third-party AI services under contract with us — to find and fix problems: see Who we share data with.)

• Voice notes. When you record a voice note, your iPhone writes out what you said using Apple’s speech recognition on the device itself, when it supports your language; the audio is not sent to Apple. The transcript is sent with the voice note, and our server translates it. When someone plays a translation, their own iPhone reads it aloud with its built-in voices.
• Translations in your voice. Speaking a translation in a voice like its sender’s (“My voice”) is not switched on on our server: the app says so before asking for a recording, no voice sample is recorded and no one’s voice is modelled. We will update this policy before we switch it on.
• Stored translations. Translations are stored with the original so they do not have to be redone, and translated text is also kept in a temporary cache for 7 days.
• Your words and corrections. When you correct a translation, the correction is kept. If “Learn from my corrections” is on, a correction of up to four words also becomes a rule in your list of words (“My words”, in Settings → Translation → Translation preferences). “Add suggested words” adds to that list your own name and the names of your contacts, or the names you gave them. Your list shapes the translations of the messages you send, which other people read, and of the messages you read; when the sender’s list and the reader’s list both contain a word, the sender’s version is used. You can remove words from the list in the app, and “Forget what was learned” deletes your corrections and the rules made from them. Deleting a message for everyone erases the corrections made to it, but not rules already made from them.
• Suggested photo descriptions. When you choose a photo or a video for a post, or the cover photo of a store listing, and have not written a caption or description yet, the app sends the picture (for a video, a single frame) to our server. An image-description model running on our own server describes it, our translation model puts the description into your language, and the app offers it to you. The picture is not kept for this, and the description is used only if you accept it.
• The assistant. When you ask the assistant something, your question goes to our server, which answers from your own information in the app using fixed wording rather than generated text. Nothing it suggests happens until you confirm. If you confirm adding an event, it is written to your iPhone’s calendar.
• On the phone. In some cases your iPhone translates on the device with Apple’s built-in translation, and reads text aloud with its built-in voices.

Automatic translation makes mistakes; see our Terms of Service.

Suggestions in your chats

Our server reads the 30 most recent messages that contain text in a conversation when a member opens it, again whenever new messages arrive while it is open, and, when a member opens the assistant, in that member’s six most recent conversations. It looks for a plan (a day, in English or French, or a time such as “10h” or “10 am”, as in “Saturday at 10”) or for talk of money or savings (words such as “tontine”, “CFA”, “€”, “monthly” or “épargne”). It may then offer a card suggesting a meeting (tontine cards are switched off). This is done by fixed rules on our own server, not by an AI service. The cards are shown only to the members of that conversation, and a card can also be added to your notifications. Nothing happens unless a member accepts a card: accepting a meeting card creates a meeting in the conversation, listing its members, and we record who accepted which card and when.

There is no setting to turn these cards off. We offer them on the basis of our legitimate interest in making the app useful; you can object by writing to support@helloworldmessenger.com.

Encryption and translation

Hello World translates messages on its own server, so messages are not end-to-end encrypted. A message, photo, voice message or file is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) from your phone to our translation server in France, which we rent from OVHcloud. There it is decrypted and stored, so that our own translation models can translate text and voice messages (a voice message is usually transcribed on your phone first); the server also reads recent messages to offer suggestions (see Suggestions in your chats). It is then sent, again encrypted in transit, from that server to the phones of the people in the conversation. No outside AI company receives your messages to translate them. Because the server decrypts messages, we could technically read them, and Hello World AI Tools — the AI services we use to find and fix problems — can process them if you have allowed it. We commit that no person at Hello World reads your private messages and that those services do not show their content to any person at Hello World, ourselves included; the third-party services among them receive what they process and handle it under their own terms. There are two exceptions: a conversation or a flash reported to us, which we review to keep people safe, and what someone chooses to send us themselves, such as a screenshot attached to feedback (see Who we share data with).

Notifications take a different route, through Apple: see Notifications for what Apple receives. Calls are not translated and are protected differently: see Calls. How connections, passwords and the messages kept on your phone are protected is set out in Security.

Calls

Voice and video calls are encrypted between the devices (with the DTLS-SRTP standard used by WebRTC). They travel directly between the two phones when possible; when not, they pass through a relay on our own server in France, which forwards them still encrypted. We do not record calls.

To set up a call, the two phones exchange connection details through our server, including their IP addresses, so the other person’s phone learns yours. Each phone also asks our server for its own public IP address (a “STUN” service), and the relay sees the IP addresses of both phones. Apart from our hosting provider, OVHcloud, whose server we rent, no other company connects or carries a call; only the alert for an incoming call goes through Apple (see Notifications).

We keep a record of each call: who called whom, audio or video, when it started, was answered and ended, how long it lasted, and technical quality details (the type of connection, the time it took to connect, where it failed if it did), which we use to find and fix problems. Calls also appear in the Recents list of your iPhone’s Phone app, like other calls; if you sync your iPhone with iCloud, iOS may sync that list too.

Location

Hello World uses your location only when you ask it to, and only while the app is open. iOS asks your permission first, for use “while using the app”.

• Sending your location in a chat. When you tap the location button, your iPhone takes a single reading (accurate to about 100 metres) and sends it as a message — the coordinates and, if you like, a place name — to the people in that conversation. It is kept like any other message.
• Sharing your live location. You choose specific people and a duration (1 hour, 8 hours or until the end of the day). While the sharing is active and Hello World is open on your screen, your phone sends its position (accurate to about 100 metres, at most every 30 seconds, when you have moved about 50 metres) to our server, which passes it on to those people only. We keep just your latest position, in a temporary memory store on our server rather than in our database, and it expires after 15 minutes. Updates stop when you leave the app, when the sharing expires or when you stop it. We keep a record of each sharing (with whom and until when) after it ends.
• Nearby places. When you tag a place in a post or use a place effect in the camera, your phone sends its approximate location to Apple Maps, to list places nearby, and to our server, to suggest nearby businesses, some of which pay to be shown and are marked “Promoted”. A post keeps only the name of the place, not your coordinates.
• Stores. If you put your store on the map, its location is visible to everyone.
• In your photos and videos. Photos you send are re-encoded by the app, which removes any location your camera recorded in them. Videos are re-encoded too, but we cannot guarantee that every video loses that information, so check your camera settings if it matters to you.

When you open a location someone shared, it opens in Apple Maps, which receives its coordinates and name.

Your address book and finding people

If you let Hello World access your contacts, the app reads on your phone the name, the first phone number and the first email address of each contact card. The names never leave your phone. For the numbers and addresses, the app sends our server only coded fingerprints (SHA-256 hashes), up to 2,000 at a time. The server compares them with the fingerprints of members’ numbers and addresses to show you which of your contacts already use Hello World, and does not store the fingerprints you send. These fingerprints are pseudonymous, not anonymous: the method is public, so a phone number could be worked out from its fingerprint by trying every possible number.

When you link a contact card in your phone to someone’s Hello World account, so that the app knows who is who, the app sends that card’s phone number and name to our server, where they are saved with your contact list; only you can see them.

You can also look someone up by typing their phone number, email address or username, or by scanning their Hello World code. Your list of contacts in Hello World (the people you added, the names you gave them, favorites and blocks), your friend requests and the people you follow are stored on our server.

Being found. By default, other members can find you by your name or username, by typing your exact phone number or email address, and through contact matching, and you can be suggested to people who may know you. You can turn this off with “Discoverability” in Settings → Privacy: members can then find you in these ways only if one of you already has the other in their Hello World contacts, and you are no longer suggested to anyone. Your public card stays visible to anyone who has your Hello World code, QR code or profile link, or who knows your username (see Who we share data with), and a member who scans your code in the app can still add you. Whatever your setting, someone you have blocked, or who has blocked you, cannot find you in search, through contact matching or by typing your number, email address or username, and you cannot find them; blocking does not hide your public card, which anyone can open without an account.

Telling your contacts that you joined. When you sync your address book within 14 days of creating your account, the members of Hello World whom contact matching shows you — people whose phone number or email address is in your address book, except those described under “Being found” above, and supervised children under 13 unless you are one of their guardians or in a circle with them — are told that you have joined. This happens only once. It is on by default for accounts created since 2 September 2026 (off for older ones); you can turn it off with “Tell my contacts I joined” in Settings → Privacy, before you sync your contacts. For supervised children, see Children and supervised accounts.

During the test. Every new sign-up is announced to our two administrator accounts. Every account created with the sign-up form is also added automatically to the contact lists of those two accounts, and we can add all other accounts in the same way, including those created with Apple or Google sign-in. This lets us see the posts you share with your contacts (“friends”), so that we can keep a small test group safe — for example by noticing abusive or illegal content that nobody has reported. The link sits in the administrator accounts’ contact lists, not in yours, so there is nothing for you to remove; if you block an administrator account, it no longer sees your posts in the app. We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping the test safe; you can object by writing to support@helloworldmessenger.com.

If you are in a member’s address book

This section is for people whose phone number or email address is in the address book of someone who uses Hello World, whether or not they use it themselves.

• Matching. If a member lets the app read their contacts, the member’s phone turns the first phone number and the first email address on each contact card into coded fingerprints (SHA-256 hashes); your name never leaves their phone. Our server compares the fingerprints with those of members’ numbers and addresses, and does not keep them. If you do not use Hello World, nothing about you is stored as a result.
• If you use Hello World, the member is shown your profile (name, username, photo and bio) and can add you; and if the member has just joined, you may be told that they have arrived. Neither happens if you have turned off “Discoverability” and neither of you has the other in their Hello World contacts, if one of you has blocked the other, or if you are a supervised child under 13 and the member is not one of your guardians or in a circle with you.
• A saved number. If the member links one of their contact cards to a Hello World account, the phone number and name on that card are saved with the member’s contact list on our server, where only that member can see them.

This information comes from the member’s address book. We use it on the basis of the legitimate interest of members, and ours, in letting people find those they already know. You can ask us about it, or object, by writing to support@helloworldmessenger.com.

Photos, videos, voice notes and flashes

The photos, videos, voice notes and files you send in a chat are stored on our server so they can be delivered, and are reached only through links that expire. In a one-to-one chat, a file is deleted from our server 72 hours after every recipient’s phone has received it (a second device that never collects it is not waited for beyond 7 days), and an upload that is never sent is deleted after 24 hours. Your phone and the recipient’s keep their own copies. Files sent in group chats, and files sent before this rule was introduced, are not deleted automatically. When a file is deleted, a record of it remains (its type, size and length and, for a voice note, its transcript). A file in a message deleted for everyone is deleted together with that record, unless it was forwarded to another chat, where the forwarded copy stays.

Photos and videos in posts stay until you delete the post, which erases them.

Flashes can be opened once. A flash expires 24 hours after it is sent, and its photo or video is then deleted from our server within about 15 minutes, whether or not it was opened; opening it does not delete it sooner. A record of the flash remains (caption, recipients, when it was delivered and opened). If a flash is reported, a copy is kept as evidence for moderation. Hello World cannot stop the recipient from taking a screenshot or recording their screen, and does not tell you if they do.

Camera and photos. The camera’s face effects use your iPhone’s face detection and depth sensor. This is processed entirely on your phone: face data is never stored or sent to us or anyone else. QR codes are also read on the phone. To pick photos the app uses iOS’s photo picker, which gives it only the photos you select, and it asks to add to your library only when you save something.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, our server sends them through Apple’s Push Notification service, using a token that identifies your phone to Apple; incoming calls use Apple’s call notifications (PushKit) in the same way. Apple’s service receives who a notification is from, a link to their profile photo and, unless the person receiving the notification has turned off “Show message content in notifications” in Settings → Privacy, the first 160 characters of a text message as it was written and the first 80 characters of a comment. Whatever that setting, it receives the name of the circle, meeting or tontine a notification is about, the name of a chat when we suggest a meeting or a tontine in it, and, for an incoming call, the caller’s name. That setting covers the notifications you receive; the people you write to have their own.

We also keep the history of your notifications in the app. For text messages it includes the first 160 characters, and for comments an excerpt. This history currently has no time limit, except that the notifications about a message are erased when it is deleted for everyone.

Signing in with Apple or Google

• Sign in with Apple: Apple gives us a stable identifier for your Apple account, your email address (or a private relay address if you choose to hide yours) and, the first time only, your name. We never see your Apple password.
• Sign in with Google: you sign in on Google’s own page, inside the app, in a browser session that shares Safari’s Google sign-in. Google gives us your Google account identifier, your email address and your name. We keep no access to your Google account.

In both cases we check the sign-in with Apple’s or Google’s public keys. We send them nothing about you. Apple and Google handle your sign-in under their own privacy policies.

Crash reports, diagnostics and feedback

When the app crashes or freezes, iOS gives it a technical report (the kind of error and a trace of the program at that moment), and the app’s own monitor notes when the screen stopped responding (which screen, for how long, and a trace). The app sends these reports to our server automatically, with the app build, your iPhone model and your iOS version, and they are linked to your account. They describe the software and are not designed to contain your messages, but because they are linked to you they are personal data. There is no setting to switch them off yet; you can object by writing to us.

If you send us feedback from the app, we receive your text, the screen you were on, the app version and build, your iPhone model, iOS version and language settings, recent diagnostics and any screenshots you attach (up to 10). Screenshots show whatever was on your screen, possibly including other people’s messages, so check them before you send. If you withdraw a note, it is hidden but not erased, and its screenshots are kept until you delete your account.

We read these reports and your feedback, with any screenshots you attach — with the help of Hello World AI Tools if you have allowed it, and ourselves if you have not (see Who we share data with). If a screenshot shows messages, yours or other people’s, we see them: what someone chooses to send us is one of the two exceptions to our commitment that no person at Hello World reads your private messages (see Encryption and translation). We use all this only to find and fix problems. It currently has no time limit.

Sponsored content

Hello World shows some sponsored content, marked “Sponsored” — for example one item for every five chats in your chat list, and between posts and Moments. It never appears inside a conversation, and nobody under 16 and no supervised account is shown any of it — our server leaves them out before anything is chosen. We choose what to show without using your profile, age, location, interests or messages: only the place in the app and the dates of the campaign count, apart from never showing you content from someone you have blocked or content you have hidden.

To do this we record, linked to your account, which sponsored items were shown to you and where, and whether you saw, tapped, hid or reported them. We use these records to limit how often you see the same thing, to never show you again what you hid, to show you first what you have seen least, and to count results. Advertisers receive only totals, never who saw or tapped their content.

The app contains no advertising or analytics software from other companies, does not use Apple’s advertising identifier and does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites. We do not sell your personal data or share it for advertising.

Automated decisions

We make no decision about you based solely on automated processing that has legal effects on you or affects you in a similarly significant way. Some things are chosen or ordered automatically, from your activity and your connections:

• your feed shows the posts you are allowed to see, newest first;
• sponsored items are chosen by their place in the app and the dates of their campaign, and ordered so that you see first those you have been shown least, never those you hid (see Sponsored content);
• people you may know are suggested in order of how many contacts you have in common;
• the members of a meeting or a tontine are listed in order of how closely you are connected to them, from circles, contacts and follows;
• when you mark a post as interesting or not, the mark is recorded; it does not change your feed today, and the assistant uses “interesting” marks when it looks for posts related to your question, without showing who made them;
• suggestion cards in chats come from fixed rules applied to recent messages (see Suggestions in your chats).

Children and supervised accounts

A parent or guardian can supervise a child’s account from Parental controls (Settings → Parental controls). This is how it works today, including where it protects less than you might expect:

• How supervision starts. A parent or guardian with a Hello World account asks, from Parental controls, to supervise an existing account; the app offers their contacts to choose from, but a request can be sent to any existing account. The account holder is told and decides: nothing a guardian can do applies until they accept. They can decline, and the guardian is told either way; after a refusal, the same person cannot ask again for 30 days. Once supervision has been accepted, the account holder can leave it at any time from Parental controls in their own app, and the guardian is told. The guardian can also withdraw a request or end supervision. We still do not check that the person asking really is the account holder’s parent or guardian. If a request comes from someone who is not your parent or guardian, decline it — or leave, if you have already accepted — and write to us.
• Age. We ask your date of birth when you sign up, or the first time you open the app if your account was made with Apple, Google or an earlier version of the app. Nobody under 13 can create an account. From 13 until 16, an account needs a parent or guardian: until a guardian’s request has been accepted, the account can only do what it takes to get one — edit its profile, show its code, accept contact and supervision requests, receive notifications, report, send feedback, export its data, sign out and delete itself. From 16, it is the person’s own. Your date of birth can be given once; after that, only a guardian whose request you have accepted can change it. We do not verify it.
• What a guardian can do, once supervision has been accepted. Decide whether the child can receive friend requests (allow, ask me, refuse); allow or block features; answer the child’s requests for a feature, which can include a reason written by the child; approve or refuse people who want to connect with the child — they have to explain how they know the child, and the guardian sees that explanation; and set the child’s date of birth. A guardian cannot read the child’s messages or see their location through Hello World.
• A supervised child under 13, according to the date of birth on the account. Whatever any guardian chooses, the child cannot post publicly (a public post goes to friends instead), send or share a location, tag a place in a post or put a store on the map, be found by name in search or appear in suggestions, or make their measurements public; only their guardians and the members of a circle they belong to can find them through contact matching or by typing their phone number, email address or username, or open their public card (see “What anyone can see” below); the camera does not offer them effects that smooth or reshape the face; their arrival is not announced to their contacts, and they are told of someone else’s arrival only if that person is one of their guardians or in a circle with them. Unless the guardian decides otherwise, friend requests wait for the guardian’s approval; posts to friends, calls and flashes are allowed; and the shop, sharing measurements and character camera effects are off.
• A supervised child whose date of birth is not known. The protection above that no guardian can lift does not apply. Unless a guardian decides otherwise, posting publicly, location features, public measurements, face-smoothing and face-reshaping effects, the arrival announcement and the shop are off, and everything else is allowed, including friend requests; a guardian can switch any of them on.
• A supervised child of 13 or over can use everything a guardian has not restricted.
• In search and suggestions, a supervised child of 13 or over, or whose age is not known, can be found like any member — in search, through contact matching and by their exact phone number, email address or username — and is suggested only to other supervised children, unless “Discoverability” is turned off.
• Accounts with no guardian — including one with a request still waiting for an answer, and one that has declined or left supervision — get none of the protections above. If the date of birth on such an account is under 16, the account is limited as described under “Age” until a guardian’s request is accepted again.
• Circles. A circle with a supervised child in it, or anybody under 16, cannot be found in search, so nobody can find it and ask to join. Somebody who joins it does not become that child’s contact unless the child has already saved them; to connect, they send a friend request, which follows the child’s friend-request setting described above. A supervised child joins a circle only if their guardian’s choice on friend requests allows it — with “ask me”, the guardian is asked first — because joining makes them a contact of the people already in it. A circle is never handed over to a child: if its owner leaves and only children remain, it closes.
• Hello World AI Tools never process the data of anyone under 16: the app does not ask them, and our server refuses their permission.
• What anyone can see. A supervised child of 13 or over, or whose age is not known, has the same public card as an adult — whatever their guardian has chosen — with their name, username, photo and bio. Anyone who has their Hello World code, QR code or profile link, or who knows their username, can see it, even without an account. A supervised child under 13 has no public card: their code, QR code, profile link and username show nothing to anyone outside the app, and in the app only their guardians and the members of a circle they belong to can open their card. They are not given an invitation link to send either, because it would carry their card.

Hello World is not meant for anyone under 16 without a supervised account, nor for anyone under 13 at all (see our Terms of Service). We do not verify ages or identities, and we do not collect verifiable consent from parents. If you think a child is using Hello World without supervision, or you are a parent who wants a child’s data deleted, write to us.

Who we share data with

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only in these cases:

• Other people, as you choose: the people in your conversations; the audience you choose for your posts and your measurements; your contacts, according to your privacy settings (online status, last seen, read receipts, typing); the people you share your live location with; the buyers and sellers you deal with; the members of your tontines and meetings; your guardian or your supervised children, and anyone who asks to supervise your account, who is told your answer.
• Anyone with your code, link or username: your public card — name, username, photo and bio — can be seen by anyone who has your Hello World code, QR code or profile link, or who knows your username, even without the app. Its photo can be opened through your code for as long as that code is valid. Supervised children under 13 have no public card (see Children and supervised accounts). Store and listing pages, with their pictures, can be seen on the web by anyone.
• Our hosting provider: OVHcloud runs our server in Gravelines, France — the database, the files, the call relay and our AI models. It acts on our instructions.
• Apple: notifications and call alerts, Sign in with Apple, in-app purchases and subscriptions through the App Store, Apple Maps (nearby places and opening shared locations), TestFlight, and the iOS features the app relies on. Through TestFlight, Apple also gives the operator information about testers (see What we collect and why).
• Google: Sign in with Google; and YouTube, when a message contains a YouTube link — the app fetches the video’s picture and title from YouTube as soon as the message is on screen, so YouTube sees your IP address and which video it is, and playing it opens YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com), which can store cookies in the app.
• AI services, only with your permission: we find and fix problems, and review what is reported to us, with Hello World AI Tools — AI services we operate ourselves and third-party AI services under contract with us, some of them in the United States. The app asks whether you allow it, and you can change your answer at any time in Settings → Privacy → Fixing problems; we record each answer, with the date and the version of the wording you answered. If you allow it, they can read your feedback notes and the screenshots attached to them, your crash and freeze reports and other diagnostics and, to find and fix a problem, process data stored on our server about your account, which can include account details, messages and other content. When something is reported to us they can help us review it in the same way, and whose permission counts is whose data it is: what you wrote is processed only if you allowed it, what somebody else wrote only if they did, and what a child wrote never. A person, never a machine, decides what happens to an account. If you do not allow it, have not answered, or are under 16, your data is left out of that work; we commit that they do not show the content of messages to any person at Hello World, ourselves included, apart from what is reported to us and what someone chooses to send us themselves (see “The operator” below). A third-party AI service receives this data to do that work and handles it under its own terms. We do not name those services here, because the ones we use change; write to support@helloworldmessenger.com and we will tell you which they are today. We rely on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with the same switch.
• Sending codes: if we send you a code by email or text message, your address or number and the code will go through the delivery service we use for that. None is in use on the date of this policy; we will name it here before one is.
• Us, the operator: we have full access to the server, and so, technically, to all the data on it, including messages, which are not end-to-end encrypted. We use that access to run and fix Hello World, and it is bound by our commitment that no person at Hello World reads your private messages: when a problem is investigated with Hello World AI Tools, we commit that those services do not show us the content of messages. There are two exceptions. The first is what is reported to us: when a member of a conversation reports it, or someone who received a flash reports it, we review what was reported, including the messages in that conversation, to keep people safe. The second is what someone chooses to send us themselves: we see everything in a screenshot attached to feedback, in the app or through TestFlight, or in an email, which can include other people’s messages. Two administrator accounts, both ours, also show account details (including name, username, email address, phone number, date of birth, city, country, time zone and last connection), the audit log with its IP addresses and technical error records, and can suspend accounts and change the service’s settings. No one else has an administrator account or access to the server, except through the tools we use, including Hello World AI Tools.
• Authorities: when the law requires it, for example a valid court order, or when it is needed to protect someone’s safety.

Payments between buyers and sellers are arranged outside the app, and no payment provider receives your data for them. Hello World Premium is paid to Apple through the App Store: Apple handles your payment details under its own terms and gives us only the transaction information described in What we collect and why. If Hello World were ever handed over to someone else, for example a company set up to run it, your data would go with it and we would tell you beforehand.

International transfers

Hello World is run from the United States: we live there and manage data from there, including when a problem is investigated with Hello World AI Tools, for people who allowed it. Our server, where your data is stored, is in France, in the European Union. The GDPR applies to people in the EU because Hello World is offered to them.

For data accessed from the United States we rely on no adequacy decision, standard contractual clauses or other transfer safeguard, and the United States may not protect your data as well as EU law does. Apple and Google are companies based in the United States, and so are some of the third-party AI services we use. They receive only the data described in this policy — Apple and Google for the features listed above, the AI services for what they process, with your permission, when we find and fix problems — and handle it under their own terms. If you live in Senegal or elsewhere outside the EU, your data is sent to France to be stored and is accessed from the United States.

How long we keep data

Most data has no automatic time limit yet. This is what happens today; you can ask us to erase data at any time (see Your rights).

Deleting your account

In the app, go to Settings → Delete my account and confirm. If the request does not reach our server — for example if you are offline — the app tells you so and your account is not deleted; try again, or write to us. When it does reach our server, this happens straight away:

• your account is deactivated and closed, and you are signed out on all your devices;
• your name is replaced with the words “Deleted account”; your email address, phone number, password, PIN and Apple or Google sign-in are removed; your profile photo, cover image and chat background are deleted, and so are your voice sample and the screenshots attached to your feedback;
• your profile can no longer be found in search, opened through your code or username, or matched from an address book.

Then, usually within minutes, we erase what you made (if the erasing is interrupted, it is started again every hour until it has finished):

• every message you sent, deleted for everyone in each conversation, with its translations, files, transcripts and the notifications about it;
• your posts, Moments and reshares with their photos and videos, your Memories, your comments, likes, reactions, bookmarks, collections and views;
• the flashes you sent (their photos, videos and captions) and your flash inbox;
• your shop and its listings, with their photos;
• your contacts (including the names and numbers you saved), the entries for you in other people’s Hello World contacts, your blocks, follows and friend requests, and the circles you own; your supervision links end, so any supervision stops;
• your measurements and whom you shared them with, your location-sharing records, the meetings you organized and your replies to others, your camera presets, interests, list of words and translation corrections;
• your notifications, crash reports and diagnostics, sponsored content records, devices and sign-in sessions, settings and your answers about Hello World AI Tools;
• what remained on your account: bio, date of birth, city, country, relationship status, when you were last seen, and work and education history.

What stays, and why — each of these is also someone else’s, or keeps someone safe:

• the reports you made, which are about someone else’s conduct;
• your orders, which are the other party’s record of a sale;
• your call records and savings circles, which are the other person’s history too;
• your username, which is never given to anyone else, so nobody can take over a name you were known by;
• the text of your feedback notes, without your name or screenshots, which is how we track the fixes they asked for;
• a copy of messages in a conversation that had an open report when you deleted your account, kept as evidence until 30 days after the report is resolved;
• the record of a Hello World Premium subscription, without your account (see How long we keep data);
• the audit log of sensitive actions, with IP addresses.

Deleting your account does not cancel Hello World Premium. Apple bills the subscription, so cancel it in your iPhone’s Settings → your name → Subscriptions, or billing continues.

Our database backups keep copies of everything, including what was erased, for up to 14 days. To have anything that stays erased where the law allows it, write to support@helloworldmessenger.com with your username; we will erase it, or tell you what we must keep and why.

On your phone, deleting your account signs you out and removes the messages the app kept there for quick display.

Your rights

Depending on where you live — in particular under the GDPR in Europe and under Senegal’s personal data protection law — you have the right to:

• access your data and receive a copy. Export my data, in Settings → Storage, gives you a file you can save or send anywhere; write to us if you would rather we sent it, or if anything is missing from it;
• correct it. You can edit most of your profile in the app. Your email address, and your date of birth once it is set, cannot be changed in the app: write to us;
• erase it (see Deleting your account);
• take it with you: receive the data you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format;
• object to uses based on our legitimate interests — for example diagnostics, the announcement when you join, suggestion cards in chats, or the administrator accounts’ view of your posts during the test. Where there is no setting for it, write to us; the law then requires us to stop unless we have compelling legitimate grounds. Chat suggestion cards and crash reports have no per-person switch yet, so honoring an objection to one of them takes a change on our side, which we will make and confirm to you within one month;
• restrict its use while a request or complaint is being dealt with;
• withdraw your consent at any time: turn off access to contacts, location, notifications, camera, microphone or photos in iOS Settings, stop a live location sharing, delete your voice sample, or turn off Hello World AI Tools in Settings → Privacy → Fixing problems.

In the app you can also control, in Settings → Privacy, your discoverability, who can see whom you follow, your last seen, read receipts, typing indicators, message content in notifications, the announcement when you join and Hello World AI Tools; in Settings → Security, your password; in Memories, whether your Moments are kept automatically; in Settings → Translation → Translation preferences, what Hello World learns from your corrections and the words in your list; and you can block people, report posts, Moments, comments, messages, conversations, flashes, people, offerings, shops and ads, and hide an ad.

To use your rights, write to support@helloworldmessenger.com. It is free. We will answer within one month (two more months for complex requests, in which case we will tell you) and may ask you to confirm who you are.

You can also complain to a data protection authority: in France the CNIL (cnil.fr), in Senegal the Commission de Protection des Données Personnelles (CDP, cdp.sn), or the authority of the country where you live. We would be glad of the chance to sort things out with you first.

Security

• Connections between the app and our server are encrypted (HTTPS), and calls are encrypted between the devices, including when they pass through our relay.
• Messages are not end-to-end encrypted: they are stored on our server in a form the server can read, so that it can translate them and deliver them to all your devices.
• Passwords and PINs are stored only as one-way hashes. On your phone, your sign-in keys are kept in the iOS Keychain, and the messages the app keeps for quick display are encrypted with a key held there.
• Files are served through links that expire, with two exceptions: your profile photo can be opened by anyone who has your Hello World code, for as long as the code is valid, and the pictures of store listings can be opened by anyone from the listing’s page.
• Only we can sign in to the server, directly or through the tools we use, including Hello World AI Tools, which may process a person’s data only if that person has allowed it. That access is used to run and fix the service, and we commit that no person at Hello World reads your private messages, except what is reported to us and what someone chooses to send us themselves (see Who we share data with).

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when Hello World or the law changes. The date at the top shows when this version took effect. If a change matters — a new use of your data or a new recipient, for example — we will tell you in the app before it applies.

Contact

For any question about this policy or your data:

Run by

El Hadji Fadilou Seck

Email

support@helloworldmessenger.com

Phone

+1 405 651 1813

Postal address

11925 SW 30th St, Yukon, OK 73099, USA