Neya Privacy Policy
Last updated: 5 November 2026
1. Who we are
Neya Technologies Ltd (“Neya”, “we”, “us”) runs the Neya app and joinneya.com. We’re the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at hello@joinneya.com, or by post at Neya Technologies Ltd, c/o Founders Law, 1 Hamilton House, Temple Avenue, London EC4Y 0HA.
The short version: we use your information to match you with people nearby, coordinate plans (in the app, by email and on WhatsApp), support community safety and run membership. We do not sell your data. AI services help Neya write and understand messages, including her replies to you on WhatsApp; section 5 explains their role.
2. Neya is for adults
Neya is only for people aged 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If we find that an account belongs to someone under 18, we close it and delete their data, except what we need to keep to protect others. If you think a child is using Neya, tell us at moderation@joinneya.com.
3. What we collect
| What | Examples | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Account details | First name, email address, phone number (verified by a code sent by text or WhatsApp), age, gender | You, when you sign up |
| Profile | Photo or selfie, a short bio, interests, what you’d like to do and how often | You |
| Where you are | Your postcode or area. If you tap “Use where I am”, your phone’s approximate location is turned into the nearest postcode; we keep the postcode, not the exact location | You and your device |
| Optional details | Whether you have children and their rough ages, the kind of household you live in, whether you have a dog, whether you’ve moved to the area recently, skills you could help with. We use them to match you with people at a similar stage of life | You, only if you choose to add them |
| Messages and plans | Your group chats, messages with Neya, plans, replies to polls, who said they’d go and whether a plan happened, feedback after a plan, plans you’ve asked Neya for and what you search for | You and other members |
| Messages you send to Neya on WhatsApp and her replies, buttons you tap, your WhatsApp display name, and whether our messages were delivered and read | You and Meta, when you use WhatsApp with Neya | |
| Safety records | Reports you make or that are made about you, blocks, moderation decisions, warnings | You, other members, our moderation tools |
| Membership | Which plan you’re on, trial and renewal dates, payment status, refund requests. If you add a card for no-show fees, Stripe holds it. We never see or store your full card details | Apple, Google, Stripe and RevenueCat |
| Device and usage | App version, device type, operating system, IP address, which screens you use, crash reports, notification settings | Your device |
| How you found us | The ad, link or campaign that brought you to Neya | Our website cookie and our marketing partners |
If you message Neya on WhatsApp before you have an account, we create a basic one for your phone number, using your WhatsApp display name as your name, so Neya can answer you and you can carry on in the app.
4. How we use it, and our legal basis
UK data protection law says we need a legal reason (a “lawful basis”) for each use.
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Create your account, match you with people and groups near you (using your interests, what you’d like to do, your age and gender and, if you’ve told us, your household and life stage), suggest plans, run your chats, send you messages about your plans. Some groups and plans are open only to an age range, a gender or parents; we use your profile to decide whether you can see and join them, and whether membership applies where you are | Contract: it’s the service you signed up for |
| Message you on WhatsApp to invite you to plans, help organise them, remind you before you meet and follow up afterwards, and reply when you message Neya there. WhatsApp is part of how Neya runs plans. You can switch it off in Settings → Notifications or by replying STOP, but you may then miss updates about your plans | Contract |
| Use AI to write Neya’s messages, understand what you’re looking for, sum up chats and suggest plans, including her replies on WhatsApp | Contract |
| Take payment, run trials, renewals, cancellations and refunds | Contract, and legal obligation (tax and accounting records) |
| Moderate chats, assess reports and safety risks, prevent fraud and enforce our terms | Legitimate interests: protecting members and the service; legal obligation where processing is required by applicable online-safety law |
| Apply our age eligibility rules and detect false or abusive accounts; phone verification is not an identity or criminal-record check | Legitimate interests, and legal obligation where it applies |
| Understand how Neya is used and improve it (analytics, crash reports, testing new features) | Legitimate interests for necessary service improvement and diagnostics; consent for optional tracking where required |
| Measure which ads and campaigns bring people to Neya | Consent where required by data-protection and electronic-communications law; platform tracking permission does not replace any separate legal consent requirement |
| Send marketing by email. We send marketing by text or WhatsApp only if you’ve separately agreed to it | Consent, unless a lawful existing-customer exception applies (email only). You can opt out at any time. Essential account and plan messages are separate; getting plan messages on WhatsApp does not mean you’ve agreed to marketing there |
| Send service push notifications | Contract for account and plan messages, with your device permission; promotional notifications follow the marketing rules above |
| Answer legal requests and protect our legal rights | Legal obligation and legitimate interests |
| Work out who turned up to a plan, and charge no-show fees | Contract: it’s part of the terms you agreed |
Please avoid sharing sensitive information, such as health, religion or sexuality, unless needed for the feature you choose, and do not share another person’s sensitive details without authority. Using sensitive data needs both an ordinary lawful basis and an additional condition under UK GDPR Article 9; simply sending it to us is not blanket consent.
Who turned up. We use explicit attendance reports, cancellation records and information provided in a dispute to assess attendance fees under our Terms of Service. You can challenge the evidence and have a person review the decision at hello@joinneya.com. We handle reporters’ information confidentially as far as reasonably possible, subject to legal and fair-investigation needs.
5. AI, automated moderation and decisions about you
Neya uses AI services listed in section 7 to process relevant messages, profile and plan details, including messages you send her on WhatsApp. Under our API arrangements, these providers do not use member data to train their general models. This is different from provider retention for security, abuse monitoring or delivering the service. For example, Google keeps prompts and responses for up to 55 days to detect abuse, and for up to 30 days when Neya searches the web or maps for you.
We use automated tools to check messages for harassment, threats, self-harm and other safety risks. A tool may hold or hide a message and alert our team. A person always makes the decision to suspend or close an account. You can ask for any decision about you to be reviewed by a person at moderation@joinneya.com.
Neya automatically suggests people, groups and plans. These suggestions help you choose; they do not require you to attend. You can contact hello@joinneya.com about inaccurate information or a suggestion. Disputed attendance fees and account suspension or closure receive human review as described above.
6. How Neya learns about you
Neya finds your people by getting to know you. The more she understands what you enjoy, the better the groups and plans she suggests. This section explains what she learns, where it comes from, and how you stay in control of it.
What you tell us
- Your profile: your interests, what you’d like to do and how often, your age, gender and area, and, if you choose to add them, your household and whether you have children.
- What you tell Neya: when you chat with her, in the app or on WhatsApp, Neya can save what you say to your profile so she doesn’t have to ask again. For example, “I’ve just taken up padel” or “I can’t do weekends”.
What Neya works out
- From the groups you join: joining a group can add its activity to your interests. You can edit these in your profile.
- From how you use Neya: which groups and plans you look at, join or pass on helps decide what she shows you next.
- From what you ask for: plans you’ve asked her for and things you’ve searched for help decide what she suggests.
- From plans: which plans you went to, and who you said you’d like to see again, help her suggest groups and people.
These are Neya’s best guesses, used only to match you with people and plans. She doesn’t try to work out sensitive things about you, such as your health, religion, sexuality or politics. If you join a group connected to one of these, such as a faith group, an LGBTQ+ social or a walking group for people living with a health condition, Neya doesn’t add it to your interests. If you add an interest like this yourself, we use it only to suggest groups and plans to you, never show it to other members, and you can remove it from your profile at any time.
What Neya remembers over time
- your profile and interests, until you change them
- your one-to-one chats with Neya, in the app and on WhatsApp, and a short running summary of longer conversations, so she can pick up where you left off
- the plans you’ve been part of, and your feedback on them
- interests you’ve removed, so she doesn’t add them back
We keep this while your account is open, and then as set out in section 9.
How to correct or delete it
- Change or remove any interest or detail in Profile → Edit profile.
- Ask for a copy of everything Neya has learned about you, or ask us to delete it, at hello@joinneya.com.
- Delete your account to remove it all (see section 9).
7. Who we share it with
Other members see your first name and photo, and messages you send to shared groups. When Neya suggests a plan or a person, she may also tell them interests you have in common (and up to two of your others), roughly how far apart you live (within 1, 2, 5 or 10 miles), whether you’re around the same age, and that you’re a parent, if they are too. When someone nearby asks Neya to start a plan, she may show you to them as someone she’d invite, with the same details. We never show other members your surname, your age, your gender, your household, your contact details, or any interest connected to health, religion, sexuality or politics. Joining a group or plan that’s open only to an age range, a gender or parents shows its other members that you fit it. We do not display your precise location or address as a profile field; avoid putting those details in messages or other content you share.
The providers below help deliver Neya. Providers acting on our instructions are subject to data-processing terms. Some, including app stores, payment and messaging providers, also process information for their own purposes under their own privacy notices.
| Provider | What for |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in and file storage |
| Stream | Chat |
| Google (Gemini) | AI for Neya’s messages, her WhatsApp replies, search and moderation |
| OpenAI | AI for Neya’s messages and moderation |
| Anthropic | AI for Neya’s messages |
| Railway and Vercel | Hosting the app and our servers |
| Google Maps and postcodes.io | Finding places and turning a location into a postcode |
| Resend | |
| Twilio | Sending sign-in codes by text |
| Firebase (Google) and Apple Push Notification service | Push notifications |
| Meta (WhatsApp) | Messages between you and Neya on WhatsApp, and sign-in codes sent by WhatsApp |
| Apple, Google Play, Stripe and RevenueCat | Payments, membership and no-show fees |
| Mixpanel and Google Analytics | Product analytics |
| Sentry and Axiom | Error reports and system logs |
| Slack | Internal alerts to our team about plans, membership, reports and safety |
Marketing partners. We use Meta and AppsFlyer to measure sign-ups and activity following ads, subject to consent where required. When you finish signing up, we may send Meta your email address, phone number and name in hashed form, with your IP address and browser details, so it can match the sign-up to an ad. Identifiers may be hashed before sharing, but hashing does not make personal data anonymous. Apple’s tracking permission is an additional platform control, not a substitute for legally required consent.
When the law or safety requires it. We share information with the police or other authorities when the law requires it, or when we believe it’s needed to protect someone from serious harm.
If Neya changes hands. If Neya is sold or merges, your data would pass to the new owner under this policy.
We never sell your personal data.
8. International transfers
Some providers process data outside the UK, mainly in the US and EU. Where required, transfers must have a valid safeguard: UK adequacy regulations, including the UK–US data bridge for eligible certified recipients, or approved contractual safeguards such as the UK IDTA or UK Addendum, with the required assessment and supplementary protections.
Contact hello@joinneya.com for details or a copy of the relevant safeguards.
9. How long we keep it
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account and profile | While your account is open |
| After you delete your account | Normally retained for up to 6 months after deletion for proportionate safety investigations and legal claims, then deleted or anonymised unless a specific legal obligation or live dispute requires longer. Your profile is removed from member view promptly. We keep only what is necessary for those purposes. |
| Messages you sent to a group | Removal from live group chats and processor copies follows our deletion process; we may retain necessary records privately for the purposes above. Copies or screenshots held independently by other members are outside our control. |
| Your WhatsApp conversation with Neya | While your account is open, and deleted with it. Copies on your phone, and any Meta keeps under its own terms, are outside our control |
| Safety records (reports, warnings, removals) | Up to 2 years after your account closes, so we can stop people coming back after removal and deal with complaints |
| Payment and tax records | Normally 6 years for tax, accounting and legal obligations; longer only where a specific requirement or ongoing claim justifies it |
| Inactive accounts | We may delete accounts after 2 years with no activity, after a warning email |
| Analytics and logs | Up to 2 years |
10. Your rights
You have the right to:
- get a copy of your data
- correct anything that’s wrong
- have your data deleted (you can delete your account yourself in Profile → Delete account)
- restrict how we use it, or object to our use of it based on legitimate interests
- take your data to another service
- withdraw consent at any time, for example to marketing emails
- have a person review an automated decision
Email hello@joinneya.com. These rights apply subject to legal conditions and exceptions. We respond within the legal time limit, normally one month, and explain any permitted extension or refusal. We may need to verify your identity. Requests are normally free; any fee or refusal must be permitted by law.
11. Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest with our main providers. Access is limited to the team members who need it. We regularly review our security and the providers we use. No system is completely secure, so if something goes wrong that puts you at risk, we’ll tell you and the ICO as the law requires.
12. Cookies
On joinneya.com and in the Neya web app at app.joinneya.com we use:
- an attribution cookie (nv_id): a random ID, stored for up to 30 days, to see which campaign or link brought you to Neya
- analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to see how the site and app are used
- advertising cookies (Meta, TikTok) to measure our ads
We ask for consent before optional analytics, attribution and advertising tracking where required by law. You can reject it or withdraw consent as easily as giving it. Strictly necessary technologies may operate without consent.
13. Complaints
If you have a data-protection complaint, email hello@joinneya.com or write to the address in section 1. We acknowledge complaints within 30 days, investigate appropriately, keep you informed and communicate the outcome without undue delay. You may also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.
14. Other people we hold data about
We also hold personal data about people who apply for jobs with us, researchers and community partners we work with, suppliers, and people who visit our events or offices. We use it to run that relationship (recruitment, contracts, invoices, event safety), on the basis of contract, legal obligation or legitimate interests, and keep it for 12 months after the relationship ends unless the law requires longer. Ask us at hello@joinneya.com for the full details.
15. Changes
We’ll update this policy when how we use data changes. If a change matters, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it applies.