Privacy Policy

1Who we are

Noora is an iPhone app made by BlackGem LLC (“BlackGem”, “we”, “us”). This policy covers the Noora app, the services we provide through it and this website. Noora is offered only in the United States and in Canada outside Quebec, to adults 18 and older.

BlackGem is responsible for your personal information. If you have a question or a request, contact us at support@joinnoora.com. Section 22 lists all the ways to reach us, including our Privacy Officer.

Our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines explain the rules for using Noora. If you live in Washington or Nevada, our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy also applies to you.

2Information we collect

Information you give us

Information we collect automatically

• Device and app information: your iPhone model, iOS version, app version and settings such as notification permission.
• Identifiers: your Noora account ID, an ID the app creates for your iPhone, and the push notification token Apple gives your device. We don’t collect Apple’s advertising identifier.
• How you use Noora: for example, which screens you open, which features you use, when you were last active, which messages you have read and when you are typing.
• Diagnostics: crash reports and error details that help us fix problems.
• Network information: your IP address, which our servers and service providers receive when the app connects to them, and which is stored with your sign in sessions.
• Location: only if you allow it. See Section 9.

Information from others

• Other members may send you messages, report you or block you.
• Apple and Google share an account ID and email address when you sign in with them. Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your real one.
• Apple and our subscription provider tell us whether your Premium subscription is active.
• Our service providers give us results, such as the outcome of automated photo screening, the liveness check and face comparison (Sections 4 and 6), and whether a sign in attempt looks automated.

3Sensitive information

Some of what you share is sensitive under privacy laws:

• Religious beliefs: your sect and how often you pray.
• Ethnic or national origin: your country of origin.
• Biometric data: the liveness check and face comparison described in Section 4.
• Precise location: if you use your current location (Section 9).
• The content of your messages.

Noora asks for your faith and background because they matter in a marriage, and members choose who to meet based on them. We use sensitive information only to run Noora and keep it safe: to show your profile to members, to match you with people using your answers and filters, to deliver your messages and to verify your identity. We never use it for advertising, never sell it, and never use it to guess things about you for any other purpose.

Your faith and background answers are needed to use Noora, because matching depends on them. If you live in Connecticut, the app asks you to agree to how we use them before you share them. If you don’t agree, we can’t create your profile, or keep showing it to other members. You can withdraw your agreement at any time in Settings, under Faith and background answers. We then delete those answers and your precise location, and close your account. You can restore it within 30 days by signing back in and agreeing again. Using your current location is always optional: you can type your city instead.

Your faith and background answers appear on your profile, so other members can see them (Section 7). Please share only what you are comfortable showing.

4Biometric data

This section is our notice and our public written policy for biometric data, including under the laws of Illinois, Texas, Washington, Colorado and Quebec. If you live in Washington or Nevada, our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy also applies.

What we collect and why

Our verification provider runs three checks:

• Liveness check. While you take your verification selfie, the app streams a few seconds of video of your face directly to our verification provider over an encrypted connection, and it checks that a real person is at the camera, and not a photo, a screen or a mask. Your selfie is a still image taken from that video.
• Face comparison. Our verification provider compares the face in your selfie with the faces in your profile photos. To do that, it measures the features of each face and works out how similar they are. If a profile photo shows other people, it also measures their faces to find yours. It compares them only with your selfie, keeps nothing, and we never use them to identify anyone.
• One account check. Our verification provider keeps a face print from your selfie, a set of measurements of your face, and compares each new selfie with the face prints of other accounts, so one person can’t have two accounts or come back after a ban. If a selfie looks like another account, a person on our team compares the two selfies and decides. Nobody is removed automatically, and we never use face prints to identify anyone outside Noora.

The face measurements, the face print and the analysis of your face in the liveness video are biometric data. We use them for one purpose only: to confirm that you are a real person and the person in your photos, and that you have only one account, which keeps fake profiles, impersonators and banned members off Noora.

The checks run:

• when you take your verification selfie, at sign up or later (all three checks);
• each time you add or change a profile photo, when the new photo is compared with your verification selfie (face comparison only).

If the checks clearly pass, your profile is verified automatically. If the face comparison doesn’t, for example because the match is low or a face is covered or unclear, a person on our team compares your selfie and photos by eye before deciding. If the liveness check doesn’t clearly pass, you can try again, and if it still doesn’t, you can send your selfie to our team to check. The automated checks never reject a verification on their own. The liveness check flashes colors on your screen; if you would rather avoid that, you can take a regular selfie for our team to check instead.

If your selfie goes to our team without a confirmed liveness check, for example because you took a regular selfie or the check didn’t pass, the app records a few seconds of video of you, without sound, while you turn your head the ways the screen asks, and takes your selfie at the same time, so our team can see that a real person took it. During sign up, the video stays on your phone until you finish. Only our team watches it. It is never shown to other members, never sent to our verification provider, and we make no face measurements from it. We delete it within 2 days of our team’s decision on your selfie, or earlier if you take a new selfie or your account is deleted. A video that isn’t used for a selfie is deleted within 2 days.

Your consent

We ask for your consent in the app before the first check. You can withdraw it at any time in Settings. If you withdraw it, or don’t give it, our team checks your selfie against your photos by eye instead, without a liveness check, face measurements or a face print. That check can take longer.

What we keep

• Your selfie photo, so photos you add later can be checked against it.
• The results: whether you were verified, the similarity score and, for each liveness check, whether it passed, its confidence score, the type of check, any feedback such as low light, and when it ran.

We don’t keep the liveness video or the face measurements. Our verification provider works them out for each check and gives us only the results and your selfie. It also keeps a face print from your selfie for us, for the one account check, and never gives it to us: we keep only a random label for it. It doesn’t keep the video, images or measurements to train or improve its own services.

If a selfie looks like another account, we also keep a record of that review: the two accounts, the similarity score and our team’s decision.

Who can see it

Your selfie is never shown to other members. Only members of our team who review verification can see it. We share the video and images only with our service providers, to run the checks and to store your selfie. We never sell, lease or trade your biometric data, and we never profit from it. We don’t disclose it to anyone else unless you agree, or a law, a court order, a warrant or a subpoena requires it.

How long we keep it

We permanently delete your selfie, the liveness results, the similarity score and any other biometric data at the earliest of:

• when your account is deleted, at the end of the 30 day period in Section 13;
• when you take a new selfie, for the old one. If the new selfie needs a check by our team, we keep the old one until the check is done, so we can confirm it’s still you, and never for more than 30 days;
• when you withdraw your consent, for the liveness results and similarity score. We then keep your selfie only for our team’s check by eye;
• 2 years after you last used Noora.

Your face print is deleted at the same times, and also when you withdraw your consent or choose a check by our team instead. There is one exception: if we ban you for fraud, a fake identity or coming back after a ban, your verification provider keeps your face print for up to 3 years after the ban, even if your account is deleted, so you can’t make a new account. If the ban is lifted, it is deleted then. The record of a review of two similar selfies is deleted 3 years after our team decides it.

We delete it from our systems within 30 days of the earliest of those dates, and from backups as they are overwritten. We protect biometric data at least as carefully as the other confidential information we hold, and we review this schedule every year.

A liveness check that isn’t used for a selfie, for example because you stopped partway, is deleted after 7 days.

5How we use information

We don’t send marketing emails or texts. We don’t use your personal information to train large language models or any other artificial intelligence models.

6Automated checks and decisions

Some decisions about your account are made, or started, by automated systems:

• Photo screening. Our screening provider checks every profile photo for nudity, sexual content and violence. If it is very confident a photo breaks our rules, the photo is rejected automatically. Everything else is approved or sent to our team.
• Story screening. Before anyone else can see a story, our screening provider checks it for nudity, sexual content, gore and hate symbols. If it is very confident it shows one of these, the story isn’t posted and we tell you. Otherwise it is posted. Our team looks at a story only if someone reports it.
• Selfie verification. A liveness check and face comparison can verify you automatically. They never reject you on their own: if they don’t clearly pass, a person on our team can check your selfie instead (Section 4). If the one account check finds a selfie that looks like another account, a person decides what happens.
• Profile approval. A new profile is approved automatically once the selfie is verified, the photos are approved and the bio is complete. Otherwise our team reviews it.
• Reports. Reports never hide anyone automatically. Our team reviews every report, and warnings, suspensions and bans are always decided by a person.
• Age check. If your phone’s app store tells us you are under 18, we hide your profile until our team reviews it.
• Discover. The order of profiles in Discover is worked out automatically each time it loads, from both members’ answers and filters, distance, who has already liked you, and your own likes and passes, which it uses to learn what you like from people’s profile answers, never their photos. It also looks at when members were last active and when they joined, whether a profile is complete, and how many likes a profile got this week. Nothing extra is stored on our servers to do this.

Warnings, suspensions and bans are always decided by a person. If an automated decision affects you, you can ask us at support@joinnoora.com what information and main reasons led to it, ask us to correct the information, and ask a person on our team to review the decision.

7What other members see

Members who can see you in Discover, your matches, and Premium members you have liked can see your profile:

• your first name, age, gender, photos and profession;
• the city or neighborhood you chose and how far away you are;
• your bio, prompts and profile answers: height, marital status, marriage timeline, country of origin, languages, education, sect, prayer, diet, alcohol, smoking, children, wanting children and moving;
• your story, unless you chose to show it to your matches only;
• whether you have Premium, unless you hide your badge;
• when you were last active, for example “Active now” or “Active 3h ago”. Premium members can hide this.

Other members never see your last name, phone number, email address, date of birth (only your age), selfie, exact location, filters, the people you pass on, or the people you report or block. We never tell someone who reported them.

When you interact with someone

• If you like someone, they learn that someone liked them. Premium members can see who it was.
• When you match, you both get a notification with each other’s first name.
• If you view a match’s story, they can see that you viewed it. Story owners see only a count of viewers who aren’t their matches.
• Your matches see your messages, when you have read theirs and when you are typing.

Changing who sees you

• Pause hides you from Discover. Your matches can still see your profile and message you, and only your matches can see your story.
• Block stops someone from seeing your profile and stories, and from messaging you.
• Delete your account hides your profile right away (Section 13).

8Messages and notifications

• Who can read your messages. You and the person you are talking to. Messages are encrypted while they travel between your iPhone and our servers, and our hosting provider encrypts them where they are stored. They are not end to end encrypted, which means our systems can process them to deliver them and send notifications.
• When our team reads messages. Only authorized staff, signed in with two step verification, can access messages. They read a conversation only to review a report from someone in it, to investigate a serious safety or security problem, or when the law requires it. We record every time a staff member opens a conversation.
• Notifications. A message notification shows the sender’s first name and the start of the message, up to 100 characters, and passes through Apple’s push notification service. Notifications for matches, likes and stories include the other person’s first name. You can turn message, match, like and story notifications on or off in Settings, or hide previews in your iPhone’s settings. Notices about your account and safety can’t be turned off.
• Link previews. When a message contains a link, the Noora app on your iPhone loads a preview directly from that website. That website sees your IP address, as it would if you opened the link.
• Read receipts and typing. The people you message can see when you have read their messages and when you are typing.
• After an unmatch, block or report, the conversation becomes read only and stays visible to both of you until either account is deleted.

9Location

• When you tap “Use current location”, the app asks iOS for your location once, only while you are using the app. Noora never tracks your location in the background.
• We send that point to our maps provider to find the name of your neighborhood or city. If you search for a place instead, our maps provider receives what you type.
• We store an approximate point, accurate to about a kilometer, to work out distances between members. Other members see only the place name and a distance in whole miles, never your exact location.
• You can turn off location access in your iPhone’s settings and type your city instead.
• Our analytics provider may estimate your general area, such as your country, region and city, from your IP address.

10Who we share information with

We don’t sell your personal information, we don’t share it for advertising and we don’t let advertisers or data brokers have it. We share it only as follows.

Other members

As described in Section 7.

Service providers

These service providers process information for us, under contracts that require them to protect it and to use it only to provide their service to us:

Apple and Google also handle sign in and payments under their own privacy policies.

Safety and the law

We may share information with law enforcement, courts or others when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, or that it is needed to prevent death, serious harm or fraud, to protect members or to enforce our Terms. Where we can, we look at each request carefully and tell the member concerned unless the law or safety prevents it.

Business changes

If BlackGem is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of it. The new owner must keep honoring this policy, and we will tell you before your information becomes subject to a different one.

With your permission

We share information in other ways only if you ask us to or agree.

11Reports, moderation and bans

People on our team review reports and decide on warnings, suspensions and bans, as described in our Community Guidelines and Terms. These decisions are always made by a person, never by automation.

Moderation records

• Reports you make about other members, and reports other members make about you.
• Decisions: any warning, suspension or ban on your account, the reason and when it happened.
• Appeals you send and our answers.

We use these records to review reports, to apply our Community Guidelines consistently (for example, to tell a first issue from a repeat one), to answer appeals and to keep members safe. A moderator reviewing a report may look at the reported profile, stories and the messages related to the report. Moderation records are kept for as long as your account exists, and deleted with it, except the ban record below. If we report content to the authorities, or receive a legal request about an account, we keep that content and the related records for as long as the law requires, even if the account is deleted.

Notices

• A warning is shown to you in the app.
• Notice of a suspension or ban may also be emailed to the confirmed email address on your account. Our answer to an appeal is sent by email, or shown in the app if your account has no confirmed email address.
• If you report someone and we take action, we tell you in the app that we took action, but not what it was. We never tell anyone who reported them.

Ban record

If we ban an account, we keep a small ban record so the same person can’t create a new account. It contains:

• Keyed hashes of the phone number and of the Apple and Google account IDs linked to the banned account. A keyed hash is a one way code made with a secret key. We never store the actual phone number or IDs in the ban record, and we use the hashes only to check whether a new account matches a ban.
• The reason for the ban, its date and the banned account’s ID.

The ban record does not use face matching. We keep the hashes, reason, date and account ID for as long as the ban stands, including after the banned account is deleted, because keeping banned people out protects our members. If a ban is lifted, for example after a successful appeal, we delete them.

A ban record can occasionally match someone who was never banned, such as a person whose phone number used to belong to a banned member. If you think this has happened to you, contact support@joinnoora.com and we will look into it. If we confirm it, we keep a keyed hash of your phone number, with a short note, so it no longer matches the ban record.

12How long we keep information

We keep information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy:

We may keep specific information longer when the law requires it, or when we need it for an active legal claim or investigation, and only for that purpose.

13Deleting your account

• To delete your account, go to Settings in the app and tap Delete account. Your profile is hidden from everyone right away and you are signed out. Until your account is permanently deleted, your matches still see your first name, without your photo, in their past conversations with you.
• You have 30 days to change your mind by signing back in. After 30 days, we permanently delete your account and everything in it, including your profile, photos, selfie, stories, matches, messages and voice messages.
• When an account is deleted, the conversations it was part of are deleted for both people.
• If you signed in with Apple, deleting your account also removes Noora’s access to your Apple Account.
• Deleting your account doesn’t cancel a Premium subscription. Cancel it in your Apple Account settings.
• If you can’t open the app, email support@joinnoora.com from the email address on your account, or tell us the phone number on it. We will confirm it is you before deleting anything, usually by asking you to write from the confirmed email address on your account.

What we keep after deletion

• The ban record, if the account was banned (Section 11), and, after a ban for fraud, a fake identity or coming back after a ban, the face print our verification provider keeps for up to 3 years after the ban (Section 4).
• A record of the consents you gave or withdrew, such as for selfie verification, for 5 years, to show that we followed the law. It contains your account ID, your choice and when you made it, never your selfie or any biometric data.
• Analytics and crash reports, linked only to the deleted account ID, until they expire on the schedule in Section 12.
• Keyed codes made from your phone number that limit how often sign in codes are sent, for about a day, and how often selfie checks are started, for up to 3 days (Section 12).
• Purchase records that Apple and our subscription provider keep under their own policies (Section 12).
• A record that an account was deleted, with the date and how it happened. It doesn’t include your phone number, email address or account ID. If our team deleted the account, the record also says which staff member authorized it, and holds a one way code made from the account ID instead of the ID itself.
• Copies in backups, until they are overwritten.
• Information we must keep by law, or for an active legal claim or investigation, including content we reported to the authorities (Section 11).

14Information on your iPhone

To be fast and to work with a weak connection, the Noora app keeps some information on your iPhone: your sign in details in the iOS Keychain, an encrypted summary of your recent conversations, photos you have viewed, link previews, messages waiting to be sent and your app settings. This information is protected by your iPhone’s own security.

When you sign out, the app deletes your sign in details and your conversation summary. Other stored items, such as viewed photos and messages that failed to send, stay on your iPhone until you delete the app. iOS may keep Keychain items even after the app is deleted.

15Your choices and rights

In the app

• Edit your profile at any time.
• Download My Data in Settings gives you a copy of what we keep about your account, once every 24 hours: your account details, phone number and email address, your profile, prompts, photos, verification selfies, liveness check results and stories, stories you viewed that are still up, the consents you gave or withdrew, your matches, every message in your conversations and the voice messages you sent, likes and passes you gave, passes you undid, the unmatch reasons you picked, people you blocked, reports you made, subscriptions, support requests, notifications, Discover filters, devices registered for notifications, and any warnings, suspensions or bans on your account. To protect other members, it shows only how many people liked you or viewed your story, not who, and leaves out who blocked or reported you, reports about you, the reasons others picked when they unmatched you, other members’ details beyond their first name and the audio of voice messages others sent you. It also leaves out our internal review notes and scores. To ask for something it leaves out, write to us as described below.
• Notifications: turn message, match, like and story notifications on or off in Settings.
• Stories: choose Everyone or Matches Only each time you post.
• Premium members can hide their badge and their activity status.
• Location, camera, photos and microphone: allow or deny access in your iPhone’s settings.
• Pause, block, report or delete your account at any time.

Your rights

Wherever you live in the United States or Canada, you can ask us to:

• tell you whether we hold your personal information, give you access to it and tell you how we use and share it;
• give you a copy in a format you can take elsewhere;
• correct information that is wrong;
• delete your information;
• withdraw a consent you gave, such as for selfie verification;
• explain an automated decision and have a person review it (Section 6).

To make a request, use the app, or email support@joinnoora.com with “Privacy request” in the subject. To protect you, we will confirm your identity, usually by asking you to write from the confirmed email address on your account. If your account has no confirmed email address, we will ask for other information that shows the account is yours. You can ask someone to act for you; we will ask for proof that you authorized them. We answer within 30 days, and if we need more time where the law allows it, we will tell you why. Requests are free.

If we can’t do what you ask, we will explain why. If you disagree, reply with “Appeal” in the subject and someone who wasn’t involved in the first answer will review it, within 45 days. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact your state attorney general, or the privacy regulator listed in Section 17.

We will never treat you differently for using your privacy rights.

16United States privacy rights

Several states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon, Texas and Virginia, give their residents privacy rights. Section 15 explains how to use them. This section gives the extra details those laws ask for.

What we collect, and why

In the last 12 months, we collected these categories of personal information, for the purposes in Section 5, from the sources in Section 2:

• Identifiers: name, phone number, email address, account ID, device ID, push token, IP address.
• Personal characteristics: age, date of birth, gender, marital status, religion, national origin.
• Commercial information: Premium purchases.
• Biometric information: the liveness check and face comparison (Section 4).
• Internet and app activity: how you use Noora, crash reports.
• Geolocation: precise location if you allow it, and general location from your IP address.
• Audio and visual information: photos, selfie, verification video, stories, voice messages.
• Professional and education information: profession, education.
• Sensitive personal information: account sign in details, precise location, religious beliefs, ethnic or national origin, biometric data and message content.

We disclosed each of these categories to the service providers in Section 10 for the business purposes described there, and some of them to other members as described in Section 7. We keep them for the periods in Section 12.

No sale, sharing or targeted advertising

We don’t sell personal information or share it for cross context behavioral advertising, and we don’t use it for targeted advertising or for profiling that has legal or similarly significant effects. We have not done so in the last 12 months. We use sensitive personal information only to provide Noora and keep it safe and secure. Where state law requires it, we ask for your consent in the app before we process sensitive personal information, and you can withdraw it in Settings, as Sections 3 and 4 explain. We honor browser privacy signals, such as Global Privacy Control, as a request to opt out of sale and sharing. Our website doesn’t respond to Do Not Track signals, because it doesn’t track you.

Washington and Nevada

Our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy explains how we handle consumer health data, which under these states’ laws includes the biometric data in Section 4.

17Canada and Quebec

• By using Noora, you consent to the uses of your information described in this policy. For the liveness check and face comparison, we ask for your express consent separately (Section 4). You can withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual limits, and we will tell you what that means for your account.
• Your information is stored and processed in the United States by us and by the service providers listed in Section 10. While it is there, the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of the United States may be able to access it under their laws. We protect it with contracts and security measures. To get written information about our policies for service providers outside Canada, or to ask questions about them, contact our Privacy Officer.
• Our Privacy Officer is responsible for how we protect personal information, and is the person in charge of the protection of personal information under Quebec law. You can reach our Privacy Officer at support@joinnoora.com, with “Privacy Officer” in the subject.
• If something goes wrong with your information that could cause you serious harm, we will tell you and the privacy regulator, as the law requires.

If you live in Quebec

Noora isn’t offered in Quebec yet. If you live in Quebec and use Noora, these rights also apply to you.

• You also have the right to ask us to stop sharing your information, and to remove links to it, where the law allows; to be told about any automated decision and how it was made (Section 6); and to receive your information in a structured, commonly used technological format.
• If you are not satisfied with how we handled a request, you can file a complaint with the Commission d’accès à l’information.

Complaints

Please contact us first. You can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or your provincial privacy commissioner in Quebec, Alberta or British Columbia.

18Security

We protect your information with measures that fit how sensitive it is, including:

• encryption of information as it travels, and encrypted storage at our hosting provider;
• database rules that let each member reach only the information they are allowed to see;
• private file storage, where photos and voice messages are opened through signed links rather than public addresses;
• staff access to member information only through our admin tools, signed in with two step verification;
• automated screening and human review to keep fake profiles and harmful content off Noora.

No system is perfectly secure. If you think your account has been accessed by someone else, contact us right away. If a breach affects your information, we will tell you as the law requires.

19Children

Noora is only for adults 18 and older. We ask for your date of birth at sign up and don’t allow anyone younger to create an account. When you sign up, we also ask your phone’s app store whether you are 18 or older. Sharing it is a condition of signing up: if you decline, or it says you aren’t 18, you can’t sign up. Your date of birth is the check only if your phone can’t answer or doesn’t reply. Where the law requires it, we may also ask again when you open the app. We keep only the app store’s yes and the date, never your age range. If we learn that someone under 18 has an account, we ban it like any other ban (Section 11), so an adult the app store has wrong can appeal.

20This website

This website, joinnoora.com, doesn’t use advertising or analytics cookies, or tracking tools, and we don’t allow other companies to collect information about your activity over time and across websites through it, or through the Noora app. Our website host delivers this website and protects it from attacks, so it processes your IP address and browser information, and may set a cookie that is strictly needed for security.

Early access list

If you join the early access list on our home page, we keep the email address you enter. We send one email asking you to confirm it, and if you don’t confirm within 7 days, we delete it. Once you confirm, we send one more email, on the day you can download the app and make a profile, and then we delete the whole list. You can remove your address at any time from the link in the confirmation email.

We use the list only for those emails. The app doesn’t read it, and we never sell it or share it with anyone except our hosting and email delivery providers, who store it and send the emails for us (Section 10). To stop the form being misused, we also keep a keyed code made from your IP address, never the address itself, and delete it after about a day.

21Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when Noora or the law changes. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If we make an important change, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and where the law requires, ask for your consent again.

22Contact us

BlackGem LLC
971 US Highway 202N, Suite N
Branchburg, NJ 08876, United States
Phone: (609) 375‑8203
Email: support@joinnoora.com

Privacy Officer, BlackGem LLC, at the address above, or by email at support@joinnoora.com with “Privacy Officer” in the subject.