Privacy Policy
Effective Date: October 2026 • Last Updated: October 2026
Unlike commercial advertising networks, Pepperwater does NOT sell, rent, monetize, or broker personal member data to advertisers, data aggregators, or marketing brokers. We do NOT embed cross-site ad tracking pixels (such as the Meta Pixel or third-party ad retargeters). Your family genealogy, oral history memories, photographs, and recipes belong exclusively to you and our community.
Privacy at a Glance
We only collect the information necessary to authenticate your profile, map family trees, and deliver your direct messages.
Decide what details are displayed on your profile. Direct messages are restricted strictly to conversation participants.
Delete individual messages, entire conversations, or wipe your entire account and all data with a single click in Settings.
1. Information We Collect
We collect information you provide directly to us when registering, customizing your profile, attributing kinship, and communicating on the platform:
A. Account & Identity Credentials
When you create an account, we collect your verified email address, display name, chosen @username, password hash (encrypted via Supabase Auth), and avatar photo.
B. Diaspora Heritage & Biographical Details
To connect relatives across generational migrations, you may optionally provide geographic background details such as birthplace city/country, current city, historical railway colony or cantonment connections, and ancestral origins.
C. Content, Memories & Communications
We store the content you submit to the platform, including social feed posts, heirloom recipes, family photographs, video recordings, comments, and 1-on-1 direct messages sent to other members.
D. Kinship & Genealogical Relationships
When you request or accept kinship attributions (e.g. cousin, aunt, grandparent), we record the relational link between user IDs to render your interactive diaspora family tree.
E. Device & Technical Log Information
For security and session management, we collect basic technical data including your IP address, browser type, device operating system, and secure session tokens. On mobile devices with biometric login (Face ID / Touch ID), biometric data is handled exclusively by your device's Secure Enclave hardware and is never transmitted to our servers.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect solely to provide, protect, and enhance the Pepperwater platform:
- Powering Community Features: Rendering the diaspora feed, publishing your heirloom recipes, delivering notifications, and displaying verified member profiles.
- Kinship Discovery: Mapping family trees and suggesting potential generational connections based on mutual relatives and historical origins.
- Trust & Safety Enforcement: Combating spam, harassment, hateful content, automated scraping, and unauthorized account access (Apple Guideline 1.2 compliance).
- Direct Messaging Delivery: Routing encrypted private communications and quarantining messages from unconnected users in the Safety Requests drawer.
- Essential Communications: Sending account confirmations, password resets, security alerts, and replies to support inquiries.
3. How Information Is Shared & Disclosed
We believe in strict confidentiality. We only share information under the following limited circumstances:
A. With Other Community Members
Your public profile information (name, @username, avatar, biographical origins), public feed posts, recipes, and accepted kinship relationships are visible to other logged-in Pepperwater members. Direct messages are restricted strictly to the sending and receiving participants.
B. Trusted Infrastructure Providers
We utilize enterprise cloud infrastructure to host and deliver Pepperwater. These include Supabase (database, authentication, and secure media storage hosted on AWS) and Vercel (application hosting). These service providers process data strictly on our instructions and under contractual data protection obligations.
C. Legal Obligations & Harm Prevention
We may disclose information if required to comply with a valid legal court order, subpoena, or applicable law, or when necessary to protect the immediate physical safety of any person or to prevent fraud and platform abuse.
4. Your Rights, Controls & Right to Complete Erasure
You have full ownership and control over your personal data:
- Profile Editing: Update your name, avatar, bio, and diaspora origins at any time in your Profile and Settings.
- Message Deletion: You have the ability to delete individual direct messages permanently or wipe entire conversation threads.
- Blocking & Reporting: Block any user with one click to permanently hide your profile and prevent future interactions.
- Complete Account Erasure (Apple 5.1.1v & GDPR): You hold the unconditional right to delete your account and all data at any time directly through Settings > Danger Zone > Delete Account & All Data. Upon execution, your profile, authentication records, feed posts, recipes, comments, kinship links, and direct messages are permanently purged from active production databases.
5. Security & Data Protection Safeguards
We implement comprehensive technical protections to safeguard your data, including:
- Row-Level Security (RLS): Granular PostgreSQL security policies enforced directly in the database engine, ensuring users can only read or edit records they are authorized to access.
- Encryption in Transit: All web and mobile communications are encrypted using modern Transport Layer Security (TLS/HTTPS).
- Secure Token Storage: Passwords are cryptographic salted hashes; session tokens are protected against unauthorized extraction.
6. Children's Privacy
Pepperwater is designed for general audiences and family genealogy, but is strictly restricted to individuals aged 13 and older. We do not knowingly solicit or collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that a child under 13 has created an account, we will promptly terminate the account and purge associated data.
7. International Diaspora Data Transfers
Because the Anglo-Indian diaspora is global—with members residing across India, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand—your information may be stored and processed on servers located outside your country of residence (including the United States). By using Pepperwater, you acknowledge and consent to cross-border data processing in compliance with this Privacy Policy.
8. Contact Us & Privacy Inquiries
If you have questions, feedback, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal data rights, please contact our Data Protection and Heritage team:
Privacy & Data Questions?
Email us at [email protected] or reach out through our online contact desk.