Who this is about
James Clayson operates Wanderland and is responsible for the data described here. Contactable at 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA.
What you give us
All of it comes from you, either at sign-up or as you use the app.
- Your email address, which is how you sign in. There is no password.
- Your name — the one shown to people you match with.
- Your date of birth, and the age derived from it. The date is what proves you are over 18; the age is what other people’s preferences are matched against.
- Your height, gender, who you are looking for, the age range you want, and what you are looking for from a relationship.
- Photos you upload — up to five on your profile, plus the optional one you can attach to asking someone out.
- Your answers to the About Me questions, and the plans you write.
- Messages you send to people you have been on a date with.
- The area and vibe you give when you ask Quick meets for ideas.
- What happens in a date: the choices you make in Same Boat, whether you finished, and what you chose at the end.
- Feedback, if you fill in the survey.
- Your place in your city: which city, whether you are a woman, a man or non-binary, your number — #37 in Manchester, say — and whether that makes you a founding member, kept on your account so the founding offer can be honoured. Other people are never shown it, or how many people have joined. It is deleted with your account.
- How you use the app: when you open it, how far through sign-up you get, which maps you look at and how many people they show you, whose card you open, when you open a chat, whether you allow notifications, and when things like answering an ask happen, yes or no, and how long it waited — kept in our own database with the city you are in, so we can see what is working. Never what you write, say or send, and never shared or sold. When a message, note, plan, name or photo is stopped by our safety filter we count it, without recording who. If you delete your account these records are kept without anything linking them to you.
- When you last used the app, and who has been on your map: the time you last opened it or looked at the map, so you appear on other people’s maps only while you have used Wanderland in the last 7 days, with the recently active shown first; and which people have been on your map and when, so it stays steady while you look and shows you new people when you come back. Other people are never shown either. Both are deleted with your account.
- Cities you ask for: if you tap a city Wanderland hasn’t opened in yet, we keep that you asked for it and when, so we can see where to open next and tell you when it opens. It is deleted with your account.
- Roughly where you are, if you allow it. The phone app asks once during setup. You can say no and use the app normally. What is stored is a single approximate point, rounded on your phone to about a kilometre before it is sent, and replaced when you move — it is not a history of where you have been. Instead of your phone’s location you can choose a place in your preferences, and then the point is that place’s centre; if you have neither shared a location nor chosen a place, you are placed in central London, and your preferences show it. Your own spot on your own map is drawn from your phone’s precise location instead — that is read on your phone while the map is open and never leaves it.
If you sign up to promote Wanderland
The form at wanderland.dating/promote asks for your name, your uni email, which uni you are at, and how you would get people signed up. We keep that to decide who to give a code to, to email you about it, and to pay you. It is read only by us, and deleted if you ask. Whether you go on to use the app is separate; the form does not create an account.
If you sign up with a friend’s code
If you type a code when you create your account, we record which code it was, so the student who shared it can be paid. They are paid only for real profiles, so we also look at whether your profile is finished, has a photo and is in Manchester. They see none of that: we pay them a total, and never tell them who signed up.
To stop one person making several accounts to be paid for each, the app sends an id for your phone with the code. It is an id that only means something to Wanderland, not your phone’s advertising id, and we keep it only scrambled, which is enough to tell that two accounts came from the same phone and nothing more. It is used for nothing else, and it is deleted with your account. Without a code, it is never sent.
What we do not collect
This section exists because these are easy to assume, and all of them are wrong.
Your movements
The app does not keep a record of where you go. It asks for permission once, during setup. After that, while the app is open on your screen, it replaces your approximate point when you have moved far enough for it to change, so the islands stay the people near where you are now. There is no background location: nothing is read while the app is in the background or closed, and no trail is kept. One approximate point is stored and overwritten; nothing accumulates.
It is rounded before it leaves your phone, to about a kilometre, and the point that is sent comes from the phone’s least precise fix, so that precision is never collected in the first place rather than collected and discarded. The one precise reading is for you alone: while the map is open, your phone reads where you are exactly so it can draw you there on your own screen, and that never leaves your phone. The rounded point is used for five things: deciding who is near enough to appear on the islands, which is anyone within 1.5 km, or further when fewer than fifteen people are that close, up to 25 km at most; placing you on the islands’ map, at a blurred point described below; telling the people you have been on a date with roughly how far apart you are, in whole kilometres from 1 to 10 and “10 km+” beyond that; working out which city’s map you are part of and your place in it — or, if Wanderland has not opened in your city yet, which city you are waiting for, so we can see where to open next; and putting nearer places first when you search for somewhere to meet. A kilometre is far finer than any of them needs.
Other people’s apps are told roughly where you are, never more precisely than that kilometre, because that is what puts you on the islands near them. They are never told where you have been.
The islands are maps of real streets, and other people see your face on them near where you are — but never at your point. Their apps are given a different point for you each day, between half a kilometre and a kilometre away from yours, in a direction only our server can work out. If you chose a place instead of sharing your location, the point is somewhere within 1.4 km of that place’s centre. Your face drifts about near that point; the drifting is decoration, and nothing about where it goes comes from you. People you have been on a date with and kept talking to see you the same way, on their own island.
When you search for somewhere to meet, that same rounded location is sent to Mapbox so nearer places come first. Nothing about the search is written to our database.
Anything about you from anywhere else
No data brokers, no advertising networks, no tracking across other sites. There is no third-party analytics in this app: no analytics company receives anything.
Payment details
Nothing is paid for, so nothing is collected.
Who else sees it
These are the companies that hold or process some of your data because the app runs on their services. Each is listed with what actually reaches it.
- Supabase — the database, the photo storage, and the email that sends your sign-in code. Everything above is stored here.
- Vercel — runs the app and serves the website.
- Anthropic — writes the one closing line at the end of a Same Boat date, and picks places to meet when you ask Quick meets for ideas. For the closing line it receives both players’ first names, the scenario, and the two choices you each made. For ideas it receives the area you typed, the vibe you chose, and your Same Boat scenario and choices with that person, without names, with a list of public places in that area from Mapbox to choose from. It does not receive your messages, your profile, your photos or your email.
- Mapbox — venue search. It receives what you typed and your location rounded to about a kilometre.
- Sentry — error and crash reports, so faults can be fixed. A report from the app says what went wrong and on which kind of phone, system and app version; it carries no name or account. Email addresses are removed from sign-in errors and app reports before they are sent.
- Expo — passes push notifications on to Apple and Google, if you turn them on. It receives each notification as it is sent, which can include someone’s name and the start of a message, and a code that lets Apple or Google reach your phone.
- Apple and Google — push notifications, if you turn them on, and signing in with Apple or Google if you choose that instead of email.
Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared for advertising.
Who can see your photos
Your profile photos are stored privately. The app shows them only to people it would show you to: people near you on the islands, people you have been on a date with, and anyone you ask out. Nobody you have blocked can see them, and while you are hidden only people you have already been on a date with can. Each link the app uses to load a photo stops working after an hour. As with anything shown on a screen, someone could still keep a copy of what they have seen.
The optional photo attached to asking someone out works differently and is deliberately short-lived: it is deleted the moment the ask is answered, and a decline never shows it to anyone.
Cookies
Two, both strictly necessary, neither used for tracking: one that keeps you signed in, and one that records that you have entered the code for the closed test.
How long it is kept
Your account and everything in it stay until you delete them. When you delete your account it is removed immediately, not queued or held for a grace period.
Ideas Quick meets finds for you are kept for a week, then deleted.
Chats you have opened are also saved on your phone, so they open straight away. That copy is left out of iCloud and computer backups. It is deleted when you sign out or delete your account — and from any other phone you were signed in on, the next time the app is opened there.
Safety reports are kept indefinitely. A report is somebody else’s account of something that happened to them, so it survives the deletion of either person’s account — but with the link to whoever left removed, and nothing identifying kept in its place.
What you can do
- Delete everything. Profile, Delete my account. It removes your profile, photos, plans, answers, matches and conversations, and cannot be undone. Your email is freed, so you can sign up again later as a new account with no history.
- Sign out everywhere. Signing out revokes every session on every device.
- Block someone. You stop seeing each other and the conversation closes. They are not told. It cannot currently be undone.
- Ask for a copy. There is no export button yet. Write to privacy@wanderland.dating and it will be put together by hand.
Under-18s
This app is for adults. Your date of birth is checked when you sign up and again on the server, so the check cannot be skipped by editing the page.
Complaints
If something here is wrong or you are unhappy with how your data has been handled, write to privacy@wanderland.dating. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
When this changes
This app is early and changing quickly. If what it does with your data changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves.
Questions about any of this go to privacy@wanderland.dating.