Privacy Policy

This English translation is provided for convenience. The German version at tablemates.social/legal is the legally binding one; in case of any discrepancy, the German text prevails.

Last updated: 16 October 2026

1. Controller

Marcus Maier Am Goldenen Acker 53 31832 Springe Germany Email: contact@tablemates.social

2. What TableMates is for

TableMates arranges small, real-life meetups between people with similar interests. Almost all of the processing described here serves exactly this purpose: generating suitable suggestions and organizing meetups.

The app is not yet public. Before launch there is additionally a waitlist and a Discord server; what is processed there is described in section 3a. Both are voluntary and not required for using the app later on.

3. What data we process

Account (legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, performance of a contract)

• Email address, password (stored only as a bcrypt hash), year of birth (to check the minimum age of 18). Only those who turn 18 in the year in which they register also state their month of birth; a full date of birth is never collected.

Profile (Art. 6(1)(b))

• Display name, optional photo, description, occupation.
• Home area as a rough indication (city or district from a fixed list). An exact address is not collected here.
• Interests, creative skills, tastes (including dislikes and exclusion criteria), languages with proficiency level, social preferences, planning preferences. Entries marked as "private" only steer the suggestions and are never shown to other users.

Contact details (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, consent)

• Phone number and home address are optional and remain private. They become visible to the participants of a specific meetup only if you share them there actively and per meetup. This sharing is your consent; it is stored as a snapshot and shown in the group chat of the meetup.

Meetups and communication (Art. 6(1)(b))

• Participation in meetups, generated suggestions and your responses to them, tasks you take on, attendance ("was there" / "did not show up", from which a reliability score is calculated), chat messages. The chat consists of predefined building blocks; free text is limited to a few variables.
• Connection wishes after a meetup ("would like to see again") remain private until both sides have expressed them.

Pictures: profile picture and meetup photos (lit. b; for reviewing reported pictures lit. f)

• You can upload a profile picture and, after a meetup you attended, post photos in its room (at most 10 per person and meetup). Purpose: the people at your table should recognise you, and the group should be able to share memories of the evening.
• The pictures are stored on our own server (Hetzner, Germany), not with an image or cloud service. On upload every picture is scaled down and saved anew; in the process all metadata is removed, including EXIF data such as location (GPS), camera and time taken. We do not keep file names from your device.
• Who sees what: Your profile picture is visible to your connections and to people with a pending connection request between you; the participants of a shared meetup see it only shortly before the meetup starts. Meetup photos are visible only to the participants of that meetup. Every picture is delivered only after login and after these rules have been checked.
• Anyone shown in a meetup photo can have it removed with one tap and without giving a reason; the person who uploaded it does not learn who did so. Reported pictures with sexual content or a child-safety concern are hidden immediately until moderation has reviewed them; moderation can view any picture.

Safety and moderation (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, legitimate interest in a safe platform)

• Blocks (invisible to both sides), reports with a reason and optional free text (visible only to moderation), technical protective measures such as limiting login attempts (for which the IP address is processed briefly).

Server logs (Art. 6(1)(f))

• When the servers are accessed, the IP address, time and requested endpoint are processed for technical reasons, in order to ensure operation and to prevent abuse.

3a. Waitlist, Discord and feedback (before launch)

Waitlist by email (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, consent)

• We store the email address you enter on the waitlist page, as well as the time of entry and the status (waiting / invited / joined). The sole purpose is to send you an access code once, as soon as it is your turn. No newsletter.
• You give your consent by ticking the box on the waitlist page. You can withdraw it at any time without any formal requirements; we will then delete the address promptly.
• Unredeemed entries are deleted no later than six months after the public launch of the app.

Discord server (Art. 6(1)(a) or (f), building a community around the beta)

• The Discord server is a service of Discord Netherlands B.V. (Schiphol Boulevard 195, 1118 BG Schiphol, Netherlands) or of Discord Inc. in the USA. If you join it, Discord processes your data as a separate controller under its own privacy policy (https://discord.com/privacy). Data may be transferred to the USA in the process; Discord bases this on the EU standard contractual clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. We have no influence over this.
• We ourselves store from Discord only what you actively give us there:
  • with /beta: your Discord user ID and your Discord name, in order to put you on the waitlist and send you the access code by direct message;
  • with a ticket: Discord ID, Discord name, the category you chose and the text you write in the ticket and in the associated thread.
• A Discord account is not required. The waitlist by email and, later, the app work without one.

Feedback and tickets (Art. 6(1)(b) or (f))

• We store the category, title, text and the further course of the conversation so that we can handle your request and reply to you.
• A card becomes visible on the public roadmap only if we explicitly release it for that purpose. By default it is not, and the text of your messages is not shown there.
• Tickets sent from the app are deleted together with your account (see section 6).

Counting on the home page (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, legitimate interest in knowing whether our announcements reach people)

• We count how often the home page was opened and how often someone used the Discord door or the email door. Only the type of event, the time and, if contained in the link, a short tag indicating which post you came from (?v=…) are stored.
• IP address, device identifier, browser details or any other identifier are not stored. Events are counted, not people; the numbers cannot be attributed to anyone, not even by us. That is why we set no cookies for this and need no consent banner.

4. What we do NOT do

• No analytics services, no ad networks, no cross-device or cross-site recognition. What we count on the home page is described in section 3a and works without any identifier.
• No passing on or sale of data to third parties.
• No profiling beyond the matching purpose described.
• Meetup reminders are scheduled locally on your device; no information leaves your device for this.

5. Recipients

• Other users see of you: display name, photo if any, description, rough home area, public interests/skills, languages, reliability score, and, within a shared meetup, your chat messages and actively shared contact details.
• Hosting: The servers are operated by Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany (processing on our behalf under Art. 28 GDPR). The server location is Nuremberg, Germany.
• Email delivery: Confirmations, password resets, replies to feedback and waitlist invitations are sent by Resend, Inc. (2261 Market Street #5039, San Francisco, CA 94114, USA) on our behalf. Delivery is fixed to the EU region (Ireland); your email address and the content of the message are processed there. Since Resend is a US company, access from the USA nevertheless cannot be ruled out; the basis for this is the EU standard contractual clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR) in the data processing agreement.
• Push notifications: If you allow notifications, the app registers your device with us using a device identifier (push token) and the app language you have set. Notifications are delivered via Firebase Cloud Messaging of Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland), and on iPhones additionally via the Apple Push Notification Service of Apple Distribution International Ltd. (Hollyhill Industrial Estate, Hollyhill, Cork, Ireland). A notification only says that something happened (e.g. "Reply from the TableMates team"), never what a message says. Access from the USA cannot be ruled out; the basis for this is the EU standard contractual clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR). You can turn notifications off at any time in your phone's settings; if you delete your account, we delete the device identifier.
• Discord: see section 3a. Discord is not a processor on our behalf but a separate controller for the operation of the server.

6. Retention period

• Account data remains stored for as long as your account exists.
• Account deletion is possible directly in the app (Profile → Delete your account). This deletes your profile, interests, tastes, languages, contact details, shared snapshots, connections and blocks, and anonymizes the account. Shared content (e.g. the chat history of a group) is retained without any reference to you. Reports remain stored for moderation (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• Pictures: If you delete a picture, replace your profile picture or a picture is removed (by you, a person shown in it or moderation), it becomes invisible to everyone else immediately; the file is kept for another 30 days solely for moderation (evidence in case of reports) and then deleted automatically. When you delete your account, all your pictures are deleted immediately. Exception: a picture reported for child sexual abuse is kept for up to 90 days (longer only if an authority asks us to), solely so that it can be handed over to law enforcement (Art. 6(1)(c) and (f) GDPR).
• Backup copies of the database are kept for 14 days and then deleted automatically; deleted data thus disappears from the backups after 14 days at the latest.

7. Your rights

You have the right of access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21 GDPR). You can withdraw consent you have given (e.g. the sharing of contact details) with effect for the future; however, participants may already have seen snapshots that were already shown in the chat. To do so, contact the address given above. You can also lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is the Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz Niedersachsen (State Commissioner for Data Protection of Lower Saxony), Prinzenstraße 5, 30159 Hannover.

8. Obligation to provide data

Without account and profile data, TableMates cannot fulfil its purpose. All other information (phone number, address, private interests) is voluntary.