Privacy Policy

Nisf is a Muslim matrimonial application. This policy explains what we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the control you have over it.

We have written this policy against what the app actually does, feature by feature. Where a practice is unusual for a matrimonial app (such as the fact that Nisf has no in-app chat, or that we store only your month of birth and not your full date of birth), we say so plainly.

Who we are

Nisf Suite No. 72, Door No. 63/700, D Space, 6th Floor, Sky Tower Mavoor Road Junction, Bank Road Kozhikode, Kerala, India 673001

Contact: info@nisfapp.com

In this policy, "we", "us", "our" and "Nisf" refer to the above. "You" and "your" refer to the person using the app or visiting our website. "Service" means the Nisf mobile application, our website at nisfapp.com, and everything we operate to run them.

Almost everything below describes the app, because that is where all but a little of what we hold about you is created. What the website collects is small, and §1.9 sets out the whole of it.

1. Data we collect

1.1 Account data

Created when you sign up, before you build a profile.

We never see or store your Google or Apple password. If you sign in with an email and password, your password is handled by our sign-in provider and is never readable by us.

1.2 Guardian and family contact data

Nisf is built around wali involvement, so we collect contact details of people other than you:

• If you are a female user: your wali's name, their relationship to you, and, where applicable, your reasons for nominating a wali other than your father. You also choose who can see your wali's details: everyone, or only users whose requests you have accepted.
• If you are a male user: optionally the name, relationship and phone number of a relative (father, grandfather, uncle or brother) who can be contacted on your behalf.

Please only provide another person's details if you have their permission. You are responsible for having obtained it. We will delete a third party's details on request from you or from them.

1.3 Profile data

Your profile is the heart of the Service and is the data other users see. It includes:

Basic and background Age and month and year of birth (we deliberately do not collect your exact date of birth), ethnicity, languages, current location (locality, city, region, country), place of origin, preferred location to settle, and whether you are a revert to Islam.

Education and work Highest education, field of study, place of study, profession, field of work, work location, profession type, career level, family income band, your father's profession, and your views on working after marriage.

Family and marital Marital status, number of children, duration of any previous marriage, family details, your family's religious practice, the kinds of matches you are open to, wedding and mahr expectations, and whether you are open to living with in-laws.

Appearance Height, weight band, body type, skin tone, facial appearance, dressing styles, whether you wear glasses, hair style, beard style (male users), and head covering such as hijab or niqab (female users).

Photographs Photos you upload, together with the visibility rules you set for them (see §3.1). Photographs are part of a brother's profile only, so this applies to brothers: a sister's profile carries none. A brother who follows the opinion that photography is impermissible may request an exemption from the photo requirement instead, and we store the status of that request.

Religious practice (special category data) Your sect or ideology, madhhab, aqeedah, prayer habits, Qur'an recitation ability, Qur'an memorisation, Arabic comprehension and speaking ability, religious specialities (such as being a hafidh or involvement in da'wah), favourite speakers, reciters and organisations, courses you have completed in the app, and, for sisters, whether you believe photography of people is impermissible, which is shown on your profile and which other users can filter on.

Personality Your responses to our personality questionnaire, from which we derive scores on five dimensions (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), along with your top traits and your Islamic, recreational, food and other interests.

What you are looking for Your stated preferences for a spouse's age, ethnicity, profession, education, appearance, religious practice, personality and family, plus free-text sections about yourself, your hobbies and what you are looking for.

1.4 Data we do not collect

To be explicit, because matrimonial apps are often asked about these:

• No health or medical data. We do not ask for medical history, disability, genetic or fertility information. Height, weight band and whether you wear glasses are collected as appearance attributes, not as health records.
• No biometric data. We do not process your photographs as biometric data. We do not create a face template from them, and we do not use them to identify you anywhere outside Nisf.
• No contacts, calendar, microphone or SMS access. The app requests camera and photo library access solely so you can add profile photos and attach screenshots to feedback, and notification permission so we can send you push notifications.

1.5 Activity data

• Requests you send, receive, accept, decline, put on hold, revoke or let expire, and the reasons you select when declining or revoking.
• Profiles you save, and profiles you block.
• Timestamps recording when someone viewed your profile photos, and which walis' details you have viewed.
• Your online/offline presence status and when it last changed.
• Courses, lessons, modules and quizzes you complete; coaching sessions you book, reschedule or cancel.
• Reports you submit about other users, including the reasons, your description, and a snapshot of the reported profile at the time of reporting.
• Moderation records about you: reports our own team raises against your profile, the reasons selected, our verification and photo exemption decisions, and the reason recorded when a profile is deactivated, which is the reason shown to you in the app. See §7 of the Terms and Conditions for how moderation works.
• Feedback you submit, including the subject, your message, any screenshots you attach, your WhatsApp number if you provide it, and your app version.

1.6 Data collected automatically

• Device and technical data: device type and model, operating system, app version, app store of origin, language, time zone, and the network address your device connects from.
• Push notification token, so we can deliver notifications to your device.
• Diagnostic data: when the app crashes or hits an error, we receive a report describing what went wrong, together with basic device details and enough account information to trace the fault to a specific account.
• Advertising identifier: your device's advertising ID is collected from first launch (see §1.7 and §4.1). You can limit or reset it in your device settings; see §4.3.

1.7 Analytics and advertising data

Analytics collection is on by default, from the moment you first open the app. Nisf does not currently offer an in-app setting to turn it off. The controls you do have are described in §4.3.

We use analytics and advertising services to understand how the app is used and to measure our campaigns. We collect product-usage events: screens you visit and milestones you reach, such as completing onboarding, creating a profile, sending or accepting a request, viewing the paywall, starting your free trial, enrolling in a course, or deleting your account.

For advertising attribution and measurement we also share your email address and gender with our advertising provider. Your email address is protected before it leaves your device so that it does not travel in readable form. Separately, when your account is first created, your name, email address and account identifier are included alongside an event, and those are not protected in that way.

We do not share your photographs, your free-text profile answers, your family or wali details, your contact numbers, or any other profile field with these providers.

We do not use analytics data to make decisions about individual users. It is used in aggregate, to understand which parts of the app work and which do not.

1.8 There is no in-app chat

Nisf does not provide messaging between users, and we therefore hold no conversation history between you and a match. Contact happens off the platform; see §3.2.

1.9 The Nisf website

Our website at nisfapp.com tells people about Nisf and points them to the app. Where a page asks you for something (a form, or a sign-in if we add one), it says so on the page, and what you enter there is handled as described in this policy. If you email us or open one of its WhatsApp links, that is you choosing to contact us, and what you then send is covered by §3.2 and by that provider's own policy.

The website measures its own traffic from your first visit. In broad terms this covers the pages you view, where you arrived from, links you follow out of the site, and basic technical data such as browser and device type and an approximate location derived from your network address. Some of it uses cookies and similar browser storage so that repeat page views can be recognised as one visit. We use this to understand which pages work and which campaigns bring people to the app.

The site carries no third-party advertising and no advertising cookies, and advertising and personalisation signals are switched off in our analytics provider. This measurement does not tell us who you are, and we do not use it to link your browsing to a Nisf account. If you go on to install the app and sign in, the app's own collection begins there and is described in §1.7. Some pages may embed content hosted elsewhere, such as videos or other media from third-party platforms. When such content loads, that platform receives the request, and its own privacy policy applies to it.

Your controls here are your browser's: private browsing, blocking or clearing cookies and site data, or a content blocker will each stop or remove some or all of this. You may also object to this processing, or ask us to erase what we hold, by writing to us (§6.1).

2. How we use your data

3. Who we share your data with

3.1 Other users of Nisf

This is the sharing that matters most day to day.

Visible to other eligible users of the opposite gender: your profile ID, age, location, ethnicity, languages, education, profession, income band, marital status, family details, appearance attributes, religious practice details, personality traits and interests, your free-text sections, and your stated preferences.

Not visible to other users: your email address, your phone numbers, your wali's or relative's contact details (until the conditions below are met), your exact month of birth, your personality questionnaire answers, your saved and blocked lists, your decline reasons, and any reports you submit.

Photographs are shown according to the visibility tier you choose:

• Everyone: any signed-in user of the opposite gender;
• Sent: only users you have sent a request to, plus accepted users;
• Accepted: only users whose request you have accepted.

These tiers are enforced by us, not merely hidden in the app. You can additionally enable one-time photo viewing, and block screenshots of your photos on devices that support it. Screenshot blocking is a deterrent, not a guarantee: no app can prevent someone photographing a screen with another device.

Your profile can be shared outside the app. Nisf lets a user copy a profile's details as text, or share it as a PDF, so that a match can be discussed with family or with a wali. That is how proposals are usually considered, so we support it. Contact details are never included, and your photographs are included only where your own photo settings allow it.

Beyond that, anyone who can see your profile can also take a screenshot of it or pass it on, and once something has left the app we cannot recall it. So it is worth choosing your photo visibility with that in mind, and sharing on your profile what you are comfortable being seen.

Contact details are different. Your phone numbers and your relative's details are never part of a shared profile, and are released when a request is accepted. Our Terms do not allow a user to publish them or use them for anything other than the proposal.

Wali details follow your own setting, and are the exception to the rule above. You choose who may see them: everyone, or only users whose request you have accepted, and the app requires you to choose. Choosing everyone is a decision you take in advance: any eligible user may then unlock your wali's contact details without sending you a request at all. That costs them one of their request credits, we record which walis they have viewed (§1.5), and they can unlock yours only once. If you choose the other setting, the details are released when you accept a request and no sooner.

3.2 WhatsApp introductions

When a male user's request is accepted, we send a WhatsApp message to the female user's number, addressed to her wali. That message contains the male user's name, profile ID and phone number (and his secondary number and his nominated relative's name and phone number, where he has provided them).

This message is sent through a messaging provider and delivered over WhatsApp. It is sent only if the female user has given WhatsApp consent; if she has not, no message is sent.

Once contact moves to WhatsApp, that conversation is between you and the other party. It is not part of the Service, we do not have access to it, and it is governed by WhatsApp's own privacy policy, not this one.

3.3 Service providers

We rely on a small number of companies to run the Service. Each processes only what it needs for the purpose shown, and only on our instructions.

We do not give any of these providers permission to use your data for their own independent purposes, except that our analytics and advertising providers also process data in accordance with their own terms.

If you would like to know which companies we currently use, write to info@nisfapp.com and we will tell you.

Card and bank details never reach us. Payments are handled entirely by our payment providers and by the app stores. We receive only the outcome of a transaction and a reference for it.

3.4 Legal and corporate disclosures

We may disclose your data where we are legally required to do so, where we believe in good faith that it is necessary to protect the safety of our users or the public, to investigate fraud or abuse, or to establish or defend legal claims.

If Nisf is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, your data may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you before your data becomes subject to a different privacy policy, and you will have the opportunity to delete your account first.

3.5 We do not sell your data

We do not sell your personal data, and we never have. We do not trade, rent or licence your profile, your photographs or your contact details to data brokers, marketers, other matrimonial services, or anyone else.

4. Consent, legal basis and eligibility

4.1 Legal basis

Where the GDPR or the UK GDPR applies to you, we rely on:

• Contract: to run your account, display your profile, deliver requests and process payments. Without this data there is no Service to provide.
• Explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a)): for religious and philosophical beliefs, which is the special category of data your sect, madhhab, aqeedah, prayer habits and related fields fall into. You provide this consent by choosing to enter that information into your profile, knowing it will be shown to other users. You may withdraw it by removing those fields or deleting your profile.
• Consent: for push notifications, which your device asks you to allow.
• Legitimate interests: for analytics and advertising measurement, for security, fraud and fake-profile detection, and for service stability. In each case we weigh that interest against your rights, and you may object (§6.1).
• Legal obligation: where the law requires us to retain or disclose data.

The consent described above covers showing your religious information to other users, which is the purpose you provide it for. As set out in §1.7, an indicator of your sect is also attached to our analytics events. If you are in the EEA or the UK and you do not want that, write to info@nisfapp.com and we will exclude you from analytics and erase what has already been collected.

Where India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 applies, we process your personal data on the basis of the consent you give when you create your account and complete your profile, and for the legitimate uses the Act permits.

4.2 Age requirement: 18 and over

Nisf is exclusively for adults aged 18 and over. This is a matrimonial service, and marriage is its only purpose. We do not accept a date of birth that would make you younger than 18.

If you are under 18, you may not create an account, and you must not attempt to do so by misstating your age.

4.3 Your controls

• Analytics and advertising: there is currently no in-app switch. At the device level you can reset or delete your advertising ID, and turn on "Limit Ad Tracking" (iOS) or "Delete advertising ID" (Android), which stops the advertising identifier being shared. You may also object to this processing, or ask us to erase what we hold, by writing to us (§6.1).
• The website: in your browser. Private browsing, blocking or clearing cookies and site data, or a content blocker will each stop or remove some or all of what §1.9 describes.
• Push notifications: in the app's notification preferences, or in your device settings.
• WhatsApp introduction messages: by withdrawing WhatsApp consent in the app.
• Religious and profile data: by editing or clearing those fields, or by deleting your profile.
• Everything: by deleting your account (§6.2).

Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew it.

5. How long we keep your data

While your account is active, we keep your profile and account data so the Service can function.

Requests expire automatically. A connection request that is not acted upon expires and is removed after its expiry period. Expired, declined and revoked requests are archived in a request history so that both parties retain a record of who has previously contacted whom. This is a safety measure, and prevents the same profile repeatedly re-approaching someone.

When you delete your account, we erase your data immediately, not on a delayed schedule. In a single operation we delete your account record, your profile and every photograph on it, your personality and compatibility data, your settings and saved preferences, your activity and course records, your purchase records, and your sign-in credentials.

What survives deletion, and why:

• Anonymous deletion reasons. If you tell us why you are leaving, we keep the reason. If you tell us you are leaving because you are marrying someone you met on Nisf, we are notified of that so we can record the outcome.
• Records held by other users. If someone accepted your request before you deleted your account, and contact moved to WhatsApp, that conversation and the contact details you shared are on their device and in their WhatsApp account. We cannot reach into it, and deleting your Nisf account does not remove it.
• Reports and safety records. If you have been the subject of a report, we retain the record for as long as we need it to keep other users safe and to defend any claim.
• Financial records. Transaction records are retained for as long as tax and accounting law requires, and are held by our payment providers as well as by us.
• Analytics and advertising data. Events already sent to our analytics and advertising providers sit in their systems and are subject to their retention periods, not ours. Deleting your Nisf account does not retroactively delete them, though we clear the identifiers linking them to you. You can also exercise deletion rights directly with those providers.
• Diagnostic data. Crash reports are retained on a rolling basis for troubleshooting and then aged out.
• Residual copies. For a short period after deletion, copies of data may persist in our providers' systems before being overwritten in the ordinary course. We do not use these copies, and they are not accessible through the Service.

6. Your rights

6.1 What you can ask for

Subject to the law that applies to you, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you;
• Correct anything inaccurate; most of it you can edit yourself in the app;
• Delete your account and your data;
• Export a copy of your data in a portable form;
• Object to or restrict certain processing;
• Withdraw consent you have given, where we rely on consent (§4.3);
• Complain to your data protection authority. In India, that is the Data Protection Board; in the EU or UK, your national supervisory authority.

Most of these you can exercise yourself in the app without contacting us. For the rest, write to info@nisfapp.com. We will respond within 30 days. We may ask you to verify your identity before we act, so that nobody else can make a request in your name.

We do not charge for these requests, and we will not treat you differently for making one.

6.2 Deleting your account

Go to your account settings and choose to delete your account. Deletion is immediate and, as described in §5, comprehensive. It cannot be undone. Your profile ID is not reissued to you if you sign up again.

If you have an active subscription, deleting your Nisf account does not by itself cancel it. Subscriptions are managed by Apple or Google, and you must cancel through the App Store or Play Store to stop future billing.

7. How we protect your data

7.1 Technical measures

We protect your data with, among other things:

• Access controls applied by us, not left to the app. Who may see or change each record is decided on our side. Photographs are the clearest example: the visibility tier you choose is applied by us, so it cannot be overridden from a device.
• Measures to detect and block automated, unauthorised or abusive access.
• One-time password verification of phone numbers.
• Screenshot protection on photo screens, where you have enabled it and the device supports it.
• Regular review of the safeguards we have in place.

We deliberately do not publish the detail of these measures, or of the systems behind them. Describing them precisely would be of most use to the people they exist to stop.

7.2 Organisational measures

Access to user data by our team is limited to those who need it to run the Service, chiefly for profile verification, moderation, report investigation and support. Moderation necessarily involves a person reading your profile text and viewing your photographs, and may extend to photographs whose visibility you have restricted to particular users. Reviewers act on our instructions and only for the purposes in §2.

7.3 The limits of this

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. In particular, anything you make visible to another user is out of your control once they have seen it. Please think carefully before sharing photographs or contact details, and use the visibility tiers we provide. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

8. International transfers

Our primary infrastructure is located in India. For most of our users, that means their account data, profile data and photographs stay in India.

Some of the providers we rely on operate internationally, including in the United States and the European Union. Limited categories of data are therefore processed outside India, chiefly analytics and advertising data, messaging, payment and diagnostic data.

Where data is transferred out of the EEA or the UK, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or an applicable adequacy decision. Where data is transferred out of India, we do so in accordance with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

By using Nisf, you understand that your data will be processed in the countries described above, which may have different data protection laws from your own.

9. Children's privacy

Nisf is not for children, and is not directed at anyone under 18.

We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we learn that a user is under 18, we will delete their account and their data promptly and without notice.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child has created an account, contact info@nisfapp.com and we will remove it.

10. Changes to this policy, and how to reach us

We will update this policy as the app changes. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top.

If we make a material change (such as collecting a new category of data, sharing data with a new provider, or using your data for a new purpose), we will notify you in the app or by email before the change takes effect. Where the new processing requires your consent, we will ask for it again rather than assuming your previous answer still applies.

Please review this policy from time to time.

Contact

Email: info@nisfapp.com

Post: Nisf Suite No. 72, Door No. 63/700, D Space, 6th Floor, Sky Tower Mavoor Road Junction, Bank Road Kozhikode, Kerala, India 673001

For privacy requests, please write "Privacy Request" in your subject line so we can route it correctly.

Governing law

This policy is governed by the laws of India, and the courts at Kozhikode, Kerala shall have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from it, without prejudice to any right you have to bring a claim or complain to a regulator in your country of residence.