Privacy Policy

This Policy describes the processing of personal data on the JustMess barter platform, in its built-in messenger and in the Pixel Garden game. The data controller is Sharapudin Sharapudinov (an individual), 2761 Lavender Terrace, San Jose, CA 95111, USA, justapp4u@gmail.com.

The servers of the Service are located in the Russian Federation. For users in Russia, processing takes Russian Federal Law No. 152-FZ of 27 July 2006 “On Personal Data” into account (see section 11); for users in the EEA and the UK, section 12 additionally applies, drafted with the GDPR in mind.

This is a translation; the Russian edition prevails in case of discrepancy.

1. What we process

Account data: email address, username, display name, password hash (we neither store nor see the password itself), country, city, date of birth if you provided one, avatar, bio, language and interface settings.

Swap data: listings and their photos, the category and city of a listing, proposals sent and received, deal history, escrow operations and the fee withheld in in-app currency, saved and hidden listings, comments on listings.

Reviews and rating: ratings given and received, review texts and the public rating calculated from them.

Dispute submissions: reports about users, listings, deals and reviews, the messages exchanged in a dispute discussion and the decisions taken.

Your content: messages and attachments (photos, video, documents, voice messages, video notes), stories, profile wall entries, notes, polls, events, comments, reactions.

Voice transcripts: the recognised text of a voice message or video note, if you or another chat participant tapped «Text» under it. A transcript is stored next to the message, is available to members of the same chat and is deleted together with the message. Speech is recognised on our own server — the audio is not passed to anyone for this.

Location in chats: your device’s coordinates, their accuracy in metres and, if the device reports it, the direction of movement. We receive them only when you yourself tap “Location” in a chat and send a point or start live location — for 15 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours or “Until I turn it off”. Your position is sent only while the app is open: no location is collected in the background. During live location each new position replaces the previous one — we do not keep a history of your movements. The coordinates are stored on the server encrypted, like message text, and are visible only to the current members of that chat (in a channel, to its subscribers); they are not shown to people you have blocked or who have blocked you. You can end live location at any time with the “Stop” button; the server also ends it itself when the chosen period runs out, when you leave the chat, or when a block appears in a private chat. After it stops, the last position sent remains in the chat. To remove it, delete the message for everyone: in a private chat at any time, in a group or channel within 48 hours of sending; after that a chat administrator can do it, or we can on request to justapp4u@gmail.com.

Call data: the fact, time, duration and participants of a call and technical connection parameters. We do not record or store the audio or video of calls.

Technical data: IP address, app type and version, device model and operating system, session identifier, sign-in and sign-out times, push notification tokens, approximate country derived from IP.

Device time zone (for example, “Europe/Moscow”): it keeps non-urgent notifications from arriving at night, between 22:00 and 08:00 your time, and makes event times display correctly.

App installation identifier: a random value the app generates itself when installed. The server keeps only an irreversible keyed hash of it (HMAC); we do not store the value itself. What it is for is explained in section 2.

Usage data: activity in chats and the feed, interests and subscriptions, hidden authors and topics, in-app search history, ad impressions and clicks, achievements and statistics.

Saved “Looking for” searches: the search words, the category or game item, the notification mode, and the listings found by the search. Only you can see your searches.

Trust passport: figures we calculate from your swap history: how long you have used the Service (as a range, without an exact date), whether your email is confirmed, the number of completed swaps with unrelated users, how often deals fell through on your side (as a category), your usual response time to proposals, and your rating. Your messages are not analysed for this. If you allow everyone to see your passport, the consent log keeps the fact of consent or its withdrawal, the time, the text edition and the IP address.

Hand-over photos: up to 4 photos and a short note that a party to a deal attaches to the “Handed over” step. Photo metadata — capture coordinates (GPS), camera model, time — is removed on upload. The photos are visible only to the parties to the deal and to the administrator handling a dispute about it.

Text helper, translation and recaps: the text you send to the helper (fix, make more polite, shorten, translate, draft a listing description, summarise), translations of messages, and recap chapters of what you missed in chats. They are processed by a language model on our own servers. No text is passed to third-party services, including artificial intelligence services. The helper’s answer is a draft: it is shown only to you and is not stored unless you send it yourself. A message translation is stored encrypted next to the message, is available to those who can read the message itself, and is deleted together with it or when it is edited. A recap chapter is stored encrypted for 7 days. There are no recaps in private chats; in closed groups and channels they work only if an administrator has enabled them.

Calendar and Meetups: events and meetups you create or are invited to, responses, requests to join, reminders, the Meetups questionnaire, the “I am 18 or older” confirmation, visibility settings and the address access log. Details are in section 14.

Pixel Garden data: progress, plots and plants, inventory, in-app currency balance, transaction history.

Moderation data: reports you file or that are filed about you, and the decisions taken.

2. Purposes and legal bases

• Providing the Service — registration, sign-in, the feed of listings, messaging, calls, the game. Basis: performance of the contract (the Terms of Service) and your consent.
• Running swaps — publishing listings, matching them by city, receiving proposals, holding in-app currency in escrow and calculating the fee, confirming deals and cancelling them automatically. Basis: performance of the contract.
• Participant reputation — collecting reviews, calculating and displaying ratings, detecting manipulation. Without a public reputation, swapping between strangers does not work. Basis: performance of the contract and legitimate interest.
• Handling disputes — a discussion involving both parties and the Administration, decisions about frozen currency, listings and reviews. Basis: legitimate interest and performance of the contract.
• Security — protection against account takeover, spam, fraud and block evasion, incident investigation, sign-in and password-change alerts. Basis: legitimate interest and legal obligation.
• Moderation — handling reports, restricting unlawful content and listings offering prohibited items. Basis: legitimate interest and legal obligation.
• Voice message transcription — when a chat participant taps for it, we convert the speech in a voice message or video note into text and store it for the members of that chat. Without that tap no transcription happens; we never recognise speech automatically. Basis: your consent expressed by the action, and performance of the contract.
• Text helper, translation and recaps — when you tap for it, a language model on our server fixes, rewrites or translates text, or summarises what you missed in a chat. Neither translation nor recaps run automatically without a tap. Basis: your consent expressed by the action, and performance of the contract.
• Location in chats — showing chat members the point or live location you sent. Without your tap no location is requested, and it is not used for the feed, advertising or recommendations. Basis: your consent expressed by the action (sending a point or starting live location), and performance of the contract.
• Saved searches — letting you know about new listings that match your “Looking for” search. Searches are never used for advertising or promotion and are never shown to sellers. Basis: performance of the contract.
• Trust passport — helping the other party judge reliability before a swap. Basis: legitimate interest — for showing it to the other side of your proposal or deal; your separate consent — for showing it to all users.
• Calendar and Meetups — keeping your events and reminders, inviting participants, showing the meetups feed, revealing the address to participants and protecting them. Basis: performance of the contract; for the Meetups questionnaire — your consent (you can skip and delete it); for the “I am 18 or older” confirmation, the address access log and handling reports — legitimate interest in participants’ safety.
• Notifications — push messages and emails about events in the Service. Basis: performance of the contract and consent; notifications can be turned off in settings. Non-urgent notifications are held until morning in your time zone.
• Preventing manipulation — detecting several accounts of one person through a shared app installation or a shared IP address. Such a link only removes task rewards and points, and a deal between linked accounts does not count towards the trust passport; there are no blocks or negative marks based on it. Basis: legitimate interest.
• Improving the Service — aggregate statistics, error diagnostics, performance measurement. Basis: legitimate interest.
• Advertising — displaying promoted channels, profiles and listings, frequency capping, measuring effectiveness. No advertising profile is built about you: see section 5. Basis: legitimate interest.
• Legal compliance — responding to lawful requests from competent authorities and retaining data for statutory periods. Basis: legal obligation.

3. City, reviews and rating — what others see

Swapping things means carrying them by hand, so the city is the feed’s primary filter. We store the city you chose and the country code, together with the city’s identifier in the open GeoNames geographical database (CC BY 4.0 licence), which lets us read place names consistently across languages and tell identically named cities apart.

• you choose your city yourself from the reference list; device geolocation is not used for the feed or listings — the Service asks for it only when you tap “Location” in a chat (see section 1);
• your IP address is used only to derive an approximate country — for interface language and sign-in security;
• your city is visible to other users on your listings, and is used to show you listings nearby;
• you can change your city in settings or leave it unset, in which case the feed shows listings without a geographic filter;
• the “where I am browsing right now” choice in the feed header is kept on your device only and is not sent to the server.

Your rating, your number of completed swaps and the reviews about you are public too: anyone opening your profile or your listing can see them. That is a condition of the platform working — there is no other way to judge a stranger. A review you leave is shown as coming from you.

Your swap history as such is not public: other users see aggregate figures (rating, number of deals) and reviews, but not the list of your deals or the messages about them.

The trust passport is visible by default to you and to the other side of your current proposal or deal. All users of the Service see it only if you enable this in Settings → Account → Privacy. That is a separate consent to making the data available: we record it in the consent log, and once you withdraw it the passport stops being shown at once. Unauthenticated visitors never see the passport. Linking accounts by a shared IP address or a shared app installation can be wrong — for example, when many people go online through one carrier address — so it only excludes a deal from the count and never creates a negative mark.

4. Who receives the data

We do not sell personal data and do not share it with third parties for their own marketing. Sharing happens only as far as the Service needs it:

• Other users — to the extent you decide: message recipients, chat participants, channel subscribers, profile visitors, and anyone who sees your listing, your city, your rating and the reviews about you.
• The other party to a swap and the Administration — within a dispute discussion: the user complained about sees the claim and can answer it.
• Apple (APNs) and Google (FCM) — solely to deliver push notifications to your device: the device token is matched with the notification text. Can be disabled in notification settings. The same channel is used by the server to update the lock-screen banner of a person sharing live location: the time left and the number of viewers, without coordinates.
• Cloudflare — the Turnstile service protecting sign-in and sign-up forms from automated attacks; it processes the IP address and technical browser characteristics.
• Apple (MapKit JS) — solely to display the map under a location in a chat. While the map is on screen — before you send a point and when you view a location — the device loads Apple’s map library and the image of the relevant map area from Apple’s servers. Apple receives the device’s IP address, technical request data and the map area being shown, which means it can learn where the point is. We do not pass Apple your name, account, messages, or who sent the point and in which chat. If Apple’s map is unavailable, a plain diagram without a map is drawn instead, and no requests go to Apple.
• Google (Google Fonts) — loading the interface fonts of the Service and of Pixel Garden. When you open the app or the website, the device requests the font files from Google’s servers, and Google receives the IP address and technical request data (browser type, language, the site address). Google receives no account data and no content of the Service.
• The map service you choose yourself — only when you tap “Get directions” on an event or meetup, or “Open in Maps” on a location in a chat. The venue address or the point’s coordinates are passed to the app or website you pick: Yandex Maps, 2GIS, Apple Maps (on Apple devices), Google Maps, or on Android also the app you choose in the system menu. From then on that service handles them under its own rules. Apart from the address or coordinates we pass nothing to it and receive nothing from it.
• Your device’s calendar — only through the “Add to phone calendar” button: the title, the time and, if it is already visible to you, the address of the event. We do not request access to your device calendar and do not read its contents.
• Hosting and connectivity providers — server hosting and traffic transmission.
• Competent state authorities — upon a lawful and properly issued request.

The GeoNames city database is loaded onto our own servers in advance: city search runs against our database, and your queries are not sent to any external service.

Files and media are stored in our own object storage on servers we rent, and email is sent from our own mail server. The app contains no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs.

Speech recognition, the text helper, translation and recaps run on our own servers. Neither messages nor drafts nor transcripts are passed to third-party artificial intelligence services.

The garden widgets and the lock-screen timer get their data only from the app on the same device: ready times and short labels. Nothing is sent to the server for them — see Cookies and local storage.

5. Advertising in the Service

Advertising in the Service means promotion within the Service itself: other users’ channels, profiles and listings. We place the ad slots ourselves; there are no third-party ad networks, SDKs or pixels in the app, so advertisers get no access to your data and cannot follow you outside the Service.

• What is marked as an ad. Every ad slot is labelled “Ad” and looks distinct from ordinary listings and posts. If there is no label, it is not advertising.
• There is no profile-based selection. We do not build an advertising profile and do not choose what to show you based on your interests, age, gender, city or messages. Everyone sees the same queue of promoted material, ordered by the advertisers.
• What is taken into account. Only two things: how many times you have already seen that material (so it is not shown again beyond a daily cap) and whether you already follow the promoted channel (in which case it is not shown to you). The impression counter is stored on the server against your account.
• What the advertiser sees. Aggregate statistics only: how many times a slot was shown and how many clicks it received. They receive neither your data nor a list of who was shown the ad.
• Private stays private. The contents of your messages, calls and files are never used for advertising.

If we ever introduce interest-based ad selection, we will update this section before it goes live, notify you separately and give you a way to opt out. Advertising cannot be switched off entirely in the free version of the Service.

6. How we protect data

• all traffic between the app and our servers goes over HTTPS/WSS (TLS);
• passwords are stored only as an irreversible hash (bcrypt);
• message contents are stored encrypted in the database;
• server access is restricted and key-based, and administrator actions are logged;
• sensitive events (password change, sign-in from a new device) trigger an email alert, and two-factor authentication is available.

7. Retention

• account data and content — while the account exists;
• listings — while they are published; once withdrawn or swapped, the card remains in the deal history of the parties;
• the history of completed swaps, reviews and ratings — indefinitely, because the other party’s reputation rests on them; after an account is deleted they are anonymised;
• after a deletion request — a 14-day grace period (you can change your mind), then the data is erased or anonymised as described in Deleting your account and data; it disappears from backups within 30 days. If an unfinished deal, dispute or complaint exists at that moment, the data is kept until it is resolved;
• technical logs — up to 12 months;
• the sign-in journal of your account (time and method of each sign-in, IP address, device and app type) — 180 days: we use it to protect accounts from takeover and to detect abuse such as fraud, evasion of restrictions and manipulation;
• the link between an account and an app installation (the hash of the installation identifier) — 180 days after the last sign-in from that installation;
• a saved search — 90 days from saving or renewal, after which it stops working and is deleted within 30 days; the listings found by it — 30 days;
• hand-over photos — 90 days, or, if there is a dispute or an open complaint about the deal, until it is resolved; the note on the “Handed over” step is kept in the deal’s step history, like the deal itself;
• a message translation — as long as the message itself exists; a recap chapter — 7 days;
• location in chats — the last point sent or the last live-location position is kept until the message containing it is deleted for everyone; after deletion the coordinates are erased from the server within an hour;
• the trust passport is recalculated and kept while the account exists; the consent log likewise;
• calendar and Meetups: the exact venue address and the link to an online meetup — 30 days after the event ends, then erased; the address access log — 12 months; past events and meetups — 12 months, cancelled ones — 30 days; fired reminders and declined calendar invitations — 30 days; “seen” marks in the meetups feed — 30 days; the Meetups questionnaire — until you reset it;
• data we are required to keep by law — for the statutory period;
• moderation and blocking records — up to 3 years, to prevent evasion of restrictions.

8. Your rights

You may obtain information about the processing of your personal data, have it corrected, request that it be blocked or deleted, and withdraw your consent.

Most of this is available directly in the app: edit profile data and your city in settings, withdraw a listing in your own swaps section, delete content in the relevant screen, delete the account in account settings.

Send other requests to justapp4u@gmail.com from the address registered to the account. We reply within 30 days. We may ask you to verify your identity so that data is not disclosed to someone else.

Withdrawing consent stops the processing and, as a rule, ends your ability to use the Service, because it cannot technically operate without processing data.

9. Children

The Service is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect their data. If you are a legal guardian and believe a child registered without your consent, write to justapp4u@gmail.com — we will block the account and delete the data.

Our measures against child exploitation are described in Child Safety Standards.

The Meetups section is available only from the age of 18 — see section 14.

10. Cookies and local storage

We use cookies and browser/app storage, including to keep you signed in and to remember the city you are browsing. See the Cookie Policy.

11. Where data is processed

Personal data of Russian citizens is recorded, systematised, accumulated, stored, updated and retrieved using databases located in the Russian Federation.

The controller is an individual residing in the USA and accesses the data from there. This is a cross-border transfer, of which you are informed by this Policy; we have no other recipients of data in the USA.

In addition, cross-border transfer occurs as far as needed to deliver push notifications (Apple, Google), to load fonts (Google), to display the map under a location in a chat (Apple) and to protect against automated attacks (Cloudflare), when you use the Service from abroad, and when you yourself open an event address or a location in a foreign map service (see section 4).

12. Additional information for EEA and UK users

The controller is Sharapudin Sharapudinov. Legal bases under Art. 6(1) GDPR: performance of a contract (b), consent (a), legitimate interests (f) and compliance with a legal obligation (c).

You have the rights of access (Art. 15), rectification (16), erasure (17), restriction (18), data portability (20) and objection (21), including objection to profiling. To exercise them, write to justapp4u@gmail.com.

The right to erasure is limited where the data is needed to protect the other party to a swap: records of completed deals, reviews and ratings are retained in anonymised form (Art. 17(3) GDPR).

You may lodge a complaint with the data protection supervisory authority of your country of residence.

Transfers outside the EEA (to our servers) rely on your consent and on the necessity of performing the contract with you (Art. 49 GDPR).

13. Additional information for users in the United States

We do not sell personal data and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising — not for money, and not for any other valuable consideration. Accordingly, we do not need a separate “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link: there is nothing to sell and no one to sell it to.

California residents have the right (CCPA/CPRA) to know what categories of personal information we have collected, where it came from, what it is used for and who it was disclosed to; to obtain a copy of it; to request its correction or deletion; and to limit the use of sensitive information. We do not discriminate against you for exercising these rights: prices and features stay the same.

Categories collected, in CCPA terms: identifiers (email address, username, IP address, device identifier), customer records (city), commercial information (swap and proposal history), internet activity (actions within the Service, saved searches), geolocation — coarse (city, time zone) and precise (only the location you yourself send to a chat), audio and visual information (photos you upload, voice messages, calls), age information (the “I am 18 or older” confirmation) and inferences (interests used for the feed, the Meetups questionnaire). The source is you and your device. Purposes and recipients are in sections 2 and 4.

Sensitive personal information (as defined by the CPRA) is collected only in the form of your sign-in credentials and the precise geolocation you yourself send to a chat, and is used solely to provide the Service (signing in, showing the location to chat members) and to secure it — that is, within the limits in which the right to limit its use does not arise.

Send requests to justapp4u@gmail.com from the address registered to your account, or carry them out yourself in the app (see section 8). We reply within 45 days, extendable once by a further 45 days with notice. An authorised agent may submit a request on your behalf with a power of attorney.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. No single standard for handling the Do Not Track signal has emerged, and we do not act on it, because we do not track you across third-party sites at all. We do honour the Global Privacy Control signal as an opt-out of sale and sharing — although no such sharing takes place in the first place.

Residents of other states with privacy laws (Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas and others) have equivalent rights: access, correction, deletion, a copy of their data and an opt-out of profiling for advertising. The procedure is the same.

14. Calendar and Meetups

The calendar brings your arrangements together: calls, group get-togethers, handing over an item in a swap. Meetups is a section for shared activities with other users, online and offline: co-working, board games, language practice, walks. There is no dating in the section: a card describes the meetup, not a person, and there are no filters by gender or appearance. There is no money in Meetups either: no tickets, no fees, no rewards.

What we store

• the event or meetup: title, description, cover image, time and time zone, format (online or offline), city, district and landmark, the exact venue address or the link to an online meetup, the type of venue, the number of places and the participation rules;
• participation: invitations, “Going / Maybe / Not going” responses, requests to join and the waiting list, your answer to the organiser’s question if they asked one, your reminders;
• questions about a meetup and the answers to them, “Save” and “Not interested” marks, organisers you have hidden, cards you have seen;
• the Meetups questionnaire — five questions with ready-made answers: what to do, format, convenient times, group size, languages;
• the “I am 18 or older” confirmation and when it was given;
• the address access log: who was shown the exact venue address and when, including when a plan is sent to someone close and when a moderator reviews it;
• your answer to “Are you OK?” after a meetup starts, and the “Tell me when a meetup appears in my city” subscription with the chosen city;
• calendar and Meetups settings: who may invite you, what is shown in your profile, which notifications to send.

The questionnaire. It is used only to order the Meetups feed — which meetups to show first. Only you see your answers; they are not shown to other users, organisers or advertisers. The questionnaire has no sensitive topics: no politics, religion, health, finances or alcohol. You can skip it, and reset a completed one in Settings → Meetups, which deletes the answers.

Age. Meetups is available from the age of 18. We ask only for the “I am 18 or older” checkbox and do not request your date of birth for it. If a date of birth is already set in your profile and shows you are under 18, the section is unavailable.

Venue and location

• Meetups do not request or use device geolocation. The venue is whatever the organiser typed in; “Nearby” in the feed means the city in your profile or the one chosen in the feed. A location you yourself send to a meetup chat is seen by the members of that chat — as in any other chat (see section 1).
• Before a request is approved, only the city, the district and the nearest metro station or landmark are shown. The exact address is stored separately from the rest of the meetup data and is shown only to participants: in the calendar — to those invited personally; in Meetups — once the request is approved and, if the organiser chose so, no earlier than the number of hours before the start they set. Membership of an open chat does not reveal the address.
• Every display of the exact address is logged. The exact address never appears in the feed, the meetup card, notifications, the meetup link, your profile, or the copy of data the app keeps on the device for offline use.
• If only two people have signed up for an offline meetup, a participant is warned about it in advance.

Who sees what

• The card of a published meetup — the organiser (name, profile picture, since when they have been on JustMess, number of swaps and meetups held), city, district or landmark, time, activity and number of participants — is visible to users of the Meetups section and, through the meetup link, to unauthenticated visitors in a shortened form.
• The organiser sees your request without your photo: initials and facts about you on JustMess.
• The list of participants is visible only to the organiser and approved participants, and only if the organiser has opened it; you can hide yourself from the list.
• Once approved, you join the meetup’s closed chat. Such a chat has no invite links, and 7 days after the meetup it becomes read-only.
• Your calendar as a whole is never visible to other users. Your profile shows meetups and events only as you choose: separately for those you organise and for your participation in others’; for each — nobody, contacts or everyone, nobody by default. You can change the choice for an individual meetup or event. The exact address is never shown in the profile — only the city and district.
• Invitations from people outside your contacts go to Requests. You choose who may invite you in the calendar settings.

Safety

• Reporting an event, meetup, question, answer or participant and blocking the person take a single action. A report does not take a meetup down automatically. A participant’s report of a safety threat or a child safety concern, or reports from several different people, put the meetup on review: until a moderator decides, new participants do not receive the address. The moderator sees the report and, if necessary, the exact address; that view is logged too.
• Texts of meetups and events addressed to people outside your contacts go through an automatic check for prohibited content and for an address typed into the title or description.
• “Share my plan with someone close” prepares an ordinary message with the time and the address. You send it yourself to a recipient you choose; we record only the fact in the address access log.
• “Are you OK?” is a notification about 45 minutes after an offline meetup starts. Answering is optional. “I need help” opens a call to 112 from your phone, a report and sending your plan. We do not call anyone ourselves, and nothing is sent without your tap.

How the address is passed to a map app and to your phone’s calendar is described in section 4; retention periods are in section 7.

15. Changes to this Policy

The current edition is always available at https://justmess.chat/privacy. We will announce material changes inside the Service or by email at least 7 days in advance.

Edition of 2026-10-25.