PopOff
Privacy Policy
Last updated: 8 October 2026
Before publishing: the operator's legal name, address, contact address and the governing country in this document are placeholders written as [SQUARE BRACKETS]. Fill them in, and have the result read by someone qualified in your country. This page is written to be accurate about what the software does; it is not legal advice.
PopOff is a place to study with other people. This page says exactly what we collect, why we need it, who else ever sees it, how long we keep it, and how to get rid of it.
The short version
- There are no advertising networks, no analytics and no tracking pixels in PopOff. Nobody is profiled, and nothing is sold or shared with data brokers.
- The only cookies are the ones that keep you signed in and keep your session safe. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.
- You can delete your account, and everything in it, from inside the app at any time.
- What other people can see about you is what you put on your profile, plus what you say in rooms and chats.
Who is responsible
PopOff is operated by [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME], [ADDRESS] — the data fiduciary / controller. We process your personal data on the basis of your consent, given when you create your account, for the purposes set out below. Questions, requests and complaints: support@popoff.club.
Grievance Officer (India, Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023): [GRIEVANCE OFFICER NAME], reachable at support@popoff.club. They answer data questions and complaints. [If you have users in the EU or UK, name your representative here if you need one.]
What we collect, and why
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address, password (stored only as a one-way hash), name, age | To create your account, sign you in, reset a forgotten password, and keep under-18s out of the 18+ part of the app. |
| Anything you choose to add to your profile: photo, bio, subject, region, interests, prompts, a voice note, links to your own social profiles, gender | So other people can decide whether to study with you. All optional; all visible to other signed-in people. |
| Your study activity: focus sessions, points, streaks, which rooms you were in | The leaderboard, your own stats, and the points you spend in the Store. |
| Messages you send: direct messages, room chat, community channels | To deliver them. Direct messages are readable by you and the person you sent them to. |
| Reports and blocks you make | To keep people safe and to act on rule-breaking. |
| Sign-in security log: the time, your IP address and browser user-agent for sign-ins, failed attempts and password changes | To stop somebody guessing their way into your account, and to show you your own active sessions. |
| If you turn notifications on: the address your browser's push service gives us, per device | To send the notifications you asked for. You can turn it off per device, which deletes it. |
| If you use the 18+ Love section: a selfie and a photo of an identity document | Only to check that you are a real adult. Both images are deleted the moment the check is decided — approved or not. Only the outcome and the date are kept. They are never shown to other members. |
What we deliberately do not collect
No location beyond the region you type in yourself. No contacts, no device identifiers, no browsing history, no advertising identifiers, no behavioural profiling. Video and voice in study rooms are sent between the people in the room and are not recorded by us.
Cookies
PopOff sets three cookies, all of them strictly necessary. None of them are used for advertising or analytics, so no consent banner is required.
| Cookie | What it is for | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Session (refresh) cookie | Keeps you signed in. It is HttpOnly, so no script can read it, and it is only sent to the sign-in endpoints. | Until it expires or you sign out |
| CSRF token | Stops another website from acting as you. | Same as your session |
| Sign-in handshake cookie | Only while signing in with Google or Discord, to prove the round trip belongs to you. | 10 minutes |
The app also uses your browser's own local storage to remember small conveniences (a collapsed sidebar, whether sound is on). That never leaves your device.
Who else ever sees your data
- Other people using PopOff — your profile, what you write, and whether you are in a room.
- Our email provider ([Resend, or whichever you configure]) — your email address and the contents of account emails such as password resets.
- Google or Discord — only if you choose to sign in with them, and only the handshake itself.
- Your browser's push service (Google, Apple or Mozilla, depending on your device) — if you turn notifications on, they carry the notification to you.
- Unsplash — the photographs on the signed-out home page are loaded from Unsplash's servers, so your IP address reaches them when that page loads. [If you would rather not, we can serve those images ourselves; see the note at the end.]
- Fonts — PopOff serves its own fonts from its own servers. They are not loaded from Google Fonts or any other outside font service, so opening the page sends no font request — and no IP address — to a third party.
- Our hosting and database — [name your host here].
Nobody is given your data for their own purposes. Nothing is sold.
How long things are kept
- Your account and profile: until you delete it.
- Direct messages: kept until you or the other person deletes them, or the account is deleted. [If you switch on DM_RETENTION_DAYS, say the number here.]
- Community and room chat: rolls off automatically — roughly a month of history.
- Identity check images: deleted as soon as the check is decided.
- Sign-in security log: kept for a limited period so we can investigate account break-ins.
- Backups: snapshots are kept for a short rotation, so deleted data can survive in a backup for a little while before those snapshots age out.
Your choices and your rights
- See and change your data: everything about you is on your profile, editable there.
- Delete your account: Profile ▸ Account & privacy ▸ Delete account. This removes your profile, photos, voice note, messages, study history, points and any rooms you host. It cannot be undone.
- Turn notifications off: per device, in the same place.
- Block somebody: from their profile. Blocks work both ways and can be undone in Account & privacy.
- Withdraw your consent: at any time, and as easily as you gave it. Deleting your account withdraws it for everything; for a narrower change, write to us. Withdrawing does not undo processing that was already lawful before you withdrew.
- Ask us anything else — a copy of your data, a correction, erasure, or an objection — at support@popoff.club. We answer within [30] days.
- Nominate someone (India, DPDP Act) to exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or are unable to act — write to us to set it up.
Depending on where you live you may also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. [EU/UK: your local supervisory authority. India: the Data Protection Board, once operational.]
Age
PopOff is for people aged 13 and over. The Love section is 18+ and is closed until an adult has been verified by a person. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, write to us and it will be removed. [Check the minimum age for your country: several require parental consent below 16 or 18, and India's DPDP Act requires verifiable parental consent for under-18s.]
Security
Passwords are stored only as bcrypt hashes. Sessions can be ended on every device at once from your profile. Uploaded files are checked by their actual contents, not their name. Private files (identity checks, chat attachments) are served only to the people entitled to see them. The connection is encrypted end to end in transit (HTTPS).
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes and the app will say so.