1. What this covers
This page covers WhoChat Live at whochatlive.com: the pages on this domain and the video chat service you reach from them. Read it before you turn your camera on, not after.
The service behind this site doesn't run on this domain alone. Accounts, coin balances, messages and moderation records are held by the platform that operates the service, on shared infrastructure. Deleting your browser history here doesn't remove anything from that side. The routes for deletion are in section 9.
Using the site means this page applies to you. If a line in it isn't acceptable, the right move is to close the tab before starting a match, because most of what's described below begins the moment a camera opens.
2. What we collect
2.1 Things you hand over
- A guest session. You can start matching without registering. A session identifier is still created for you and stored in your browser, because the service has to be able to tell one visitor from another to pair you, count your free matches, and apply a ban if you earn one.
- Account details, if you register. Email address, username, display name, password, and whatever optional profile fields you fill in: avatar, bio, date of birth, gender.
- Sign-in through Google or Apple, if you use it. That returns your name, email address and profile picture to us from the provider.
- Anything you post or send. Text messages, voice messages, photos, videos, comments, profile content. Voice messages are recorded on your device by a recorder that exists for that feature specifically, and are sent as files.
- Reports and support mail. What you reported, who you reported, what you wrote, and the email address you wrote from.
- Payment details. Coin purchases are processed by third-party payment providers. We receive the transaction record: amount, time, status, what it bought. Full card numbers are handled by the processor.
2.2 Things collected while you use it
- Device and browser. Browser and operating system, device type, screen size, language, and device identifiers used to keep a session attached to one device.
- IP address and rough location. Your IP is in every request. Country and region are derived from it. That's how the service knows which region you're in.
- Usage and logs. Pages opened, features used, timestamps, referring URL, errors thrown.
- Call and match records. Who you were paired with, when, how long it lasted, who ended it, and what it cost in coins. Your call history is a feature of the product. It exists as a stored record, not only as a log.
- Push notification tokens, if you allow notifications in your browser. Revoking that permission in the browser stops it.
3. Your camera and microphone
This is the section most sites in this category leave out. It's the part that matters here, so it gets its own heading.
3.1 The live stream
Starting a match asks your browser for camera and microphone access. Nothing opens until you grant it, and revoking it in browser settings ends the ability to match. The live video and audio are carried between you and the other person by a third-party real-time communications provider, which necessarily handles that stream to deliver it.
3.2 Still frames taken for safety screening
While you're on the matching screen or in a call, the service can capture still images from your camera, run face detection on them, and send the results back to the platform. When the platform's configuration calls for it, the still image itself is uploaded. This is a real capability in the product, it's controlled from the server side rather than by a setting in the app, and we would rather you read it here than discover it.
What gets measured and sent for each frame: how many faces are in it, whether a face is present at all, how much of the frame the face fills, a detection confidence score, and overall image brightness, attached to the identifier of the match or call room it came from.
These frames are used for safety screening and nothing else. They enforce section 4 of the community guidelines: checking that there's a person on camera rather than a looping video, a still photo or an empty chair, and they catch accounts pointing a camera at things nobody consented to see. They aren't used to build a profile of you, to train anything, or to decide who you get matched with. It's the mechanism behind the moderation we describe elsewhere on this site, and describing that moderation while hiding its mechanism would be dishonest.
Frames captured this way are handled as moderation data under section 8, not as content you published. They don't appear on your profile and they aren't shown to the person you were matched with.
3.3 What isn't kept
We do not record your calls. The video and audio of a match are carried live between the two of you and aren't written to a recording, stored, or kept for replay by us. What section 3.2 describes is a still frame for a safety check, not a recording of the conversation, and the two are worth keeping separate in your head.
What we do keep about a call is the record described in section 2.2: who, when, how long, what it cost. That's metadata about the call, not its contents.
The limit of that promise is worth stating: it covers us. It doesn't cover the person on the other end pointing a phone at their own screen, which no service can prevent and which section 7 of the community guidelines can only punish after the fact.
4. What we use it for
- Running the thing. Pairing you, opening rooms, carrying messages, keeping your coin balance correct.
- Safety and abuse. Acting on reports, detecting fake camera feeds and automated accounts, enforcing bans, keeping banned users from walking straight back in.
- Payments. Processing purchases, reversing failed ones, investigating disputed charges.
- Support. Answering what you write to us, which requires reading what you wrote.
- Measurement. Aggregate traffic and usage analysis, so we can tell which pages work. This is counting, not profiling.
- Legal obligations. Responding to lawful requests, keeping records we're required to keep, and defending claims.
We don't sell your personal information, and we don't hand your data to advertising networks to build profiles on you.
5. What other people see
Two different things get confused here: what the stranger in your call can see, and what the open internet can see.
- The person you're matched with sees your live camera feed, hears your microphone, and sees whatever display name and avatar you set. If you're in a guest session with no profile, that's close to nothing.
- Everyone, including search engines, can potentially see anything you publish to a public profile: display name, avatar, bio, posts, videos, public comments. A public profile page has a URL, and URLs get indexed.
- Nobody except you and us sees your email address, your password, or your payment records. Passwords are stored hashed and aren't readable by staff.
Deleting published content stops it being served, but copies already cached by search engines or saved by other people are outside anyone's control, including ours. That's worth knowing before you post rather than after.
8. How long we keep it
- While your account is active, your account data stays. That's what an account is.
- After deletion, account data is removed or anonymised within a reasonable period.
- Moderation records (reports, ban decisions, and the evidence behind them, including safety frames from section 3.2) are kept longer than account data on purpose. A ban that evaporates when the banned account is deleted isn't a ban.
- Transaction records are kept for as long as tax, accounting and chargeback rules require.
- Logs roll off on their own schedule and aren't kept indefinitely.
9. Your rights
Depending on where you live you may have the right to get a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, receive it in a portable format, object to certain processing, or withdraw consent you previously gave.
How to actually use them: write to [email protected] from the email address on the account, say which of the above you want, and we'll handle it and write back. A guest session with no account attached is harder to identify. Tell us roughly when and from where you used the service and we'll do what we can.
Deletion requests go through that address instead of a button in the app. If your local law gives you the right to complain to a data protection authority, that right stands whatever we say here.
10. Under 18s
This service is for adults. Nobody under 18 may use it, register for it, or appear on camera in it, regardless of the local age of majority.
We don't knowingly collect anything from anyone under 18. If we find out that we have, the account goes and the data goes with it. If you believe a minor is using the service, report it. The channel and what happens next are set out in the child safety standards.
11. Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are hashed, not stored. Access to production data is restricted to the people who need it to operate the service.
None of that's a guarantee, and a privacy policy that promises perfect security is lying. Use a password you don't use anywhere else, and treat anything you say or show to a stranger on camera as something you can't take back.
12. Changes to this page
When what we collect changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves. For a change that materially affects you (a new category of data, a new purpose, a new recipient), we'll say so in the product rather than quietly editing the text.
If you keep using the service after a change, that's the version that applies to you.
13. Contact
Questions, data requests, and complaints about anything on this page go to [email protected]. Say what you want up front. The other ways to reach us, and what each kind of request needs to include, are on the contact page.
Questions about anything on this page reach a person at [email protected].