Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 14, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Ripe ("we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, and protects your information when you use the Ripe mobile application.

1. Information We Collect

Information you provide:

• Phone number or email address (used for authentication)
• If you sign in with Apple or Google, the name and email address those providers share with us at sign-in (used to create your account)
• Display name and @handle
• Profile photo (optional)
• Climbing plans and activity, including gym, date and time, climb type, attendance, streaks, and session history
• Session photos you upload to your memory vault
• Chat messages sent during active sessions (ephemeral — deleted when the session ends)
• One-to-one direct messages you send to active friends (retained as shared conversation history)
• Safety reports you submit, including the reason, optional details, and a snapshot of the reported profile, message, or session needed for review
• Feedback you submit, together with app version, build number, device platform, and operating-system version

Information collected automatically:

• Device location — only when you grant permission and only while the app is in use. A current location fix may be sent to our backend for the immediate nearest-metro calculation and then discarded. Map centering and gym-distance calculations occur on your device. If you join the area waitlist, we store rounded coordinates and a city-level label.
• App usage data (screen views, feature interactions, session and feature details, device/app information, and account and installation identifiers) — collected via PostHog Analytics to understand how the app is used. Not sold or used for advertising.
• Diagnostic data (crash reports, error stack traces, device model, OS version, app version, and a pseudonymous account identifier) — collected via Sentry when the app encounters an error, used solely to diagnose and fix bugs. We do not record session replays.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use your information exclusively to:

• Create and maintain your account.
• Enable coordination features (friend feeds, direct messages, session groups, check-ins).
• Build your personal climbing history and memory vault.
• Send push notifications about your sessions and friend activity (you may opt out in your device settings at any time).
• Review safety reports, enforce our rules, and protect users from abuse.
• Improve the reliability and performance of the service.

We do not use your data for targeted advertising, and we never sell your information to third parties.

3. Information Sharing & Service Providers

Your profile: Your display name, profile photo, handle, selected area, and any climbing-profile details you choose to save are visible to other signed-in climbers. Your streak, session history, favorite gyms, and best buddies remain visible only to mutual friends. With the optional Discover Climbers feature (below), limited plan details may also be visible to opted-in non-friends.

Direct messages: One-to-one messages are visible only to the two participants, unless a participant reports a message for safety review. New messages can be sent only while both people are active friends. Ending a friendship makes the existing history read-only; blocking hides the conversation and stops new messages and notifications.

Discover Climbers (optional, off by default): If you turn on Discover Climbers, you can browse limited gym-plan previews shared by other opted-in climbers across your selected metro; you do not need a plan at the same gym. When you share a plan with "Climbers here" visibility, your display name, profile photo, gym, climb type, and planned time block or actual session start time become visible to those opted-in climbers — even if you are not friends. Discovery is symmetric at the account level, and each visible plan must also be shared to Climbers here. Only participants who independently meet those requirements are shown or counted. Users you have blocked are never shown to you, and you are never shown to them. You can turn Discover Climbers off at any time in Settings, which stops your plans from appearing in discovery.

Service providers we use: The following providers process data to operate Ripe. Their handling of data is also governed by their applicable terms and privacy commitments.

• Supabase (supabase.com) — backend infrastructure for authentication, database, and photo storage.
• Apple and Google — optional account sign-in and authentication.
• PostHog (posthog.com) — account-linked product analytics and feature interactions, without your display name, @handle, email address, or phone number.
• Sentry (sentry.io) — crash and error diagnostics.
• Expo Push Service and Apple Push Notification service — delivery of optional push notifications using a device push token and the notification content. Expo does not persist notification content after delivery.
• Resend (resend.com) — delivery of safety-report and feedback notices to our moderation and support inboxes. These notices may include the submitted content, relevant account details, and app/device details needed for review.
• Google Cloud Vision — AI-assisted automated screening of uploaded photos for unsafe content. For the immediate-response operation Ripe uses, Google processes image data in memory and does not persist it to disk; Google may temporarily log request metadata such as request time and size.

Legal requirements: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to valid legal process.

We do not share your information with advertisers, data brokers, or any other third parties beyond the above. We do not engage in cross-app tracking and do not link your data with data from other companies' apps or websites.

4. Data Retention

• Session chat messages are deleted automatically when a session ends.
• Direct messages are retained as shared history while at least one participant's account remains active. Ending a friendship does not delete that history.
• Your profile, session history, and memory vault photos are retained until you delete your account.
• Safety reports and the snapshots needed to review them are retained in Ripe's database for up to 24 months. If either account is deleted sooner, its account reference is removed immediately. Copies already delivered to our moderation inbox and email provider follow the retention settings and legal obligations applicable to those systems.
• On account deletion, your login, email, friendships, current and future plans, avatar, waitlist entry, feedback record, and user-specific notification and app state are erased from Ripe's active product database. The original bytes of every session photo you uploaded are deleted. Solo memories are removed; in shared memories, each photo you uploaded is replaced by a neutral placeholder so the remaining participants' album keeps its layout. Photos uploaded by other participants remain unchanged. Direct-message text you authored is replaced with “Message deleted”; the other participant's messages remain unchanged. Your identity on retained shared history is shown as "Deleted climber" with a neutral avatar. A direct conversation is deleted after both participants delete their accounts. Safety reports follow the separate retention rule above. Copies already delivered to support or moderation systems, and limited security or backup records, may remain until those systems' retention periods expire. Your @handle is released after a 90-day hold.

5. Your Rights & Choices

• Access: You can view your data within the app at any time.
• Correction: You can update your display name, @handle, and photo from Edit Profile.
• Deletion: You can permanently delete your account from Profile → Settings → Delete account. Your original photo uploads and the text of direct messages you authored are removed as described above; other participants' content remains unchanged.
• Notifications: You may disable push notifications at any time in your device's Settings app.
• Location: You may revoke location permission at any time in your device's Settings app. You can still select your metro area manually, but location-based area detection and map centering will be unavailable.

6. Location Data

Ripe requests "When In Use" location permission (foreground only). To detect your area, the app sends a current latitude and longitude to our backend, which calculates the nearest supported metro and does not store those coordinates. Map centering and gym-distance calculations use location on your device. If you join the area waitlist, your device derives a city label and sends coordinates rounded to approximately two decimal places (roughly one kilometre) for storage with that label. We do not monitor your location in the background, use geofencing, verify gym check-ins with location, or retain precise location history.

7. Photos & Camera

Camera and photo-library access is requested only when you choose to take or select a profile or session-memory photo, or to save memory photos to your device. Uploaded profile photos are visible according to your profile and discovery settings. Uploaded session photos are stored in our cloud storage and are accessible only to checked-in members of that session.

8. Children's Privacy

Ripe is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

9. Analytics & Tracking

We use PostHog and Sentry to understand how the app is used and to diagnose problems. PostHog receives account and installation identifiers, screen-view and feature-interaction events, and event details such as gym, plan, session, and memory metadata. Sentry receives crash and error diagnostics, navigation context, basic device/app information, and a pseudonymous account identifier. We do not intentionally send either provider your display name, @handle, email address, phone number, private-message content, or photos, and Sentry session replay is disabled. These tools do not use Apple's advertising identifier (IDFA), and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites. Because we do not engage in "tracking" as defined by Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework, we do not display an ATT prompt.

10. Security

We implement industry-standard technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including encrypted data transmission (TLS) and secure cloud storage. However, no method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes via a notice in the app. Your continued use of Ripe after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy.

12. Contact Us

For privacy-related questions or requests, please email us at support@ripeclimb.com.