Privacy Policy
How we collect, use, protect, and share your information — written in plain language, because you deserve to understand it.
Effective Date:
Our Privacy Commitments
Sidekick is different than other apps
We believe your personal data belongs to you. Here are four commitments we make — and keep — about how we handle your information.
🔒
Your Data Stays on Sidekick
We collect personal information only to power the Sidekick experience. We don’t sell your data, and we don’t share it with advertisers or data brokers.
🙈
Your Contact Info Is Private
We will never share your last name, email address, or phone number with other users, community admins, partner organizations, or any third party.
🚫
No Cross-App Tracking
We don’t follow you around the internet. No tracking pixels, no third-party ad SDKs, no purchasing data from brokers. We only know what you tell us and how you use our app.
📊
Admins Get Aggregated Data Only
Community and event admins can see their members’ first names, last initials, and profiles — but we share analytics only in aggregated form. No individual tracking data is shared.
Table of Contents
1
Information We Collect
We collect information in three ways: what you give us directly, what we observe from your use of the app, and limited technical data from your device.
Information You Provide
When you create an account and use Sidekick, you may provide:
- Account information: Your first name, last name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and gender.
- Profile information: Your bio, profile photo, city or neighborhood, and any other details you choose to share on your profile.
- Interests and preferences: The interests you select (from 2,500+ options across 10 categories), personal filters (such as language, personality type, or situation), and any Kickit suggestions you create.
- Content you create: Messages, posts, community descriptions, event listings, and other content you submit through the app.
- Communications with us: Emails or messages you send to our support team.
Information We Collect Automatically
When you use Sidekick, we automatically collect:
- Usage data: How you interact with the app — features you use, pages you visit, communities you join, events you browse, and how often you use the app.
- Device information: Device type, operating system, app version, and general device identifiers needed to deliver the service.
- Approximate location: If you grant permission, we may use your general location to show you nearby communities, events, and users. We do not track your precise or continuous location.
What this means in plain language: We only collect what we need to make Sidekick work for you. If you select 47 interests and join 3 communities, we use that information to connect you with the right people and activities — not to build an advertising profile.
2
Information We Do Not Collect
This section is just as important as the one above. Sidekick is the anti-social-media app, and our data practices reflect that.
- No cross-app tracking. We do not track your activity on other apps, websites, or platforms. We have no interest in what you do outside of Sidekick.
- No third-party advertising SDKs. We do not embed ad-tech software in our app. There are no hidden trackers reporting your behavior to advertisers.
- No tracking pixels. We do not use invisible tracking pixels in the app or in our emails to monitor your activity.
- No data purchases. We do not buy data about you from data brokers, social media platforms, or any other source.
- No biometric data. We do not collect fingerprints, facial recognition data, voice prints, or any biometric identifiers.
- No financial information. Subscription payments are processed by third-party payment processors (such as Apple or Google). We do not see or store your credit card number, bank account, or financial details.
What this means in plain language: If you use Sidekick to find a hiking group and then browse hiking boots on Amazon, we have absolutely no idea — and we want to keep it that way.
3
How We Use Your Information
We use your information for one primary purpose: to power the Sidekick experience. Specifically, we use it to:
- Operate and improve the app: Create and maintain your account, display your profile, process your interest selections, and deliver the matching, community, event, and messaging features of Sidekick.
- Connect you with others: Match you with potential friends, communities, events, and Kickits based on your interests and preferences.
- Communicate with you: Send you notifications about messages, friend requests, community activity, and event updates. We may also send service-related emails about your account.
- Ensure safety and enforce our Terms: Monitor for violations of our Terms of Service, investigate reports of misconduct, and take action to protect our users and community.
- Analyze and improve: Understand how people use Sidekick in aggregate so we can make the app better. For example, knowing that 60% of users browse events on weekends helps us prioritize event discovery features.
- Comply with legal obligations: Respond to lawful requests from law enforcement or regulatory authorities when required by applicable law.
What we will never do: We will never use your personal information to serve you targeted advertisements, sell to data brokers, or build a profile for third-party marketing purposes. Period.