KAPWA Connection
We use your information to verify your identity, select and arrange introductions matching your stated preferences and the kind of connection you say you are looking for, communicate with you about your membership — including emails two days before your trial, your membership term, or your weekly messaging allowance runs out — and meet our legal obligations.
We also use it to run the parts of the service that count things: your weekly conversation allowance, any additional messaging you have bought, and the points you have earned from thumbs ups. Points are counted from the thumbs ups you have received rather than held as a separate balance, so the record of who gave you a thumbs up is what the count is made of and is kept for as long as it stands.
Photos may be checked automatically before they are added to your profile so that images that appear blurry, show no clear person, depict someone under 18, or contain nudity or sexual content can be refused. We use third-party image-analysis providers to perform these checks, which means the image is sent to those providers and handled under their privacy, security, and data-processing terms. Automated screening helps us apply the photo policy but is not used by itself to decide whether your membership should be suspended or terminated. If an upload is refused, you can submit a different photo or contact us if you believe the decision was incorrect.
Messages sent between members are checked automatically for the wording used in money scams — requests for money, loans, a padala or remittance, top-up or load, gift cards, cryptocurrency, bank, card or wallet details, or a one-time code, and offers of investments, trading schemes, inheritances or unclaimed funds. Where that wording appears, both people in the conversation are shown a warning alongside the message.
This check runs on our own servers as the conversation is displayed. Nothing about it is stored: there is no record of which messages were flagged, no score kept against your account, and no message text is sent to any third party for this purpose. The check never blocks a message and never decides anything about your membership — it only adds a warning that either of you can read and ignore. It works by matching wording, so it will sometimes warn about an ordinary conversation about money, and it will not catch every scam.
We share limited profile information (such as first name, age, general location, interests, and what you are looking for) with prospective matches as part of the introduction process. While your profile is hidden — when a package has lapsed, or when your own-country allowance is used up — it is not shown in browsing to members who have not already liked or matched with you. We do not sell member data to third parties.
A member you give a thumbs up to is told that you did, by name, in the same way a like is: a thumbs up is a message to that person, not an anonymous vote. They are not told anything else about it, and they cannot see how many points you hold, what you have bought, or which profiles you passed on. Nobody is told when you pass on their profile.
Anything you write in a group chat can be read by everyone in that group from the moment they join, and everyone in the group can see who else is in it. Only members you have already matched with can be added to a group, and the name search used to add them looks only at the searcher's own matches, so being in the search results means the person searching had already matched with you.
Identity verification on the site — photo ID and a selfie — is carried out by Stripe Identity. The document and the selfie are uploaded to Stripe and held by Stripe under their own privacy and security terms; we receive the outcome of the check and a reference for the session, and we do not receive or store copies of the document images ourselves. Where a package includes background verification, we use a licensed New Zealand provider to check identity and, where relevant, publicly available records. We will always ask for your explicit consent before running a background check; you may decline, though this may limit our ability to offer one-on-one matchmaking.
We retain your personal information for as long as your membership is active, and for up to 24 months afterward in case you rejoin, unless you ask us to delete it sooner. We limit access to your information to staff who need it to provide the service, and use access-controlled systems to store it.
Our own staff use an administration area of the site to see the members who have signed up, in every country, along with the details submitted on the signup form, profile photos, the outcome of the identity check, any additional messaging purchased, and any reports made about a member. It also lets us email a member directly about their membership; when we do, a record of that email — who sent it, to which address, its subject and its text — is kept so that we can see what a member has already been told. Access to that area is limited to staff accounts, and members' messages to each other are not read as part of it.
Some of the tools we use to run this service — such as payment processing, email, website hosting, and the automated photo screening described in section 2a — may store or process information on servers located outside New Zealand. Where this occurs, we take reasonable steps to ensure your information is protected to a standard comparable to the Privacy Act 2020, including using providers with their own privacy and security safeguards.
If a privacy breach occurs that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm, we will notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and affected members as required under the Privacy Act 2020.
Under the Privacy Act 2020, you can ask to see the personal information we hold about you and request corrections. Contact info.kapwaconnections@gmail.com to make a request.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can contact us directly, or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.
info.kapwaconnections@gmail.com
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