Effective date: 2026-04-17
App: Vicinity (also known as Vicinity.Life)
Developer: Club77
Contact: vicinity@club77.org
The short version
Vicinity is designed so you keep your data. The app does not send your interests, identity, location, or any personal information to any server, and we do not track what you do with it.
During our limited beta, we collect what you enter on our signup form — your name and email address — so we can send you beta builds and updates. That is the only data collection, and it stops when we leave beta.
1. Who we are
Vicinity is an Android application developed and published by Club77, based in Singapore. You can reach us at vicinity@club77.org for any questions about this policy or your data.
2. What data we collect
2.1 From the app itself
None. The Vicinity app does not collect, transmit, or share any personal data with Club77 or any third party. In particular, the app does not:
- Create user accounts
- Contact any server operated by us or anyone else
- Record your location
- Track which devices you encounter, where, or when
- Log analytics, crash reports, or telemetry
All information the app uses to work — your interest ratings, your local match history, your labels and mute settings, and your cryptographic keys — is stored only on your own device and never leaves it, except as described in Section 3.
2.2 From the beta signup form on vicinity.life
If you sign up for the limited beta on our website, the signup form on vicinity.life collects:
- Your name — used to address you personally in beta communications.
- Your email address — used to send you beta builds and updates.
These two fields are the only personal data collected by us at any stage. We use them solely to send you beta builds, beta-related updates, and a notification when Vicinity is publicly released. We do not use them for marketing of other products and we do not share them.
The beta signup list is stored on our website (WordPress) and beta emails are sent via our own mail server on the `club77.org` domain. No third-party email marketing platform (such as Mailchimp, SendGrid, or similar) is used.
Once the limited beta ends, the beta signup list is deleted.
3. What the app does over Bluetooth
To find compatible people nearby, Vicinity uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to exchange encrypted information directly with other phones running Vicinity that are in Bluetooth range (typically a few metres).
Here is what happens during that exchange:
- Your phone and the other phone each send each other a public cryptographic key (a Paillier public key). This key is not linked to your name, email, phone number, or any other identifier we hold.
- Each phone sends the other an encrypted vector of their interest ratings. Because the vector is encrypted with the other phone’s public key, neither phone can read the other’s raw interests.
- Each phone computes a compatibility score on the encrypted data (this is called homomorphic encryption), and the result is a percentage.
- Small random noise is added to the result to prevent either phone from deducing the other’s exact ratings over repeated exchanges.
The result of the exchange is a single percentage shown in your app. No interest data, identity, or location is exchanged in readable form. Club77 never sees any of this — the exchange is strictly peer-to-peer between the two phones.
Bluetooth addresses are rotated by Android automatically and cryptographic keys are rotated by the app at configurable intervals (default: daily) to reduce the possibility of third-party tracking.
4. What is stored on your device
The following is stored locally on your phone, in encrypted storage, and never transmitted off the device by the app:
- Your interest ratings
- Your Paillier keypair (rotated on a schedule you control in Settings)
- Cooldown records of devices you recently matched with (kept for up to 7 days of inactivity)
- Match history: up to 200 past exchange results (compatibility percentages + timestamps, no identifying information about the other person)
- Any labels or mute settings you chose for past encounters (stored against the peer’s public-key fingerprint, not any identifier of them)
You can erase all of this from Settings > Clear all data & reset at any time.
5. Permissions the app requires
Vicinity requests the following Android permissions:
- Bluetooth (scan, advertise, connect) — to detect and exchange with nearby Vicinity phones.
- Location (fine/coarse) — Android requires location permission for any app that uses Bluetooth scanning. This is an operating-system requirement, not our choice. The app does not read your location and does not use this permission to determine or record where you are.
- Post notifications — to show you when a nearby match is found.
- Foreground service — to keep discovery running in the background.
6. Third parties
We do not use any third-party analytics, crash reporting, advertising, or tracking services in the app.
The vicinity.life website is hosted on a private server operated by Club77 and uses a signup form plugin (Sureforms) for beta signups. Beta signup data (your name and email) is stored on that server; beta emails are sent via the Club77 `club77.org` mail server.
Google Group for Play Store beta access
If you want to test the app via the Google Play Store closed beta, you will need to join a Google Group that we use to manage the list of approved beta testers. This is a requirement of Google Play’s closed testing system — the Play Store checks your Google account against the group’s member list before letting you install the beta.
When you request to join the Google Group, Google will share your Google account email (and whatever name is on your Google account) with Club77 as the group owner. Club77 uses this only to approve or decline your membership and to keep the Play Store beta tester list up to date. Google operates the Group itself and acts as a data processor for the membership list; their handling of that data is governed by Google’s Privacy Policy.
You can leave the Google Group at any time, which will also remove your access to the Play Store beta.
If any of this changes in the future (for example, if we later use a third-party analytics or email service), we will update this policy and notify beta subscribers by email before any new collection begins.
7. How long we keep data
- Beta signup data (name + email): until you ask us to delete it, or until the limited beta ends — whichever is sooner.
- Google Group membership: until you leave the Group or the limited beta ends.
- On-device data: kept on your phone until you clear it in Settings or uninstall the app.
8. Your rights
Because the app does not send anything to us, there is no account or profile on our side that you can access, correct, or delete remotely — there is simply nothing there.
For the beta signup list, you may at any time:
- Ask for a copy of the name and email address we hold for you
- Correct either of them
- Ask us to delete the entry and stop contacting you
Send any of these requests to vicinity@club77.org and we will action them within a reasonable time.
This policy is written with the Singapore Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in mind. Users in other jurisdictions may have additional rights under their local law; we will honour reasonable requests to the extent that local law applies.
9. Children
Vicinity is intended for users aged 18 and over. The app does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child under 18 has signed up to the beta list, please contact us and we will delete the record.
10. Security
- The app stores sensitive local data using Android Keystore-backed AES-256-GCM encryption.
- Over-the-air exchanges use 1024-bit Paillier homomorphic encryption.
- Beta signup data is stored on a private server with access limited to Club77.
No system is perfectly secure. If you believe you have found a security issue, please email vicinity@club77.org.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy to reflect changes to the app or to the website (for example, if we later use a third-party email service). When we do, we will update the effective date at the top of this page. If the change is material and you are on the beta list, we will also notify you by email.
12. Contact
Email: vicinity@club77.org
Developer: Club77, Singapore