Privacy Policy
Last updated: 10 October 2026
TalkTo is anonymous by default: no name, no phone number and no required email. This policy lays out the data we do hold, what it is for, who can see it and how long it stays.
1. Who is responsible
TalkTo is operated by RadioWyves Media, a business incorporated in South Africa. We decide how the data described here is used. For anything in this policy, write to legal@talktohq.com or open a ticket on the support page.
2. The short version
- You start with a handle we assign, an animal avatar and the gender answer you give on the start screen. We do not ask for your name or phone number.
- An email address is optional. It is used to log you in and nothing else, and it is never shown to anyone.
- We store an approximate country, your timezone and a one-way hash of your IP address. The raw IP address is not kept in our database.
- An automated filter checks each message before it is delivered. Nobody reads your chats unless a report is filed or the law requires it.
- We do not sell personal data.
3. What we collect and why
Where the law asks us to name a legal basis, ours are: providing the service you asked for, our legitimate interest in running it safely and in understanding how it is used, and our legal duties.
What you give us
| Data | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Gender: Male, Female or Other | Your answer on the start screen. Kept with your account. |
| Email address (optional) | Logging in on another device, and sending your login codes. Never shown to other users. |
| Messages | One-to-one chat text, direct messages and room messages. Delivered to the people you send them to, after screening. Section 9 says how long each kind is kept. |
| Notes | A note of up to 60 characters that your friends can see for 24 hours. |
| Interests and lobby choices | Up to five interests, used while you wait to be matched. Your lobby choices are also remembered in your browser. |
| Friends, requests and blocks | Who your friends are and who you blocked, so that chats, messages and matching follow your choices. |
| Reports you file | The reason, any context you add and a chat excerpt. Section 4 has the detail. |
| Support messages | Your name (optional), email, subject and message, so we can answer you and keep a record of the exchange. |
What we create
| Data | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Handle and avatar | Assigned when you start. They are how other people see you. |
| Hashed session token | Lets us recognise your browser after you start. Our database holds a hash of the token, not the token itself. |
| Hashed login codes | Used when you log in by email. Codes are stored hashed, expire after 15 minutes and allow five tries. |
| Theme and unlock progress | Which themes you have unlocked by finishing chats. |
| Streaks, notifications and history rows | Day streaks with friends, alerts inside the app, and one row for each recent conversation, holding the handle, the time and a message count, so a report is still possible after the chat is gone. |
| Game results | Run the games and the leaderboard of game wins over the last 7 days. |
| Report and ban records | Keep people safe. Section 9 says how long they stay. |
What your connection gives us
| Data | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Approximate country | Worked out from your connection. Shown to the person you are matched with (section 5). |
| Timezone | Sent by your browser when you start. |
| Hashed IP address | A salted one-way hash. Used to apply bans and to limit spam. We cannot turn it back into the address. |
Your raw IP address is not written to our database. Cloudflare, our network provider, does handle it while delivering traffic to us, and Google Analytics receives it with the requests your browser sends (section 6).
4. Screening, reports and who reads chats
Screening is automated. It runs on our server before a message is delivered. A blocked message is dropped and the sender is told. Blocked messages can count towards a temporary ban.
No person reads your chats as a matter of routine. Chat text reaches a person only when a report includes an excerpt, or when the law requires us to look.
What a report stores. Who reported, who was reported, the reason, any context the reporter wrote, a chat excerpt of up to about 2,500 characters, the time and the status of the case. Only the people who review reports, and anyone handling an appeal about that case, see it.
Automatic temporary bans. Some start without a person: after several separate reports from different people, after repeated blocked messages, or after someone claims in a message to be under 18. A person reviews each one, and longer bans are a person's decision. To ask for a review, use the support form.
5. What other people can see
- The person you are matched with sees your handle, your avatar, the country your connection comes from, the interests you share and whatever you type. If you are both in the same country, an opener says so. They do not see your email address or your IP address.
- Friends see your handle, your note and whether you are online.
- Rooms show your handle, your avatar and your messages. Recent room messages can be read by anyone using the service, even before they join. The two adult rooms ask for an age confirmation first.
Anyone who can read a message can copy it, so write with that in mind.
6. Analytics, cookies and similar storage
We run Google Analytics 4 on every page to see, in aggregate, which pages get used and how. A banner announces it. The banner is a notice with a Got it button, and it has no decline button. We use the numbers to improve the service, not to aim adverts, and no advertising cookies come from us.
To stay out of analytics, block cookies for the site in your browser settings, or install Google's opt-out add-on. The Cookie Policy lists each cookie and each item of browser storage we use, what it does and how long it lasts.
7. Who we share data with
We do not sell personal data. We share it with the following, and only for the reasons given.
- Cloudflare hosts the service, its database and its live chat machinery, and provides network security. It handles the traffic that reaches us, IP addresses included.
- Resend sends the login emails, so it receives your email address and the message carrying your code whenever you ask to log in.
- Google Analytics receives page-view data from your browser, as described in section 6.
- Sponsored-slot destinations. If you click a sponsored slot you go to a third-party site, which sees your visit and applies its own policy. We do not send it your messages or your email address.
- Authorities. We disclose data when the law requires it, for example under a valid court order, or when we believe it is needed to protect someone from serious harm.
Each of these providers has its own privacy policy.
8. Moving data between countries
Our providers run servers in many countries, and some of them, Google among them, are US companies. Your data can therefore be processed outside the country where you live, in places whose data protection rules may differ from yours. Where the law asks for a safeguard on such a move, we rely on the ones our providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses.
9. How long we keep things
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Sign-in session | Until you log out or delete the account, and no longer than 400 days without use. |
| Login codes | 15 minutes. |
| One-to-one chat text | Not saved once the chat is over. |
| Excerpt of your latest chat | Kept so that a report can carry it. Your next chat overwrites it. An excerpt attached to a report stays with that report. |
| Direct messages | Until the message is unsent or the account is deleted. |
| Room messages | Kept as readable history until you delete your account, at which point they are blanked. |
| Notes | Visible to friends for 24 hours. Deleted with your account. |
| Friends, streaks, themes and game results | For as long as the account exists. |
| Reports and bans | 12 months from the report, or until the ban ends if that is later. |
| Support tickets | As long as it takes to answer you, then as long as we need a record of the exchange. |
10. Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, you can ask us to:
- give you a copy of the data we hold about you
- correct data that is wrong
- delete your data
- stop or limit certain uses of it
- hand it over in a portable form
- stop relying on your consent, where consent is what we rely on
Accounts here are anonymous, so we may need to confirm that a request comes from the account holder, for example by asking you to log in or to write from the email address linked to the account. Use the contact details in section 15.
If you think we have mishandled your data, you can complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za.
California and other US states. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for advertising. You can still ask to know, correct or delete your data, and we will not treat you worse for asking.
11. Deleting your account
Open Settings in the app and delete your account. It cannot be undone. Your handle, friends, direct messages, notes and history are deleted, and your old room messages are blanked. Reports and ban records about you, with the hashed connection data used for bans, stay for 12 months from the report, or until the ban ends if that is later, because they protect other people.
If you cannot log in, contact us through the support form. An anonymous account with no linked email gives us no way to confirm it is yours, so we may not be able to find it.
12. Security
We store session tokens, login codes and IP addresses as hashes. Traffic to the service travels over HTTPS. The session cookie is HttpOnly, so scripts on a page cannot read it. Access to our systems is limited to the people who need it.
No system is perfectly secure. Chats are not end-to-end encrypted, because our server has to read a message in order to screen it. If you find a security problem, tell us at legal@talktohq.com.
13. Children
TalkTo is for adults only, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor, we end its access and delete its data, apart from report and ban records. If you think a child is using the service, tell us through the support form.
14. Changes
When we change this policy we update the date at the top, and when the change matters we post a notice on the service.
15. Contact
Email: legal@talktohq.com. The form on the support page also reaches us.