privacy.

who we are

CineMatch is a movie-recommendation service. When we say "CineMatch," "we," or "us," we mean the team behind it. When we say "you," we mean the person using the service.

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP), we are the Data Fiduciary for the personal data we collect. See your rights below for what that means in practice.

For anything data-related — access requests, deletion, corrections, complaints, or questions — write to hello@cinematch.in. We respond within 30 days per DPDP § 8(9).

what information we collect

To keep the service usable, we collect:

• Your phone number, in E.164 format (country code + national number), because we sign you in with a one-time code delivered over WhatsApp or SMS.
• Your country code, derived from that phone number.
• Your saved films and watched films — the movies you tell us you've seen or want to watch.
• A taste vector we compute from your onboarding answers and later activity: numeric scores for pace, warmth, complexity, prestige, and format. This never leaves our database.
• Chat messages you send to the CineMatch curator (web chat or WhatsApp) — used to understand what you're asking for tonight and stored in your session history so the friend voice can remember prior turns.
• Recommendation and engagement events — which films we recommended, whether you clicked, saved, or dismissed them.
• Optional profile fields — display name and timezone, if you provide them.
• Session cookies — one signed HTTP-only session cookie so you stay logged in.

We don't collect passwords (there aren't any), payment information, or precise location.

why we collect it

Under DPDP § 4, every purpose below is either (a) processed with your consent — given when you sign up and reaffirmed via our cookie banner — or (b) processed for a "legitimate use" that DPDP explicitly permits (running the service you requested, complying with law, responding to an emergency).

• Authentication (legitimate use — DPDP § 7(a) service you requested). Phone number + OTP replaces passwords.
• Recommendations (consent). Your taste vector and saved/watched lists are the inputs to what we suggest tonight.
• Notifications (consent). If you save a title, we may message you when it lands on a streamer you subscribe to.
• Quality (legitimate use — service improvement). Recommendation events help us find and fix bad picks. Aggregated only.
• Legal compliance (legitimate use — DPDP § 7(c)). Retention of minimum records where compelled by Indian law.

where your data lives

We store data in Supabase (Postgres), hosted in a Southeast Asia region. Backups are encrypted at rest by our host. Access to the production database is limited to CineMatch operators and gated behind row-level security policies.

international transfers

Some of the third-party services listed below process data in servers outside India (typically the United States or European Union):

• Twilio (US) — routes your phone number and OTP code.
• OpenAI (US) — receives film titles + public plot summaries + your recent chat messages when you interact with the CineMatch curator. It does NOT receive your phone number or full taste vector.
• Vercel / Cloudflare (US) — host the app and serve traffic. Access logs (IP + timestamp) may transit their infrastructure.
• Wikipedia / Wikidata / TMDb / OMDb — public metadata sources. We query them; we do not send them information about you.

Under DPDP § 16, these transfers are permitted because these providers process your data under contractual data-processing terms and India has not restricted transfers to these jurisdictions. If the Government of India restricts a jurisdiction, we'll switch providers within a reasonable time.

security & breach notification

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures: TLS in transit, encrypted backups, HTTP-only cookies, service-role isolation, rate-limiting on auth endpoints. No security scheme is perfect.

If we become aware of a personal-data breach affecting your account, we'll notify you and the Data Protection Board of India as required by DPDP § 8(6) — without undue delay and no later than 72 hours after discovery, unless a longer period is authorised by law-enforcement request.

who we share it with

We only share the minimum needed to run the service. We don't sell your data. Ever.

• Twilio — for OTP delivery over WhatsApp and SMS. Twilio processes your phone number under its own privacy terms; we send only the phone number and the code we're asking Twilio to deliver.
• The Movie Database (TMDb) — we use TMDb's public metadata for film titles, posters, and cast. We do not send TMDb any information about you.
• OpenAI — we use their models to attribute films (pace/warmth/etc.) and to write short synopses. We send film titles and public plot summaries; we do not send your taste vector, phone number, or watch history.
• Cloudflare / Vercel — for CDN and hosting. Standard access logs (IP, timestamp, path) may be retained by these providers for their security purposes.
• Vercel Analytics — pseudonymous session metrics (page views, referer) with no personally identifying information sent from our side.

We'll also share data if legally compelled — for example, in response to a valid legal request from Indian authorities.

how long we keep it

• Active accounts: your data is retained while your account is active.
• Inactive accounts: if you don't use CineMatch for 12 months, we purge your account and its data automatically.
• Recommendation event history: retained in aggregate form for up to 24 months for service-improvement analytics, then deleted.
• Deletion requests: honored within 30 days of receiving a valid request to hello@cinematch.in.

your rights

Under DPDP § 11-14 (and equivalent rights under GDPR if you're an EU visitor), you can, at any time:

• Right to access — the data we hold about you. Email us and we'll send a copy within 30 days.
• Right to correction — display name, timezone, saved films, anything inaccurate.
• Right to erasure — delete your account and all associated data. Honoured within 30 days.
• Right to portability — export your diary and library as a portable JSON file.
• Right to withdraw consent — which, for us, is the same as deleting your account, because we don't operate the service without your phone number. Withdrawing consent doesn't affect processing already carried out.
• Right to nominate — under DPDP § 14, you may nominate someone to exercise these rights on your behalf in the event of your death or incapacity. Contact us to register a nominee.
• Right of grievance redressal — email hello@cinematch.in with your complaint. Response within 30 days.
• Right to lodge a complaint — with the Data Protection Board of India (DPBI, statutory authority under DPDP § 18/27) if we don't resolve your grievance to your satisfaction.

For any of these, email hello@cinematch.in with your registered phone number in the subject.

cookies & tracking

We use:

• An essential session cookie — signed, HTTP-only. Keeps you logged in. Cannot be disabled without breaking the service.
• An analytics consent flag (localStorage) — remembers whether you accepted or declined analytics cookies via our banner.
• Vercel Analytics (pseudonymous, aggregate page metrics) — only enabled if you accept analytics via the banner.

No third-party advertising cookies, no cross-site tracking, no marketing pixels. You can revoke analytics consent at any time by clearing your browser storage or emailing us.

children

CineMatch is not designed for anyone under 18, and under DPDP § 9 we do not knowingly collect data from children (defined as persons under 18 in India). If you're a parent or guardian and believe we've mistakenly collected a child's data, email us and we'll delete the account.

We do not process children's data for targeted advertising, tracking, or any behavioural profiling that could harm a child.

changes to this policy

If we materially change this policy, we'll email registered account holders at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Non-material updates (typo fixes, clarifications) may be published without notice — the effective date at the top always reflects the latest revision.

contact

Questions, corrections, or complaints: hello@cinematch.in.