Privacy policy

Your privacy is extremely important to us. cMatch will never share your personal details (like e-mail address, encrypted password, IP address and payment details) with third parties — apart from a few situations listed here. Also, our technicians pay great attention to securing our data storage and infrastructure, to prevent abuse of your personal data.

Last updated on February 25, 2025.

Your e-mail address (and our newsletter)

During your registration, you provide us with your e-mail address. We need your e-mail address for the performance of our contract, primarily to provide you with a secure way to log in at cMatch, and to securely identify you when you contact us. We also have legitimate interests, including reviewing complaints, and prevent fraud, abuse, and stalking.

We'll also subscribe you to our newsletter, sent irregularly through e-mail. Our newsletter contains (among other things) cMatch related news, offers, and (dating) tips. You can unsubscribe at all times; instructions can be found at the bottom of the newsletter.

We'll retain your e-mail address in our records until you unsubscribe from our newsletters, with a minimum of two years since you last had an active account at cMatch.

Your public profile

During your registration and while you're a registered member you're providing us with data to be part of your public profile, including profile name, gender, date of birth, location, photos, multiple-choice answers, essays, marital status, ethnicity, and church background. During your active membership we'll match you with other singles, and a match percentage may be shown on your profile if another cMatch single visits your profile. We encourage responding to received messages, so we publish your 'response rate' on your profile. Also, your profile shows the time/date you last logged in at cMatch. When it's your birthday, we will make this known as well. Your profile is visible to other members.

We also track which profiles you visited and blocked. Only you and the person involved can see this information.

We need this information for the performance of our contract, namely to be able to provide you with a functional dating platform, with latest features.

While your account is active, you'll have access to a management portal that you can use to update, add, or delete profile details. You'll also have several options to limit public visibility of your profile. For instance, you may revoke access to your identifiable details on a per member basis. Limited details of your public profile (thumbnail, profile name, age, gender, location, and an essay teaser) may be publicized on our website available for site visitors who are not logged in. You may disable this. When you delete a photo, the image will be retained on our servers for a period up to seven days, however, the photo will be immediately unavailable to members and website visitors. When you choose to deactivate your account, your public data will be retained up to two years, however, your profile will be immediately unavailable on our website.

Other account details

We store your favorite search result. This information is used to offer you better matches, and to improve user friendliness of cMatch. In other words: We need this information for the performance of our contract. We retain this data for two years after you deactivated your account (or allowed your account to become inactive).

When you deactivate your account, we ask you to (optionally) provide us with the reason of your departure. This information is used for statistic purposes in order to improve cMatch. this information is retained for two years in non-anonymized form.

Your interactions with other members

When you wink or send a private message to another member, your message is securely stored on our server, and only shared with the person involved. We also register when you read a private message for the first time. We share this information with the sender, unless you blocked the sender. Private messages are retained for six months after both you and the recipient have deleted the message, or two years after both you and the recipient have been an active member.

When you post a praise on someone's profile, the recipient of praise is the owner of this information. Praise is public, meaning that the praise is visible to all other members, unless the recipient deletes the praise, limits visibility through our privacy settings, or deactivates his account. We retain praise data for six months after the praise has been deleted by staff or recipient, or two years after the recipient deactivated his account (or allowed his account to become inactive).

When you post a message on our forum, it is public. While the forum is only accessible to members, you should assume the whole world can read your post. Therefore, please consider what you're posting, and familiarize yourself with our forum rules. Forum messages are rarely deleted, because in general, the fundamental right of freedom of expression carry more weight than the right to privacy.

We need this information for the performance of our contract. Also, we have legitimate interests, like reviewing complaints, and prevent fraud, stalking, and abuse.

Your payment data

We provide you with the option of becoming a premium member. When you do this, we store your payment data, location, and IP address to complete the transaction. We retain this information for 2 years after you deactivated your account (or allowed your account to become inactive) with a minimum of 10 years. Retaining this data is a legal requirement.

We use PayPal as our payment provider. PayPal shares some data with us that you provide to PayPal. You may review PayPal's privacy policy here.

If you're using our Android app to complete an in-app purchase through Google's Play Store, your payment is handled by Google, not cMatch. It means you're providing personal payment details to Google. For more information, please consult Google's privacy policy. If you do not wish to share this information with Google, then please choose an alternative payment method.

Our accountant needs our financial records to do his job. Your payment details are part of our financial records, and are therefore shared with our accountant. We have signed a processing agreement with our accountant.

Note: We never retain, nor store, your credit card details.

Technical data that we collect

During your registration and use of cMatch we also collect technical data: your IP address, browser headers, referrer information, and device identifiers. We have legitimate interests for storing this data; this information is crucial as we combat fraud, abuse, and stalking. Also, we need this information for the performance of our contract; for example, to provide you with adequate support. Also, we use this data for statistic purposes in order to improve our service and marketing. We retain this data two years after you deactivated your account (or allowed your account to become inactive).

Our contact form (and when you send us an e-mail)

You can ask questions, make requests, or report abuse through our contact form. For this, we store your e-mail address, IP address, (profile) name, and your message/question. We need this information in order to respond to your request. This includes situations where you contact us by e-mail. We retain this information until we're sure that we've provided a satisfactory response and 5 years onwards. This way we can quickly respond to follow up questions, and we train to improve our customer service. Your communication with our staff is treated strictly confidential.

Android app

Would you like to use our Android app? Protect yourself against hacks, viruses, and invasion of privacy: make sure to download our app exclusively from the Google Play Store, after reading Google's privacy policy.

Push notifications and Google Firebase

If you're using our Android app, we'll send you push notifications. Very convenient; you'll know right away if you got a new message, and you can answer a message with a single tap. We use Google Firebase to send notifications. It means we share your unique device identifier with Google, as well as the contents of the push notification. Often, the notification is personalized and private (for instance, the first sentence of the message you received). This is why we encourage you to read Google's privacy policy. If you do not wish us to share this data with Google, please refrain from using our Android app.

Removal of your account (data)

You may request removal of your account, according to your legal right to be forgotten. Depending on the state of your account, you can request this a) using the link at the bottom of the e-mail you received from us, or b) through your account settings. In accordance with GDPR we'll comply to your request within 30 days. Please note, the GDPR contains a few important exceptions. For starters, the government mandates us to retain certain data. For instance, the Tax Authority requires us to keep records, meaning that data related to your transactions/payments cannot be deleted. Moreover, GDPR acknowledges that other compelling interests may outweigh the interest of personal privacy: public interests in general, or interests of other cMatch members specifically, or interests of the organization managing cMatch. For instance, we won't be deleting your messages from the inbox of other cMatch members; that would harm the interest of the recipient, so the recipient's right to be informed and freedom of information takes precedence here. Also, we need certain data to be able to investigate complaints (at a later stage) and, if necessary, provide law enforcement agencies with evidence. Also, the GDPR acknowledges that we require certain data for the performance of our contract entered with you and other cMatch members. We promise our members to fight fraud and abuse, and to maintain a safe and clean dating platform. Also, parts of the agreement between you and cMatch are still in effect, even after deactivating your account; for instance, you re not allowed to create a new account within two years. This is why we keep certain profile data and logs needed to fight fraud and abuse.

Your privacy is very important to us. Our tools have been created according to the 'privacy by design' and 'privacy by default' principles. We never retain your data longer that required.

Access of your personal data by our staff

cMatch staff may access your personal data, including access logs, payment data, and private communication with other members. This to offer (technical) support, process complaints, and fight abuse. In sort: to offer you a safe website and great service. Naturally, our staff signed a non disclosure agreement.

Cookies (and similar technology)

Cookies — small text files stored on your computer — are indispensable to our website's operation. We use cookies (encrypted and secured when needed) to provide you a safe login system and a problem-free web experience. Third parties also might store cookies. For example, cMatch uses Google Analytics to create anonymous visiting statistics. In addition, Google Ads might place a 'tracking cookie', making it possible for example for you to see an advertisement on cMatch based on your visit of another website. Google enables you to opt out for this. For more information, see www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads. Finally, in some cases content originating from third parties (like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) is being posted on cMatch. These external websites might store cookies on your computer. cMatch has no option to control or monitor these cookies.

This is when we do share confidential data with others

In some rare situations we share personal details with third parties. For instance, when cMatch is forced to do so in order to comply with legal provisions or court orders. Most cases involve providing data to law enforcement agencies in order to help investigate or prosecute criminal activity. Also, organizations/companies providing services to cMatch might have (partial) access to your data. For example, our hosting provider and payment provider. However, they may only access confidential data in order for them to do their job properly, and are bound by non disclosure agreements. Finally, we reserve the right to share certain information with third parties in case you first contacted this party (directly or indirectly); for example, if you filed a dispute through a consumer organization, we will provide or publish the data required to process or rebut your complaint.

Security

Securing your personal data is very important to us. We're making sure your data are properly secured. We keep updating our security system and policies. Our server is being monitored 24/7.

Questions?

If you still have questions regarding how cMatch handles your privacy and personal data, feel free to contact our privacy officer at privacy@cmatch.com.