Privacy Policy

VAELA is operated by VAELA Ventures LLC, 7901 4th St N #35664, St. Petersburg, FL 33702, United States. We are the controller of the personal data described in this policy. You can reach us at support@joinvaela.com.

Account details (email address and password credentials handled by our authentication provider), your application profile (first name, birth date, gender, city, occupation, headline and alignment answers), your four portraits, the identity document you submit for verification, your date invitations and bookings, your private messages and message reactions, reports you file or receive, and basic technical logs needed to operate the service.

Payment card details are never stored by VAELA. Card data is processed directly by our payment provider.

If you ask for launch updates on this website, we store the email address you give us, your first name if you choose to share it, the fact that you consented, and the date you signed up. We use this only to tell you when VAELA opens in your city and to share occasional news about the launch. We do not sell or share this list, and every email includes an unsubscribe link. You can ask us to remove you at any time by writing to support@joinvaela.com.

• To review your application and verify that every member is a real person.
• To show your profile to members of the opposite gender within your stated age preference, and to rank introductions by compatibility.
• To arrange, confirm and settle dates, including payment authorisation.
• To deliver private messages between two members of a confirmed introduction.
• To investigate reports, no-shows and safety concerns.
• To send you service notifications about your membership and your dates.

We rely on different legal bases depending on why we are using your data:

• To provide the membership — reviewing your application, showing your profile, matching, arranging and settling dates, and delivering messages between members of a confirmed date. This is necessary to perform our contract with you.
• To verify your identity and age — necessary to perform our contract with you and to meet our obligation to keep the membership adults-only.
• To keep members safe — investigating reports, no-shows and safety concerns, and preventing banned members from re-registering. This is our legitimate interest in protecting members.
• To send launch updates from this website — your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To meet legal obligations — keeping records we are required to keep, and responding to lawful requests.

When you apply for membership, we ask you to upload a government-issued identity document to confirm that you are a real person and at least 18 years old. This is document verification only. We do not perform background checks, criminal record checks, income verification, or biometric or facial matching against your photographs.

Identity documents are processed by VAELA. We do not share them with any third party. Our infrastructure provider hosts the systems these documents pass through as a data processor acting only on our instructions. This is not sharing your document with a third party for their own use. We delete the document as soon as verification is complete, and afterwards retain only a record that verification was completed, the date it was completed, and confirmation that you meet the minimum age requirement.

Your identity document is never shown to other members and is not used for matching. Access is limited to the staff who administer verification.

Your application includes portrait photographs. These are shown to other members as part of introductions. They are stored while your account is active and deleted within 30 days after your account is closed. If your application is declined, your photographs are deleted within 30 days.

As part of your application you answer 15 questions about your lifestyle and what you are looking for in a relationship. We use an automated system, including artificial intelligence, to compare your answers with those of other members and to generate a small number of suggested introductions.

No name, email, photograph, identity document, age, city, or internal account identifier is sent to the AI system. Only each member's answers to the questions you both answered, and each member's stated gender, are included — members are referred to only as 'Person A' and 'Person B,' and results are matched back to your account entirely on our own systems. If you and another member have fewer than six shared answers, no request is sent at all. The result is stored as a compatibility score with a short written summary. Other members see the summary, never your raw answers.

This is automated processing. It affects which members you are introduced to. It does not determine whether your application is accepted — every application is reviewed by a person before a decision is made.

Your answers are processed using Google Gemini, accessed through Lovable's AI gateway. Both act as processors on our instructions. We have opted out of any use of your answers for model training by our infrastructure providers, and our agreements with model providers separately restrict them from training on this content. Your answers are not published, not sold or shared with advertisers.

If you are in the EU or EEA, you have the right to request human review of matching decisions, to express your point of view, and to contest the outcome. Contact us at support@joinvaela.com.

You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or provide it in a portable format. You can object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and you can withdraw consent for launch updates at any time. Write to support@joinvaela.com and we will respond within one month.

If you are in the EU or EEA, you may lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority.

• Other members: your portraits, first name, age, city, occupation, headline and compatibility summary — only once your profile is verified and discoverable.
• Your date and chat counterpart: your messages, reactions and booking details for that date.
• Our team: your application, portraits, alignment answers and any reports, for review and safety purposes; your identity document during verification only, and not afterwards.
• Service providers: authentication and database hosting, payment processing, and the model provider used for compatibility assessments.

You can edit your profile details at any time, hide your profile from Discover, request a copy of your data, or ask us to delete your account. Age, gender, birth date and city are fixed after verification to keep the membership trustworthy — contact support if something was entered incorrectly. Deleting your account removes your profile from the membership; limited records may be retained where required for legal, security or payment-dispute reasons, and a banned email address may be retained to prevent re-registration.

Data is stored on managed infrastructure with row-level access controls so members can reach only their own records and their own conversations. Retention periods for each type of data are set out in the table above, in 'How long we keep your data'.

VAELA operates from Sweden. Our database and stored files are hosted in the United States. Your answers to the 15 questions are processed using Google Gemini via Lovable's AI gateway, which may also process them outside the EEA.

This means personal data of members in the EU or EEA is transferred outside the EEA. We rely on the transfer safeguards offered by our providers, including Standard Contractual Clauses where they are in place.

VAELA is only for adults. You must be 18 or older to apply or hold a membership.