Privacy Policy

Information we collect

• Account information: your email address and password (stored securely, hashed — we never see or store your plain-text password), or the email of the Google account you sign in with.
• Profile information: username, bio, the kind of art you make, genre, links and the profile photo you choose to add.
• Content: posts, comments, polls, photos, audio, video clips, music, artwork, playlists and links you post, and the messages and group chats you send.
• Activity: things like follows, likes, plays, views and votes, so we can show counts, your Wrapped, badges and recommendations.
• Live audio, video and calls: when you go live, join a room or start a call, your audio (and video, if you turn your camera on) is streamed in real time — through LiveKit, or directly between devices for one-to-one calls and shared studio sessions. We don't record lives, rooms or calls.
• Purchases and payouts: buying beats, songs, gifts, game add-ons, tips, artist memberships and monthly supporter subscriptions goes through Stripe, which handles your card details — we never see or store your card number. We keep a record of what you bought or sold. Artists who get paid set up payouts with Stripe directly; Stripe collects their identity and bank details, and we store only their Stripe account ID and payout status.
• The game (Cafe Kinship: the game): you can play without an account. Online play goes through Epic Online Services and needs a free Epic Games account; Epic handles that sign-in and connects players under its own privacy policy. Chat in the game goes between the players in that session and isn't stored by us, except the lines sent with a report (see below). If you link the game to your Cafe Kinship account, we store a sign-in token for it and the device name you give it (so you can see and unlink your devices), and what you do with your account in the game: your CR and what you spend it on, the items, looks, homes and shops you own (including what you put in them and your shop sign), your stage times and scores for the leaderboards, the beats you save and the people you follow.
• Reports from the game: when you report a player or a shop in the game, we receive the reason you picked, the player's in-game name (and their Cafe Kinship username, if they have one), their last few chat messages from that session or the shop's sign, and who sent the report: your account, or the name you play under if you aren't signed in. Our moderators use reports the same way as reports made on the website.
• Cafe Kinship Games (the Windows game launcher): the games you add to it, and their pictures, stay on your PC. Nothing about them is sent to us.
• Notifications: if you turn on push notifications, your browser's push subscription is stored so we can send them.
• Usage data: basic, aggregated analytics and page-speed measurements (Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights), which don't identify you individually. To count clip views fairly, a signed-out viewer's internet address is stored only as a one-way hash, never the address itself.

How we use your information

To operate the Service — creating and displaying your profile and posts, connecting you with friends, running lives, calls and the game, processing purchases, payouts and artist applications, sending account-related emails (like signup confirmation and notification summaries you can turn off), keeping the Service safe, and moderating content that gets reported. We don't sell your information or use it to show you targeted ads.

Who we share it with

We don't sell your information. We share it only with the service providers that make Cafe Kinship work:

• Supabase — our database and authentication provider, which stores your account and content data.
• Stripe — processes all payments, and artists' payouts.
• LiveKit — carries live audio, rooms and calls in real time.
• Resend — sends account-related emails on our behalf.
• Epic Games (Epic Online Services) — signs players in with their Epic Games account and connects them for online play in the game.
• Vercel — hosts the Service and provides aggregated, anonymous usage analytics.
• GIPHY — powers the GIF search feature in comments; your search terms are sent to GIPHY when you use it.
• Ticketmaster — when you look up events, the city you type is sent to Ticketmaster to find shows.

No ads; embeds: Cafe Kinship doesn't show ads. The Sponsorships page lists affiliate links that we earn a commission from; they take you to the partner's own site. Embedded players from services like YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud that artists add to their pages may use cookies or device information under their own privacy policies.

Your choices and rights

• Delete your account: available any time — see Deleting your account below.
• Delete some of your data and keep your account: see Deleting some of your data below.
• Notification preferences: control which notifications you receive from Settings.
• Access or correct your data: update your profile directly, or email us for anything not editable in-app.

Children's privacy

Cafe Kinship isn't intended for anyone under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from children under 13.

Data security

We use reasonable technical measures to protect your information, including row-level database access controls and encrypted connections. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, so we can't guarantee absolute security.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Reach out at info@cafekinship.com.