Privacy Policy

Last updated: 7 August 2026

Go Dutchie ("we", "us") helps you find people in your contacts who use the same services and subscriptions so you can share costs and referrals. This policy explains what we collect, why, and your choices. Questions? [email protected].

Information we collect

• Account details — your email address and display name, used to authenticate you and to create and manage your Go Dutchie account.
  If you choose to set a profile picture, it is stored securely on our servers and displayed to your matched contacts and fellow sharing/split members.
  Your name is shown to you, in your own account. Matching shows contacts under the name you saved them as in your own phone. When you share a subscription or join a split group, your display name and profile photo are shared with those members.
• Phone number — used to match you with your contacts. It is hashed (a one-way cryptographic digest with a secret key) so it can be compared without being readable.
  If you choose to verify your phone number, we send a one-time code to it to confirm you own it. Once verified, that number is locked to your account and cannot be reused on another account or changed from within the app — this keeps your account secure and prevents impersonation. To change a verified number, contact support.
• Contacts — with your permission, we read your device contacts on your device to find matches. Your contacts' names stay on your device. To find matches, candidate phone numbers and email addresses are sent to our server over an encrypted connection, where they are hashed with a secret key and compared against other users' hashes. We do not store the raw phone numbers or emails you send for matching.
• Service usage you choose to share — the services you mark as "My Services", referral links you add, and service suggestions/edits you submit.
• Dutchie requests and shares — when you ask another member to share a subscription we store the request: who sent it, who received it, which service, your optional note, and whether it was accepted, declined, or expired. We also store the members you have blocked and your contact-sharing preferences. See Dutchies below for what the other member sees, and Dutchie Plans for what everyone sees when a subscription is shared with more than one person.
• Photos — only when you choose a profile picture, group avatar, attach an expense receipt, or set a custom service icon from your photo library or camera. Expense receipts and split group photos are stored securely in private storage and accessible strictly to members of that specific Split group.
• Push notification token — a device token (via Firebase Cloud Messaging) so we can notify you, e.g. when your service suggestion is approved. It is stored against your account, along with your device platform and app version, and replaced whenever you sign in on a different device. It is used only to deliver notifications, never to track you, and it is deleted with your account.
• Basic technical data — device platform and app version needed to deliver notifications and run the service.

How we use it

• To authenticate you and keep your account secure.
• To match you with contacts who use the same services, using hashed values.
• To power the community service list and approvals.
• To work out balances in a Split from the expenses its members enter, and to show each member where they stand with the others.
• To send you notifications you've enabled. Notifications about a Dutchie or a Split carry the profile name of the member who caused them — "X added you to Flat 3B", "X says they paid you back" — so you know who is meant.

How matching protects your contacts

Matching is designed to reveal as little as possible. Your contacts' names never leave your device. When you search, candidate phone numbers and emails are sent securely to our server and converted to keyed HMAC-SHA-256 hashes with a secret pepper. We compare only the hashes, do not store the raw values you send, and cannot reverse a hash back to a phone number or email. They are not written to our server logs either: the numbers exist only for the moment the comparison runs, and are gone when it finishes.

A match is shown to you under the name you saved in your own phone. Matching itself sends nothing about the other person to your device — not their profile name, and never their profile picture, which we do not store at all. What a match reveals is that someone already in your contacts uses the same service: nothing about them that you did not already have.

Names are exchanged when one of you acts, not by matching alone. Sending a Dutchie request carries your profile name so they can see who is asking. Adding someone to a Split does the same in the other direction: your profile name is written into that Split and is visible to everyone in it, and theirs to you — being added is enough, no request is involved. Both are described in full below.

Dutchies: sharing a subscription

A "Dutchie" is a subscription you agree to share with another member. It starts when you send that member a request and completes only if they accept. Nothing in this section happens without that deliberate step.

• When you send a request — the recipient is shown your profile name (the name on your Go Dutchie account, not the name they saved you as), which service the request is about, and the optional note you wrote. They are not shown your phone number or email address at this stage. You already know who you are sending to: you picked them from your own contacts.
• Your note — a request may carry one short free-text note (up to 300 characters). We store it so the recipient can read it, and it is checked automatically for disallowed content. We blank the note text 90 days after the request is answered or expires; the request record itself is kept so neither of you loses the history of what was agreed.
• If they accept — you each see the other's profile name and the contact details each of you has chosen to share, so you can arrange the split yourselves. Which details are shared is your setting: your phone number (which covers calls, texts and WhatsApp, since they all reach the same number) and your email can each be turned on or off under Profile → Privacy & safety. Turn both off and only your profile name is shared. The email shared is the address on your Go Dutchie account, which may not be the one they already had for you.
• If they decline, or do nothing — you are told it was declined and, if they picked one, the broad reason (for example "plan is full"). No contact details are exchanged. An unanswered request expires by itself after 7 days.
• Blocking — you can block another member. They can no longer send you Dutchie requests, and we store the fact that you blocked them so it keeps working. We never tell them they were blocked.
• Split terms — either of you can propose what the subscription costs, how often it renews, and who pays what. We store those figures and who proposed and agreed them, so you both have the same record.
• Reporting — the optional note on a request is the only thing one member can send another; there is no chat and no reply. You can report the request that carried it as spam, harassment, or an inappropriate note, with optional details. Reports go to our administrators so we can act on them; the person reported is not told who reported them.
• Money — Go Dutchie does not take payments, hold funds, or see what you pay each other. Whatever you settle on is between the two of you, and the terms of the underlying service are between each of you and that provider.

Community announcements — "a new app has been proposed", "a new app was approved" — are shown to everyone without naming who submitted the app. We record the submitter internally so that your own submissions still reach you when you have muted community updates; that attribution is not readable by other members.

Dutchie Plans: sharing one subscription with several people

A Dutchie Plan is the same idea as a Dutchie with more than two people in it. One member owns the subscription and the others pay them a share. Each payer is someone the owner already had in their contacts — payers do not need to have each other in theirs, and no matching is ever run between them.

• Everyone in a plan sees the other members' profile names and what each of them pays. This is the part worth being clear about: two payers who have never met, and who are not in each other's contacts, will see each other listed by name in the plan. It is not something we could leave out — a plan divides one cost between named people, and a share you cannot attribute is a number you have no way to check.
• Contact details stay with the owner. A payer is offered a way to reach the plan owner, using whichever channels the owner has chosen to share under Privacy & safety. Payers are given no way to contact each other, and nothing about a co-payer is compared against your phone.
• You are shown the members before you join. Accepting an invitation to a plan is what puts your name in front of the others; declining or ignoring it shows them nothing.
• Leaving. You can ask to leave a plan at any time. The owner confirms it, the remaining shares are recalculated, and you stop appearing in it. What the plan recorded while you were in it stays in its history.
• Go Dutchie handles no money here either. A share is a number the members agreed on. Nothing is charged, collected, or transferred.

Splits: sharing an expense

A Split records shared expenses between members. For the Split itself we store its name and currency; for each expense, a description, an amount, a date, who paid, and how it was divided between you.

• Everyone in the Split sees all of it, including expenses entered before they joined. We say so before you add someone, because adding a person shows them that history.
• Corrections are open, and attributed. Any member can add or correct an expense, and every edit records who made it — a change to what someone owes is never anonymous. Only the person who paid, or who entered it, can remove one.
• Changes are kept as a record. Creating, editing or deleting an expense writes an entry naming who did it and what changed, and that entry remains after the fact — including for a deleted expense. It is what makes a disputed change answerable, so members cannot edit or remove it.
• Balances are derived from the expenses themselves rather than kept as a separate running figure, so they cannot drift away from the entries that produced them.
• No money moves. Marking a debt settled records that one of you says it was paid and the other agrees. Go Dutchie is not a payment service and holds no funds.
• Members only. Everyone in a Split is already a Go Dutchie member and in the contacts of whoever added them. There are no invited or placeholder participants.

Service providers

We share data only with providers that run the service on our behalf:

• Supabase — authentication and database backend.
• Google Firebase — push notifications and this website.
• Google & Apple — to facilitate secure third-party authentication (OAuth) when you sign up or log in using your Google or Apple accounts.

We do not sell your personal information.

Google API User Data Policy Compliance

Go Dutchie's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We only access basic profile information (email, display name, profile picture) using secure OAuth 2.0 protocols, and do not use this data for advertisements, targeting, or transfer it to third-parties outside of our core authentication services.

Retention & deletion

We keep your data while your account is active.

Deleting your account yourself. Open Profile → Delete account — in the app or on this website — and confirm. This is the fastest route and needs no request to us: your profile, your saved services, your referral links, your community suggestions, your Dutchie requests and active Dutchies, your block list, and your notification token are removed, and your phone and email hashes are deleted so you can no longer be matched by anyone's contacts. Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone — signing up again later starts a fresh, empty account.

Dutchie Plans end when you go. If you own a plan, deleting your account ends that plan for everyone in it and tells them why — the subscription is yours, so we do not hand it to someone who has no access to it. If you are a payer in someone else's plan, you are removed from it, the remaining shares are recalculated for the members who stay, and the owner is told. Either way, what the plan recorded while you were in it stays in its history, under the name it already showed. An open share never blocks or delays deletion.

Splits are the one partial exception. Deleting your account ends your membership of every Split and tells the other members, but the expenses you were part of stay in their Splits, no longer linked to your account. They are those members' records too, and removing them would silently change what everyone else owes. An open balance never blocks or delays deletion — Go Dutchie holds no money and is not a party to what you owe one another.

By email. You can instead ask us to delete your account by emailing [email protected] from the address on your account. We will complete the deletion within 30 days.

In both cases we may retain a limited record where the law requires it — for example to meet accounting or fraud-prevention obligations. Anything another member has already saved to their own device (a referral link they copied, a contact they already had) is outside our systems and is not affected by deletion.

Your choices

• Contacts, photos, and notifications are permission-based — you can grant or revoke them in your device settings.
• You can hide services from your profile or remove referral links in the app.
• Under Profile → Privacy & safety you choose which contact details (phone number, email) a Dutchie partner receives, mute community updates, and manage your block list.

Children

Go Dutchie is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country), and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

We may update this policy; material changes will be reflected by the "Last updated" date above.

Contact

Go Dutchie — [email protected]