Privacy policy
Last updated October 26, 2026
Moots is a social app for verified NYU students. This policy explains what we collect, why, who helps us run Moots, and the choices you have. The short version: we collect what it takes to run nightly drops and help you meet people, we never sell your data, and you can delete everything at any time.
What we collect
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your NYU email | To verify you’re an NYU student and sign you in with a one-time code. Never shown to other students. |
| Name, birthday, class year, major, school | Your profile. Your birthday confirms you’re 18 or older and is never shown to other students. |
| Your home base | Your NYU hall, your neighborhood, where you commute from, your NYU global site, or “prefer not to say.” Other students only ever see “same hall” or “lives nearby,” never the name. We don’t collect GPS or device location. |
| Your classes | So classmates can find each other. If you upload a schedule screenshot, we read the course codes from it and don’t keep the image. |
| Profile photos (up to 3), interests, prompts, how you like to connect | Your profile. Your photos are stored privately and shown only to signed-in NYU students on Moots. |
| Your clubs and teams | So people from them show up in your drops. You can add one that’s missing. |
| Quick-round and warm-up answers | Ten this-or-that taps when you sign up, and a daily warm-up before Opening Night. They make your NYU type and help us put people you’d click with in your drops. Others only see warm-up totals for all of NYU, never your answers. |
| What you’re down for and your NYC spots | Shown on your profile, and used to find people who’d enjoy the same things. |
| Invite links | Your personal link (joinmoots.com/i/…) and who joined with it, so friends who join land in each other’s first drop and you get a ping. The invite page shows only your first name. |
| Picks, mutuals, Sparks and messages | To run drops, reveal mutual picks and deliver your chats. |
| Blocks and reports | To keep you and others safe. |
| Usage activity | Things like which drop cards you open, pick or skip. We use this to show better people in future drops and to measure how Moots is doing. |
| Push notification token | To send the notifications you’ve left switched on. |
Contacts (optional)
If you choose to check your contacts, your phone turns each email address into a one-way code (a SHA-256 hash) before anything leaves your phone. We compare those codes to verified students on Moots and show you matches. We don’t store your contacts or the codes.
Photos (optional)
Moots only sees a photo you pick or take yourself: your profile picture or a schedule screenshot. When you add a profile photo, your phone checks that each one shows one face (it only counts faces, nothing about who it is, and nothing is sent or stored). We never scan your camera roll.
How we use AI
We use OpenAI’s API for a few specific jobs:
- reading course codes from a schedule screenshot;
- writing starter questions for a new Spark, based on interests and prompts you share, never your name or email;
- an automatic safety check on messages, which holds messages that look harmful and sends them to a person for review.
We send OpenAI only what each job needs, never names or email addresses, and we ask it not to store requests. AI never writes or sends messages as you. We don’t use your chat messages to train AI models.
Who shows up in your drop is ranked by our own model, which runs on our servers (none of this goes to OpenAI). It looks at what you and others share: classes, clubs, hall or neighborhood, school, major, quick-round and warm-up answers, and people you both know on Moots. It learns from what happens after each drop: who gets picked, which picks turn mutual, and whether both people sent a message in the chat (never what the messages say). Over time it also learns which of these matter most to you from your own picks. To make sure it’s fair and actually helps, some drops use a simpler rules-based ranking for comparison.
What other students see
Students who can find you see your photos, full name, class year, school, major, interests, prompts, and what you have in common (like a class, dorm or group). You choose whether any verified NYU student can find you or only people you share a class, dorm, group or add with, and you can pause Moots to disappear from drops and search. Nobody sees who you picked unless it’s mutual.
Who helps us run Moots
We share data only with service providers that run Moots for us, under their terms for business customers:
- Cloudflare: hosting, photo storage and email delivery;
- Supabase: our database;
- OpenAI: the AI jobs listed above;
- Expo and Apple: delivering push notifications.
We don’t sell your personal information, share it for advertising, or show ads. We may disclose information if the law requires it or to protect someone’s safety.
How long we keep it
- Picks that weren’t mutual are erased after 30 days.
- Sign-in codes expire after 15 minutes.
- When you delete your account, we erase your profile, photos, classes, groups, picks, mutuals, chats and notifications right away. Usage records stay only with your account link removed.
- Safety records: if we remove an account for breaking our rules, we keep the report and a one-way code of the email address so it can’t sign up again.
Your choices
- Edit your profile anytime in the app.
- Switch each kind of notification on or off in Settings.
- Choose who can find you, or pause.
- Block or report anyone from their profile or your chat.
- Delete your account in Settings & safety → Delete account.
- Email hello@joinmoots.com to ask for a copy of your data or with any question.
Age
Moots is for NYU students who are 18 or older. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 18, we remove it.
Changes
If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we’ll tell you in the app before it takes effect.