Privacy
Privacy Policy
Effective 15 October 2026
This policy explains what personal data Kinli holds, why we hold it, who we share it with, and your rights over it. We collect what the service needs and nothing more. We run no advertising, and we do not track you across other websites. With your consent we use Google Analytics to see how this website is used. Nothing analytics-related loads unless you agree.
Who we are
Kinli is run by Kinli Circles Limited, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17394471. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy, under UK GDPR and the EU GDPR, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration number ZC243990.
For any question about this policy, or to exercise your rights, email support@kinli.co.uk.
What this policy covers
The Kinli mobile apps, the website at kinli.co.uk, and the services behind them. It applies to members, to visitors to our website, and to the people described below whose details we hold without an account.
What data we collect, and why
Account data
Your name, email address and how you sign in: with Apple, Google, or an email address and password. If you sign in with Apple’s private-relay email, we only ever receive the relay address. We store a password as a one-way hash. We never see or keep the password itself.
Your mobile number, if you add one. You confirm it with a code sent by text message; Google’s Firebase sends that text for us, and our servers only accept the number once Firebase confirms the code was typed back. The page that sends the code uses Google’s reCAPTCHA to check that a person, not an automated script, is asking, and Google receives information about your device and browser for that check. One number can be on only one account: if you confirm a number that is on another account, it moves to yours and the other account is told by email. If you gave us a number when you registered your interest, asked to join on our website, signed up as a founding member or joined the Ambassador Programme, we put it on your account unconfirmed, so you can confirm it in the app or remove it. Your number is shown to you and to the Kinli team, and never to other members.
Profile data
Anything you add to your profile, such as a short bio and a photo or preset avatar. It is optional, and members of your circles can see it. They can also see which circles you host, but only circles they are in or could find for themselves in Find a circle, never an invite-only circle they are not part of.
Content you create
Posts, replies, reactions, marketplace listings and the images you attach. These are shown to the members of the circle you post in.
Conversations (direct messages)
Message bodies are encrypted on our servers using AES-256-GCM. This is not end-to-end encryption: we hold the key, and can in principle read a message, for example to respond to a lawful request or a safety report. Treat direct messages as private between you and the other person, but not secret from us.
When a message triggers a notification, a short preview of it is stored unencrypted with the notification, and the same preview travels through Apple’s, Google’s and Expo’s notification services to reach your lock screen. Deleting your account does not delete your messages: see “How long we keep your data”.
Location
Some circles are tied to a place. The location permission is requested “while using the app” only, never in the background and never at start-up: the app asks only when you reach something that uses it, such as choosing a circle’s area on a map or tapping “Use my location”. If you have already given that permission, the app does not ask again, and Find a circle may use your approximate location as soon as you open it (see below). You can change the permission at any time in your device settings. A circle’s area is a general area, and other members never see your home address. When a host sets up or opens the joining settings of a circle drawn around a point on a map, that point, rounded to about a kilometre, is sent from our servers to postcodes.io to check that it is in the UK.
A postcode you type when joining a place circle. A circle’s host can ask people who want to join for a UK postcode, to see roughly whether they are nearby. Typing one is your choice: you can skip it, or say you have no UK postcode, and the circle’s host will take a look at your request instead. A postcode you type is sent to our servers in the body of the request (never in a web address), and we look it up from our servers with postcodes.io, a UK postcode service, which is sent the postcode and nothing else, not your name, your email address or your IP address. We use it only to work out whether you are in or near the circle’s area.
We keep only whether you’re nearby, roughly how far, and the first half of your postcode (for example “OX15”). The rest of your postcode, and the coordinates it maps to, are used for that one lookup and then discarded. You are told only whether you are in the area. The circle’s hosts, and the members of our team who look after circles, can see a short label such as “Just outside” and the first half of the postcode while a decision is waiting. A postcode is a good guide and not proof, and we do not check it against anything else.
Finding circles around you. Find a circle opens on the circles around you. To work that out without asking you anything, it uses the first of these it has: the postcode you last used to find circles on that phone, which the app keeps on the phone only and removes when you sign out; the postcode of the collection address you saved for the marketplace, which our servers look up for you, so that this tells the app only the first half of it (for example “Near OX15”); or, if you have already allowed the app to use your location, your approximate location, rounded to about a kilometre on your phone and again on our servers. If it has none of these, it waits for you to tap “Use my location” or “Enter a postcode”.
Whichever it uses, and any postcode you type into “Find circles near your postcode”, is looked up from our servers with postcodes.io, which is sent the postcode or the rounded location and nothing else about you. We use it only to show you the circles near you: a location used for this is not kept, on your phone or by us, and nothing from the lookup is added to your account. The answer is for you alone.
Camera
The app asks for your camera to take photos for your profile and listings, and to scan a circle’s QR code. When scanning, the camera is used only to read the code on your phone. No picture or video is kept or leaves your phone. When you join a circle by QR code, we record that you did, in the same way as when you join from an invite link.
Payment data
A paid membership bought on our website is paid through Stripe. Stripe collects your card details directly. We never see or store your full card number. When you pay for a membership on our website, we give Stripe your name and email address so it can take your subscription payments and keep a record of them. We keep a record that you have a subscription and the identifiers Stripe gives us to manage it.
Marketplace payments and payouts to sellers are covered in ‘Buying, selling and getting paid’ below.
Device and diagnostic data
If the app crashes, we receive a crash report through Sentry so we can fix it. It can include technical details about your device and the state of the app at the time. We use no advertising or tracking identifiers, and the app never shows Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt because we do not track you across other apps or websites.
Which posts and listings you have seen
When a post is on your screen in the app, and when you open a post or a marketplace listing, we record which one it was, the first and most recent time, and how many times. We record this only for things in circles you belong to, and never for your own posts or listings.
Nobody can see who has read their post or opened their listing, and there are no read receipts. We use these records only as totals, on an internal page, for example, to see how many posts were read last week. They do not decide what you are shown, and they are not joined to anything from outside Kinli. They are deleted when your account is deleted, and a deleted post stops counting towards anything we report.
Support correspondence
If you email us, we keep the correspondence so we can help you and keep a record of the request. Email sent to our @kinli.co.uk addresses is received by Resend and kept in our admin. It may be forwarded to the mailbox of the person on our team who handles it, which is hosted by Google Workspace.
If an account is permanently banned
In the most serious cases, protecting children above all, we permanently ban an account: the person is signed out everywhere, taken out of every circle, and can no longer sign in. So that a ban cannot be undone by signing up again, we keep a record of the identifiers the account used: its email address and, where it signed in that way, its Apple or Google sign-in identifier.
Each identifier is turned into a one-way code (a SHA-256 hash; an email address is lower-cased and trimmed first), and only the code is stored, with the kind of identifier, the account it came from, and the date. The list holds no names, addresses or reasons. A hash of an email address is still personal data, and we treat it as such. If anyone tries to create an account, register their interest or be invited with a matching identifier, we do not create it and we do not write to that address.
We keep these codes for as long as the ban stands. A ban has no end date: the codes are removed only if the ban is lifted, which only the owner of Kinli can do, and they are not removed when the account is deleted, or deleting it would undo the ban. We also record when the ban was placed, which member of our staff placed it, and an internal note of the reason. Only our staff can see that note, and it is never shown to the person. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests: protecting our members, children above all, from someone we have decided must not return.
Registering your interest (before you have an account)
If you fill in the form at kinli.co.uk/register, we hold your name, your email address, and a phone number if you chose to give one (the field is optional). We use these to tell you about Kinli, what it does, and when a circle opens near you.
We record which permissions you gave and when. Being emailed and being telephoned are separate permissions: we will not call or message your phone unless you ticked the box that says so. We do not sell this list, share it, or use it for advertising. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link that works without signing in, and you can also email us to be removed. If you later create an account, the rest of this policy covers it; your entry on this list stays separate and you can leave it separately.
Our onboarding emails to this list, and the email we send when founding places open for your group, include a small image that tells us whether the email was opened (and when, and how many times), and a “View this email online” link that shows the same email on our website: opening that link also counts as opening the email. The buttons in the onboarding emails, and links written as words, go through a Kinlilink that records that you tapped one, which one, and when, before taking you straight on to the page; a link shown as a web or email address goes straight there, and the button in the founding-places email is not tracked. We keep this against your email address and use it only to see which of our emails are read and acted on, not to build a profile of you. If your email app is set not to load images, the image does not load.
Our email provider, Resend, also tells us what happened to each email we send: whether it was delivered, delayed, bounced, failed to send, was blocked, or was marked as spam. We keep that against your email address, with the provider’s reason, so we stop writing to an address that no longer works or that marked our email as spam, and so an email that never reached you can be sent again. For emails other than these onboarding and founding emails, we only keep it when something went wrong. We delete it after 24 months.
If the page for a particular circle also asks for a postcode, that is separate from the details above and is described under “Location”; typing one never ticks either of the permissions above. If you are later let in from a founding invitation, the postcode is still asked and kept in the same way, but it never affects whether you are let in.
Bringing a +1 to a founding place
A member who has claimed a founding place can ask us to hold one for a second person, usually a partner who was not in the WhatsApp group, by giving us that person’s first name and email address. If that is you, we did not collect your details from you: the member gave them to us, and the invitation we send says so.
We keep your first name, your email address, which group the invitation was for, and the email address of the member who asked, so that we can say who gave us yours. We do not ask for or keep a phone number, and we record no permission to contact you. We send you one invitation email and nothing else: we have not added you to any mailing list, and we will not send you anything further unless you choose to claim a place yourself, on the founding page, with your own details and permissions. If the invitation cannot be delivered, we delete what we hold about you straight away.
To have your details removed: use the “Forget my details” link in the invitation (one click, no account needed) or email support@kinli.co.uk. That deletes your name and the note of which member asked us to invite you straight away, and keeps your email address on our do-not-contact list, so that we cannot invite you again by mistake. What is left is deleted in full 24 months after the entry was created.
Contacts shared by members (recommendations)
A member can attach a contact card to a post to recommend someone: a babysitter, plumber or tutor, say. The card holds the name and whichever details the member chose to share, field by field, and only the members of that circle can see it. If you are the person being recommended, see “If someone shared your details” below.
These recommendations also build a private directory of professionals (“Your Book”), which members can see only within circles they belong to. A recommended professional may be invited to claim their profile: this is optional, and lets them set up how they appear (their trade, area, a short bio, and how to reach them), manage it, or take it down. If a business that claims its profile adds its Companies House registration number, we check it against the public Companies House register to show a verification mark. We send only the number; we store the confirmed company name and status returned to us. Sole traders are not asked for a company number.
One exception to “only within circles they belong to”: Ask Kinli Radar (and Ask Kinli itself, when you ask it a question) can show a paying member a business that is endorsed in another circle, when that circle allows its content to be shown beyond it and the business covers the area of the member’s ask. It shows the business and the name of that one circle: never who endorsed it. The same two can show a short snippet of a post or reply from such a circle, beside your own results; that snippet is never given to the AI that writes an answer.
Buying, selling and getting paid
Buying
When you pay for something in the marketplace, your card is handled by Stripe, our payments provider. Stripe collects your card details directly. We never see or store your full card number. When you pay, Stripe keeps your card so you can pay more quickly next time, and we keep only Stripe’s reference to it. For marketplace payments Stripe gets the card you enter and your Kinli member id as a reference, and not your email address. Your receipts and refund confirmations are sent by Kinli. If you also pay for a membership on our website, Stripe holds your email address for that subscription (see Payment data above). The payment is held until the item is collected and then paid to the seller.
Selling and getting paid
To be paid for things you sell, you give Stripe your date of birth, home address, phone number and the bank account to pay into, in a form inside the app. We fill in your name for you from your Kinli account and give Stripe your Kinli member id as a reference. For your payout account we do not give Stripe your email address. Stripe needs an email address on a payout account, so we give it a Kinli address instead, and any email Stripe sends about your payout account comes to us rather than to you. Notices about your sales, withdrawals and payout bank are sent by Kinli. When Stripe emails that address about your payout account, we pass its message on to you by email.
Stripe uses these details to check your identity and to pay you. It also uses them for its own legal obligations, such as identity checks and preventing fraud, for that it decides how they are used, under its own privacy policy (stripe.com/privacy).
What Kinli keeps
A record of each sale (the price, our fee and what you earned) and of each withdrawal to your bank, including any withdrawal fee, and a record of the receipts and payment notices we emailed you (which email and when, not its contents). Your bank’s name and the last four digits of the account, so you can see where your money goes; we never hold your full account number or sort code. A seller reference (for example KS-4F7Q2M) to quote if you contact us: it is not a password, and we will never ask you to send us a password, a sign-in code or your bank details by email, message or phone.
When your account is deleted we remove your bank’s name, the last four digits and your seller reference; the sale and payout records stay, without your name in our own records, because we must keep payment records for tax purposes. Deleting your Kinli account does not close the payout account you set up with Stripe or delete the identity and bank details you gave Stripe: Stripe holds them under its own privacy policy and legal obligations, and we keep the link between your payment records and that Stripe account for the same tax reasons.
Our legal bases for using your data
Data protection law requires a lawful basis for each use of your personal data. This is the basis for each.
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Creating and running your account; showing you your circles and content | Performance of a contract (our Terms of Service with you) |
| Sending you service emails (verification, password resets, receipts and other notices) | Performance of a contract |
| Taking subscription payments and managing billing | Performance of a contract |
| Taking marketplace payments, paying sellers, and keeping the records of both | Performance of a contract |
| Keeping sale and payout records for tax and payments law | Legal obligation |
| Keeping the service secure, preventing abuse, and diagnosing crashes | Legitimate interests (running a safe, reliable service) |
| Using your device location to find nearby circles | Consent (you grant the device permission, and can withdraw it at any time) |
| Optional push notifications for circle activity | Consent (you choose which notifications to receive) |
| Holding a contact card a member shared as a recommendation, and (if the member chose to invite them) sending that contact one invitation email | Legitimate interests (helping members recommend trusted people within a private circle), balanced by a one-tap removal link in any email we send |
| Building a private directory of recommended professionals for members to browse within their circles | Legitimate interests (helping members find trusted local professionals), balanced by the removal link and the ability to claim and manage a profile |
| Setting up and managing a professional profile you have claimed, and (for businesses) verifying a Companies House number | Performance of a contract (running the profile you asked to claim), and legal obligation or legitimate interests for accurate business verification |
| Keeping you on the pre-registration list and sending you news about Kinli before you have an account | Consent (you ticked the box; every email has a one-click unsubscribe) |
| Asking for a postcode when you join a circle whose host has chosen to ask, and showing the host roughly how near you are | Consent (typing a postcode is your choice: you can skip it or say you have none, and then nothing is processed) |
| Checking a postcode when you join a circle whose host has chosen to check postcodes, so that people outside its area wait for the host’s decision | Legitimate interests (keeping a local circle local; we have written down the balance), balanced by keeping only a band and the first half of the postcode, by a person making every decision about someone outside the area, and by your option to say you have no UK postcode. We do not use consent here, because it would not be freely given |
| Keeping your place on a circle’s waiting list when it lets in a few new members a day | Performance of a contract (your request to join the circle) |
| Holding the first name and email address a founding member gave us for their +1 (and the member’s own email address, as the source), and sending that person one invitation email | Legitimate interests (helping a member bring their partner to a founding place), balanced by sending one email only, saying who gave us the address, and a one-click removal link |
| Keeping a one-way record of the identifiers of a permanently banned account, so the person cannot sign up again | Legitimate interests (protecting members, children above all, from someone we have decided must not return) |
| Complying with legal obligations (e.g. tax records, lawful requests) | Legal obligation |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights and believe the use is proportionate and one you would reasonably expect. You can object to it. See “Your rights”.
AI features, and what they send
Ask Kinli answers questions from posts in the circles you belong to, and always shows the posts it drew on. To answer, your question and the relevant posts go to an AI model provider. We do not send names: where an answer needs to refer to a member, a circle or a recommended tradesperson, we replace the name with a short code before the posts leave our servers, and put the real name back before you read the answer. The text of a post is sent word for word, so a name, an address or a phone number someone typed into a post goes with it.
Some of this happens without you asking. To make posts findable, we send the text of every post and reply to a search-indexing provider when it is written. No name, no circle, just the words. We also send a sample of past posts and questions to an AI provider from time to time, to measure and improve these features. Neither is triggered by anything you do, and neither can currently be switched off.
Ask Kinli can also draft a listing from a post, suggest what kind of post you are writing, summarise a busy conversation, and tidy up a draft: some of these send text you have written but not yet posted. Photos you add to a marketplace listing are sent too, to check that they are your own rather than taken from a catalogue.
We do not send your direct messages to any AI provider. Ask Kinli can be wrong, and its answers are not professional advice.
Message requests
When Ask Kinli Radar, or Ask Kinli itself, finds something you wrote in another circle that could help someone, that person can send you a message request instead of a direct message. We hold three things for it: a short quote of what of yours matched, an excerpt of the question they asked, and their first message.
You see what of yours matched and what they asked. Their name, photo and circle stay hidden from you until you accept. You can allow it (their message then becomes an ordinary direct message and they learn who you are), decline it, block them, or report it. If you decline, block, or do nothing, they are only told it didn’t connect: never which of those it was. You can switch requests off under Privacy; you can also stop your posts being offered to other circles at all.
A request that nobody answers expires after 14 days. The question excerpt and the first message are scrubbed 30 days after a request is resolved , accepted, declined, blocked, withdrawn or expired: unless a report is open on it. Once accepted, the message lives on as a direct message and is kept as described under “How long we keep your data”. Requests you sent or received are deleted when you delete your account. Kinli’s AI only suggests the match; it does not read the request.
How long we keep your data
- Your account and profile: kept while your account is open. When you delete your account, we permanently remove your sign-in details and profile.
- Your posts, replies and reactions: deleting your account does not erase what you contributed to a circle. After a grace period of 14 days, your name on them is replaced with “Former member” and can no longer be linked back to you. You can delete individual posts yourself at any time.
- Direct messages: kept for the life of the conversation. Deleting your account does not delete your messages , the other person can still read the whole thread, and your name on it becomes “Former member”.
- Which posts and listings you have seen: deleted outright when your account is deleted.
- Message requests: expire after 14 days if unanswered; the question excerpt and first message are scrubbed 30 days after a request is resolved; deleted outright, sent and received, when your account is deleted.
- Your mobile number: removed straight away if you remove it in the app, and when your account is deleted.
- Your circle memberships, recognised devices and stored notifications: not removed when you delete your account. Email us and we will remove them.
- Pre-registration details: kept until you unsubscribe, or for 24 months from the day you registered, whichever comes first. When you unsubscribe we delete your name and phone number straight away and keep only your email address on a do-not-contact list, so that we cannot add you again by mistake.
- Postcode checks: while a decision is waiting we keep a short label (such as “Just outside”), a distance in whole miles and the first half of the postcode, and delete the entry after 90 days if nobody has decided by then. When a decision is made the distance and the first half of the postcode are erased straight away, and the label is kept for 30 days so the circle’s host can still see it. A check made when you registered your interest is also deleted when you unsubscribe, and with the rest of that entry after 24 months. When your account is deleted, the checks and waiting-list entries held for it are deleted with it, once the 14-day grace period has passed.
- Waiting-list entries: your place in a circle’s line (when you asked, where you stand, and when you were let in or taken off) is kept for as long as you are a member. An entry that has ended is deleted 30 days later, and one for an email address that was never confirmed is closed after 7 days. None of it contains a postcode.
- Invitations for a +1: the entry made when a founding member asks us to invite someone is deleted in full 24 months after it was created, or straight away if the invitation could not be delivered. If you use the “Forget my details” link, your name and the note of who asked are deleted straight away and your email address stays on our do-not-contact list until that same date.
- Permanent-ban records: the one-way identifier codes described under “If an account is permanently banned” are kept for as long as the ban stands (indefinitely, unless it is lifted) and are not removed when the account is deleted.
- Email delivery records: deleted after 24 months.
- Crash reports: kept only as long as needed to diagnose and fix the problem.
- Billing records: kept as the law requires (usually six years, for UK tax).
- Marketplace sales and payouts: records of sales, fees and withdrawals are kept for at least six years for tax purposes, together with a record of the receipts and payment notices we emailed you (which email and when, not its contents), without your name in our own records once your account is deleted. Your bank’s name, the last four digits and your seller reference are removed when your account is deleted. The identity and bank details you gave Stripe to be paid are held by Stripe, and deleting your Kinli account does not delete them or close your payout account with Stripe; we keep Stripe’s reference to your payout account with the payment records.
International transfers
We keep your data in the UK and EU wherever we can, and chose our core providers accordingly. Where a provider processes data outside the UK and EEA, we rely on a safeguard recognised by UK and EU law (an adequacy decision, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses) so that your data has the same level of protection.
How we protect your data
Everything is encrypted in transit (HTTPS), and direct messages are also encrypted at rest. Access to our systems is restricted and authenticated. No system is perfectly secure, but we design for security from the start.
Your rights
Under UK and EU data protection law you have the right to:
- Access , ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification , ask us to correct data that is wrong or incomplete. You can edit most of your profile yourself in the app.
- Erasure , ask us to delete your data. You can delete your account in the app; this removes your sign-in and profile data and anonymises your content as described above. It does not delete the details you gave Stripe to be paid for things you sold. See ‘How long we keep your data’.
- Portability , ask for a copy of the data you gave us in a machine-readable format (we can provide it as JSON).
- Restriction , ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
- Objection , object to our using your data on the basis of legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent , where we rely on consent (such as location or notifications), withdraw it at any time, without affecting what was done before.
To exercise any of these rights, email support@kinli.co.uk. We will respond within one month. It is free, and we will not treat you differently for doing so.
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113, or, in the EU, to your local supervisory authority. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Children
Kinli is not for children: you must be at least 18 to create an account, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will remove it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will change the date at the top and, if the change matters, tell you in the app or by email.
Contact us
For any privacy question or request, write to support@kinli.co.uk. We are Kinli Circles Limited, registered in England and Wales under company number 17394471.