1Who runs Othord
Othord isn’t a company. It’s a social network for food that I, Othman El Hajjami, run on my own from Kenitra, Morocco. That makes me the person responsible for your personal data (the “data controller”) under Morocco’s Law No. 09-08 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data. When this policy says “I”, that’s me; “Othord” is the app and the website othord.com, including the waitlist.
If you have a question about your data, write to me at hello@othord.com. A person reads every email: me. The rules for using Othord are in the Terms of use.
2Who Othord is for
Othord is only for people aged 18 and over. When you sign up, I ask you to confirm that you’re 18 or older. I record that you confirmed, and when. I don’t ask for your date of birth and I don’t store it. If I learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, I delete it. See the child safety standards.
3What I collect
When you create an account
- Email address, to sign you in, confirm your account and reset your password.
- Password. My sign-in provider stores it only as a one-way hash: nobody, me included, can read it.
- Name and username. You can change your username once every 30 days. When you do, your old one stays reserved for 14 days, so nobody else can take it straight away.
- Your confirmation that you’re 18 or over, with the date and time.
Your profile
- Your profile photo, bio and the food preferences you pick.
- Your city, if you pick one.
- Whether your account is private.
What you post and do
- Posts: the text, the photos and videos, the spot, the rating you give, and the music you add, if any.
- Snaps: the photo or video, what you add on top (text, stickers, music), the spot and the rating you give. See Snaps below.
- Comments, and miams (likes) on posts, comments and snaps.
- Mentions: when you write someone’s @username in a post or a comment, they get a notification (if they can see it). In your bio or in a message, an @username is only a link to their profile.
- The messages you send: the text, the stickers, and the posts and snaps you share or reply to.
- Spots you add: the name, the kind of place, the city and, if you give one, the area. I record who added each spot, to limit new spots to 5 a day per person and to stop abuse; nobody else can see who added it.
- Follows and follow requests, saves, blocks, and the people whose snaps you chose to hide.
- Reports you make, and reports other people make about you or your posts (see Reports).
- The notifications I show you, for example that someone followed you or mentioned you, and whether you’ve seen them.
I don’t use your device’s location. A spot is a place you pick from Othord’s list or add yourself, by its name and city.
Snaps
- A snap is seen by the people who follow you, and by anyone you send it to in a message, for 24 hours. After that, its photo or video is erased from storage, along with the record of who saw it and who gave it a miam.
- While it lasts, you can see who has seen your snap and who gave it a miam. Nobody else sees that list.
- If you rate the spot in a snap, the rating stays after the 24 hours, anonymously: it counts towards the spot’s average, with no name on it and no link to the snap. It stays linked to your account, where nobody else can see it, so that it’s deleted with your account.
- A snap that someone reported is kept with the report, as evidence (see Reports).
Music and stickers
Music and stickers come from Othord’s own library: I don’t collect anything from the music on your phone. When you add music to a post or a snap, I record which track, where it starts and how loud it plays against your video’s sound, and the artist’s credit is shown with it, as its licence requires. The app remembers, on your phone, the stickers you used last.
Camera, photos and microphone
The app asks for these permissions only so you can take or choose the photos and videos you post or share as snaps (the microphone records the sound of your videos). I only receive the files you choose to post, to share as a snap or to use as your profile photo.
Notifications
If you turn on notifications, I store a push token: an identifier that lets me send notifications to your device. (Othord doesn’t send push notifications yet; this is what it will use when it does.) When you sign out on that phone, the token is removed from your account. You can turn notifications off at any time in your phone’s settings.
Your settings
Your theme (Night, Day or Auto), your video autoplay and data saver choices, and your language are kept on your phone. Your language is also saved with your account, so Othord speaks it on every device you sign in on.
Technical data
When the app or the website talks to Othord’s servers, the hosting providers automatically record basic technical information: your IP address, your type of device or browser, what was requested and when. These logs are used to keep Othord secure and to fix problems, and are only kept for a short time. While you’re signed in, your session also records the IP address and type of device it was opened from.
The Othord app contains no analytics and no advertising tools.
The waitlist
If you join the waitlist at othord.com, I collect your first name, your email address, your city if you pick one, your language, how you found Othord (for example Instagram, TikTok or a shared link, worked out from the link you followed or from your browser) and the date you joined.
When you create an account with the same email address, I check whether you were one of the first 500 on the waitlist. If you were, your profile gets the founding member star, which you can hide in Settings.
I share your first name and email address with Brevo, the service that sends the waitlist emails. That’s all they get, they only use it to send those emails, and it’s never sold.
The website
- othord.com counts visits with Vercel Web Analytics. It uses no cookies and doesn’t identify you: I only see totals, such as the pages visited, the site you came from, the country and the type of device.
- The website’s fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when a page loads.
- Your browser keeps your language choice and, if you joined the waitlist, the link to cancel your registration. They stay on your device. There are no advertising cookies.
Looking around before you sign up
You can look around the app before creating an account. First you confirm you’re 18 or older: your phone keeps that answer, and I don’t receive it. While you look around you’re not signed in, so I don’t know who you are; like any visit, it only leaves the technical logs described above.
Testing a beta version (TestFlight)
If you test a beta version of the app through Apple’s TestFlight, you can send me feedback and screenshots from it. Apple passes me what you choose to send, with the details it attaches (such as your device model, its iOS version and the email address you test with), and crash reports from the beta. I use them only to fix bugs, and delete them once the bug is fixed, 12 months at most.
When you write to me
If you email me, I receive your email address and whatever your message contains.
Coming features (planned)
These aren’t in Othord yet. I list them so you know what’s coming. Before any of them goes live, I’ll update this policy, and the ones that need your permission will ask for it first.
- Sign in with Apple, Google or your phone number (planned): I’d receive the account identifier Apple or Google gives me and the email address they share, or your phone number, which would go to an SMS provider to text you a code.
- Spots near you (planned): your approximate location, only if you switch it on, to show spots around you. It wouldn’t be kept as a history of where you’ve been.
- App statistics and crash reports (planned): which screens are used and what made the app crash, to improve it and fix bugs, through PostHog or Sentry, on servers in the EU where possible, kept 12 months at most.
- Subscriptions (planned): paid through the App Store or Google Play and managed with RevenueCat. I’d see what you subscribed to and until when, never your card details. Payment records would be kept as long as tax law requires.
- Voice notes in messages (planned): the recordings you send, kept like your other messages.
What I don’t collect
- Your date of birth or any ID document.
- Card or bank details.
- Your phone’s contacts.
- A history of where you go.
- Nothing for advertising: I don’t sell data and there are no advertising trackers.
4Why I use it
I use your data only to:
- Run Othord: create and secure your account, show your profile, posts and snaps to the right people (according to your privacy settings and your blocks), deliver your messages, show your notifications, make snaps disappear after 24 hours and work out each spot’s average rating.
- Moderate content: review reports, keep a record of them, remove content and accounts that break the Terms of use, and keep people safe.
- Keep accounts secure: sign you in, send account emails (confirming your address, resetting your password) and prevent abuse, for example with limits such as 5 new spots a day.
- Run the waitlist: send you a welcome email, and an email when Othord opens.
- Answer you when you write to me.
When you create an account, you tick a box that says “I agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy”. It’s never ticked for you, and without it you can’t create an account. I process your account data because it’s needed to give you the service those Terms describe. For notifications and the waitlist, I rely on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. I keep reports to protect the people on Othord and to meet my legal obligations.
I don’t sell your data, I don’t share it for advertising, and I don’t use it to build advertising profiles.
5Who can see what
- Public account: your name, username, profile photo, bio, posts, followers and the people you follow are visible to other signed-in Othord users. Your name, username, photo, bio, founding member star, posts and comments can also be seen by people looking around before they sign up, who can find you in search; your followers and the people you follow can’t.
- Private account: your name, username, profile photo and bio stay visible so friends can find you. Your posts, and who follows you and whom you follow, are only visible to the people you approve. People who haven’t signed up see nothing of yours.
- Messages are only visible to the people in the conversation. I don’t read them, unless I have to in order to look into a report or to comply with the law.
- Snaps: seen by the people who follow you and anyone you send one to, for 24 hours. Only you see who viewed yours.
- Spots: a spot’s page, with its average rating and the posts there that each person is allowed to see, is visible to everyone signed in. Nobody sees who added a spot, and ratings from snaps count without a name.
- Blocks: when you block someone, you no longer see their profile, posts or comments, and they no longer see yours. They can’t message you, comment, give you miams or follow you any more, and any follow between you is removed. They aren’t told.
- Photos and videos are delivered through links that expire after one hour, and only to people who are allowed to see them.
6Reports
You can report a post, a snap, a comment or an account from the app. When someone does, I keep the report with a copy of what was reported (the text, the photos and videos, the username), so I can look into it even if it’s deleted afterwards. The person reported doesn’t see the report or who made it.
Reports are Othord’s moderation records, kept apart from accounts. If an account is deleted, the reports made by that person or about them stay, with the reported content kept as evidence. Only I can see a report and what was kept with it; the person who made it can only see that they did.
Serious reports — anything involving a minor, threats or violence, self-harm, sexual content or someone’s private information — send me an alert by email, through Brevo, to my own inbox. Reports involving a minor are marked urgent.
7Who helps me run Othord
I use the services below to run Othord. They handle data only on my behalf and on my instructions, and may not use it for their own purposes.
| Service | What it does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, file storage and sign-in: your account, profile, posts, snaps, photos, videos, messages, spots, reports, and the waitlist; also Othord’s music and stickers. | Ireland (EU) |
| Resend | Sends account emails (email confirmation, password reset). | United States |
| Brevo | Sends the waitlist emails (first name and email address only) and the report alerts to my inbox. | France (EU) |
| Vercel | Hosts othord.com and the web version of the app; counts website visits. | United States, with servers worldwide |
| Expo | Issues push tokens. | United States |
| Apple, Google | Run the phone push services behind push tokens, under their own privacy policies. | United States |
| ImprovMX | Receives email sent to hello@othord.com and forwards it to my inbox. | United States (servers in the US and the EU) |
| Gmail (Google) | My inbox: your emails to hello@othord.com and the report alerts arrive there. | United States |
| Google Fonts | Serves the website’s fonts. | United States |
| Apple (TestFlight) | Delivers beta versions of the app and passes me testers’ feedback, screenshots and crash reports. | United States |
| RevenueCat (planned) | Would manage subscriptions: what you subscribed to and until when. | United States |
| PostHog or Sentry (planned) | Would collect app statistics and crash reports. | EU where possible, otherwise United States |
For phone sign-in (planned), I’ll add the SMS provider here once I’ve chosen it.
I may also have to disclose data when Moroccan law, a court or a competent authority requires it. I report child sexual abuse material to the authorities: see the child safety standards.
8Where your data goes
Your account, posts, snaps, photos, videos, messages, spots, reports and the waitlist are stored with Supabase in Ireland, in the European Union. Ireland is on the CNDP’s list of countries that ensure an adequate level of protection.
Some of the services above are in the United States, which isn’t on that list. Your data goes there only because it’s needed to give you the service you signed up for under the Terms of use, as Article 44 of Law 09-08 allows (point 1-d: the transfer is needed to carry out the contract between you and me):
- Resend: your email address, to send you account emails.
- Vercel: technical logs, to host the website and the web app.
- Expo, Apple and Google: your push token, to set up notifications.
- ImprovMX and Gmail: the emails you send me, and the report alerts.
- Google Fonts: your IP address, to load the website’s fonts.
- Apple (TestFlight): if you test a beta, the feedback, screenshots and crash reports you send me.
- RevenueCat (planned): your subscription status, to manage subscriptions.
- PostHog or Sentry (planned), only if I can’t use their EU servers: app statistics and crash reports.
9How long I keep it
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Account, profile, posts, comments, messages and activity | As long as you have an account. Anything you delete yourself, such as a post or a comment, is deleted straight away (unless it’s under a report, see below). |
| Snaps | 24 hours. Then the photo or video is erased, with who saw it and the miams. A rating you gave in a snap stays, anonymously, until you delete your account. A reported snap is kept with the report. |
| Spots you add | They stay on Othord as places everyone can use, even after you delete your account; the record that you added them is deleted with your account. |
| Your old username | Reserved for 14 days after you change it. |
| Reports, and the content kept with them | As long as needed to protect users and meet legal obligations: up to 5 years, longer only if a case or a legal request is still open. |
| Push token | Until you sign out on that phone or delete your account. A new token replaces the old one. |
| Sign-in sessions | Until the session expires, and always deleted with your account. |
| Settings on your phone | Until you change them or remove the app. |
| Technical logs | A few days at most, as set by the hosting providers. |
| Waitlist | Until 12 months after Othord launches, or until you leave the list or ask me to delete it, whichever comes first. Leaving deletes your details from my database and from Brevo. |
| Beta feedback (TestFlight) | Until the bug it reports is fixed, 12 months at most. |
| Emails you send me | 2 years. |
| Record of a deleted account | Kept as proof that I deleted it: the account’s internal ID and the date, with no name, email address or content. |
| App statistics and crash reports (planned) | 12 months at most. |
| Subscription records (planned) | As long as tax law requires. |
10Deleting your account
You can delete your account at any time in the app: Profile → Settings → Delete Account. You can also ask me by email, without opening the app: see othord.com/delete-account.
Deletion is immediate and can’t be undone. It removes:
- your profile (name, username, photo, bio, food preferences) and your push token;
- your posts, with their photos and videos, and the comments and miams other people left on them;
- your snaps, with their photos and videos, who saw them, their miams and the ratings you gave in them;
- every photo and video you uploaded, profile photos and snaps included, which are erased from storage;
- your comments, miams, saves, follows, follow requests, blocks, the people whose snaps you hid, your notifications and the reservation on your old username;
- every message you sent.
What stays:
- In a conversation with someone who still has an account, their messages stay, so they keep their side of it. You appear to them as “Deleted account”, and your own messages are gone. When both people in a conversation have deleted their accounts, the whole conversation is deleted. A post of yours that someone shared in a message shows as no longer available.
- The spots you added stay, as places everyone can use, but nothing links them to you any more.
- Reports made by you or about you stay, with the reported content kept as evidence (see Reports). Any photo or video kept that way can no longer be seen by anyone on Othord.
- A record that the account was deleted (its internal ID and the date), so I can show that I did it.
11Your rights
Under Law 09-08, you have the right to:
- access the personal data I hold about you, and get a copy of it;
- correct it if it’s wrong or incomplete;
- object, for legitimate reasons, to my processing it;
- have it deleted.
You can do most of this yourself in the app: edit your profile, delete your posts and comments, make your account private, or delete your account in Settings. For anything else, email hello@othord.com from the address linked to your account (or the one you used for the waitlist). That includes a copy of your data, which I send you as a file; a “Download your data” button in Settings is coming (planned). I may ask you to confirm it’s you. I reply within 30 days.
You can also complain to Morocco’s data protection authority, the CNDP (Commission nationale de contrôle de la protection des données à caractère personnel): www.cndp.ma.
12Security
All data travels encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are only stored as hashes. Rules in the database decide, for every post, snap, message and file, who’s allowed to read it, and photos and videos only travel through links that expire. I’m the only person with administrative access. No system is perfectly secure: if a breach affects your data, I’ll tell you and do what’s needed to fix it.
13CNDP declaration
The declaration of Othord’s processing of personal data to the CNDP is in progress. Declaration receipt number: [number to come].
14Changes to this policy
If I change this policy, I’ll update this page and the date at the top. If the change is significant, I’ll tell you in the app or by email before it applies.
15Contact
Othman El Hajjami · Othord · Kenitra, Morocco