Privacy Policy

FreeNikah by Alnico Tech Private Limited  ·  Last Updated: August 2026

This Privacy Policy applies to FreeNikah, a matrimony and matchmaking application for the Muslim community, developed by Alnico Tech Private Limited ("Company", "we", "us", or "our"). It describes how we collect, use, share, and protect your personal data when you use our Services.

We process personal data in accordance with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (India) and other applicable law.

1. Personal Data We Collect

• Account information: Your name, email address, and Google account identifier when you sign in with Google.
• Profile and matrimonial information: Gender, who the profile is created for, date of birth, height, marital status, number and age of children where applicable, nationality, native and current city, religion, sect and sub-caste, education, profession and employment type, languages, financial status, body type, lifestyle and personality attributes, marriage timeline, and your biography and tagline.
• Contact details: Your phone number and WhatsApp number. These are not shown on your public profile — see section 4.
• Photographs: Profile photos you upload, and the per-photo privacy settings you choose.
• Verification selfie (biometric data): A selfie used to confirm that you are the person in your profile photo. See section 3 — this is sensitive data and we treat it accordingly.
• Activity on the Service: Interests you send and receive and their status, profiles you view, profiles that view you, profiles you shortlist or block, private notes you write about a profile, contact details you view and who views yours, saved searches, and reports you submit.
• Messages: The content and timestamps of messages you exchange with members you have matched with.
• Device and technical information: Device type, operating system, app version, and your push-notification token.
• Payment information: If you purchase a paid membership, transaction records are processed by our payment gateway. We never receive or store your card, UPI, or bank credentials.
• Support communications: Messages you send to our support team.

2. How We Use Your Data

• To create your profile and show it to other members in line with your settings
• To recommend and let you search for potentially suitable matches
• To operate interests, matches, messaging, shortlists, notes, blocking, and reporting
• To verify that profiles belong to real people, and to detect fraud, impersonation, and misuse
• To send you service notifications about interests, matches, and messages
• To process payments and provide paid membership benefits
• To respond to support requests and enforce our Terms & Conditions
• To comply with legal obligations and lawful requests

We do not use your photographs or your selfie to train machine-learning models, and we do not sell your personal data.

3. Selfie Verification and Biometric Data

To reduce fake and impersonated profiles, we ask you to submit a selfie. We use Amazon Rekognition, a service operated by Amazon Web Services, to compare the facial features in your selfie with those in your primary profile photo and produce a similarity score. A sufficiently high score verifies your profile automatically; otherwise a member of our team reviews it manually.

• The comparison is used solely to verify that you are the person in your profile photo.
• Your selfie is never displayed on your profile and is never shown to other members. It is accessible only to authorised staff carrying out manual verification.
• Your selfie and the resulting verification status are retained while your account is active, as evidence that your profile was verified. You may request deletion of the selfie at any time by contacting us; note that doing so may remove your verified status.
• We do not use the facial data for advertising, profiling, or any purpose other than verification, and we do not share it with third parties other than the cloud processor named above.

4. Sharing Between Members

Matrimony inherently involves sharing information with other members. Specifically:

• Your profile — your matrimonial details, city, and photos, subject to your photo-privacy settings — is visible to other registered members.
• Your contact details (phone and WhatsApp number) are not shown on your profile. They are disclosed only to members holding a paid membership who choose to view them. We record which members have viewed your contact details, and you can see that list.
• Your activity is partly visible: a member can see that you viewed their profile, sent them an interest, shortlisted them, or viewed their contact details.
• Private to you: notes you write about a profile, your blocked list, and your saved searches are never shown to the other member.

Please do not put information in your profile, biography, or messages that you are not comfortable sharing with other members.

5. Data Retention

• Profile data and photographs: Retained for as long as your account exists. They are not automatically deleted on a fixed schedule. They are deleted when you delete your account, as described below.
• Verification selfie: Retained while your account is active as evidence of verification (see section 3).
• Messages: Retained while your account exists so that conversation history remains available to you and the member you matched with.
• Account data after deletion: Removed from active systems within 30 days of a verified deletion request, and purged from backups within their normal cycle.
• Payment and transaction records: Retained for 7 years as required by Indian tax and accounting law.
• Reports, blocks, and safety records: May be retained after account deletion where necessary to protect other members or comply with law.

6. Third Parties Who Process Data for Us

• Google — sign-in.
• Amazon Web Services — cloud hosting, database, photo storage, and Amazon Rekognition facial comparison. Data is stored in the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region.
• Google Firebase — authentication, push notifications, and crash reporting.
• Payment gateway — processing paid memberships. Card, UPI, and bank details go directly to the gateway and never to us.

These providers process data on our instructions under confidentiality obligations. We may also disclose data where required by law or valid legal process, and data may be transferred in the course of a merger or acquisition.

7. Data Security

We use access controls, encryption in transit, encryption at rest for stored photographs, and least-privilege credentials to protect your data. Contact details are released only through an authenticated, permission-checked request. No security measure is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. Your Rights

• Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction: Correct inaccurate data — most fields are editable directly in the app.
• Deletion: Delete your account and personal data — see our Account Deletion page.
• Withdraw consent: Withdraw consent where processing relies on it, including for selfie verification.
• Restriction and portability: Ask us to limit how your data is used, or to provide it in a structured format.
• Grievance redressal: Contact our grievance officer at support@alnicotech.com. We acknowledge complaints within 48 hours and aim to resolve them within 30 days.

9. Age Requirement

FreeNikah is intended only for adults seeking marriage. You must be at least 18 years old to register. We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors, and we delete such data promptly if we discover it.

10. Contact Us

📧 support@alnicotech.com

Address: Bangalore, Karnataka, India

11. Policy Updates

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes in the app or by updating the "Last Updated" date above. Continued use after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.