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Selat Privacy Policy

Effective date: 20/09/2026 · Last updated: 28/10/2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Selat Family Networking ("Selat," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, discloses, and protects information when you use the Selat mobile application, web application, and related services (together, the "Service").

This Policy is written to describe, in plain and legally accurate terms, exactly what the Service collects and why — nothing hypothetical, and nothing broader than what the Service actually does as of the date above.

1. Who this Policy covers, and who we are

Selat is a private, multi-family networking service, available on mobile and web. Each family maintains its own private environment to connect, communicate, and share — members can chat, and share photos and videos within their family, or extend sharing to other relatives or friends connected to their family members. Selat is not a public social network: content and data within a family's environment are visible only to that family's own members and to whichever relatives or friends a member has chosen to include, plus limited admin moderation review (for example, where content is reported), never to the public or to unrelated users, other than the limited search listing described in Section 2.2.

Data controller: Selat Family Networking, operated by Alaa Abdo, Amman, Jordan. For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), the UK GDPR, and equivalent regional frameworks, Selat Family Networking is the data controller of the personal data described in this Policy.

2. Information we collect

We collect only the categories of information below, each of which is stored to power a specific, named feature of the Service. We do not collect data "for later" or for purposes not described here.

2.1 Account & identity information (required to use Selat)

• Name and gender — first and last name, and gender. Used to identify you to your connections and to resolve relationship terms (e.g. "aunt" vs. "uncle") in the family graph.
• Sign-in identifier — your mobile number or email address. Verification codes (sent by email or text message) are stored only as a one-way hash, never in plain text.
• Text-message verification — when you sign up or reset your password with a mobile number, we send a 6-digit code by text message to that number. The number and the message are passed to our text-message provider (see Section 6) and to the mobile carriers that deliver it. A code expires after 10 minutes. We send these texts only to verify your account and reset your password — never for marketing. To prevent abuse, we count recent code requests for a number.
• Sign in with Google (optional) — if you choose to sign in with Google, Google tells us your name, your verified email address and a unique Google account identifier. We use these to create or find your Selat account and keep the identifier so you can sign in with Google next time. We do not receive your Google password, and we do not get access to your Google emails, contacts, files or any other Google data. You still give us your family name, gender and birth date yourself. Google handles your sign-in under its own privacy policy.
• Sign in with Apple (optional) — if you choose to sign in with Apple, Apple tells us an identifier for your Apple account, your email address (which may be a private relay address if you choose "Hide My Email"), and, the first time only, your name. We use these to create or find your Selat account and keep the identifier so you can sign in with Apple next time. We also keep a token from Apple for one purpose only: to end the link between your Selat account and Apple if you delete your account. We never receive your Apple password.
• Password — stored only as a salted cryptographic hash. We cannot recover your password; we can only help you reset it.
• Profile photo (optional) — including your chosen crop/focal position.
• Birth date — powers birthday alerts and age-relative logic in the family tree.
• Marital status and marriage date (optional) — drives the Family 1/Family 2 distinction described in Section 3 and anniversary alerts.
• Online status and last-seen time — visible to your connections, consistent with standard messaging-app behavior.
• Consent timestamp — the date you agreed to our Terms of Service and this Policy, retained for accountability and not shown to other users.

2.2 Family relationship data (core to the Service)

• Relationship records — who you are connected to and how (parent, child, sibling, spouse, aunt, uncle, cousin), and when each connection was established.
• Family unit membership — which households you belong to and your role in each (member or admin).
• Pending requests and invites — connection requests and invite links you have sent or received, retained until accepted, declined, or expired.
• Search listing — your name, profile photo and the number of connections you have in common can appear to other signed-in Selat users who search for you by name, so they can send you a connection request (or claim a placeholder profile). Your mobile number and email address are never shown in search results, and people you have blocked cannot find you.
• Blocks and reports — anyone you have blocked (enforced in both directions), and the content of any reports you file (reason, details, status), visible only to admin moderation.

2.3 Location information (off by default)

• Coordinates and place label — latitude, longitude, and a human-readable location (e.g. "Amman, Jordan"), collected only if and when you explicitly enable the Family Map feature. This is a separate, independently withdrawable consent from every other category in this Policy — disabling it does not affect your account or any other feature.
• Shared location pins — if you choose "Location" in a chat's attachment menu and confirm, your device is asked for your position at that moment and it is sent to that chat as a message (latitude and longitude only). It is a one-time snapshot: it never updates or follows you afterwards. It is stored like any other message, is visible to the people in that chat, and you can delete it for yourself or for everyone. Your device asks for location permission only when you use this. If you delete your account, location pins you sent are removed.
• Place lookups — If you use the Family Map, place names you type and, if you choose "Use current location," your coordinates are sent to OpenStreetMap to look up the place. Your device also connects to OpenStreetMap's servers to load map images, which receive your IP address. On Android, the phone's position is obtained through Google's location services; on iPhone, through Apple's location services.

2.4 Messages (private content)

• Message content and attachments — text, photos, videos, voice notes, documents, and one-time location pins sent in 1:1 or group conversations.
• Reactions and read state — emoji reactions and per-conversation last-read timestamps.
• Group membership and join dates — who is in a given group chat and when they joined; a member cannot see messages sent before they joined.
• Chat: messages travel over our own server, not a third-party chat service.

2.5 Memories, stories, and recipes (content you choose to share)

• Post content — captions, photos, and videos you tag as a memory, a recipe, or a 24-hour story.
• Sharing settings — the audience(s) you selected for each post (Family 1, Family 2, relatives, friends, or a narrowed list of specific people).
• Engagement data — likes, comments, and view/seen records, used only to power the Service's own alerts and counts — never for advertising (see Section 6).
• Story replies — the text of private replies you send to someone's story, who sent it and when. A reply is visible only to the person who posted the story and to you as the sender. It is never shown to other viewers of the story. When someone replies to your story, the text of the reply is included in the push notification we send you, which is delivered through Firebase Cloud Messaging (see Section 6).

2.6 Family coordination content

• Pinned notes — note text and whether it is addressed to an audience or to one specific person.
• Polls and votes — poll questions, options, and each person's individual, changeable vote.
• Events — title, date, audience, and each invitee's RSVP status.
• Trips — destination, location, date, gathering time, total cost (if entered), headcounts, what each person is bringing, and who has joined. After its date has passed, a trip stays visible as a read-only record.
• Needs list items — item name, an optional note, and checked/unchecked status.

2.7 Home Budget (financial data)

• Monthly budget amount — set once per household, per calendar month.
• Expense entries — amount, one of 34 fixed categories (e.g. groceries, medicine), an optional note, the date, and which household member logged the entry.

This data is scoped to a single Family 2 household and is not visible outside it.

2.8 Baby & pregnancy timeline (health-adjacent data, including about children)

Availability: the baby & pregnancy timeline is available on the Selat website and in the Selat iPhone app. It is not part of the Selat Android app, which does not collect this data.

This is the most sensitive category of data Selat collects, and it is treated accordingly:

• Pregnancy details — baby name, due date, baby shower and gender-reveal dates, revealed gender, and birth date once born.
• Doctor visits — visit title, date, and free-text notes.
• Vaccine records — vaccine name, due date, date given (if given), and notes.
• Medicine schedules — medicine name, dosage, schedule, and timing, including after the child is linked to a real profile.

This module is co-owned by both parents in a Family 2 household. Deleting a timeline requires the agreement of both parents — a deletion request must be accepted by the other parent before the data is removed, so that neither parent can unilaterally erase shared records concerning their child.

2.9 Device & technical data

• Push notification token — a device-specific identifier and platform (Android; iPhone; web), used solely to deliver notifications and removed automatically once it becomes stale.
• Notification content — the text of a push notification can include a snippet of the content it tells you about, such as a reply to your story, a pinned note, a poll question, an event or trip title, or a baby-timeline reminder (for example the baby's name, or a vaccine or medicine name and dosage). This text is delivered through Firebase Cloud Messaging and, on iPhone, Apple's push notification service (see Section 6).
• Reminder records — we keep a record that a particular reminder (such as a birthday or a baby appointment) has already been sent, so the same notification is not sent twice.
• Server logs — our hosting provider records technical request data, including your IP address, to keep the Service running and secure.
• Crash reports — if the Android or iPhone app crashes, technical details (the error, app version, device model and Android or iOS version) are sent to Firebase Crashlytics to help us fix bugs. No account details are attached.
• Website and server error reports — when the website or our server hits an error, technical details are sent to Better Stack to help us fix it: the error message (with email addresses and phone-like numbers masked), where in the code it happened, the type and version of the browser or server, and the address of the page without anything after a "?". No name, message, account details, cookies, request contents, click history or screen recordings are included. Better Stack also checks every few minutes that the site is running; those checks contain no user data.

3. The Family 1 / Family 2 model

Selat explicitly models two family lines per user: the family a person was born into ("Family 1") and the family created through marriage ("Family 2"). This structural choice affects data handling in two ways worth stating plainly:

• Content, budgets, and coordination tools scoped to a Family 2 household (e.g. Home Budget, Needs List, the pregnancy timeline) are visible only to members of that specific household, not to Family 1 members, unless a user separately chooses to share specific content more broadly.
• A placeholder profile may be created by a member for a relative who does not yet have a Selat account. Placeholder profiles hold only the minimal information needed to represent the relationship (e.g. name, relationship type) until claimed. If the real person later joins Selat and claims the profile, they gain full control over that data as their own account; if they never do, the placeholder remains attributed to the household, not to any individual account.

4. How we use your information

We use the information described in Section 2 only to:

1. Create and secure your account, and authenticate your sign-ins.
2. Operate the features you use — the family graph, tree, chat, memories, stories, reels, recipes, family map, memory book, pinned notes, polls, events, trips, needs list, home budget, and baby/pregnancy timeline.
3. Generate the Alerts inbox by computing, at the time you open it, which items across the Service are relevant to you.
4. Deliver push notifications to your device.
5. Enforce blocks and review reported content through admin moderation.
6. Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service.

We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not run an ad system of any kind (see Section 6).

5. Legal bases for processing (where GDPR or an equivalent regime applies)

6. How we share information

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for advertising purposes — Selat has no advertising system. Information is visible only to:

• The family members and circles you have chosen to share it with, per the audience settings on each feature.
• Admin moderators, who may review and remove content to enforce our Terms and keep the Service safe — most often content that has been reported — and only to the extent necessary for that purpose.
• The infrastructure sub-processors listed below process data on our behalf under contract, strictly to provide the technical function described.

The map services from OpenStreetMap are public third-party services that your device or our app contacts directly. They are not operated under a contract with us:

We may also disclose information where required by law, legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Selat, our users, or the public.

In accordance with Jordan's Personal Data Protection Law (No. 24 of 2023), you can withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal data at any time, and you have the rights of access, rectification, objection, and erasure of your personal data. To exercise them, contact us as described in Section 14.

7. International data transfers

Selat is operated from Jordan, but our infrastructure providers (listed in Section 6) store and process data on servers outside Jordan, mainly in the United States and Europe. This means your personal data is transferred to and processed in countries whose data-protection laws may differ from those of your country of residence. We only use providers that commit contractually to protect personal data, including, where applicable, the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. We transfer only the data needed for each provider to perform its function. You can ask us for details of the safeguards we rely on, or object to a transfer, by contacting support@selatfamily.com. By using Selat you acknowledge these transfers.

8. Data retention

We retain personal data for as long as your account remains active and the relevant feature continues to use it. Specific retention points:

• Pending requests and invites are retained until accepted, declined, or expired.
• Past months of Home Budget data lock as read-only history and are retained as part of the household's financial record unless the household is deleted.
• Reports and moderation records are retained as needed for safety and accountability purposes.
• Upon account deletion, retention follows Section 10 below.
• Stories and their replies are hidden from view 24 hours after posting and are permanently deleted during routine maintenance shortly afterwards. Deleting a story, or deleting your account, removes its replies immediately.
• Trips stay visible as a read-only record after their date has passed, until the organizer deletes them or deletes their account.

9. Your rights and choices

Subject to applicable law, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete data (most fields are directly editable in your Profile & Settings).
• Withdraw consent for the Family Map at any time, independently of your other data — this immediately stops new location collection and removes previously shared coordinates.
• Delete your account and associated data, as described in Section 10.
• Object to or restrict certain processing, where applicable law provides this right.
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in Section 14.

10. Deleting your data

Account deletion is self-service and available directly within the app.

Removed outright — anything only you authored, and that no one else depends on:

• Your own posts, stories, and comments on your own content.
• Events you created.
• Needs-list items you added.
• Pinned notes you wrote.
• All personal identifying details on your account (name, contact information, photo, etc.).
• Replies you sent to other people's stories, and all replies received on your own stories.
• Polls you created and trips you organized, together with all votes and sign-ups on them.
• Your own votes on other people's polls and your sign-ups to other people's trips.
• Location pins you sent in chats.

Kept, but disconnected from you — content other members actively rely on, where deleting it outright would corrupt a shared record or erase another family member's own data:

• A message you sent in a shared chat.
• A comment you left on someone else's post.
• A shared family budget you contributed entries to.
• A co-parented baby/pregnancy timeline.

In these cases, the record is retained but re-attributed to a scrubbed, anonymous account rather than your name — the content itself is preserved for the other participants, but it is no longer identifiable as yours.

11. Children's privacy

Selat is not directed at children, and account registration is intended for users aged 13 or older. The Service does, however, allow parents within a Family 2 household to record information about a child (in the baby/pregnancy timeline described in Section 2.8) and to create placeholder profiles for relatives, including minors, who do not hold their own account.

12. Security

We apply technical and organizational measures appropriate to the sensitivity of the data described in this Policy, including: salted password hashing, one-way hashing of verification codes, encryption of data in transit, and access controls limiting internal access to content for moderation purposes only. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

13. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time to reflect changes to the Service or to applicable law. We will update the "Last updated" date above, and where changes are material, we will provide additional notice (e.g. in-app notification) before the change takes effect.

14. Contact us

If you have questions about this Policy or wish to exercise any of the rights described above, contact us at:

Selat Family Networking, Amman, Jordan, support@selatfamily.com

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