Version: 1.0.0 Effective date: 2026-09-17 Last updated: 2026-09-19 Operator: Midwest Technical Training & Consulting INC, a Missouri corporation ("Vibz", "we", "us").
This Privacy Policy explains how Vibz ("we", "us") collects, uses, and shares information when you use the Vibz mobile apps, website, and related services (the "Service").
We do not sell your personal information.
We process your information to perform our contract with you (operating your account), for our legitimate interests (security, abuse prevention, product improvement), to comply with legal obligations, and with your consent (for tracking, marketing, optional integrations).
We share information with:
We do not share your contact list or message contents with third parties for advertising. Section 1.1 explains what happens to address-book numbers when you turn contacts permission on, and section 5 explains how long the resulting match records are kept.
What is end-to-end encrypted. Private vault posts, subscriber-only and mutual channel posts, all vibes, and the captions on that content are end-to-end encrypted on your device before they are uploaded. Information we need to run the Service, such as account and post identifiers, timestamps, the audience you chose, and delivery and access records, is not end-to-end encrypted. In ordinary operation Vibz stores only ciphertext and the public key material needed to route encrypted grants, so we cannot read that content or its captions.
Your keys. The keys that unlock this content are created and stored on your device, and are included in your backups. Vibz does not hold these keys and cannot reset or replace them. If you explicitly attach a subscriber-post content key with a report, authorized moderation may decrypt that reported target for trust-and-safety review; that targeted, user-initiated exception does not give Vibz a general key or access to other end-to-end encrypted content, and it is not an account-recovery key.
Backups. We encrypt your backups to protect them if your device is stolen, and we store the key to your encrypted backup securely on our servers. We store only that key. The backup file itself stays on your device or in your own Google Drive or iCloud account, and is encrypted before it leaves your device. To get the key back, you verify that you own your phone number by SMS. Vibz does not receive your backup files. Backups stored in your cloud account are also subject to your provider's terms and privacy policy.
What a backup contains. A backup contains the keys for your end-to-end encrypted content and, in a chat backup, your chat history as stored in the app on your device: your messages and conversations, and the photos, videos, voice notes, files, and personal stickers saved with them. You can choose to leave videos out of chat backups.
Where backups are stored. Backups are stored only in places you control:
Backups are sent from your device directly to your phone's storage or your cloud account. They do not pass through Vibz servers, and Vibz does not receive your backup files, their plaintext contents, or your recovery key.
How backups are protected. Backups are always encrypted on your device. The key that opens them (your backup key) is kept on our servers, encrypted, and linked to your Vibz account. We store only that key. We release it only to your own account, and only after you verify that you own your phone number by SMS. Vibz does not receive your backup files. A backup can be restored only to the Vibz account that made it. Restoring a cloud backup also requires access to the same Google or Apple account the backup was saved to.
Recovery key (optional). You can create a recovery key in Chat Backup settings as an extra layer of protection. It is a code generated on your device, shown to you once, that you write down or save yourself, and it can also open your backups. Vibz never sees it and does not store it. If you lose it, you can create a new one, which stops the old one from working on backups made after that point.
Changing phones. When you change phones, you can (1) transfer from your other phone with the in-app phone-to-phone transfer (by QR code), or (2) restore from a backup by signing in to your account (and, for a cloud backup, using the same Google or Apple account). If neither is available, signing in starts a new account; see "If your account can't be recovered" below. A phone-to-phone transfer moves your keys, not chat history. Chat history is restored only from a backup made on the same platform (on Android, from your phone's storage or Google Drive; on iOS, from iCloud); a transfer between iOS and Android does not move chat history.
If you lose your phone without a backup. Whether to turn on cloud backup is your choice, and we recommend it. If you lose your phone and have no backup you can restore and no other phone to transfer from, you permanently lose access to the end-to-end encrypted content protected by those keys and to any chat history that is not in a backup. Vibz and our providers cannot restore the keys or the content.
If your account can't be recovered. If you sign in on a phone with no way to recover your account (no transfer from another phone and no backup), and you do not keep it on the same phone as described below, signing in starts a new account on your phone number. The previous account is closed immediately: it is signed out on every device, hidden from other users, and removed from contact matching, but its data is not deleted yet. For 30 days it can be recovered with its backup, its recovery key, or a transfer; recovering it removes the new account. After 30 days the closed account is deleted exactly as if you had deleted it yourself (see "Deleted account" in section 5), including the retention of moderation, safety, and legally required records. Content that can't be decrypted can't be restored. An account that has been inactive for 45 days or more is treated the same way when its phone number signs in on a device with no recovery path.
Keeping your account on the same phone. If you sign in again on the phone your account was last used on, with no backup and no other phone to transfer from, you can keep your account instead of starting a new one. We recognise that phone by the hashed device identifier described in section 1.2. The app creates new keys, and your profile, public posts, connections and conversations stay. Your private, subscriber-only and mutuals posts made before then can't be opened with the new keys: they are hidden from everyone, you included, for 30 days, and restoring a backup that has the old keys in that time brings them back. After 30 days they are deleted with their media, unless a safety report or legal hold preserves them.
We first preserve content required by an open safety report or a media-moderation/legal hold for up to one year from when preservation begins (or the applicable statutory start), or longer where law requires. A held encrypted object may remain unreadable without a separately reported content key; a hold preserves bytes and evidence, not a promise that Vibz can decrypt them.
Unsubscribing, blocking, or being removed from a channel ends access to all of that channel's posts: Vibz stops returning feed rows, key grants, and signed media URLs, and the app purges its cached copies. This cannot revoke ciphertext or keys that a modified client already downloaded, and the access guarantee also depends on CDN expiry enforcement. Do not treat a prior download as recalled merely because your subscription ended.
We keep your information only for as long as we need it. The periods below are the retention targets our systems apply. Deletion is carried out by scheduled clean-up jobs, so a record can persist past its stated period until the next sweep removes it. A legal hold, a safety investigation, or a security incident can extend any of them. Indicative retention:
| Category | Retention |
| Active account | Until you delete the account |
| Deleted account | Deletion runs immediately when you confirm it. Hard-deleted: your messages, posts, comments, follows, blocks, channel relationships, settings and interests, sessions, devices, encryption keys (including account-content keys), and the media files you uploaded, which are removed from our storage and not only unlinked. Your phone number is erased from your account record, not replaced with a placeholder. What remains is a tombstone row carrying no phone number and the name "Deleted user", kept so that safety reports and other people's conversations referencing the account remain actionable. Moderation, safety and security records about the account — enforcement history, reports, and anything we are required by law to preserve — are retained as described in the rows below |
| Closed account (when signing in starts a new account on the same phone number, described in section 4.1) | Kept, hidden, and signed out, for 30 days so it can be recovered with its backup, its recovery key, or a transfer. Then deleted exactly as a deleted account (row above). A link between the new and the closed account (account identifiers and dates only) is kept for the same 30 days, then removed |
| Delivered direct messages and private-group messages (E2EE ciphertext) | We do not retain message contents in the ordinary course: message bodies are purged from active servers about 24 hours after delivery, unless reported or preserved for legal, safety, or security reasons |
| Undelivered messages | If a message cannot be delivered immediately (for example, the recipient is offline), we keep it in encrypted form on our servers for up to 30 days while we try to deliver it, then delete it |
| Call records (participants, start/end time, status — never call audio or video) | Up to 30 days |
| Teen social access records, where enabled | Pairing codes expire after 10 minutes. Link requests, approvals/declines/revocations, adult attestations, teen safety acknowledgement, and capability settings are kept as needed to operate and audit the relationship and are handled by the account-deletion process, subject to legal, safety, and security retention requirements. No companion-review message copies, call content, or decryption keys are created. |
| Message metadata and tombstones (message ID, timestamps, delivery/read state, reaction/edit/delete state — never message contents) | Up to 12 months where needed for delivery, abuse prevention, edits, reactions, deletions, safety, and legal compliance |
| Contact-match records (which two accounts are connected — never a phone number, and never a copy of your address book) | Kept while your account exists, and deleted when you delete your account. We only act on a record your device has refreshed within the last 35 days, so a contact you remove from your address book stops affecting your suggestions within that window even while the record itself is still on file |
| Contact aliases (private names you give other people) | Kept until you change or clear the alias. Deleted when you delete your account, and deleted when the person you named deletes theirs |
| Sign-in, security, message-delivery state, and time-limited technical diagnostic records | Up to 7 days, unless preserved longer for legal, safety, or security reasons |
| Push notification delivery records (device token, message and conversation identifiers, delivery result) | Kept while your account exists, and removed when you delete your account |
| Stale device records | Deleted after 90 days of inactivity |
| Encrypted message key-delivery records for private groups | Kept with message metadata/tombstones where needed to deliver, sync, recover, or troubleshoot encrypted group messages; these records are wrapped to recipient devices and do not contain plaintext message content |
| Signal device public keys and one-time prekeys | Kept while the device/account is active; claimed one-time prekeys are pruned after about 90 days by default; old signed prekeys may be kept in limited history so delayed messages can still decrypt |
| Encrypted key and chat backup archives | Kept on your Android phone's storage (Download/Vibz/backups) and, if you turn on cloud backup, in your own iCloud (iOS) or Google Drive app-private folder (Android). The app keeps a small number of recent archives and deletes older ones automatically; you can also delete them yourself, and archives in your cloud account are subject to that provider's storage and retention controls. Archives are always encrypted on your device. Vibz does not receive the archives, their contents, or your recovery key |
| Hashed device identifier | Kept while your account exists, for up to 20 phones per account (the oldest is dropped past that), and deleted when your account is deleted. We never receive the raw device identifier |
| Posts held after keeping your account on the same phone (described in section 4.1) | Private, subscriber-only and mutuals posts made before then are hidden from everyone, you included, for 30 days so that restoring a backup can release them. Then they are deleted with their media, unless a safety report or legal hold preserves them. A record of the reset (dates and post counts, no content, keys or phone number) is kept until your account is deleted |
| Backup key (server-held) | Kept, encrypted, while your account exists, including while a closed account can still be recovered, and deleted when your account is deleted. We store only the key, never the backup file: the file stays on your device or in your own cloud account, and Vibz does not receive your backup files. We release the key only after you verify that you own your phone number by SMS |
| Backup key release records | We keep a record of each release of the key — the date, the session it went to, and the key version. It holds no phone number, no backup file and no key material. We use it to protect accounts against misuse of the recovery path, and we keep it after an account is deleted so it is still available for security and legal review |
| Private/subscriber-only media under an open safety report or legal/media-moderation hold | Up to one year from when preservation begins (or the applicable statutory start), or longer where law requires; the hold preserves the ciphertext and evidence even when no usable decryption key is available |
| Vibes (ephemeral moments) | A vibe stops being visible to the people it was shared with when its window closes — 24 hours by default, or 3 days if you choose that when you post it. Expiry is a change in who can see it, not a deletion: the vibe and its media stay in your own Previous moments archive, visible only to you and available for you to reshare, and are kept there until you delete the vibe or delete your account. Deleting a vibe removes its media from our storage, not only the link to it. The record of who viewed a vibe is kept with the vibe, and is removed when the vibe is deleted or when that viewer deletes their account |
| Public posts | Until you delete or your account is deleted |
| Public-group messages | Until deleted by the sender, removed by moderation, or the account/group is deleted |
| Moderation reports + decisions | Kept while needed to enforce our rules, handle appeals, and detect repeat abuse. Reports tied to a child-safety determination are kept as required by law |
| Server access logs | 30 days |
| Server backup retention | 35 days rolling; your encrypted phone-storage, iCloud, and Google Drive archives are controlled separately by you and are not this server retention row |
Important encryption-retention note: deleting an encrypted message body from active servers does not immediately delete every supporting key or device record. Vibz keeps some encrypted key-delivery records, device public keys, prekey history, and locked account-key metadata longer than 24 hours so the Service can deliver delayed messages, support multi-device sync, prevent abuse, and troubleshoot encryption failures. These records are not plaintext message content and are not made available to linked adults for review. Your recovery key is not stored by Vibz. The backup key we store is described in section 4.1 and in the retention table above.
Your device may keep decrypted message bodies, media files, and media decryption keys in local app storage after the server copy is purged. You can remove that local copy by deleting the message, deleting the conversation, deleting your account, or clearing/removing the app data from your device.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
To exercise any right not directly available in the app, email privacy@marketvibz.com.
The Service is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn we have collected such information without verifiable parental consent, we will delete it. Some jurisdictions set a higher minimum age (e.g. 14, 15, or 16) — those minimums are enforced where they apply.
For users between 13 and 17, we apply additional safety defaults: private profile by default, restricted DM and calling, limited discoverability, no private-group access, public-group access only where allowed by our safety rules, and no view-once or time-expiring secure media. Teen accounts do not receive adult-oriented recommendations.
Where teen social access controls are enabled, an eligible minor and adult account must both approve a link before the adult can allow specific social capabilities. The adult account's declared date of birth must indicate age 18 or older, and the adult attests that they are authorized to supervise the minor; Vibz does not verify identity or legal relationship through this flow. The link controls access only and provides no message, call, or activity monitoring. Age-restricted content, adult-oriented recommendations, view-once media, disappearing media, private groups, and other age-restricted features remain blocked.
Adults may enable Filter messages from strangers so direct messages from people they do not follow land in a separate Message Requests inbox without a notification or badge. From there, the adult can accept the conversation into the main inbox or decline it and delete the request.
We are based in the United States. If you use the Service from outside the US, your information will be transferred to and processed in the US (and possibly other countries where our service providers operate).
If you use the Service from Jamaica, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States. That transfer is necessary to perform our contract with you: the Service is operated from US infrastructure and cannot be provided to you without it. By creating an account and using the Service you also consent to that transfer. Where a transfer to any other country is required, we rely on the same contractual necessity or on your consent, and we apply the safeguards described in Section 9 wherever your information is processed.
We use industry-standard administrative, technical, and physical safeguards. No system is 100% secure. Vibz has no passwords: you sign in with your phone number and a one-time code, so the security of your account depends on the security of your phone and your phone number. We encourage you to lock your device with a passcode or biometric, keep control of your phone number (and contact your carrier immediately if you suspect a SIM-swap), and never share a Vibz verification code with anyone — we will never ask you for one.
If we discover a security incident affecting your information, we will notify you and the appropriate regulators as required by law.
The current categories of third parties that process data on our behalf include:
drive.appdata scope and uses the user's private app-data folder. Archives are encrypted on your device before they are sent; iCloud and Google Drive receive only that ciphertext, never your plaintext chat history, private-media keys, your backup key, or your recovery key. You can delete the archives through the app's backup controls or the applicable cloud provider.Vibz does not claim proactive image or video scanning at upload. Reports involving possible child sexual exploitation receive priority moderator review. After a moderator records a reportable determination, the backend queues the required CyberTipline submission and applies the appropriate preservation and takedown workflow. End-to-end encrypted content cannot ordinarily be inspected by Vibz. If a reporting user explicitly supplies a subscriber-post content key with the report, authorized moderation may decrypt only that reported target for review; this does not provide general access to end-to-end encrypted content.
The automated screening Vibz performs before publication is on text, not media: a keyword filter runs when you change your display name or profile status, when you upload a public post with a caption, and when you write or edit a comment. Captions on end-to-end encrypted content are not screened by this filter because Vibz cannot read them. The list is tiered, and a match does not always mean the same thing. A small set of child-sexual-abuse solicitation phrases is refused outright — the post, comment, or profile change is not saved. A separate list of severe slurs and explicit violent threats is not refused: that content is published, and an automatic report is filed at the same time so a person reviews it. Anyone who sees it can also report it. It is a keyword filter, not a general-purpose content classifier, and it does not read your end-to-end encrypted messages.
We may update this Policy. When we do, we will bump the version, post the updated version at this URL, and notify you in-app. For material changes affecting your rights, we will require you to accept the new policy before continuing to use the Service.