Privacy

App

Mamou

iPhone app, plus the backend service that supports it

Mamou is a baby name app for two people. It needs an account and it stores what you swipe, because that is how your matches reach your partner’s phone and how the deck learns your taste. It does not track you, does not show ads, does not use analytics or advertising software, and does not sell or share your data with anyone for their own purposes. This section explains, in plain terms, exactly what is kept and why.

In this section, “we” means the maker of Mamou, and “you” means the person using the app. Questions, requests or complaints go to the address behind the contact button at the end of this section.

What we collect, and why

We only collect what the app needs to work. There is no hidden collection and no profiling for advertising.

• Your email address and password. Your password is stored only as a cryptographic hash. We never see it.

  WhyTo create your account and sign you in on your own phone, so your swipes, room and progress persist and sync.

• Your partner’s email address, if you choose to invite them by email from inside the app.

  WhyTo send them one invitation email carrying your room code. It is used for that invitation and to link them to your room when they accept.

• Your deck preferences: which genders of name to show, cultures of interest, the rarity dial and deep-cuts setting, letters to exclude, strings a name must or must not contain, length and syllable ranges, the languages you want a name to read well in, and any sibling first names you type in.

  WhyTo filter and shape the deck you are dealt, and to favour names that pair well with a sibling's name.

• Your swipes: one row per name you judge, holding the name, your verdict (love, maybe or pass), the time, and an internal label recording which part of the recommender dealt you that card.

  WhyTo never show you the same name twice, to learn your taste, and to create a match when your partner has liked the same name. The internal label is used only to measure whether the recommender is getting better.

• Your room: the room’s identifier and short code, who created it, which accounts are members, and when each joined.

  WhyTo pair the two of you privately and to keep everything in the room visible only to the two of you.

• Your matches: the names your room has matched on and when.

  WhyTo show you both your shared shortlist and to feed Final Picks.

• Your Final Picks game: the game’s stage, your Love / Maybe / Pass sort, your keep or cut on each lens, your Pitch verdicts, your Last Table picks, and the first and middle name you end on.

  WhyTo run the game across two phones and to keep the finished result as your keepsake.

A note on sibling names. If you type another child’s first name into the sibling field, that first name is stored on your account like any other preference. Only a first name is ever needed. Please do not enter surnames, dates of birth, or anything else about a child.

What we do not collect

• No location, of any precision.
• No contacts, photos, calendar, microphone or camera access.
• No health, medical, fertility or pregnancy data. Mamou never asks for a due date.
• No advertising identifier, no device fingerprint, no analytics software, no crash-reporting or attribution software. The app ships with no third-party software development kits other than the client library it uses to talk to its own backend.
• No browsing history, no search history outside the app, and nothing about what you do in other apps or on other websites.
• No payment details. Mamou does not take payments.

Tracking, advertising and selling

Mamou does not track you across apps or websites owned by other companies, and it never asks for permission to do so. It shows no advertising. We do not sell your personal data, we do not share it with data brokers, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles. There is nothing in the app that would let us.

Where your data is stored, and who processes it

Supabase. Mamou’s database, sign-in system and transactional email run on Supabase, a hosted platform built on PostgreSQL. Everything listed above is stored there. Supabase processes this data on our instructions in order to provide that hosting, and for no purpose of its own. Data is held on servers operated by Supabase and its infrastructure providers, which may be located outside your country, including in the United States.

The name dossier lookup. When a name in your deck has no written dossier yet, the app asks a large language model provider (currently Google’s Gemini API) to compile one, once, and stores the result so it is never requested again. The only thing sent is the name itself, as a bare word. No account, no email address, no identifier, no swipe, no preference, no room and no partner information leaves the service in that request. The provider is told nothing that could connect that word to you, and the resulting dossier is shared reference data for every user of the app, not something attached to your account.

Apple. You get Mamou from the App Store, and Apple provides us with anonymous, aggregate figures about downloads. We cannot identify you from them.

These are the only third parties involved. There are no others.

Who can see your data

Access is enforced in the database itself, on every row, not merely in the app:

• Your swipes and your deck preferences are yours alone. Your partner cannot read them, and neither can anyone else signed in to Mamou.
• Room contents are visible only to that room’s two members. Matches, the game state and the finished name are readable by you and your partner, and by nobody else.
• Private verdicts stay private. The Final Picks standings show a combined score and never who kept or cut which name. In the Pitch, your partner’s verdict is unreadable until you have both committed to yours, and that is enforced on the server.
• A small number of people maintaining the service can access the database in order to operate, back up and repair it. They do not read couples’ data for any other reason.

We will disclose data to a public authority only where we are legally required to, and we do not otherwise hand it to anyone.

How long we keep it

We keep your account and its data for as long as your account exists, because the whole point of the app is that you can put it down for a month and pick it up where you left off. When you delete your account, the data goes with it, as described below. Ordinary encrypted backups may hold copies for a short period afterwards before they roll off, normally within 30 days.

Names, meanings, dossiers, pronunciations and registry statistics are reference data about names, not about you. They stay in the app.

Deleting your account and your data

You can do it yourself, in the app, in two taps. Open the Matches tab, tap the … button at the top right, and choose Delete my account. It is also on the pairing screen, under Sign out, if you have not paired yet. You will be asked to confirm, and then it happens immediately. There is nothing to email and nobody to wait for.

Deleting your account permanently removes, in one go:

• your account and your sign-in, so the email and password no longer work
• every swipe you have made, and the taste the deck learned from them
• your deck preferences, including any sibling name you typed
• your membership of your room
• the matches in that room, because a match is a name you both liked and cannot honestly outlive one of you
• any Final Picks game in progress, including both partners’ verdicts, pitches and picks, because the game needs two players

It cannot be undone, and there is no grace period. Ordinary encrypted backups may hold copies for a short time before they roll off, normally within 30 days.

What happens to your partner. They are not deleted and they are not stranded. Their account, their own swipes and their preferences are untouched, and the room keeps its code, so they can pair with someone again straight away. What they lose is the shared work: your matches together, and the game if one was running. If you only want to stop sharing a room and keep your account, use Leave room instead.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask for a copy of the data we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. Deletion you can exercise yourself at any moment, in the app, as described above. For anything else, write to us at the address below and we will act on it. We do not charge for this, and we do not treat you differently for asking.

Our lawful basis for handling your data is the performance of the agreement between us: without this data the app cannot do the one thing you installed it for. If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area and you believe we have handled your data badly, you may complain to your national data protection authority.

Children

Mamou is a tool for adults who are expecting or planning a child. It is not directed at children, it is not designed for them, and it contains nothing for them to use. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.

Mamou also does not collect data about a child. It asks for no due date, no birth date, no photographs, and nothing about a pregnancy. The one exception is the optional sibling field, where you may type an existing child’s first name to improve recommendations. Please put nothing more than a first name there. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will delete it.

Security

Traffic between the app and the backend is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as hashes. Access to every row of couple data is restricted at the database level to the account that owns it or the room it belongs to. No system is perfect, and we will not pretend otherwise, but nothing here is left open by default.

Contact about Mamou

For anything at all to do with your privacy, including any request under the rights above: