Terms, Privacy & Community Guidelines

These terms are an agreement between you and MissedConnection (“we”, “us”). By creating an account or using missedconnection.app you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

Who may use it. MissedConnection is only for currently enrolled students and staff of a recognised university, verified by a university email address, who are 18 years of age or older. You may hold one account. You may not share your account, sell access to it, or create an account on someone else's behalf.

What the service is. MissedConnection is an anonymous message board on which people describe a brief encounter on their own campus in the hope of finding the other person. Posts are visible only to people verified at the same university. Posts and replies are shown under a randomly generated alias; your email address and phone number are never shown to other users.

Your content. You keep ownership of what you write. By posting, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display and distribute that content within the service for as long as it remains posted, so that we can operate the board. You are responsible for what you post and confirm that you have the right to post it.

What you must not post. Do not post another person's full name, phone number, email address, social media handle, home or room address, timetable, licence plate or any other information that identifies a specific individual. Do not post sexual content involving minors, sexual harassment, threats of violence, hate speech, slurs, incitement, stalking or intimidation, images of a person taken without consent, spam, advertising, or content that infringes someone's rights.

Moderation. All submissions pass through an automated filter that blocks slurs and threats and masks contact details. Any post can be reported by any user. Moderators may remove content, hide a post, or suspend or terminate an account at their discretion, with or without notice, where these terms or the Community Guidelines are broken. We do not promise to review every post before it appears.

No verification of people. We verify that an account holder controls a university email address. We do not verify identity, intentions or safety. If you choose to meet or communicate with anyone from this service, you do so entirely at your own risk. Meet in public, tell a friend where you are going, and stop any interaction that makes you uncomfortable.

Ending your account. You may delete your account at any time from Settings, which permanently removes your account, your posts, your replies and your private chats. We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms, if your university affiliation ends, or if we stop operating the service.

Disclaimers and liability. The service is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, nor for anything arising from the conduct of other users or from any meeting arranged through the service. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you have paid us, which is normally nothing.

Changes. We may amend these terms. Where the change is significant we will show a notice in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that notice means you accept the new terms.

Governing law and contact. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Questions, legal notices and rights requests: legal@missedconnection.app.

This policy explains what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. We are the controller of this information.

What we collect. (1) Your university email address, used only to confirm that you are a student and to sign you in. (2) Your phone number, only if you choose to add one for sign-in codes. (3) A randomly generated alias, which is what other users see. (4) Your university's email domain, used to place you on the right campus board. (5) The posts, replies, reactions, reports and private messages you create. (6) Your language preference. (7) An approximate location for each post, rounded so that it describes an area rather than an address. (8) Ordinary technical records such as request logs, kept briefly for security and abuse prevention.

What we do not collect. We do not collect your legal name, date of birth, student number, timetable, contact list, photographs of you, or precise GPS traces. We do not run advertising trackers, we do not build advertising profiles, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone.

How anonymity works. Authorship is stored separately from public content. The public board holds the post and its alias; a separate private record links your account to that post so that you can delete it and so that reports can be actioned. Other users cannot see that link, and it is never shown in the app. Anonymity is protection from other students, not from a lawful order: we can be required by valid legal process to disclose what we hold.

Why we are allowed to use it. We process your email and school domain to perform our agreement with you, your content to provide the board you asked for, and a limited amount of data for our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe and free of abuse. Where consent is the basis — for example device location or a phone number — you may withdraw it at any time.

Who else sees it. We use service providers who process data only on our instructions: our hosting and database provider, and a text-message provider used solely to deliver sign-in codes. We may disclose information where legally required, or where necessary to prevent an imminent risk of serious harm.

How long we keep it. Content stays until you delete it or a moderator removes it. Your account data is kept while your account exists. When you delete your account, your posts, replies, reactions and private chats are permanently deleted, normally at once and in any case within 30 days. Records of moderation action and abuse may be kept in minimal form for up to 12 months to stop banned users returning. Technical logs are kept for up to 30 days.

Your rights. Depending on where you live, you may request a copy of your data, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, or object to processing; you may also complain to your local data protection authority. Deletion is available immediately in Settings. For anything else, write to privacy@missedconnection.app and we will respond within 30 days. We will never charge you for exercising a right and will not treat you differently for doing so.

Security. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access rules on the database restrict each user to their own campus and their own private records, and staff access is limited to what is needed for moderation and support. No system is perfectly secure; we will notify affected users and regulators of a qualifying breach as required by law.

Children. The service is for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a minor has an account, contact us and we will remove it.

International transfers. We are based in the United States and our providers may process data in the United States and the European Union. Where required, transfers rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Changes and contact. Material changes will be announced in the app before taking effect. Contact: privacy@missedconnection.app.

MissedConnection works because it is kind and it is anonymous. These rules are enforced by moderators, and breaking them can cost you your account.

Write about a moment, not a person. Describe what happened — the place, the time, what was said, what you were both doing. That is enough for the right person to recognise themselves.

Never identify anyone. No names, nicknames, phone numbers, emails, social handles, room numbers, addresses, class timetables, workplaces or photographs. Our filter masks contact details automatically, but posting them deliberately is grounds for removal.

Keep it non-sexual about other people. Compliments are welcome; explicit descriptions of someone who has not consented are not. Nothing sexual about anyone under 18, ever.

No harassment. No slurs, threats, degrading remarks about someone's body, race, religion, disability, gender or sexuality. No posting about a person who has asked you to stop. No using the board to find someone who has blocked you or to work around a no-contact order.

One person, one voice. No bot accounts, no coordinated posting, no advertising, no selling, no recruiting, no fundraising, no political campaigning.

If a post might be about you, use “that's me”. It opens a private, anonymous chat with the person who wrote it. You never have to reply, and you can stop replying at any time.

Report rather than argue. The flag on every post sends it to moderators with your reason. Reports are anonymous to the person who was reported.

Consequences. A first breach usually means the post is removed. Serious or repeated breaches — doxxing, threats, sexual content about minors, stalking — mean a permanent ban and, where a person is at risk, a report to the relevant university office or to law enforcement.

Safety when you meet. Meet in a public place on campus, tell someone where you are going, and leave whenever you want. No one on this board is verified as safe — only as a student.

Questions or appeals: safety@missedconnection.app.