Effective Date: May 12, 2026 Last Updated: May 12, 2026
Welcome to The Stranger (“we,” “our,” or “us”). We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use The Stranger mobile application (the “App”).
The Stranger is a 365-day daily habit that expands empathy through intimate, data-grounded portraits of real global lives. Each day, the App shows you a portrait of one human being somewhere on Earth and a single comparison line that places your life next to theirs. The App is designed to work entirely offline. There is no account. There is no server that knows you exist. Everything you tell the App stays on the device in your hand.
During onboarding, you may optionally answer a small number of questions about yourself:
Every one of these questions is optional. You can skip any or all of them. The App functions even if you skip everything.
We do not ask for your name, email, phone number, photograph, or any other identifying information. There is no account creation flow.
The following data is stored only on your device, in local app storage, and never transmitted to us or any third party:
This data is held in the device’s standard local storage (AsyncStorage on iOS and Android). It is removed when you uninstall the App, when you tap “Erase everything” in Settings, or when you clear the App’s local data through your operating system.
We do not collect:
The App contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no tracking pixels, and no data brokers.
The App does not request location permissions and does not access GPS, Wi-Fi-based location, or cellular location. The “country of residence” you may select during onboarding is the only location-adjacent information ever recorded, and it is stored only on your device.
The stranger profiles include coordinates of the regions they depict so the App can show a small map dot. Those coordinates describe the stranger’s region, not yours.
The information stored on your device is used solely to:
Because the data does not leave your device, we cannot use it for anything else. We have no way to read it, export it, sell it, or share it.
We do not sell, rent, share, trade, or otherwise transfer your personal information to any third party. There is no business arrangement under which your information could be transferred, because no information ever reaches us.
The App is built using:
We do not embed Firebase, Sentry, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics, Facebook SDK, or any similar third-party data service inside the App.
If you opt in to the daily reminder, the App schedules a single local notification on your device through the operating system’s notification framework (Apple Push Notification Service on iOS, Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android — both invoked locally as device-scheduled notifications, not as server-sent push). The reminder fires from your device. No server is involved. We never send you a notification from our side.
The App includes a “Share this stranger” button that produces a text snippet or image card and hands it to your operating system’s standard share sheet. You then choose whether and where to share it. The content you share contains no information about you — only the stranger’s region, age, summary, and the counterfactual line.
Because we hold no data about you, there is nothing we can disclose in response to a subpoena, warrant, or government request other than this Privacy Policy itself and our public source materials.
If The Stranger is acquired, merged, or its assets are sold, this Privacy Policy will continue to apply to any data we hold at that time. Given that we hold no personal data, a business transfer cannot transfer your data.
The data stored on your device is protected by the security features of your device and operating system:
We do not transmit your onboarding answers over the network, which removes an entire category of risk.
No system is perfectly secure. If your device is compromised, locally stored data may be accessible to the attacker.
Your local data is retained until one of the following events:
We have no copy of your data and therefore have nothing to retain or delete on our side.
You have:
Because we never receive your data, we cannot act on these rights on a server. They are all exercisable in the App.
You have:
Open the App. Go to Settings. Your data is on that screen. The actions you can take are on that screen. There is nothing for us to do on a server because there is no server.
If you have a question that cannot be resolved in the App, contact us at the address in Section 11.
The Stranger is not directed to children under 13 (or 16 in the European Economic Area, or the equivalent minimum age in your jurisdiction). The App contains portraits of adult lives across the world — including descriptions of poverty, mortality, labor, and the texture of difficult ordinary days. Children should not use the App without a parent or guardian.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the applicable minimum age. Because the App does not transmit any user input off the device, even if a child were to use the App, no personal information would reach us.
If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has used the App and you wish to clear that usage, you can do so in Settings → Erase everything.
The App does not transfer personal information across borders, because the App does not transmit personal information at all. Your data remains on the device you are holding.
App distribution itself is handled by Apple and Google, who operate globally and may transfer the metadata they collect (purchase history, App download events) across borders under their own privacy policies.
The stranger profiles inside the App are crafted by us to be real in their numbers and composite in their names. Income figures, life expectancy, commute statistics, household composition, and regional context are grounded in publicly available demographic data (national censuses, World Bank indicators, OECD reports, UN agencies). The names attached to portraits are not the names of real, identifiable people. Any resemblance to a specific individual is unintended.
The App does not link out to third-party content during normal use. The “Share this stranger” feature hands a payload to your operating system’s share sheet, which you may then send through any third-party application of your choice. That application’s privacy policy then applies to the content you share through it.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Last Updated” date at the top will reflect any changes. Material changes — for example, the introduction of a server, an analytics SDK, or any new data collection — will be announced through an in-app notice on next launch.
Continued use of the App after changes indicates acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy.
If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy:
Email: cankatsarac@gmail.com Support: cankatsarac@gmail.com Mailing address: (to be populated with your business address before App Store submission)
For EU users requiring an EU representative under GDPR Article 27: (to be appointed and listed here if required)
California Civil Code Section 1798.83 allows California residents to request information about the categories of personal information shared with third parties for direct marketing purposes. We do not share personal information for direct marketing purposes, because we hold no personal information about you.
The Stranger is a mobile application that performs no cross-site or cross-app tracking. It contains no embedded browser content that responds to “Do Not Track” signals because there is no tracking to begin with.
By using The Stranger, you consent to the collection, use, retention, and (limited) disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. In practice, this consent extends only to the on-device storage of the answers you have chosen to provide.
If you do not agree with any part of this Policy, please do not use the App. You may delete the App at any time. To also remove the data the App has stored on your device, use Settings → Erase everything before uninstalling.
This Privacy Policy is effective as of the date listed above. By using The Stranger, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to the terms of this Privacy Policy.