The questions people ask us

It's the finding that your phone and someone else's were within a few metres of each other, for long enough that it wasn't a fluke of radio signal. Nothing more. Once that's established, the person appears in your feed and you decide whether they interest you.

Only one of the two phones needs to have detected the other for the encounter to exist on both sides.

No, and that's the whole point. The app works in the background, screen off, while you go about your day. You only open it in the evening, to see who you crossed paths with.

You do need to have allowed it to run in the background, and your phone must not be force-sleeping it — see below.

They see the encounter, as you do, if you each match the other's search criteria. But nobody ever learns that you liked them unless it's mutual. A like with no reply stays completely invisible, and the profile eventually expires without anything being said.

18 or over. It's a strict condition: an account declared as a minor cannot be created, and any account suspected of belonging to a minor is frozen and reviewed.

In this order, this resolves the vast majority of cases:

• Is Bluetooth on? Nothing can be detected without it. The app flags this with a banner, but a power-saving mode can switch it off.
• Is the app allowed to run in the background? This is cause number one. Open the “Keep listening” screen in the app's settings: it detects your phone's brand and gives you the exact steps.
• Is battery optimization disabled for DareCrush? Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and Samsung are particularly aggressive and cut off background apps after a few minutes.
• Are your filters too narrow? A three-year age range in a quiet neighbourhood doesn't leave many people. Widen it and see.
• Is anyone around you? The app shows how many people with the app are nearby. If that counter stays at zero even somewhere busy, something is wrong technically: write to us.

A few metres, roughly: the same room, the same subway car, the same sidewalk. The threshold is calibrated on signal strength, which usually rules out detections through a wall or between floors.

It isn't an exact science: measured strength varies between phone models, and a device at the bottom of a bag broadcasts more weakly. We'd rather miss a detection than invent an encounter.

24 hours on a free account, 7 days on a paid plan. After that, if there was no mutual like, the profile deletes itself.

To prevent that, favourite the person: a favourite never expires. A red tint and an “expiring soon” note warn you during the last twelve hours.

That's normal: you have routines and routes. The app knows it and deliberately spaces out repeat encounters with the same person so your feed doesn't fill up. It then tells you that you regularly cross paths in this area — without ever giving you the precise spot or the other person's habits.

Detection, yes, completely: on the subway, on a plane with Bluetooth on, in a basement. Observations pile up on your phone and go to the server as soon as the connection returns.

Browsing your feed also works offline, from the local copy. Only new encounters and outgoing messages wait for a connection.

Listening runs in short, spaced-out cycles, which keeps it cheap. Four settings let you strike your own balance: if you want more battery life, lengthen the interval between cycles; if you're going out and want to catch everything, shorten it or turn on event mode.

Because Android requires it for any app working continuously in the background — and that's a good thing: you always know whether detection is running. You can shrink it to a minimum in Android's settings without switching detection off.

That's deliberate. A match opens the conversation and the full description; personal contact details — number, Instagram, Telegram — take a second agreement, which you both have to give.

Until the other person taps it on their side, all you see is that you agreed to share yours. This step is free for everyone, and it's final once taken.

Yes. They're encrypted on your phone before they leave, and only the person you're writing to can decrypt them. The key involved stays sealed in your device's hardware keystore; it is never sent to us.

One consequence to know: if you lose your phone without another one connected, your conversation history is gone. We can't rebuild it, because we never had it in the clear.

On a free account: 10 per match. Two generous exceptions: it's unlimited if either of you has a paid plan, and unlimited as long as you crossed paths within the last half hour.

Deletion is mutual and final: the match disappears for both of you, along with the conversation, and it cannot be restored. It's a serious decision, not a way to tidy up.

• Pass — the profile leaves your feed, with no notification for the other person. It can be undone.
• Delete the match — the connection is cut on both sides, permanently, along with the conversation.
• Block — the strongest: the person stops existing for you and you for them, silently, and both your beacons are renewed so you can never cross paths again.

Because a photo taken on the spot can't be an image found on the internet. It's the minimum assurance that the person in the photo is the one holding the phone. That photo carries the “recent photo” badge and is renewed every 30 days.

You can add a second photo from your gallery, with no such constraint.

Every photo is analyzed automatically on upload to screen out nudity and violence. A photo that is too dark, too blurry, or where no face is recognizable can also be rejected. Retake it with better light, facing the camera, without sunglasses.

If you think it's a mistake, write to us.

No, never. It's the only profile field that asks for separate consent, because it is sensitive information that can reveal ethnic origin. The app works exactly the same without it, and you can withdraw that consent later.

An optional selfie check, compared against your own profile photos. The selfie is not kept and no faceprint is created: only the result of the comparison is stored.

This feature is not switched on yet. It involves biometrics and will only open once the legal formalities required in Quebec are complete.

No. What your phone broadcasts is an encrypted sixteen-byte block that changes every fifteen minutes. A device parked on a street would see different tokens go by with no way to tell they came from the same phone, or whose it is. Only our server holds the key.

Only if you accepted location sharing, and only to place an encounter approximately, to within about a hundred metres. That consent is optional and revocable: without it, encounters work exactly the same, simply without a place.

Detection itself uses no GPS at all: it is Bluetooth only.

No. No sale, no transfer to brokers, no sharing for advertising. The only third parties that touch any data are technical providers the service needs — hosting, sending texts and emails, notifications — each bound by a written agreement. The full list is in the privacy policy.

In the app's settings, “Download my data” sends you a complete file. Account deletion is in the same place, and it genuinely erases your profile, your photos and your contact details.

Both are also available from your account on the web, even if you already uninstalled the app.

No. What passes through Google's notification servers contains only an event type and an identifier — never a name, a message body or a photo. Your phone reassembles the displayed content locally.

• Check that the number you entered is right, area code included.
• A text can take a few minutes; wait before requesting another code.
• For email, check your junk folder.
• Some prepaid plans block automated texts. If nothing arrives after two attempts, write to us.

Install the app on the new device and sign in: your account, your matches and your encounters follow you. Your conversation history does not transfer, though — it was encrypted with a key that only existed on the old phone. New messages work normally.

Remember to revoke the old session in your security settings.

Change your password immediately, then go to your active sessions and revoke anything you don't recognize. Then turn on two-factor authentication. If you've lost access to the account, contact us and choose the “account security” subject.

An account is frozen when consistent reports reach us, for as long as it takes someone on the team to review the file. If you think it's a mistake, write to us with the “account suspended, frozen, or report” subject: the file will be reviewed by a human.