Privacy Statement

Direct Message Translation and Third-Party Services

Direct messages are translated automatically to help people communicate across languages. Translations are currently generated by Google (Gemini), a third-party translation service on our paid tier, so message content leaves this site; that service is covered by the Google Data Processing Addendum (v10, effective 2026-05-07, incorporated by reference, so no separate signature is required). DeepL is currently disabled (no paid-tier attestation). You can turn off automatic translation in your settings; for confidential matters please use end-to-end encrypted messages (encrypted messages are never translated).

When you turn automatic translation off, plaintext direct messages you send are no longer sent to third-party translation services, and messages you receive no longer get or show a translation: only the original is shown. Translations are used for display only and do not change content review or the deliver-first, withdraw-on-violation rule; broadcast messages follow the sender's setting. End-to-end encrypted messages are stored on the server only as ciphertext, which the server cannot decrypt, so they are never translated and never sent to any third party. Translations of public expert profiles are produced by the same third-party services and cover only the fields the expert has agreed to publish.

The Information We Process

When an account is created, we process the email address, a strong hash of the password, and the user’s self-certification that they are at least 18 years old; newly created accounts can only log in after clicking a one-time link sent to the registration email address.When you submit your expert profile, we process the public name, bio, location description, contact information, notification email address, itemized consent records, and AI moderation results that you provide.

When you click the GPS feature, the browser first rounds the coordinates to a grid of approximately 2 kilometers, then sends them to look up the city or district name; the service does not store the browser’s original precise coordinates.

Team-visible conversations: conversations started from a team card are by default visible to that team’s owner and managers, so the team can follow up on enquiries. The counterpart (client) can switch the conversation to “send to that member only”, after which the team can no longer read it; a team can also switch off “member conversation visibility” entirely. Every team read is recorded in an audit log, and visibility changes appear as notices in the conversation timeline. End-to-end encrypted messages are not covered by this mechanism: the server stores only ciphertext, and neither the team nor our staff can decrypt or read them.

What Information Will Be Made Public?

Profiles that have been approved during moderation will be displayed to visitors. Gender, age, approximate location/area of residence, and direct contact information will only be made public after you check each box to give your consent; these consent options are disabled by default and can be withdrawn and resubmitted for review when editing your profile. Your notification email address will not be made public.

If you enter direct contact information but do not check the box to consent to its public display, the system will not retain that contact information in the pending moderation or public profiles.Please do not enter house numbers, ID numbers, financial account information, information about others, or contact information you do not wish to make public in the public fields. Maps and locations are used only to indicate a general area and do not represent real-time locations, addresses, or meeting places.

Minors

Muse Nearby is intended only for people aged 18 or over. You must confirm that you are at least 18 when registering and when submitting a public profile; we do not offer accounts, profiles, content publishing or offline contact features for minors. Any exception involving minors will only be considered after a separate legal and safety review; neither this page nor the Terms of Use is a commitment that such an exception is already available.

Third Parties and Infrastructure

Map layers are provided by OpenFreeMap; when you click to look up a GPS location, a request is sent to the Nominatim/OpenStreetMap service. When your browser connects to these services, they may process the network request information according to their own policies.

Automatic review of the text of expert materials (applications and profiles) is performed by a local AI model running on our own servers; we do not send the text of your application materials to public large-model providers for review. Images in expert materials may be reviewed with the help of a third-party AI service on our paid tier covered by the Google Data Processing Addendum (v10, effective 2026-05-07) (currently Google Gemini); attachment images in direct messages are never sent to third parties. Automatic review of public articles (text content such as articles published by a team or its members) may use a third-party AI service on our paid tier covered by the Google Data Processing Addendum (v10, effective 2026-05-07) (currently Google Gemini). The names and current status of third-party services are set out in “Third-Party Services and Cross-Language Translation” above.

Save, Delete, and Contact

Operational data will be retained for a limited period necessary to ensure service availability, prevent abuse, handle reports of abuse, and restore backups.

Once signed in you can delete your account yourself from “My Profile”. This requires your current password and explicit confirmation, and immediately unpublishes and deletes your account, expert profile, favorites, login sessions and tokens, consent records, account avatar and the media you uploaded (the media files are deleted and are no longer served publicly). Direct messages you sent that remain in the other party’s conversation, and comments you posted, are retained in anonymised form (the sender is shown as “Deleted user”; the copy received by the other party is not deleted). Reports you filed have their contact email removed and only the necessary factual record is kept. Orders and payment records, platform audit records and the outbound email ledger are retained for legal, accounting and anti-fraud evidentiary needs (see “Retention Period” for the periods). After you delete a public profile or your account, restricted backups may persist until their rotation cycle completes. You can also write to Support@musenearby.com to request access, correction or deletion assistance.

Who We Are

Muse Nearby (musenearby.com, hereinafter “this platform”) is operated by the Muse Nearby team. For any questions, or to obtain the operator's full registered details (name and address), contact: Support@musenearby.com — we will reply within 5 business days.

Legal basis

We process your personal data on the following grounds: (1) performance of our contract with you (providing accounts, public profiles, direct messages and paid features); (2) your consent (optional public fields such as gender, age, location and contact details, and automatic translation; you may withdraw it at any time); (3) our legitimate interests (security, abuse and fraud prevention, and service quality), balanced against your rights; (4) compliance with legal obligations (tax, accounting and responding to competent authorities). Where special categories of data are involved, we process them only with your explicit consent or where the law otherwise requires.

Third-Party Services and Cross-Language Translation

• Machine Translation: translations of expert public profiles may be provided by Google (Gemini, paid tier; the Google Data Processing Addendum v10 applies by incorporation, effective 2026-05-07), NVIDIA NIM (nemotron-series models) or DeepL; DeepL is currently disabled (no paid-tier attestation). Direct-message translation does not include NVIDIA NIM: translations of regular direct messages (when neither you nor the other user has turned off automatic translation) are still produced by Google (Gemini, paid tier) and our own local model. You can turn off automatic translation in your settings; once disabled, plaintext direct messages you send are no longer sent to translation services, and no translation is generated or displayed for messages you receive.
• End-to-end encrypted direct messages are not translated and are not sent to any third-party translation service.
• Payments: Stripe (payments and refunds).
• Email delivery: Resend (system notifications and verification emails).
• Geocoding: OpenStreetMap / Nominatim (resolving place names into coarse-grained coordinates).
• Search and indexing: Google, Bing (search engines crawl public pages).
• Review roles: text review of expert application materials runs on our own servers (text content is not sent externally); public articles and similar text content may be reviewed with the help of a third-party AI service on our paid tier (currently Google Gemini, covered by the Google Data Processing Addendum v10); images in expert materials may be reviewed by the same third-party AI service, and public voice messages may be transcribed into text by that service; voice messages in direct messages are not sent to third parties. Voice and video calls use our own relay service.
• Content-review fallback: when Gemini is unavailable, times out or reaches its usage cap, the text of public profiles and public content (such as articles) may instead be reviewed by NVIDIA NIM (nemotron-series models); this processing covers only the text of public profiles and public content, and does not include direct messages, images or voice. NVIDIA processes that text under its publicly available terms of service. Direct-message review still runs on our own local model and never leaves our servers.
• The third parties above may process data in their own countries (including outside the EU); through contractual and compliance mechanisms we require a level of protection equivalent to that of the EU.

Content Moderation and Publication

Public content you submit is first reviewed automatically: text in expert materials (applications and profiles) is reviewed by a local AI model; public articles and similar text content may be reviewed with the help of a third-party AI service on our paid tier (currently Google Gemini, covered by the Google Data Processing Addendum v10, effective 2026-05-07); images (expert-profile images and public-article images) may be reviewed with the same third-party AI service (currently Google Gemini, covered by the Google Data Processing Addendum v10, effective 2026-05-07); video and voice are processed by cloud services when cloud moderation is enabled; public voice messages may be transcribed into text by the same third-party AI service (currently Google Gemini), and the transcript is reviewed and published only after the author confirms it; voice messages in direct messages are not sent to third parties. Human review follows where necessary. Content that does not pass review is not published. Publishing a public article also requires two independent declarations — a third-party rights and legality declaration, and a minors-content prohibition confirmation (see the Terms of Use, “Public Articles (Content Layer)”). You may withdraw your consent to publish any piece of content at any time; once withdrawn, that content is no longer publicly displayed. End-to-end encrypted direct messages are not subject to content review (we cannot read their contents), so users must assess the risks of that channel themselves.

In addition, content review uses NVIDIA NIM (nemotron-series models) as a third-party processor: when Gemini is unavailable, times out or reaches its usage cap, the text of public profiles and public content may instead be reviewed by NVIDIA NIM. This processing covers only the text of public profiles and public content (such as articles) — it does not include direct messages, images or voice; direct-message review still runs on our own local model, and message content never leaves our servers. NVIDIA processes that text under its publicly available terms of service.

The byline of a public article shows only the “display name” you set, and not your avatar, team name, email, birthday or precise location; images in an article follow its publication state and are no longer served publicly once the content is taken down or the public surface is switched off. Published articles may be indexed, quoted and retrieved by search engines and AI systems.

Retention Period

• Public profiles and account information: retained until you delete them or delete your account.
• Media: free storage for 30 days; after expiry, access is restricted during a 14-day grace period, and storage can be extended for 90 days for a fee ($2.99); after expiry it is no longer served publicly.
• Direct messages and comments: retained until you or the other party deletes them. When an account is deleted, the direct messages you sent and the comments you posted are retained in anonymised form (the other party’s received copy and the discussion context are preserved, and the sender is shown as “Deleted user”), and are no longer linked to your account.
• Account deletion: the account, expert profile, favorites, login sessions and tokens, consent records, account avatar and media you uploaded are deleted immediately; orders and payment records, platform audit records and the outbound email ledger are retained for the periods below.
• Transaction and tax records (orders): retained for 10 years as required by Italian accounting and tax obligations.
• Platform audit records (administrative actions and account-deletion traces): 3 years.
• Complaint and report records: after 365 days the reporter’s identity and technical identifiers are removed, while the handling record is kept.
• Outbound email ledger (recipient, subject, body): recipient and body are removed after 90 days.
• Access statistics (per-day deduplicated visitor hashes): 400 days.
• Login and security event logs: about 24 hours.
• Server access logs: about 14 days.
• Mail delivery logs: about 8 weeks.
• Operations logs (journald): rotated by a size cap of about 200 MB.
• While a complaint, legal claim or investigation is pending, deletion or anonymisation of the relevant records may be suspended (litigation hold), recording who added the hold and why.

Your Rights

You have the right to: access, correct, or delete your personal information; withdraw your consent (without affecting the lawfulness of processing prior to withdrawal); obtain a copy of your data; object to or restrict certain processing; file a complaint with the regulatory authority (since the business operates in Italy, the competent authority is the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali). How to exercise these rights: Support@musenearby.com.

Cookies and Local Storage

• Session Cookies: Maintain your logged-in status (required).
• Language Preference Cookie (muse_lang): Remembers your language selection; valid for 1 year.
• Browser local storage: Temporarily stores your unsubmitted form drafts to prevent data loss; cleared after successful submission or if you voluntarily abandon the form.
• We do not use advertising tracking cookies.

Safety

We protect data using measures such as transport encryption (HTTPS), password hashing, access controls, rate limiting, and audit logs. End-to-end encrypted direct messages are designed so that the server can only store ciphertext. However, please understand that no system can guarantee absolute security; please do not transmit sensitive information through this platform if you cannot afford the risk of its disclosure.