Privacy Policy

Last updated November 1, 2026

This policy explains what information VeChat collects about you, what we do with it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have. It covers the VeChat apps for Android and iPhone, VeChat for Mac, and our websites at vechat.net. Companies that use VeChat Business are also covered by the Business Privacy Notice.

The short version: VeChat is paid for by ads from businesses on VeChat, not by selling your information. We do not sell your personal information, we do not use outside advertising networks, and there are no third party analytics or advertising trackers in the app. Your chats are stored on our servers so that you have your history on every device, which means they are not end-to-end encrypted. The details are below.

Who we are

VeChat is run by Velovid Software (شركة فيلوفيد للبرمجة), an Egyptian one person company (شركة شخص واحد) registered in the Egyptian Commercial Register ("Velovid", "we", "us"). Velovid Software is the controller of your personal information. For any privacy question, or to use your rights, write to support@velovid.net.

Information you give us

Account details. Your VeChat ID, first name, date of birth, and an email address or phone number. You can also add a surname, gender, country and interests. If you set a password we store only a scrambled version of it (a salted hash) that we cannot turn back into your password.
Signing in with Google. Google tells us your name, your email address and a number that identifies your Google account. We do not receive your Google password, and we do not read your Gmail, contacts, calendar or any other Google data. You can remove VeChat from your Google account at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
Signing in with Apple. Apple tells us a number that identifies your Apple account, your email address (or a private relay address if you choose to hide your email) and, the first time only, your name. We do not receive your Apple password.
Signing in with an email code. We send a 6-digit code to the address you type and keep that address on your account so that you can sign in again.
Your profile. Profile photo, cover photo, status, frame, relationship status, job details, and anything else you choose to add. Your name, VeChat ID and current profile photo can be seen by anyone signed in to VeChat. When you set a new profile photo or cover, it is also posted to your feed.
Your messages. The text, photos, videos, voice notes, files, stickers, GIFs, polls, locations, contact cards, drawings and game moves you send in one-to-one chats, groups and rooms, and when you sent them.
What you post. Feed posts, comments, likes and dislikes, stories, the people and stores you follow, reviews, and the place or people you tag in a post.
Your files. What you upload to VeChat Drive, including the original photos and videos you send in chats, with file names, sizes and types.
Your contacts, if you choose to find friends. See "Your address book" below.
Orders. If you order from a store on VeChat, your name, delivery address, phone number, delivery location and the messages between you and the store.
Purchases. What you bought and when, and the order reference from Google Play or the App Store. We never see or store your card details.
Support and reports. What you write to our support team, the reports you make about other people or content, and how you rate our help.
Security settings. If you turn on two-step verification we store the secret that generates your codes, encrypted, and your backup codes.

Information we collect when you use VeChat

Device and app details. Device model and maker, operating system version, app version, language, time zone and screen size.
IP address and sign-in records. Each time you sign in or open the app we see your IP address. We keep a record of sign-ins (when, from which device and from where) and a list of the devices that are signed in to your account, which you can see and manage in Profile.
Approximate location from your IP address. Our hosting provider tells us the city, region and country your connection appears to come from. We store the most recent one on your account, and we store it with each sign-in record.
Connection type. We may check whether a connection comes from a VPN, a proxy or a data centre, as a signal for spotting abuse.
Calls. Who called whom, when, for how long, whether it was a video call and whether it was answered. We do not record calls and we do not keep their sound or picture.
Activity inside VeChat. Which posts you see, open, like, hide or mark as not interesting, which ads you were shown and which you tapped, what you search for in business search (stored without your identity), game scores and online chess games.
Online status. Whether you are online, away or invisible, and your status message, so that your buddies can see it. You can sign in as invisible.
Crash reports. When something goes wrong in the app, it sends us the error message and technical details of where in the app it happened, the app build number, the platform and, if you are signed in, your account number. They never contain your messages.
Usage counts. A note of each day you use VeChat, and whether each call connected, went through our relay or failed (never what was said or shown). We use these to see whether VeChat works and whether people keep using it.
Notification token. An identifier from Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging, and on iPhone from Apple's push notification service, that lets us deliver notifications to your device.
App check results. If we switch on Google Play Integrity, the result Google returns about whether the app is the real one installed from Google Play and whether the device looks tampered with.

Location

Precise location (GPS) is used only if you give VeChat the location permission, which the app asks for the first time you use a feature that needs it.
Sharing a location in a chat sends that single place to the people in the chat.
Live location shares your moving position with one chat for the time you choose, from 15 minutes to 48 hours. We keep only your latest position, not a trail. It is cleared when you stop sharing or the time runs out.
Places and navigation use your position on your device to show the map around you and to guide you. To calculate a route, your start and end points are sent through our server to a routing service.
If you have already granted the location permission, the app also reads your position when you sign in with your password and stores it with that sign-in as a safety signal. It never asks for the permission for this purpose alone.
A feed post carries a place only if you add one. An order for delivery carries the delivery point you choose.
Photos can carry a hidden location and time added by your camera. For photos you upload to public areas such as the feed, stories and your profile, our server reads that location and time, keeps them privately for safety and moderation, and then removes them from the stored file. For originals sent in chats and files uploaded to Drive, the app removes that hidden information on your phone before the file leaves it, and we do not read it. Either way, other people never receive the hidden location, device or time information in your photos and videos.

You can turn location off for VeChat at any time in your device settings.

Your address book

If you choose to find friends from your contacts, the app turns each phone number and email address in your address book into a short code (a hash) on your phone and sends only those codes to our server, which answers with the matches who are on VeChat. Names, and the numbers and addresses themselves, do not leave your phone, and we do not store the codes. A hash of a phone number is not a strong protection against someone determined to reverse it, so we treat these codes as personal information and discard them as soon as the match is done. This feature is optional and asks for the contacts permission only when you use it.

Sharing what you are playing

On Android, VeChat can show your buddies the song you are listening to. The iPhone app does not have this feature. This works only if you give VeChat one special Android access yourself, in system settings: Notification access (used only to read the title, artist and app of the song that is playing). Without that access nothing is read. When it is working, each different song is also saved to your account for up to one year, and we may use it to suggest things and, for adults who allow personalised ads, to choose ads. We do not read, store or send the content of your notifications or of other apps. You can switch this off in Profile at any time and remove the access in Android settings.

Camera, microphone and face filters

The camera and microphone are used only while you are using a feature that needs them, such as a call, a voice note, a story, live video or scanning a QR code. Face filters and lenses work by finding the shape of a face in the camera picture. This is done entirely on your device with software that ships inside the app. No face measurements are sent to us or stored, and we do not use them to identify anyone. Voice filters are applied on your device in the same way.

Automatic safety checks

Nudity check on your device. Before a photo, GIF, video or imported sticker is sent in a chat or group, the app checks it on your phone for nudity or sexual content, using a model that ships inside the app. The picture is not sent to us for this check. If the check flags the picture, the message is still sent, and the app sends our review team a reference to the file with the result so that a trained reviewer can look at that file and decide whether our rules were broken. The check is automatic and can be wrong, which is why a person reviews it before we act.
Dark web links. If a message in a chat contains a .onion link, the message is still delivered, and the link and a reference to the conversation are flagged to our review team, who may open that conversation to check for illegal activity.
Adult site links. Feed posts, comments and business posts are checked against a list of adult websites, and a post that links to one is refused. Links in chats are not checked against this list.
Limits. We limit how often some actions can be repeated, such as sign-in attempts, to stop abuse.

We do not scan the text of your private chats to choose ads.

How your messages are stored

Your messages are stored on our servers so that your history is there when you sign in on another device. The text of messages is encrypted in our database with a key that we hold, and everything travels over encrypted connections. VeChat chats are not end-to-end encrypted. This means Velovid is technically able to read message content, and we do so only in the situations described under "When our staff can see your content".

Voice and video calls travel between the people on the call through a relay, and are not recorded or stored by us. Live video and voice rooms are not recorded by us either. Other people in a call, room or chat can always record or screenshot what they receive, and we cannot prevent that.

When our staff can see your content

Access to personal information is limited to the people at Velovid who need it for their work. They look at the content of private chats only:

when you or someone else in the chat reports a message, a person or a group, in which case the reported content and the context needed to understand it are reviewed;
when one of the automatic safety checks above flags a file or a conversation;
when you ask our support team for help and the problem cannot be solved without looking;
when we must, to comply with a valid legal demand or to prevent serious harm to someone, as described under "Legal requests".

How we use information

To provide VeChat: deliver your messages and calls, keep your history, show your profile, feed and stories, run Drive, games, stores and the map, and send notifications.
To keep you signed in and your account secure, including checking new sign-ins and sending verification codes.
To keep VeChat safe: detect, investigate and stop spam, fraud, fake accounts, abuse, threats and illegal activity, enforce our Terms and Community Guidelines, and handle reports and appeals.
To choose what to show you: order your feed and suggest people, posts, stores and places.
To show ads and to measure and bill them. See "Ads" below.
To support you when you contact us, and to tell you about important changes to VeChat or to these documents.
To understand how VeChat is used and to fix and improve it.
To meet our legal obligations and to protect our rights and the rights of others.

How your feed is chosen

The Following tab shows posts from the people and stores you follow. The For you tab also suggests posts from others. To order it, we use signals such as how new a post is, how people have responded to it, whether you follow its author, and what you have viewed, liked, hidden or marked as Interested or Not interested before, from which we keep a simple record of the kinds of posts and authors you seem to like. Payment does not buy a place in the ranking: paid posts appear only in marked Sponsored positions. If you prefer a feed that is not based on your activity, use the Following tab.

The ads on VeChat come from businesses that use VeChat Business and from people promoting their own posts. Each one is marked Sponsored. We do not use outside advertising networks, and we do not let advertisers place trackers in the app.
Everyone may see ads chosen by general signals: the country your connection comes from, and whether you follow the business.
Personalised ads add the interests you chose at sign-up to those signals. They are used only for adults aged 18 or over who have personalised ads switched on. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland the switch starts off and you choose whether to turn it on. Elsewhere it starts on and you can turn it off. The switch is in Profile, under Privacy and Safety, and you can change it at any time.
People under 18 never receive personalised ads.
We do not choose ads using sensitive information such as your health, religion, political views, sexual orientation or ethnic origin, and we do not use the content of your private chats to choose ads.
We record which ads you were shown and which you tapped, so that we can limit how often you see the same ad, count views and bill the advertiser.
Advertisers receive totals, such as how many people saw or tapped an ad. We do not give them your name, VeChat ID or contact details. If you tap an ad and open the advertiser's website, follow their store or message them, they learn what you choose to share with them there.

Who can see what

One-to-one chats: you and the other person.
Groups and rooms: everyone in them. Group admins can remove messages and members and can see reports made to them.
Stories: your buddies, for 24 hours.
Feed posts, comments, likes and your public profile: anyone signed in to VeChat. Posts in the feed can be shared further by the people who see them.
Friends list and birthday: your buddies can see your friends list and the day and month of your birthday unless you switch these off in Profile. Your year of birth is not shown.
Drive: private to you until you create a share link. Anyone who has the link can open the file without a VeChat account and sees your display name. A link works until you switch it off.
Stores: when you order from or message a store, the business and the members of its team receive your order details and messages. The business is responsible for how it uses them.

Anything you share with other people can be saved, copied, screenshotted or passed on by them. Think before you share.

Who we share information with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with other companies for their own advertising. We share it only as follows.

Other people, as you direct, in the ways described under "Who can see what".
Companies that run parts of VeChat for us, under contracts that limit them to doing that work: Vercel (hosting, and the approximate location of a connection), Turso (database), Ably (real-time delivery of messages, online status and call set-up), Cloudflare (storage of photos, videos and files, and the relay that carries calls), and Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging for notifications, Gmail for the emails we send such as sign-in codes, Google Play for purchases and app checks, and Google Sign-In if you use it).
Apple, if you choose to sign in with Apple, and on iPhone for notifications (Apple Push Notification service) and for purchases (the App Store).
Map services. Map pictures load directly from OpenStreetMap and OpenFreeMap servers, which see your IP address and the area of the map you are looking at. Place searches and routes go through our server to OpenStreetMap search and routing services, without your identity or IP address.
Google Fonts, which supplies some of the lettering in the app and on our websites and sees your IP address when it loads.
A television or speaker you cast to, which receives a temporary link to the photo or video you chose to cast.
Businesses on VeChat, when you order from them or message them.
Authorities and others, when the law requires it or to prevent serious harm. See "Legal requests".
A new owner, if Velovid or VeChat is ever merged, sold or reorganised. Your information would stay under a policy at least as protective as this one, and we would tell you beforehand.

We do not put outside analytics, crash reporting or advertising software in the app. The crash reports and usage counts described above are collected by VeChat itself and stay with us.

Legal requests

We require valid legal process. We disclose account information to police or other authorities only when we receive a lawful demand that is valid and properly served, such as a court order or warrant suited to the information sought, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical harm to someone, including to protect a child. We do not hand over information on an informal request, we do not give any authority a standing way into accounts, and we push back on demands that are too broad or improper. Where the law allows, we tell the person concerned. Our Law Enforcement Guidelines describe the process.

How long we keep information

Your account, profile, messages, posts, files and call history: until you delete them or delete your account.
Stories: shown for 24 hours. After that they are no longer visible to anyone, and they are removed from our storage when you delete your account.
Sign-in records: 180 days.
Safety signals (IP address, approximate location, connection type and any GPS position stored with a sign-in): one year.
Saved "what you are playing" activity: one year.
Live location: your position is cleared when sharing ends, and the record of the share is removed within about a week.
Records of who has read a group message: 45 days.
Verification and sign-in codes: minutes.
Crash reports: 90 days.
Whether calls connected: about 13 months. The days you used VeChat: until you delete your account.
Support conversations, and records of reports and of the action we took on them: for as long as we need them to deal with repeat abuse, appeals and legal claims, and to show what we did.
The hidden location of a photo you posted: until the photo or your account is deleted.

When information is deleted from our live systems, copies may remain in our providers' backups for a limited time before they are overwritten.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in Profile, after confirming with your password (or, if you never set one, by typing your VeChat ID). If you no longer have the app, use vechat.net/delete-account. Deletion is immediate and permanent, and there is no waiting period in which it can be undone. It removes your profile, your sign-in details, your one-to-one chats (for you and for the people you talked to), the messages you sent in groups, the groups and rooms you own, your posts, comments, stories, files, saved activity, safety records, device list, orders and reviews. If you own a business on VeChat, the business, its store, its ads and any unused ad balance are deleted too.

After deletion we keep only: reports and moderation records about content (which may include a copy of what was reported), your past conversations with our support team, counts of ad views that no longer identify you, payment records (order number, product, amount and date, with your account removed from them) for as long as tax and accounting law requires, and a note that a deletion was requested for your VeChat ID and when, so that we can show we honoured it.

A suspended account can still request its information and be deleted. When a suspended account is deleted we keep a scrambled fingerprint (a one-way hash) of its email address, phone number and Google or Apple sign-in for two years, only so that the same person cannot open a new account to get around the suspension. The fingerprint cannot be turned back into the email or number.

Your choices and controls

See, correct or change your profile details in Profile.
Request a copy of your information: Profile, Privacy and Safety, Download my data. We prepare it and send it to you, normally within 48 hours. If something you expected is missing from the copy, write to support@velovid.net and we will add it.
Delete your account: Profile.
Switch personalised ads on or off.
Choose who sees your birthday and your friends list, block people, and sign in as invisible.
See and sign out the devices signed in to your account, and turn on two-step verification.
App Lock: set a passcode, or your fingerprint or face, to open VeChat. The passcode also encrypts your sign-in session and the cache of messages you sent on that device, so that someone holding your phone cannot use your account without it. We never see your passcode and cannot recover it. Screen security blocks screenshots and screen recording of VeChat on your own device.
Device permissions: location, camera, microphone, contacts and notifications are each asked for when you first use a feature that needs them, and you can withdraw any of them in your device settings.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, the law gives you some or all of these rights: to know what information we hold about you and get a copy; to have it corrected; to have it deleted; to restrict or object to how we use it; to receive it in a portable form; to withdraw a consent you gave; and not to be subject to a decision made only by automated means that has a legal or similarly serious effect on you. Most of these can be used directly in the app, as described above. For anything else, write to support@velovid.net from the email address on your account, or use Contact support in the app. We may need to confirm that the request really comes from you. We answer within one month, or sooner where the law requires. We will not treat you worse for using your rights. If we refuse a request you can ask us to look again, and you can complain to the regulator where you live.

Europe, the United Kingdom and Switzerland

If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we rely on these legal bases:

Contract. To provide the service you signed up for: your account, messages, calls, feed, stories, Drive, purchases, notifications and support.
Legitimate interests. To keep VeChat secure and free of abuse (sign-in records, IP address and approximate location, safety signals, the automatic safety checks and review of reports); to order the feed and make suggestions; to show ads that are not personalised, and to count and bill ad views; to find and fix crashes and measure whether VeChat works and is used; to improve VeChat; and to defend legal claims. You can object to these uses at any time.
Consent. Precise location, your address book, the camera and microphone, sharing what you are playing, and personalised ads. You can withdraw consent at any time in the app or in your device settings, and that does not affect what was done before.
Legal obligation. To answer valid legal demands and to meet the duties the law places on us, including online safety and consumer law.

You have the right to complain to the data protection authority in the country where you live or work. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first: support@velovid.net.

United States

This section adds information for residents of California and of other states with similar privacy laws. In the last 12 months we collected these categories of personal information, from you, from your device and from other users who mention or message you: identifiers (name, VeChat ID, email address or phone number, IP address, device details); personal details you provide (date of birth, gender); account sign-in details; commercial information (purchases, orders); internet and app activity (what you view, like and tap, ads shown); location (approximate from IP, and precise if you allow it); audio, pictures and video you create or send; the contents of your messages; and inferences about the kinds of posts you like. We use them for the purposes described in "How we use information" and keep them for the periods in "How long we keep information".

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising as those words are defined in California law. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. We use sensitive personal information, such as precise location, account sign-in details and the contents of your messages, only to provide the service you asked for and to keep it safe, and not to infer characteristics about you.

You have the right to know, to access, to correct and to delete your personal information, to appeal a decision we make about your request, and not to be treated differently for using these rights. Use the controls in the app or write to support@velovid.net. You may use an authorised agent, and we will ask for proof that the agent acts for you.

Where your information is processed

Velovid is based in Egypt, and the companies that host VeChat for us store and process information in the United States, the European Union and other countries where they operate. These countries may have privacy laws that differ from those where you live. When we move information out of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland we rely on safeguards recognised by law, such as standard contractual clauses in our agreements with those companies. You can ask us for more detail at support@velovid.net.

Security

We protect your information with encrypted connections, encryption of message text in our database, private file storage that can only be opened with short-lived links, hashed passwords, sign-in checks, two-step verification and limits on who inside Velovid can access what. No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that puts your information at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires. You can help by using a strong password, turning on two-step verification and App Lock, and never sharing your sign-in codes with anyone.

Children and teenagers

VeChat is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. We ask for a date of birth at sign-up and refuse accounts for anyone under 13. If we learn that a child under 13 has an account, we delete it. If you believe a child under 13 is using VeChat, write to support@velovid.net. If the law where you live requires a parent's permission at your age, you may use VeChat only with that permission.

For people aged 13 to 17, personalised ads are always off and the relationship status feature is not available. See the Safety Guide for Teens and Parents.

Other people's information

Other people may share information about you on VeChat, for example by sending a photo you are in, tagging you in a post, sharing your contact card or matching you from their address book. If you think someone has shared your information in a way that breaks our Community Guidelines, report it in the app or write to us.

Links and other services

VeChat contains links to websites and services we do not run, such as a store's own website when you tap Buy, or a link someone sends you. This policy does not cover them. Read their own privacy policies.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when VeChat changes. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change significantly affects how we use your information, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect, and where the law requires your consent we will ask for it.

Contact us

Velovid Software, 28 Makram Ebeid Street, Apartment 3, Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt. Email for everything, including privacy requests and legal demands from authorities: support@velovid.net. You can also use Contact support in the app.