Wave — Privacy Policy

Effective August 31, 2026

Wave ("the app") is an iOS app that helps verified UC Berkeley students meet up in person. It is operated by Wendell Kang ("we"). This policy explains what we collect, why, and what we do with it. Questions: support@wave-wave.com.

What we collect

• Account info — your @berkeley.edu email address (used to verify you are a Berkeley student and to sign you in) and an internal user ID.
• Profile — the nickname and optional profile photo you choose.
• Precise location — collected while you use the app to place your posts on the campus map and to compute walking times. See "How location works" below.
• Content you create — posts, chat messages, and photos you attach to posts or chats.
• Device data — a push notification token so we can notify you about waves, messages, and meetups.
• Crash and diagnostics data — crash reports (via Sentry), not linked to your identity.
• Usage analytics — in-app events (e.g. a post was created, a wave was accepted), identified only by your internal user ID, never your email (via PostHog).

We do not collect your contacts, and we do not use your data for advertising or cross-app tracking.

How location works

• Other users only ever see an approximate location for your post — the map shows a jittered position, never your exact coordinates.
• Your exact location for a post is shared only with a person whose wave you have accepted, and only while that meetup is live. When the meetup ends, access ends.
• Location is not collected in the background.

How we use your information

• To run the service: show nearby posts, deliver waves and messages, compute walk-time windows, and send push notifications.
• To keep the community safe: enforce Berkeley-only verification, blocks, reports, rate limits, and account suspensions.
• To improve the app: aggregate usage analytics and crash reports.

We never sell your data and never share it with advertisers.

Who processes your data

Wave runs on a small set of service providers that process data on our behalf: Supabase (database, authentication, storage — hosted in the United States), Apple (push notifications), Mapbox (map display; the Mapbox SDK collects anonymized usage telemetry to operate and improve its maps), Sentry (crash reporting), and PostHog (usage analytics). Your content is visible to other verified Berkeley users according to the app's rules (e.g. your posts appear to students on your campus; chats are visible only to their participants).

Retention and deletion

• You can delete your account at any time in the app: Settings → account → delete account.
• Deletion removes your profile, ends your posts and meetups, deletes your messages and revokes access to your photos, and signs you out everywhere.
• We retain a minimal residual record — including the email associated with the account, an inaccessible skeleton of past wave/meetup activity, and any reports you filed or that were filed about the account — for safety, anti-abuse, and legal purposes. This record is hidden from all users.
• If you later sign up again with the same email address, you get a fresh account with that address; your previous profile and content are not restored.
• After a meetup ends, its chat remains visible to its two participants in the app's "past waves" list until either participant hides it or deletes their account. Chats are never visible to anyone else, and chats from cancelled or disputed meetups close immediately.

Your choices

• Location and notification permissions can be changed anytime in iOS Settings; the app's core features require location while in use.
• You can block or report any user or post from within the app.
• To exercise access, correction, or deletion rights beyond the in-app tools, email us at the address below.

Eligibility

Wave is only for verified UC Berkeley students who are at least 18 years old. Wave is not directed at minors, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18 or from anyone who is not a verified Berkeley student.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update this page and the effective date above. Material changes will be communicated in the app.

Contact

Wendell Kang — support@wave-wave.com