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 the app never tells anyone who liked them unless it's mutual. A like with no reply stays invisible, and the encounter eventually expires without anything being said.

Two honest caveats: everyone can see, in their statistics, how many likes they received that week — not from whom. And a Super Like moves your like back up the person's list, so they may guess it came from you.

18 or over. It's a strict condition: at sign-up, your phone checks the app store's age signal when one exists, and a “minor” status stops the account from being created.

Any account suspected of belonging to a minor is blocked and reviewed. When in doubt, the team can ask for a selfie taken with the camera, which a person compares by eye with the profile photos.

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.
• Are encounters turned on? If “Turn on encounters” is off, a red “Encounters turned off” banner reminds you: you don't cross paths with anyone, even with Bluetooth on.
• Is the app allowed to run in the background? This is cause number one. Open the “Staying on the lookout” screen in the app's settings: it detects your phone's brand and gives you the exact steps.
• Is battery optimization disabled for ProxiBlu? 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? A badge, in the row of tools in Recent, counts the ProxiBlu signals your phone is picking up right now — signals, not people: the same phone can count more than once. Under an empty list, a sentence says it too. If nothing is picked up 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.

About 36 hours on a free account, 4 days on Premium, 7 on Premium+ and 10 on VIP. After that, if there has been no mutual like, the encounter leaves your list on its own. An “Expiring soon” label warns you beforehand.

To prevent that, make the person a favourite, with the star: a favourite never expires. You get 3 on a free account, more on a paid plan.

That's deliberate. The app shows only the day — “today”, “yesterday”, “3 days ago”. Showing the exact time and place would give everyone the means to piece together other people's habits; we'd rather nobody felt followed.

So you recognize the person by their photos and by what they put in their profile, not by a dot on a map.

At the top of the Encounters tab, “Recent” shows your usual list. “Live” shows only the people around you right now — detected over Bluetooth in the last few minutes — without your search filters. Handy in a bar, on a night out or at a festival: the list updates by itself, and someone who has left stays listed for up to 5 minutes.

You turn it on for 10, 20 or 30 minutes or 1 hour; at the end, the screen goes back to Recent on its own. During Live, three chips (Man, Woman, Other), an age slider and “Up to N people” narrow the list without touching your filters. That number goes up to your plan's limit, marked with a padlock: 50 with the free account, 100 with a paid plan. The thumb, star and trash can work as usual.

Because a friend isn't an encounter. As long as you're friends, they don't appear in your Recent list, crossing paths with them sends you no notification, and you don't like a friend: you already message each other, from the Connections tab. In Live, a friend who is around still shows up, marked “Friend”.

If the friendship is removed, your encounters come back. And “Find a gang you crossed via Bluetooth” suggests your friends just like the other people from your evening.

That's normal: you have routines and routes. The app deliberately spaces out repeated encounters with the same person so your list doesn't fill up, and their card simply shows how many times you have crossed paths.

For someone you run into every day — a colleague, a neighbour — use Ignore: no more card or notification for that person. It's reversible, from the list of ignored profiles.

Switch off “Turn on encounters”, behind the gear icon in the Encounters tab or in Settings: you no longer cross paths with anyone and no one crosses paths with you, even with Bluetooth on. A red “Encounters turned off” banner reminds you.

The encounters you already have stay in your list. The setting applies to this phone; you turn it back on in the same place.

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.

By default, the radio listens only about a quarter of the time, which keeps the cost low. Four settings let you strike your own balance: if you want more battery life, pick low-power listening or lengthen the pauses; if you're going out and want to catch everything, switch to responsive, continuous listening.

During “Live”, the radio goes to its maximum on Android: the battery drains faster for the length of Live, then everything goes back on its own.

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.

Instead of GPS tracking, you pick up to three places you frequent, by hand — work, the gym, a café — each with a radius you choose. In the Encounters tab, under “My places”, you see the people with a place that matches one of yours: you like them with the thumb, or pass. Two likes, and it's a match, no encounter needed.

The list is renewed every day. On a free account you set two places and see 15 new profiles a day; on a paid plan, three places, and 40 new profiles a day on Premium, 100 on Premium+, unlimited on VIP.

On top of that, a dynamic place, made for a festival, is set where you are — see below. At the top of the tab, “Places set: N of M” tells you where your places stand.

It's optional: nothing is set in advance, and turning off “Around my places” erases all your places from the server.

A place on top of your usual places, made for a festival or a big event, where circles with a radius of at least 1 km are no use. “Update my dynamic place” — in “Edit my places”, or through its icon, a target, in Recent and to the right of “Places set” — sets it where you are, from GPS; “Choose on the map or by address” sets it on the point you pick. Its radius is 50 m, it lasts 24 hours, and it can be updated once a day — removing it doesn't give you back the day's update.

It only matches other people's dynamic places: in your daily list, you see the people whose dynamic place is within 50 m of yours, and they see you. It doesn't count among your plan's places.

Through GPS, it needs an accuracy of 20 m or better, and precise location allowed for the app: otherwise nothing is sent — move into the open and try again. If your phone's location is turned off, the app tells you: turn it on, then try again. A simulated location is refused.

First look at the summary at the top of the tab, “Places set: N of M”: a place that is “Not set” brings up nobody — tap it to set it —, and neither does a “Paused” one — “Confirm my places” starts it again. Then:

• Is a search filtering the list? As long as the magnifier is coloured, you only see what matches your search; clear it to get the whole list back.
• Others have to set their places too. The tab only shows people with a place that matches one of yours: as long as few people around you have set theirs, the list stays short.
• Are your circles small? Two places only match if their centres are closer than the smaller of the two radii. A larger radius widens your list — but changing the radius counts as a move, allowed once every 7 days.
• Filters apply on both sides: the age and gender you're looking for, and the other person's. Your friends, your matches, blocked people and people skipped, either way, don't appear there.
• Is your daily list already full? On a free account, it holds 15 new profiles a day, then renews the next day.
• Your dynamic place only brings up people who set theirs within 50 m.

Nobody. The people you appear for see your public profile and “Frequents your areas” — never your places, or how far away. Each person only knows which of their own places matches: the tab's magnifier filters by place. The name you give a place is for you alone, and encrypted on the server.

The server rounds the centre of each place — to the nearest 500 m, by default — before keeping it: a place never pinpoints an address. A minimum radius, 1 km by default, stops anyone from targeting a single block. And two places only match if their centres are closer to each other than the smaller of the two radii: large circles never impose anyone on someone who chose small ones.

That rounded centre is kept in the clear, since the server is what compares places; the team, for its part, sees only the number of places and their dates on an account's file — never where.

No one sees your dynamic place either: its centre is rounded to the nearest 10 m, kept for as long as it lasts, then erased within the hour after it ends.

A place can only move once every 7 days — its centre as well as its radius — so nobody can shift their circles around to locate someone. The screen tells you when it can move: “Can be moved on…”.

Setting it the first time is free, and you can still correct it for 15 minutes after placing it. Renaming a place is always allowed.

If it was still within its 7-day period, “Put this place back” restores it as it was, until that period ends. Removing a place doesn't reset the period: another place can only be set in its spot once the period is over.

Until then, the removed place is kept hidden — it brings up nobody — and then it's erased.

A place you haven't confirmed for 90 days is paused: it no longer brings anyone up, and you no longer see anyone there. A reminder appears in the tab; “Confirm my places” starts them again with one tap.

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

Until the other person has tapped on their side, you only see that you agreed to share yours. That step is free for everyone, and it is final once taken.

The text of your conversations, yes. It is encrypted on your phone before it leaves, and only the person you're writing to can decrypt it. Your key stays in your device; if you turn on account backup, it is first encrypted with a password only you know.

One clarification about photos: an attached image is analyzed automatically once, before it is encrypted, to screen out nudity and violence. That check does not keep it, and it then travels encrypted like everything else.

A consequence worth knowing: without account backup, if you lose your phone, your conversation history is lost. We cannot rebuild it, because we never had it in the clear.

It was encrypted for the key of another phone: your account is open on another device, or you reinstalled the app. Only one phone at a time can read your messages. The app recognizes it and asks the person who wrote it for the message again, on its own: their phone encrypts it again for yours — after they confirm, if your key has changed — and it becomes readable, without the “edited” mention. This works for messages less than 7 days old, and only if that person hasn't deleted the conversation on their side.

As long as some remain, a banner above the text box says so, and “Ask again” sends the request again. If the app tells you your account is open on another device, check the active sessions in Settings › Account security; “Read my messages here” makes this phone the one that reads.

Your own messages sent before a reinstall only come back through your key backup: without it, they stay “content not available on this phone”.

Yes, for 15 minutes after sending: a long press on your message offers “Edit” and “Delete for everyone”, with a match, a friend or in a group. After that delay, both gestures disappear.

An edited message carries the word “edited” for everyone. Deleted for everyone, it leaves “This message was deleted.” in its place, for each person, image included; an image can't be edited, it is deleted for everyone and sent again. The correction travels end-to-end encrypted, like a message: we can't read it any more than the original. But the other person may have read the message before.

As many as you like. Between two people who matched, as between friends, there is no quota, whatever the plan.

The only thing that's counted is the message without a match, reserved for Premium+ (1 a day) and VIP (5 a day) — see below.

The ability to write once to someone you crossed paths with, without waiting for their like. They can accept — a match opens — or decline. It's a Premium+ and VIP benefit. Never right next to the person: the message only becomes possible a few hours — 3 by default — after your phones last saw each other, and not while you're still near each other.

If you receive one, you have no obligation to answer: you can ignore it, decline it or block the person without them being told. And you can switch off “Accept messages without a match” in the settings: nobody knows what you chose, so the sender never knows whether their message was delivered.

A like that stays longer in the person's list — it even comes back if it had expired — and moves ahead of the others. Paid plans give you 1 to 5 a day, and you can send only one per person every 30 days.

The app states the trade-off plainly: the person may guess that you liked them.

The match and the conversation are closed for both of you. You have 24 hours to undo it, from “Removed matches”; after that, it's final.

Deleting a match doesn't stop you from crossing paths with the person again. For that, you need to block them.

Yes, on your side only: long-press the conversation, or use the conversation's ⋮ menu, then confirm. The other person keeps theirs, and the match — or the friendship — stays.

If a new message arrives, the conversation comes back, with only what follows.

• The trash can — removes one encounter from your list. You have 24 hours to put it back, from “Deleted encounters”. If you cross paths again, a new encounter will appear.
• Ignore — no more card or notification for that person, even if you cross paths again. They aren't notified, and it's reversible.
• Delete the match — the link is broken on both sides, along with the conversation. Can be undone for 24 hours.
• Block — the strongest: the person stops existing for you and you for them, silently, and 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. On someone's profile, each photo is shown whole, without being cropped; tap a thumbnail to switch to the other one.

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 print of your face is created: only the result of the comparison is stored.

This feature is not yet switched on. It counts as biometrics and will only open after the legal formalities required in Quebec.

Not to be confused with the selfie the team may require when there is doubt about an account: that one is looked at by a person, with no automated facial recognition, and gives no badge.

The public tagline is one short line, seen by everyone you cross paths with, before any match: it is shown under your card, in full. It is reviewed before it goes live, and you can hide it whenever you like. Its length depends on the plan: 50 characters on a free account, up to 150 on Premium+ or VIP.

The description is a longer text, up to 500 characters, only for your matches and your friends — and for the friends you agree to be shown or introduced to. Someone you have only crossed paths with doesn't see it.

A name you choose if you like, at sign-up or later in your profile — 30 characters at most. Your matches, your friends and the members of your group conversations see it, instead of “Woman, 29”. Someone you have only crossed paths with, or someone a friend introduces you to, doesn't see it: they see your card.

You change or clear it in your profile, and it is encrypted in our database. On your side, the private nickname you give someone takes precedence over their nickname.

A way to get the group from a night out back together without anyone having had to swap numbers. You give the day and the time range; the app shows you the people you crossed paths with during that time; you tick at least two, and each of them gets an invitation. In the Social menu, it's “Find a gang you crossed via Bluetooth”. The detail, screen by screen.

The time of a crossing is never shown, and the search goes no further back than your plan's visibility window: best to do it the very next day.

Someone you genuinely crossed paths with can see you appear, with your public card, when they look for the people from their evening. They learn neither the time nor the place, and from that search all they can do is invite you.

You can refuse those invitations once and for all: behind the gear icon in the Social tab, two switches turn off invitations to events and to gangs from people you crossed paths with. Your friends and matches can always invite you, and nobody knows whether you turned these off. Blocking someone remains possible at any time.

An open gang, alongside the private gang of people you crossed paths with. Its creator chooses the accepted genders, the age range, a place and a radius (1 to 50 km), the number of spots (2 to 100), a title and a description, whether people must introduce themselves to join and whether members can invite. It's free and visible right away; the title and description are reviewed by automated moderation.

You find the gangs whose criteria you meet, with the number of spots left, and ask to join; the creator accepts or declines. A full gang no longer shows up in searches. Inside: the member list, gang events and a members-only discussion — readable and moderated by the server, like a public group's. You can leave whenever you like, and the creator can remove someone.

For when you crossed paths with someone but couldn't talk to them. You create a search: where (a point on the map, within a 50 m radius at most), when (a date and a time range of 3 hours at most) and who (a gender, an age range, hair colour, glasses, height…). It lasts 30 days and can be extended by 30 days; one search at a time.

On their side, anyone can note the places where they were, with the day and time; nobody else sees them, and each one is deleted after 30 days. If your search matches them, it appears for them in “Someone may be looking for you” — and you don't know who it's shown to. They're the one who answers you, with a short request; if you accept, they join the search's group, where you can ask them to be friends.

A one-off activity you suggest, from “Spontaneous activity search”: a specific place, a date and time within the next 7 days, a duration, a description, the number of people expected (20 at most), and the age range and genders you're looking for. Others find it by keyword, around them or another point — 10 km by default, up to 50 — if they match your criteria, and say they'll be there with one tap. The people who'll be there are visible to everyone who sees the activity, and it leaves other people's list once the number is reached. One activity at a time.

Reminders arrive 24 h and 1 h before; “I won't come” is free until 2 h before — after that, it's a late cancellation. The activity is erased 24 h after it ends.

Everyone has a participant reliability — their attendance against their commitments, over a year — which is never based on the mere absence of a Bluetooth signal. Attendance is proven by checking in your location at the start and the end, by crossing paths over Bluetooth on site, or by being confirmed by a participant whose attendance is proven (a friend's confirmation counts for little). The organizer has their own reliability, which nobody sees as a percentage: you can only filter activities by “reliable organizer”.

A match comes from a mutual like — after an encounter, around your places or through a friend. A friend is a relationship you choose, with no need to have crossed paths: you add them by phone number or email, or you ask a match or a member of one of your spaces to be friends. A friend isn't an encounter: they don't appear in your Recent list.

With a friend you can message each other, send them your location — encrypted for them alone — show them a match or introduce them to someone you crossed paths with, if that person agrees, or to another of your friends, and invite them anywhere without it counting against your plan's limits. A removed friend can be restored for 24 hours.

Yes, from an encounter's profile: “Introduce to my friends”. The person must have allowed it — the “Let people introduce me to their friends” setting, behind the gear icon in the Encounters tab, is off by default. They then get a request for each friend, which they accept or not; accepting counts as a like toward that friend.

The friend sees them in “Encounters shared with you”, in the Connections tab, and can like them: two likes, and it's a match “introduced by a friend”. You never learn their answer: you only see “Request sent”.

Yes, from their profile: “Introduce to my friends”, then you choose who to. No setting to turn on: your friend gets a request for each one, with that friend's card, and decides; accepting counts as a like toward that friend.

This time, you know what they answered: “Waiting for their approval”, “Approved” or “Declined”, and a notification tells you if they accept. The friend you introduce them to sees them in “Friends shared with you”, in the Connections tab, and can like them: two likes, and it's a match “introduced by a friend”.

In the Connections tab, Friends section:

• “Add a friend”, with their number or email: if no one has signed up with it, the app offers to invite them by SMS or by email, via WhatsApp for a number, or through another app. Your friend request will be waiting for them when they sign up with that number or email.
• “Invite on social media” opens your phone's share sheet with your invitation link and your referral code — nothing from your profile. On Android, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Snapchat come first, if they're installed.
• “Invite via WhatsApp”, if WhatsApp is installed, sends the same message in one tap.

Someone you refer who completes their sign-up earns you, by default, a credit — the details.

Private events, gangs, polls and friends are free. Two things are paid for individually: publishing a public event and running a public group (by the year, paid by the person who creates it); a private group is free. The price depends on how many people the space will hold, attendees and invitees included: the app asks “How many people?” and shows the price of each tier before you buy. The tiers and their prices are set by the team, and some may be free.

Its page then says “Up to N people”. If more room is needed, its organizer taps “Expand” and pays only the difference from what they have already paid, in ProxiBlu credits.

Your plan also sets how many events or gangs you can invite people you crossed paths with to each month: 1 on a free account, up to 10 on VIP. Your friends and matches never count toward that limit.

It is erased one week after it starts, along with its discussion — private or public, part of a group or not. The group itself stays.

A private event's date is encrypted: so that it is erased all the same, its organizer's phone tells the server the day to erase it. The server therefore learns that day, never the event's title, place or time.

In a private space — private event, private gang, private group — members only. Each text is checked automatically once as it is sent, then stored encrypted with a key our servers don't have.

A public space is meant to be read: everyone around the place for an event, members for a group's discussion, and our moderation team in both cases. Don't put any private information there. You can report a public space or one of its messages; nobody will know it came from you.

An open gang's discussion is read the same way: by its members, and by the server, which moderates it.

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 geolocation. In that case, the approximate area of an encounter — about a hundred metres — is recorded for your safety, so that where a meeting took place can be found in the event of an incident. It is shown to no one.

That consent is optional and revocable: without it, encounters work exactly the same. It also powers the “What's happening” map and the location sharing you start yourself.

During a “Going to meet”, your precise location is sent at the planned times. It is kept in the clear, without end-to-end encryption: the team can review it as a safety record, and it's erased after six months — the details.

Detection itself uses no GPS: it's Bluetooth only. And the places in “Around my places” are ones you set yourself, by hand; the server keeps only their rounded centre. Your dynamic place, if you set one, is set with one tap, from GPS or on the map: the server keeps it to the nearest 10 m for 24 hours, then erases it.

No. No sale, no handing over to brokers, no sharing for advertising. The only third parties that touch data are technical providers the service needs — hosting, sending texts and emails, notifications, automated screening of photos and text — each bound by a written agreement. Some are located outside Quebec. The full list is in the privacy policy.

No. The app asks for no permission to access contacts. “Invite from my contacts” opens your phone's own picker: you tap one person, and only their number is sent to us. We keep nothing but a fingerprint of it, used to pass on your friend request and to avoid inviting them twice.

The “Contacts” section in the Connections tab is a notebook you fill in yourself, which stays on your phone. To link a contact to one of your friends, their number and email are compared by the server, which keeps none of it.

In the app's settings, “Download my data” gives you a copy of your data in a 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 have already uninstalled the app.

Two things to know before deleting: a subscription bought in an app store is cancelled in the store, not by deleting the account; and a bare minimum for investigations is kept for six months in a separate store, solely to answer a lawful request following an incident.

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.
• The confirmation email contains a link and a 6-digit code that don't expire: it's the same code every time it's sent, and you can confirm whenever you like. The “Confirm your email” screen resends it on its own, at most once an hour, and “Resend the email” does it on request.
• 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, matches, friends and encounters follow you.

Your conversations, though, live only on your phone. To get them back, you need to have turned on account backup on the old device (Settings, “Account backup”): the app then offers to restore it, with the password you chose. Without a backup, the history does not transfer: only the messages received in the last 7 days can come back — the app asks their authors for them again on its own, and they confirm your new key. New messages work normally.

Remember to revoke the old session in the security settings: only one phone at a time can read your messages.

Partly, through the “My account” web portal: your encounters, “My places” — today's list and the editor for your places, on a map —, the Connections tab — your matches, your friends, sharing requests —, your profile, your plan, your security, your data and your tickets. You sign in with your email or phone number and your password, even if you uninstalled the app.

Conversations, however, stay in the app: end-to-end encrypted, they only open with your phone's key. “Live”, the location sent to a friend and “Going to meet” also need the phone, and it's the phone's Bluetooth that creates encounters. More about the portal.

We can't help, and it isn't unwillingness: the backup is encrypted on your phone with that password, which we never receive. Without it, nobody can open it.

If you still have the old phone, simply make a new backup with a new password: it will replace the previous one.

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.