Privacy Policy
Hawsar is a wedding-planning app for Kurdistan. It helps you find venues and vendors, keep a list of favourites, and get in touch with the people you choose. This page explains what information the app handles, why, who can see it, and how to remove it. Hawsar is operated from Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
- You sign in with your phone number and a one-time code.
- Your profile is what you type: a name, whether you are the bride, groom or a relative, your city, and an optional photo. Your wedding plan stays on your phone.
- Hawsar never receives your location. If you allow it, your phone uses it to show the nearest listings first.
- Tapping Call or WhatsApp on a listing records your name and number against that listing. Only Hawsar's own team can see this. The vendor cannot.
- Each such tap also gives the vendor a lead: the time, whether you called or used WhatsApp, and the wedding date, guest count, budget and city from your plan and profile. A lead never includes your name or your phone number.
- You can delete your account from inside the app at any time.
What we collect, and why
Your phone number
You sign in with a one-time code, sent to your phone by WhatsApp, Telegram or SMS through OTPIQ, a messaging service in Iraq. Your number is kept with your account so you can sign in again, and Hawsar's team can see it when you contact a vendor (see Contacting a vendor). To prevent abuse, we keep a short record of sign-in attempts and delete it soon after.
Your profile
During setup you give us your name and your role (bride, groom or relative), and you can tell the app your wedding date. From the Account tab you can set your city and add a photo. We use these to greet you, to tailor the app to your city, and for the contact and review features described below. Your photo is visible only to you and to Hawsar's team.
Your wedding plan (the date, the number of guests, the budget, and the list of what you still need) is kept on your phone, not with your account. The one time any of it reaches us is when you contact a vendor: the date, the guest count and the budget are then included in the lead described under Contacting a vendor.
Favourites
The listings you save with the heart are kept with your account so they follow you to a new phone, together with what you record about each one: how far you have got with them, the price they gave you, and any note you write. No other user, and no vendor, can see your favourites or your notes. Hawsar's team can see them, to understand how the app is used and to improve it. We count how many times each listing is saved, without saying who saved it.
Contacting a vendor
Hawsar opens your phone's dialler or WhatsApp. It never calls or sends messages for you. When you choose WhatsApp, the app writes an opening message for you: a greeting saying you found the vendor through Hawsar, your wedding date and number of guests if your plan has them, and a request for their prices. Nothing is sent until you press send, and you can change or delete the message first. A phone call shows the vendor your number, as any call does.
When you tap Call or WhatsApp, we record your name, your phone number and the time against that listing. Hawsar's team uses this to tell real enquiries from noise, to help if something goes wrong between you and a vendor, and to check that you contacted a vendor before you review it. Vendors do not see this record. A vendor sees how many people viewed and contacted their listing each day, and the leads described next. The one way a vendor learns who you are through Hawsar is a review you publish, which shows your name.
Each tap on Call or WhatsApp while you are signed in also gives that listing a lead, at most one a day. A lead shows whether you called or used WhatsApp, the time, and your wedding date, number of guests, total budget and city, each only if you had set it. The vendor and Hawsar's team can see it. A lead never includes your name or your phone number, and the vendor cannot use it to find your account.
Reviews
After you have contacted a vendor through the app, you can rate them and write a short review. A review shows your stars, your text, the date, and your name at the time you wrote it. Hawsar's team checks every review before it appears. Once published, anyone who opens the listing can see it, including the vendor. You can ask us to remove a review at any time, and deleting your account removes all of yours.
Location
If you allow it, the app uses your location to show the listings nearest to you first and to centre the map on you. Hawsar never stores your location and never sends it to us. The map is provided by Google Maps, which uses your location to show where you are under its own privacy policy. The same goes for Waze or Google Maps when you open directions.
You can turn location off in your phone's settings at any time. The app still works; listings are just not ordered by distance.
Notifications
If you turn them on, the app reminds you as your wedding date gets closer. These reminders are set on your phone, and your wedding date is not sent to us.
If you also turn on news about new vendors and offers, we keep a code that lets us send notifications to your phone, with the language you use the app in. We use it only to send you those notifications. Turning them off, signing out or deleting your account removes it.
On your device
The app saves some things on your phone so it opens quickly: your language and theme, your profile, your wedding plan, the listings you viewed, your favourites, photos, and which vendors you have contacted. Signing out removes your profile from the phone. The rest is removed when you uninstall the app.
Vendors and the dashboard
Vendors sign in to a separate dashboard with a username and password given by Hawsar. Everything a vendor publishes is public: business name, phone and WhatsApp numbers, address, opening hours, prices, photos and videos. Vendors see daily numbers of views and contacts for their own listings, their leads, and their published reviews. Hawsar never tells a vendor your name or number.
Who we share information with
We do not sell personal information and we do not share it with advertisers. Your information is handled by the services that run the app:
- Google Firebase stores our data and runs sign-in, app statistics and crash reports.
- OTPIQ sends the sign-in code to your phone.
- Google Maps shows the map.
- YouTube plays a vendor's video when a listing has one.
- The apps you choose to open from a listing: your phone's dialler, WhatsApp, Waze or Google Maps.
Each of these follows its own privacy policy. We may also share information when the law requires it, or to protect Hawsar, its users or its vendors.
How long we keep it
| Information | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Your account, profile, photo, favourites, reviews and contact records | Until you delete your account |
| Leads | Until you delete your account, or the vendor's listing is removed |
| Sign-in codes | Deleted soon after you sign in, and within a day at most |
| App statistics | Up to 14 months |
| Crash reports | About 90 days |
| Daily view and contact numbers on listings | Kept, as they say nothing about you |
Deleting your account
Open the Account tab and choose Delete account. This deletes your profile, your photo, your favourites, your reviews, your contact records, and the leads from your contacts. It cannot be undone.
What stays: the daily numbers on listings, which say nothing about you, and what is saved on your own phone, which goes when you uninstall the app. You can also ask us to delete your account by email.
Your choices
- Turn location on or off in your phone's settings, at any time.
- Turn notifications on or off from the Account tab, or in your phone's settings.
- Change your name or city, or remove your photo, from the Account tab.
- Sign out to remove your profile from a shared phone.
- Email us to see the information we hold about you, to correct it, or to have it deleted.
Children
Hawsar is for people planning a wedding and is not meant for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
When we change how the app handles information, we will update this page and its date. For a change that matters to you, we will also say so in the app.
Contact
Questions, corrections and deletion requests: support@hawsar.app.