Privacy Policy
1. Who We Are
Matilha ("Matilha," "we," "us," or "our") is a fitness-tracking social app operated by:
- Alfredo Manuel Rodrigues de Almeida Pascoal
- Manuel João da Silva Rocha
acting jointly as private individuals (not through a registered company), and jointly responsible as data controllers for the personal data processed through the Matilha app, available at matilha.app (the app itself runs at app.matilha.app).
Between us, Alfredo is responsible for the technical operation and security of Matilha and for handling your data-protection requests, and Manuel for marketing communications. You can exercise your rights with either of us — the simplest way is to write to [email protected].
For any question about this Privacy Policy or about how your data is handled, contact us at:
This Privacy Policy is written to comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and applicable Portuguese data protection law, as Matilha is primarily used by people in Portugal and the European Union. It applies regardless of where you access Matilha from.
2. Minimum Age
Matilha is not intended for children. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account and use Matilha, in line with the GDPR's default digital consent age. When you sign in for the first time, you confirm that you are 16 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If we become aware that we have collected personal data from someone under this age, we will delete it promptly. If you believe a child under 16 is using Matilha, please contact us at [email protected].
3. What Data We Collect
3.1 Account data (required)
When you sign up, we collect the minimum needed to create and secure your account:
- Email address — via Google Sign-In or via a passwordless "Magic Link" sent to your inbox (both handled by our authentication provider, Supabase Auth).
- Name and profile photo — if you sign up with Google, we receive your Google account name and profile picture. If you sign up via Magic Link, no photo is provided by default and Matilha generates a colored initials avatar instead.
- Username and display name — chosen by you during onboarding.
- Technical account metadata such as account creation date and onboarding status.
- Time zone — read from your device when you open the app, so that reminders and weekly summaries arrive at a sensible local time.
- Consent records — when you give or withdraw a consent (for example, for biometric data), we record which one, when, and which version of this Privacy Policy was in force, so we can demonstrate it as the GDPR requires.
3.2 Workout and activity data (core to the service)
To provide the core fitness-tracking functionality, we store the data you log yourself:
- Workouts (date, duration, notes) and individual sets (exercise, muscle group, reps, weight, or cardio metrics such as distance/time/calories, depending on the exercise type).
- Personal records (PRs), streaks, and badges you unlock.
- Challenges you create or join, and your challenge results.
- Friend connections ("Pack"), friend requests, and social interactions such as "Howl" reactions and in-app notifications you generate or receive.
- Pack Plans (workout routines) you create or save.
3.3 Optional data (only if you choose to provide it)
- Biometric data — body measurements you choose to log over time on the Biometrics page: body weight, body fat, muscle mass, body water, bone mass, BMI, basal metabolic rate (BMR) and visceral fat. This is health data, a special category under GDPR Art. 9, so we process it only with your explicit consent: the first time you open Biometrics, you tick a box to agree before anything can be saved (our database refuses measurements without a recorded consent). It is entirely optional, used only to show you your own trends, and never shared with other users. You can withdraw your consent at any time on the Biometrics page, which permanently deletes all your measurements.
- Custom exercise images — if you create a custom exercise and choose to upload an image for it.
- Gym name — an optional free-text field on your profile.
- Favourite badges and display preferences you configure in Settings.
3.4 Waitlist email (before you have an account)
If you join the founders waitlist on our landing page (matilha.app), we collect only the email address you submit. We use it to contact you about early/founder access to Matilha — nothing else. This is collected with your consent, given by submitting the form, and you can withdraw it at any time by contacting us at [email protected]. We keep it until you either create an account (at which point it's simply your account email going forward) or ask us to delete it.
3.5 Technical data (via our hosting providers)
Our infrastructure providers (described in Section 5) automatically process standard technical data needed to operate a web service — such as IP address, browser/device type, and request logs — for security, abuse prevention, and reliability purposes. We also use privacy-focused product analytics and error-monitoring tools (see Section 5) to understand how the app is used and to detect and fix crashes; these process technical and usage data about how the interface is used — which screens and features you open — never the content of your workouts. Our analytics stores nothing on your device (see Section 9). We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking services.
3.6 Feedback, reports, and safety actions
- If you send us feedback or a bug report through the app, we process the message you submit, together with your account and email, so we can understand and respond to it.
- If you block or report another user, we process that action — including the reason you select when reporting — to keep the community safe and to handle moderation.
4. How We Use Your Data
We use your data to:
- Create and maintain your account and authenticate you.
- Record and display your workouts, personal records, streaks, and badge progress.
- Calculate rankings and leaderboard positions (Power Index, monthly/global rankings, strength percentiles).
- Power social features: friend connections, the Pack activity feed, challenges, and reactions/notifications.
- Generate the shareable workout, PR, profile, and challenge-win cards you can download or share.
- Keep the service secure and prevent abuse (e.g., rate limiting, fraud/cheating prevention on rankings).
- Communicate with you about your account (e.g., notifications about friend requests, badges, or challenge results) and, if you contact us, to respond to you.
- Send in-app notifications that the app generates automatically — for example, when a friend overtakes you in a ranking, a challenge is about to end, a weekly summary, or a reminder that your streak is at risk. Each category (Social, Competition, Progress, Reminders) can be switched off in Profile → Settings.
- Send you occasional service and re-engagement emails about Matilha — for example, a reminder to log your first workout, or beta updates. These are infrequent and always include a simple way to opt out (just reply and we'll take you off the list); they are separate from the essential account, sign-in, and security emails above, which you cannot opt out of while you have an account.
- Review reports and blocks, and take action to keep the community safe (e.g., removing content or suspending accounts that break our rules).
Legal bases (GDPR Art. 6):
- Performance of a contract — processing your account and workout data is necessary to provide the Matilha service you sign up for.
- Explicit consent (GDPR Art. 9(2)(a)) — for biometric (health) data, as described in Section 3.3.
- Consent — for other optional data you choose to provide, such as custom exercise images, and for the waitlist email described in Section 3.4. You can withdraw this by deleting the data, your account, or by contacting us, at any time.
- Legitimate interests — for basic security, fraud/abuse prevention, service reliability, community safety (handling reports and blocks), product analytics to understand which features are used and improve the app (which you can switch off in Settings), and sending occasional service/re-engagement emails to our existing users (which you can opt out of at any time), weighed against your rights and freedoms.
We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.
5. Sharing With Third Parties
We only share data with the service providers ("processors") that are necessary to run Matilha. We do not sell or rent your data to anyone.
| Provider | Role | What they process |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase (Supabase, Inc.) | Database, authentication, file storage, and backend serverless functions | All account, workout, and social data described in Section 3; uploaded images (avatars, custom exercise images) |
| Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc.) | Frontend hosting and content delivery (CDN) | Serves the Matilha web app; processes standard web request/technical data |
| Google (via Google Sign-In) | Optional authentication method | Name, email, and profile photo, only if you choose "Continue with Google" |
| PostHog (PostHog, Inc.) | Product analytics, to understand usage and improve the app | Usage/interaction events, linked to your account identifier (never your email or the content you type); processed on PostHog's EU Cloud |
| Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.) | Error and crash monitoring | Diagnostic data when the app errors — technical/device data and your account identifier, with no personal profile data; processed in Sentry's EU region |
| Resend (Resend, Inc.) | Transactional and service email delivery | Your email address and the content of the emails we send you — sign-in / magic-link and invite links, and occasional service emails; sending is configured in the EU (Ireland) region |
| Anthropic (Anthropic, PBC) | AI assistant our team uses to build and maintain Matilha | Occasionally, limited account and workout data when we investigate a problem or check the service — kept to what is needed, preferably aggregated; not used to train AI models |
International data transfers: Our database, authentication, storage, and backend functions (Supabase) are hosted in the West EU (Ireland) region — within the European Economic Area. Our analytics, error-monitoring, and email providers (PostHog, Sentry, Resend) are likewise configured to store or process data in the EU. Some of our other providers (such as Cloudflare's hosting/content-delivery network, Google if you use Google Sign-In, and Anthropic) may process limited technical or account data outside the EEA (e.g., in the United States). Where this happens, it is carried out under the safeguards those providers commit to (such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses).
We may also disclose data if required by law, to comply with a legal process, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Matilha, our users, or the public.
6. Social Visibility — What's Public vs. Private
Matilha is a social app, so some of your information is visible to other users by design:
Nothing in Matilha is visible without an account — everything below requires being signed in.
- Visible to any signed-in Matilha user: your username, display name, avatar and gym name if you set one (see "Private Profile" below); your strength tier (Beagle → Wolf) and its badge; your position and score in the Power Index, Monthly and Strength leaderboards; on your profile, your number of workouts, most-trained muscle group, current weekly streak, how long ago your last workout was and which muscle groups it covered, and your three heaviest lifts (exercise, weight and reps); and any Pack Plan (workout routine) you choose to publish.
- Visible only to your confirmed friends (your "Pack"): your individual workout activity — the sets you log, with weights, reps and dates — in the Pack feed and on your profile; the badges you unlock, other than the strength tier above; and the Howl reactions and notifications between you and your Pack.
- The "Private Profile" setting: you can switch it on when you set up your profile, or at any time in Settings. When enabled, people who are not your friends see your display name replaced by ****, do not see your profile photo or the profile statistics listed above, and you no longer appear in Explore. Your rank and score still appear in the leaderboards under the masked name, so it does not remove you from the rankings.
- Never visible to other users: your email address, used only for login and account identification and never shown in the app's interface; and your biometric entries (body weight and related measurements), which are never shared with other users under any circumstances.
If you'd rather keep certain achievements private, you can control some visibility via your profile settings, or simply avoid logging data you don't want reflected in shared views (e.g., biometric data, which is never shared with other users under any circumstance).
7. Data Retention and Deletion
We keep your data for as long as your account is active, so that your workout history, streaks, and rankings remain meaningful over time.
You can permanently delete your account at any time from Profile → Settings → Delete Account. This triggers our account-deletion process, which removes:
- Your profile, authentication record, and all workout/set data.
- Biometric entries, custom exercises and their images, badges, and preferences.
- Your friendships, friend requests, and participation in challenges.
- Notifications, activity reactions, and rankings entries tied to your account.
- Your profile photo and any other files you uploaded, and your consent records.
- Your waitlist entry, if you joined the waitlist with the same email address.
Deletion is designed to be complete and irreversible — once processed, your data cannot be recovered. Some minimal records may be retained where we are legally required to (e.g., for fraud prevention or legal compliance), but only for as long as strictly necessary.
8. Your Rights Under GDPR
As a data subject, you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification of inaccurate or incomplete data (most of this you can already edit directly in your Profile).
- Erasure ("right to be forgotten") — via the in-app Delete Account feature, or by contacting us.
- Data portability — receive your data in a structured, commonly used format, or have it transmitted elsewhere where technically feasible. You can download a copy of the data we hold about you at any time directly in the app via Profile → Settings → Export My Data — your profile, workouts, sets, biometrics, plans, custom exercises, badges, friends, challenges, notifications, reactions, blocks and reports you made, rankings, consent records and preferences (provided as a JSON file, plus a CSV of your sets).
- Restriction of processing or objection to certain processing based on our legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent at any time for anything based on consent, without affecting the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.
- Lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In Portugal, this is the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD) — www.cnpd.pt.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond within the timeframes required by GDPR (generally within one month).
9. Cookies and Local Storage
Matilha does not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. Matilha uses browser storage only for the app to function:
- Session/authentication tokens — stored locally by our authentication provider (Supabase Auth) to keep you signed in between visits.
- Offline copy of your own data — so Matilha keeps working in gyms without a connection, your own profile, preferences, workouts, sets, custom exercises, Pack Plans and biometric entries are kept on your device and used when you're offline. Workouts you log offline stay on the device until they can be sent. Nothing about other users is stored. This copy is deleted when you log out or delete your account.
- Offline/installable app cache — as a Progressive Web App (PWA), Matilha caches certain static assets locally (such as the app's code, icons, badge artwork, and logo) so the app can load faster, support installing it to your home screen, and keep working when you lose network connection. These are generic app assets, not personal data — the same files for every user — and are automatically cleared after a period of disuse (currently up to 90 days) or when you clear your browser's site data. This does not track your activity across other sites.
- Your analytics choice — if you switch Usage analytics off, a small flag is stored so that your choice is respected.
We use PostHog for privacy-focused product analytics, configured so that it stores nothing on your device — no cookies and no local storage. It only runs after you sign in, and recognises you by your account identifier, never your email. We do not record your screen: session replay is switched off. You can switch analytics off at any time in Settings → Usage analytics. We also use Sentry to detect and diagnose crashes. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking tools. If our use of these tools changes materially, we will update this policy and, where required, ask for your consent.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, for example as Matilha adds new features or as our infrastructure changes. We will update the "last updated" date at the top of this page, and where changes are material, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you in-app before they take effect.
11. Contact
Questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or your data:
Alfredo Manuel Rodrigues de Almeida Pascoal and Manuel João da Silva Rocha, joint controllers of Matilha.