Vemble is operated by Re. Universe Pte. Ltd., a company registered in Singapore ("Vemble", "we", "us"), and is the data controller responsible for your information under this policy. Payouts to hosts in Korea, the tax invoices hosts issue, and the withholding and reporting of tax on those payouts are handled by our Korean affiliate, Filmplace Korea Co., Ltd. (주식회사 필름플레이스코리아, business registration number 436-87-02208, 20 Hongsanjungang-ro, Suite 502, Wansan-gu, Jeonju, Jeonbuk State), which processes payout and tax information only for those purposes, and which sells paid seats bought with Korean cards and Korean payment methods and processes the related payment information. This policy explains what information Vemble collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. Vemble is built for real-world events, so we collect the minimum needed to keep the community safe and help you find activities you'll enjoy.
2. Information we collect
Account information: email address, phone number, and sign-in method, managed through Firebase Authentication.
Profile information: display name, date of birth, nationality, current city, languages, interests, and profile photo.
Event activity: events you create, join, or attend, messages in event group chats, and feedback you submit.
Host application video: if you apply to become a host, the one-minute video introduction you record in the app. This contains your image and voice, which is sensitive personal information, and we only collect it with your consent when you choose to apply.
Language comfort levels: your own rating of how comfortably you speak English and Korean. This is never shown on your profile or to other members.
Safety data: reports you file or that are filed about you, and moderation actions taken on your account.
Device and usage data: precise device location (only if you grant permission) for nearby discovery, optional background nearby alerts and the Vemble Hunt game, push notification tokens, and basic app usage needed to keep the Service reliable. Location used for nearby discovery and alerts is processed for that search and not saved as a location history. Vemble Hunt positions are deleted when the round ends. See our Location-Based Services Terms.
Location use record: for each Vemble Hunt round, a record of when your location was collected and which players it was shown to — with no coordinates — kept as the Location Information Act requires.
Advertising measurement data (website only): the Meta Pixel and its cookies record that a visit came from one of our ads, the pages you view, and whether you signed up, together with your IP address and browser details. The app does not collect this.
Payments: if you pay for a Vemble, PortOne and KG Inicis (for Korean cards and Korean payment methods) or Stripe (for cards issued outside Korea) process your payment. We receive the amount, status and a payment reference, never your full card number.
Payout and tax information (hosts who charge for a Vemble only): your bank name, account number and account holder; whether you are paid as an individual, a foreign resident or a business; your legal name; for individuals and foreign residents, your resident registration number (주민등록번호) or alien registration number (외국인등록번호); for businesses, the business registration number (사업자등록번호), the representative's name, a copy of the business registration certificate, and the tax invoices you issue to us. We collect registration numbers only because Korean tax law requires them to withhold and report tax on your payouts (Income Tax Act arts. 127 and 164; Personal Information Protection Act art. 24-2).
3. How we use it
We use your information to:
Create and secure your account, and verify you're a real person (email, phone, reCAPTCHA)
Show you relevant events and connect you with other attendees
Send event confirmations, reminders, and safety notifications
Review reports and enforce our Community Guidelines
Review host applications. Your application video is used only to decide whether to approve you as a host — never for advertising, never for training machine-learning models, and never shown to other members
Collect payments for paid Vembles, pay hosts what they are owed, and — where Korean tax law requires — withhold income tax from host payouts and report those payments to the National Tax Service. Registration numbers are used for nothing else
Measure which of our ads bring new members to Vemble. We only tell Meta about page views and signups on our website; we never share your profile, the Vembles you join, or your messages for this
Run the Vemble Hunt game: show your position to the other players in a round, as the game describes, and keep the record the Location Information Act requires
Improve and maintain the Service
4. Who we share it with
We don't sell your personal information. We share data with the service providers that run Vemble's infrastructure, strictly to operate the Service:
Firebase (Google): authentication, including email and phone verification.
Didit: optional government-ID, selfie, liveness, biometric and identity verification processing when you choose to become an ID-verified member.
Supabase: application database and storage.
Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise: bot and spam prevention during signup.
Vercel: website hosting.
Naver: maps, venue search, geocoding, and map display.
OpenAI: translation of event and chat text between supported languages.
Resend: delivery of verification and service emails.
Sentry: crash reports and performance diagnostics used to identify technical problems and improve app reliability.
Stripe: payment processing for paid Vembles paid with cards issued outside Korea, and refunds.
PortOne (Korea Portone Co., Ltd.) and KG Inicis: payment processing for paid Vembles paid with Korean cards and Korean payment methods, and refunds.
The National Tax Service and other Korean tax authorities: payout amounts, tax withheld, and the payee's name and registration number, only as tax law requires. Our tax accountant may process the same information, under a duty of confidentiality, to prepare those filings.
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager: website and app analytics used to understand page, screen, and feature usage. Both run by default and can be turned off — see section 6. Google Analytics data is not used for advertising or cross-app tracking.
Meta Platforms, Inc. (Facebook and Instagram): advertising measurement on our website only. The Meta Pixel (loaded through Google Tag Manager) and a server-side copy of the same events tell Meta about page views and signups that came from our ads. This runs by default and stops when you turn analytics off on the website (section 6). Meta is in the United States, so this information is transferred overseas, over the internet, while you use the website, and Meta keeps it under its own data policy. The app shares nothing with Meta.
Other players in a Vemble Hunt round: your live position to the players on your side, and to the hunters at each ping and while you are outside the play zone — only during a round you chose to join. See our Location-Based Services Terms.
Your date of birth, phone number, email address, identity document and biometric verification material are never shown publicly to other users. Other members may see only whether Didit approved your optional identity verification.
5. Data retention
We keep your information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we remove or anonymize personal profile data and remove uploaded profile, event, and chat media associated with your account. Messages and event history may be retained in anonymized form for other participants and for safety, legal, or fraud-prevention purposes.
Host application videos are held to a stricter schedule. We delete the recording within 90 days of your application being decided, whether it was approved or not — approval does not mean we keep it. You can also delete it yourself at any time from the app, including while your application is still being reviewed, and doing so withdraws the application. Deleting your account deletes any application video immediately, regardless of the 90-day schedule. Only our review team can view these videos; they are stored privately and are never publicly accessible.
Payout and tax records — payout amounts, tax withheld, bank details, tax invoices, registration numbers and business certificates — are kept for five years after the end of the tax year they relate to, because Korean tax law requires those records to be kept (Framework Act on National Taxes art. 85-3). This applies even if you delete your account. They are deleted once that period ends.
Location. Vemble Hunt positions are deleted when the round ends. The record of when your location was collected and to whom it was shown (no coordinates) is kept for six months, as the Location Information Act requires, and then deleted — or sooner, if you withdraw your agreement to the Location-Based Services Terms.
After you delete your account, reviews you wrote stay visible to other members, shown as "Deleted user". So that deleting an account cannot be used to get around a suspension or ban, or to claim one-time welcome tickets again, we keep a one-way coded form of your phone number (a keyed hash, not the number itself) together with any suspension, ban or demerit points on the account and whether its one-time tickets were used. If a new account is later verified with the same number, that standing carries over to it. We keep this record for one year after deletion, or three years if the account was banned, and then delete it. The reason you give for leaving is kept without linking it to you.
6. Your rights
You can access, correct, or delete your profile information from within the app, or by contacting us directly. You can withdraw consent for your host application video and have it deleted at any time, without affecting the rest of your account. You can also disable location and notification permissions at any time from your device settings, and revoke camera and microphone access — Vemble only asks for those when you choose to record a host introduction. For your rights over location information — including seeing when your location was shown to others, and having that record deleted — see our Location-Based Services Terms.
Analytics is optional and on by default in both places. On this website you can turn it off below — that choice is stored in your browser, so it applies to this browser on this device, and it also stops the Meta Pixel. In the app you can turn it off at any time under Settings → Privacy & Safety → Analytics.
7. Children's privacy
Vemble is for people 18 and older only. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and accounts found to belong to a minor are removed on discovery. See our Child Safety Standards for details on how we enforce this and how to report a concern.
8. Security
We use industry-standard practices — including database row-level security and encrypted connections — to protect your information. No system is perfectly secure, so we encourage you to use a strong, unique password and report anything suspicious. Resident and alien registration numbers are stored encrypted, cannot be read back through the app — not even by you — and can be viewed by our staff only for tax filing, with every view recorded. Business certificates and tax invoices are stored privately and visible only to you and our staff.
9. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy as Vemble grows. We'll notify you of material changes before they take effect.
10. Contact
Questions about this policy or your data? Email hello@vemble.co.