Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Sakinah is a Muslim matrimonial platform built to help Muslims find marriage the right way — with sincerity, compatibility, and privacy at its core. We operate at mysakinah.co.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect when you use Sakinah, how we use it, and the rights you have over it. For any questions, contact us at privacy@mysakinah.co.

2. Information we collect

Account registration

When you create an account, we collect:

• Email address — used for authentication and platform communications.
• Password — stored in encrypted form by Supabase. We never see your plain-text password.

Profile information

When you complete your profile and onboarding, we collect:

• Basic details — first name, date of birth, gender, location.
• Background — ethnicity, nationality, languages spoken, education level, occupation.
• Religious practice — Islamic sect, prayer habits, hijab observance, Islamic lifestyle preferences.
• Relationship history — marital history, whether you have children, openness to relocation.
• Marriage intentions — marriage timeline, family involvement preferences, wali contact details.
• About you — a free-text bio and interests.
• Contact details — phone number and email address for sharing with mutual matches only.

Compatibility assessment

We collect your responses to a 30-question assessment covering six areas of married life: deen and Islamic lifestyle, family and marriage, communication and conflict, career and lifestyle, children and future planning, and personality and character. These responses are used to generate compatibility scores that help match you with suitable profiles.

Platform activity

• Introduction requests — messages you send and receive when expressing interest in another member.
• Matches — records of mutual accepted connections.

Usage data

We use PostHog (EU-hosted, cookieless) to collect anonymised usage data such as page visits and feature interactions. This helps us understand how the platform is used and improve the experience. No personally identifiable information is sent to PostHog beyond what you have provided to Sakinah directly.

3. Special category data

Some of the information we collect — specifically your religious beliefs and practices, and your ethnicity — is classified as special category data under UK GDPR. This type of data receives additional protection under data protection law.

We collect this information only because it is central to the purpose of a matrimonial platform, where religious compatibility and cultural background are genuinely relevant to a person's marriage intentions. By creating a profile on Sakinah, you explicitly consent to us processing this information for the purpose of helping you find a compatible spouse.

You can withdraw this consent at any time by requesting account deletion at privacy@mysakinah.co.

4. How we use your information

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and maintain your account.
• Display your profile to other verified members of the opposite gender.
• Generate compatibility scores and reports based on your assessment answers.
• Facilitate introduction requests and mutual matches.
• Share your contact details (phone, email, wali info) only when a mutual match exists and both parties have accepted.
• Send transactional emails — account verification, password resets, introduction notifications, and match alerts.
• Review profiles before they go live to maintain the quality and safety of the platform.
• Enforce our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.

We will never sell your data, share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes, or use it in any way that conflicts with the trust you have placed in us.

5. Profile visibility

Your profile is only made visible to other verified members after it has been reviewed and approved by the Sakinah team. Profiles are shown to members of the opposite gender only.

Your contact details (phone number, email, and wali information) are never visible on your public profile. They are only revealed to another member once a mutual match has been confirmed — meaning both parties have accepted each other's introduction request.

You can pause your profile at any time from Settings. A paused profile is hidden from browse results but your data is retained so you can resume easily.

6. How we store and protect your data

Your data is stored securely using Supabase, with encryption at rest and in transit. Access is strictly limited to the Sakinah team. We apply row-level security policies to ensure members can only access data they are authorised to see.

Transactional emails are sent via Resend using our custom domain mysakinah.co. Email delivery data is processed by Resend under their own privacy policy.

The platform is hosted on Vercel with HTTPS enforced on all connections.

7. Data retention

We retain your data for as long as your account remains active. If you request account deletion, we will permanently delete your profile, assessment data, introduction history, and contact information within 30 days.

Some aggregate, anonymised data (such as usage statistics) may be retained after deletion as it cannot be linked back to you.

8. Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data. You can also request this directly from Settings → Request account deletion.
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent — withdraw consent to processing special category data at any time.

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@mysakinah.co. We will respond within 30 days. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk if you believe your rights have been infringed.

9. Cookies

Sakinah uses session cookies to keep you logged in. These are essential to the platform's operation and do not track you across other websites. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. Our analytics provider (PostHog) operates in cookieless mode and does not store persistent identifiers in your browser.

10. Third-party services

We use the following third-party services:

• Supabase — database, authentication, and backend infrastructure.
• Vercel — website hosting and deployment.
• Resend — transactional email delivery (verification, password resets, notifications).
• PostHog — privacy-friendly product analytics, EU-hosted, cookieless mode.

We only share data with these providers to the extent necessary to operate the platform. Each has their own privacy policies and security standards.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify members by email. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page will always reflect the most recent version.

12. Contact

For any privacy-related questions or to exercise your rights, contact us at privacy@mysakinah.co.