Privacy notice

Closed beta. Last updated 21 October 2026.

Flamingo is an anonymous chat app for KIIT students, built and run by Aranya Dutta as a student project. This notice explains what Flamingo stores about you, why, and what you can do about it. It will be updated as the beta changes, and the date above will change with it.

What other students see, and what we can see

Other students see your pseudonym (a name like "Swift Fox"). They never see your email address or your Google account.

Two less obvious things: your gender is never displayed, but if someone uses gender-filtered matching and is matched with you, they can tell which gender you set. And the app on other students' devices receives your account ID (a random code, not linked to your name or email) with your messages and matches; it isn't shown on screen, but it is visible to someone who inspects their browser's network traffic.

The people running Flamingo can see more than other students can. Everything that is stored is listed below.

What we store

• Your account: a random account ID, your pseudonym, the gender you chose (if any) and when you set it, when the account was created, and roughly when you were last active.
• Your messages: the text of every message you send, the room it was sent in, when it was sent, and your account ID and pseudonym as the sender.
• Rooms: group rooms you create or join, their invite codes, and which random chats were kept.
• Safety records: reports you file or that are filed about you (including the reason written in the report), people you block, bans, requests to change your gender, and a log of moderator actions.
• Usage events: a log of what happens in the app (for example a match being made or a message being sent), used to understand how Flamingo is used. These events currently include the text of messages.
• Your IP address: used only to limit how many guest accounts can be created from one place. It is held in memory for at most one hour and is not written to our database or our logs.
• On your device: your sign-in token, in your browser's local storage. Flamingo does not use cookies.

Google user data

Signing in with Google is optional. If you do, Flamingo asks Google only for your email address and Google's identifier for your account (the "openid" and "email" permissions). We do not request or receive your name, profile photo, contacts or anything else from your Google account.

• How we use it: to check that your email address is a verified KIIT address (kiit.ac.in), to let you sign back in to the same account, and to allow verified-student features such as gender-filtered matching.
• How we store it: your email address and Google account identifier are stored with your Flamingo account in our database.
• Who we share it with: no one. It is never shown to other students, never sold, and never used for advertising. The hosting companies listed below hold it only as part of running our servers.

How long we keep it

During the beta, messages are kept on our servers, including random chats that disappear from your screen when they end. We keep them so that reports can be reviewed. We plan to delete un-kept chats automatically after a set time before Flamingo opens to all KIIT students, and this notice will say when that starts.

Guest accounts that have not been used for 60 days are deleted automatically. You can ask us to delete your account and your messages at any time (see below).

Who else is involved

Flamingo runs on services from other companies, which handle your data only to provide their service to us. Each has its own privacy policy.

• Google Cloud hosts our servers and database, in Mumbai, India.
• Google provides "Sign in with Google".
• Cloudflare carries all traffic between your browser and our servers.
• Vercel serves the Flamingo web app.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your data or show you ads.
• We do not show other students your email address or Google account.

Your choices

• Use Flamingo as a guest, without giving us an email address.
• Ask us to delete your account and your messages, or to tell you what we hold about you, by writing to [email protected]. There is no delete button in the app yet, so this is done by hand.

Contact

Questions about this notice or your data: [email protected].