Privacy Policy

Wistfare Cinema

Wistfare Cinema is run by Wistfare Ltd, a company registered in Rwanda with the Rwanda Development Board, whose registered office is at Cercle Sportif, Kiyovu, Nyarugenge, Kigali, Rwanda. In this policy "we" and "Wistfare" mean Wistfare Ltd, and "you" means the person using the app.

We are the data controller for the personal data described here. Write to us at info@wistfare.com about anything on this page.

Wistfare Ltd is a private company limited by shares registered with the Rwanda Development Board on 21 August 2024, Company Code / TIN 123138778, with its registered office at Cercle Sportif, Kiyovu, Nyarugenge, Kigali, Rwanda.

1. The short version

• You can browse and watch free episodes without an account. We do not ask who you are until you spend credits.
• We have no passwords. You sign in with Google or Apple, and we never see or store a password.
• Your email is never shown to other viewers or to creators.
• Your date of birth is never shown on your profile, never given to creators, and never used for advertising. It is used for one thing: deciding which age rating of content you may see.
• We run no analytics or crash-reporting service. There is no advertising identifier in this app, and we do not track you across other apps or sites.
• You can download everything we hold about you and delete your account from Settings → Account & data.

2. Using the app without an account (guest mode)

Browsing, searching, watching free episodes and reading comments all work without signing in. In guest mode:

• Your device generates a random guest id — 32 hexadecimal characters from a secure random source — and keeps it in the device's secure store (Keychain on iOS, EncryptedSharedPreferences on Android). It is not a fingerprint. It is not derived from your device, and it identifies nothing but this one install.
• We use it for one purpose: to remember where you stopped watching, so an episode resumes where you left it.
• Your settings in guest mode stay on your device and are never sent to us.
• If you later sign in, what you watched as a guest is carried into your account so you do not lose your place.

3. What we collect when you have an account

Your account

You sign in with Google or Apple. We receive and store your display name, handle, the email address from that provider, your profile photo if you set one, and an "about" line if you write one. Your account is identified by the provider pair, not the email — the same address at Google and at Apple is two different accounts.

Your email is stored so we can identify your account. It is never shown on your profile and never given to creators.

Your date of birth

We ask for it once, at the age check. From it we derive an age rating (13+, 16+ or 18+) and store that rating on your account. The date itself is write-only: it is never returned by any part of our system, never shown on a profile, never given to creators, never used for advertising, and it is deliberately left out of your data export. We delete it when your account is deleted.

What you watch

Two separate things, with two different lifetimes:

• Your position in an episode — how far through you are, and whether you finished it. This is a convenience that belongs to you, and you can clear it at any time (Settings → Account & data → Watch history → Clear).
• The fact that you viewed an episode — the episode and the time. Clearing your history does not remove these; only deleting your account does. We keep them because they are what pays creators and what tells a creator how their episode performed.

What you do

• Series you save, premiere reminders you set
• Episodes you like, comments you write (and hearts you give comments)
• Creators you follow
• Ratings you leave — stars, the tags you pick, and any note you write
• Share links you create, including the second you chose to start the clip at when you shared "start at 0:52 instead"
• Referrals — if someone opens the app from your link, we record one row linking them to your code, so the reward can be paid
• Reports you file, and any appeal
• Requests you send us ("tell us what to make") — the free text you typed
• Your genre preferences

Money

• Your credits ledger — every credit in and out, as an append-only record. We do not edit these rows; your balance is the sum of them.
• Episodes and series you unlocked, and how
• Top-up attempts — the amount, the currency, the operator's reference for the payment, and whether it succeeded or why it failed
• Your mobile money number, when you pay that way. It is stored in full so we can reconcile a payment with the operator, and it is only ever shown back to you masked.
• Your VIP subscription and its renewal attempts
• Your daily check-ins and rewarded-ad sessions, for the earning caps

Card details never reach our servers, and mobile money PINs never reach our servers. Card payments are handled on our web checkout by a payment processor; in-app purchases are handled by Apple and Google. We see that a payment happened and its reference, not the instrument.

Notifications

• A push token for your device, and whether it is iOS or Android
• The notification rows in your inbox
• Your notification preferences — eleven switches, of which "Series finished", "Likes on your comments" and "Offers and recommendations" are off unless you turn them on. "Offers and recommendations" is the marketing one, and it is off by default.
• Your quiet hours — 22:00 to 07:00 by default, in your own time zone. Quiet hours stop the push, not the inbox row.

Your devices

For each device you are signed in on we keep a session record: an optional device label, when it was created, and when it was last used. You can see these in the app and sign out of all of them at once.

What we deliberately do not collect

We want to be specific, because most apps do collect these:

• No analytics SDK and no crash-reporting SDK. There is none in the app.
• No advertising identifier, no cross-app or cross-site tracking, no advertising profile. We do not sell or share your data with data brokers.
• We do not store your IP address, browser or device user-agent string, device model, OS version or app version against your account.
• Your recent searches stay on your phone. There is no endpoint that would take them.
• The last mobile money number you used stays on your phone, so the field is pre-filled next time.

When you press play, your app tells us your connection type and whether Data Saver is on, so we can choose a video quality that will not cost you more in data than the episode cost in credits. That is used to answer the request.

4. Why we use it

We rely on your consent for notifications and for anything marked optional, on the performance of our contract with you for your account, purchases and playback, and on our legitimate interest in a safe, working, paid-for platform for safety and fraud handling.

5. Who else sees it

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with the services that make the app work:

Other viewers and creators see only your display name, handle, your photo, and anything you post publicly — comments and ratings. Creators cannot see who unlocked their episodes. Reports are anonymous: the creator is told what was wrong, never who told us.

We will also disclose data where the law requires it. Reports involving a child, real violence or someone in danger go to our safety team immediately, and to the authorities where the law requires it.

6. Where it is kept

The app's database and files run on a single server with its own database, reached only through our reverse proxy. Your profile photo and your data export file are stored on that server's disk.

That server is rented from Contabo GmbH and is located in Germany, in the European Union. Your data therefore leaves Rwanda to be stored there, under the safeguards in this policy and Contabo's own security commitments.

7. How long we keep it

• Your position in an episode — until you clear it, or until your account is deleted.
• The fact you viewed an episode — until your account is deleted.
• Your credits ledger — for the life of the account. We do not prune it: a platform that cannot say what it was paid is not one anybody should buy from.
• Payment records — for the life of the account, and afterwards where tax or accounting law requires us to keep them.
• Your date of birth — until your account is deleted, and it is cleared explicitly at that point.
• A data export file — the link stops working 7 days after the file is built.

8. Getting a copy of your data

Settings → Account & data → Download my data → Request.

We build the file within the hour. It is JSON, it contains only your rows, and we tell you it is ready in your notifications inbox. The link works for 7 days.

The file contains: your profile, your wallet balance and your own ledger entries, your watch history, your own comments, your ratings, your saved series, and the reports you filed. It does not contain your date of birth, other people's replies to your comments, or anyone else who reported the same episode — those are not your data to receive. Very large sections are capped at 5,000 rows and marked as truncated.

9. Deleting your account

Settings → Account & data → Delete my account.

We hold the account for 30 days first, in case you change your mind. Sign back in during that window and nothing is lost. During the hold nothing is taken away: you stay signed in and everything still works.

After 30 days:

• Every device is signed out first.
• Your profile is emptied — your name, handle, email, about, photo, age rating and genre preferences all go, and your date of birth is cleared.
• Your watch history, comments, saves, likes, ratings, follows and preferences are deleted.
• Your credits are forfeited. The app tells you how many you would lose before you confirm.
• Your record of purchases stays. We keep an anonymous record of what was paid, because a paid episode is permanent and because we must be able to answer an operator or a tax authority about a payment. It is no longer attached to your name.
• If you are a creator, your published series stay up under your studio name unless you delete them first — viewers have already paid for them.

Signing out of all devices and deleting an account both take effect immediately; we do not wait for a token to expire.

10. Your rights

Under Rwanda's Law No. 058/2021 relating to the protection of personal data and privacy, you may ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or hand it to someone else. Most of these you can do yourself in the app, immediately; for the rest, write to info@wistfare.com and we will answer.

You may also complain to Rwanda's National Cyber Security Authority, which supervises data protection.

11. Children

You must be at least 13 to have a Wistfare Cinema account. There is no under-13 version of this app: if the age check says you are under 13, we refuse the account rather than offer a smaller one.

Your age rating decides what you can see. You see your own tier and everything below it, never above. A viewer we have rated 13+ or 16+ cannot open an 18+ series at all.

If you have not given us a date of birth, an 18+ series shows you what it contains and asks you to declare that you are over 18 before it plays.

If you believe a child under 13 has an account, write to info@wistfare.com and we will remove it.

12. Security

• There are no passwords in this system, so none can leak.
• Your session's refresh token is stored only as a hash. A copy of our database yields nothing anyone could sign in with.
• On your phone, session tokens live in the device's secure store — Keychain on iOS, EncryptedSharedPreferences on Android — never in a plain file.
• Every request checks that your session is still live, which is why signing out of all devices works instantly.

13. Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date below and show the new version in the app. If a change materially affects you, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.

14. Contact

Wistfare Ltd — Cercle Sportif, Kiyovu, Nyarugenge, Kigali, Rwanda info@wistfare.com