Privacy policy

Last updated 21 October 2026

This policy explains what personal data Out There Together collects, why, and what you can do about it. It covers both this website and the Out There mobile app.

1. Who we are

Out There Together is a cruise discovery and social planning service for LGBTQ+ travellers, operated by Blockbeam Ltd of 6 Moulton Close, Knutsford, WA16 8BJ, United Kingdom.

Blockbeam Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC056342. You can find us at blockbeam.co.uk.

You can reach us about anything in this policy at hello@outtheretogether.com.

2. What we collect

When you use this website

The website does not ask you to create an account. Our analytics provider, Metricool, records a page view when you load a page. That record contains the address of the page, the size of your browser window, your IP address and your browser user agent. It does not store anything on your device and does not follow you to other websites.

If you choose to accept marketing cookies, we also use Meta Pixel. It sends Meta a PageView event and information about your visit, such as the page address, browser and device information, IP address and referrer. Meta may use cookies and similar identifiers to associate this with information it already holds about you. We use the Pixel to measure the performance of our Facebook and Instagram advertising and to improve who sees those ads. We do not send Meta your waitlist email address through the Pixel.

Marketing cookies are optional and the legal basis is your consent. You can reject them without affecting your use of the site, or change your mind at any time through Cookie settings. Meta explains its own processing in its Privacy Policy.

If you join the waitlist, we store the email address you enter, the date you gave it and the wording you agreed to. We also keep technical records of passing it to our email provider. We use it only to email you about Out There, starting with when the app opens. We pass your address to our email provider, Sender, which sends those emails for us, together with your first name if you gave one and a reference code that identifies your sign-up. We do not pass it to anyone else and we do not use it to advertise to you elsewhere. Consent is the lawful basis, and you can withdraw it at any time by emailing hello@outtheretogether.com, which removes your address from the list.

When you use the app

When you browse the app as a guest

You can look through sailings in the app without creating an account. As a guest you see sailings, ships, cruise lines, dates, itineraries and how many members have marked each sailing. You never see who they are: names, handles, photos and profiles stay hidden, and so do chats, events and Meet. We do not create an account or a profile for you, and app usage analytics never runs for a guest. Each time the app fetches sailings for you, our hosting provider logs the request in the ordinary way, including your IP address and basic device and app details, for security and to keep the service running. The app keeps a copy of the sailing list on your phone for up to 15 minutes, along with a note that you are browsing as a guest. Creating an account, signing in or deleting the app clears both.

3. Why we use it, and our legal basis

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered whether that interest is overridden by your rights, and you can object at any time using the contact details below.

4. Identity and intent data

Information about your gender, your sexual orientation, and what you are looking for on a sailing is special category data under UK data protection law. We treat it differently from everything else.

• It is entirely optional. The app works without it.
• We only store it if you give explicit consent, and we record the version of the wording you agreed to and when you agreed to it.
• It is held separately from your public profile, in a restricted part of our database that ordinary application access cannot read.
• It is never shown to other members unless you have chosen to make it visible.
• You can withdraw consent at any time. When you do, we delete the stored preferences.

Relationship links

You can ask another member to show on both of your profiles that you are in a relationship with each other. A relationship link can reveal something about your sexual orientation, for example if you link to someone of the same sex. That makes it special category data, like the information above, so please read this before you send or accept a request.

• A link only exists if both of you agree. Either of you can remove it at any time, and removing it removes it from both profiles.
• Unlike your identity and intent preferences, a link is not private. It shows the other person's display name and profile picture on your profile, and yours on theirs, to any member who can open either profile. There is no setting to hide it.
• There is no limit on how many links a member can have.
• Blocking a member removes any link between you. Deleting your account removes all your links.
• If you decline a request, or a link you asked for is declined or removed by the other person, the person who asked cannot ask again for 30 days. We keep a record of each request to enforce this (section 8).

Travelling-with links work in a similar way for one sailing at a time, and only between members of the app. Both of you must agree. A travelling-with link shows on that sailing's list of people to the members who have joined the sailing, and on the sailing card on your profile if you have chosen to show your sailings. It is removed if either of you leaves the sailing, blocks the other, or deletes your account.

5. Photo checks and identity verification

Known child abuse images (PhotoDNA)

Every photo you upload to a gallery or a chat goes first to a private holding area, and is published only if it passes a check against a database of known child sexual abuse images. The check uses PhotoDNA, which is provided by Microsoft. A private scanner that we run, hosted by Hetzner in Germany, turns the photo into a hash, which is a short string of numbers that works like a fingerprint and cannot be turned back into the picture. The scanner works on the photo in memory and sends only the hashes to Microsoft's PhotoDNA service in the UK. Microsoft does not receive the photo.

If a photo matches, it is not published. It stays in a restricted store, which ordinary members and ordinary app access cannot reach, so that it can be reviewed and so that the law can be followed. There is currently no fixed end date for this, which we are reviewing. We do not tell you the detail of why an upload failed.

Automatic nudity check (Sightengine)

Photos you upload are also checked automatically for nudity by Sightengine, a service of Kozelo SAS in France. We do this to help keep the service safe for members. We send Sightengine the photo itself and nothing else about you: no name, email address or member number. Sightengine sends back a result, and we record it. The result affects what happens to your photo in these ways:

• If you add a gallery photo as public and the check finds an image we treat as explicit, we move it to your private gallery instead, and tell you. If your private gallery is full, we decline the photo.
• If a profile picture, meetup photo or group picture is found to be explicit, we decline it and ask you to choose another.
• Photos sent in chats are checked and the result is recorded, but they are not blocked by the check. Chats have their own rule: you must have completed identity verification to send or open a photo.
• If the check cannot run, we keep a gallery photo private, and decline or ask you to retry for other photos.

The check can be wrong, and a photo may be moved or declined by mistake.

Sightengine deletes images after processing by default, and we do not use any of its features that keep images. Photos may be processed in any of Sightengine's data centres, including outside the UK and the European Economic Area. Where that happens, the transfer is protected by the EU standard contractual clauses and the UK addendum in our data processing agreement with Sightengine.

You can report a single gallery photo or chat image from the full-screen view of the photo (in the newest versions of the app). A reported image file is kept as evidence and cannot be deleted, by you or by account deletion, while the report exists. Who made a report stays confidential, as for any other report.

Only full administrators on our staff can view a member's image. They can do so only through our private admin website, and only to deal with a report or a safety review. The image stays hidden until the reviewer clicks Reveal. Every reveal is logged: who, which image, when and why. The log cannot be edited or deleted by staff.

If you think we have made a wrong decision about one of your photos, email hello@outtheretogether.com and a person will review it.

Confirming the photo rules

The first time you add a photo to your private gallery, and the first time you send a photo in a chat, the app asks you to confirm the photo rules: that you are 18 or over, that everyone shown is an adult who agreed to be pictured, that you own the photo or have permission to share it, and that sharing someone else's intimate images without their consent is not allowed and will lead to action on your account. We record your confirmation with the date and the version of the wording, and ask again only if the wording changes. Without the confirmation, the photo cannot be added to your private gallery or sent in a chat.

Identity verification (Didit)

Verification is optional, and it is needed to send, view or share photos. It is run by Didit, which is an identity verification provider. Inside Didit's own screens you show a photo of an identity document and a photo of your face. Didit holds that information. We give Didit a reference number for your account so that the result comes back to the right person, and we receive only whether you passed, failed or are waiting, and when. We never receive or keep your document, your face image, the name on the document or your date of birth.

Didit decides how long it keeps what you show it, under its own terms and privacy notice. If you withdraw your verification consent in the app, we delete our result and your badge. If you delete your account, we delete our result. In neither case do we currently ask Didit to delete its own copy. If you want that, email hello@outtheretogether.com and we will request it.

6. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data, and we never will.

We share it only with service providers who process it on our instructions:

• Supabase, which hosts our database, authentication and file storage.
• Sender, which sends our emails: sign-in and account emails, emails to people on the waitlist, and marketing email to members who have not turned it off.
• Sightengine, a service of Kozelo SAS in France, which checks uploaded photos automatically for nudity. It receives the photo and nothing else about you.
• Didit, which runs the optional identity verification.
• Microsoft, which provides the PhotoDNA service. It receives hashes of uploaded photos, never the photos themselves.
• Hetzner, which hosts our private PhotoDNA scanner.
• Metricool, which provides website analytics.
• PostHog, which provides in-app product analytics, only for members who have opted in.
• GitHub, which hosts this website.

Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, which runs Facebook and Instagram, receives data only if you agree: on the website when you accept marketing cookies, and in the app when you say yes to the question on first open. Meta uses what it receives for its own purposes as well as ours, so it is not only acting on our instructions. It is responsible for its own use under Meta's privacy policy.

We may also disclose personal data where we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to protect the safety of our members.

Other members see only what your settings allow: your display name, your photo if you have added one, your home port if you have added one, your status on a sailing you have both joined, and anything you post in a chat you are both part of. They can also see your @handle, and any relationship links you have agreed to, whatever your settings (see section 4). Travelling-with links are described in section 4.

7. What happens when you click through to book

Out There is an introducer, not a travel agent. We never take payments, hold deposits or confirm bookings.

When you tap through to a booking partner, we record that the click happened, along with the sailing, the partner and a reference code that lets the partner tell us the referral came from you. We do this so that we are paid the referral fee we are owed.

Once you arrive on the partner's website you are dealing with them, under their privacy policy, not ours. We have no visibility of what you book or what you pay.

The same applies to tours and activities. Where we show things to do at a port of call, those come from Viator, a Tripadvisor company, and tapping one takes you to Viator's website to book. The link identifies Out There rather than you, so no personal information about you is sent to Viator when you tap it. From that point Viator's own privacy policy applies and they may set their own cookies.

We earn a commission on bookings made this way. Our affiliate disclosure explains which links earn us money, and why it does not change what you pay or the order things are shown in.

8. How long we keep it

9. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• have your data deleted, in some circumstances;
• restrict or object to how we use it;
• receive your data in a portable format;
• withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

Ask us at hello@outtheretogether.com and we will respond within one month. There is no charge.

10. Deleting your account

You can delete your Out There account and the personal data attached to it at any time. There are two ways:

• In the app. Go to You, then Settings, then Delete account.
• On the web. Use the account deletion request page, which does not require you to have the app installed.

When you delete your account we remove your profile, your profile picture, your gallery photos and the photos you sent in chats (except an image that has been reported, which is kept as evidence until its report is deleted after 12 months), your sailing and crew memberships, your event replies, your verification result, your identity and intent preferences, and your address from our email provider Sender, within 30 days. Your one-to-one chats are deleted in full at the same time, since with your account gone there is no one left who needs to read them.

We also remove your relationship links, your travelling-with links and the records of your link requests. Your @handle stops showing on your profile. We keep only a coded fingerprint of it, which holds no readable handle, no account number and no date, so that nobody else can take it and pass as you. Our record of handle changes, which does hold the readable handle and your internal account number, is deleted 2 years after each change (longer only while a safety report about you is open or under review). We also remove any mention invitations and mention records that involve you.

Some records are kept longer, and we explain why in section 8. In short: messages you sent in a sailing or crew chat stay visible to the people you were talking to, though they are no longer linked to your profile, until they reach the 12-month cut-off in section 8 like any other message; records of consent and of clicks through to booking partners are kept with no automatic deletion date yet, and safety reports for 12 months. Three things are not cleared straight away. A record of each photo upload, including the text of the message sent with a chat photo, is kept. A record that you confirmed the photo rules, with its date and version, is kept for 12 months after you delete your account, then deleted automatically. And if you verified your identity, Didit keeps its own copy under its own rules (section 5).

11. Where your data is held

Our database and files are hosted by Supabase. Our website is hosted by GitHub Pages. Sightengine, which checks photos for nudity, may process them in any of its data centres, including outside the UK and the European Economic Area, under the safeguards described in section 5. Our PhotoDNA scanner is hosted by Hetzner in Germany, and Microsoft's PhotoDNA service, which receives hashes only, is in the UK. Our analytics provider, Metricool, is based in Spain. Our app analytics provider, PostHog, holds app usage analytics in the EU. When you consent to marketing cookies on the website, or agree to the Meta question in the app, Meta may process Pixel data and app event data in the UK, the European Economic Area, the United States and elsewhere.

Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, together with the adequacy decisions that apply to the country concerned.

12. Security

Access to your data is controlled at the database level, so members can only read the records they are entitled to see. Passwords are hashed and never stored in a readable form. Identity and intent preferences are held in a separate restricted schema. Supplier credentials and tracked partner links are held on our servers and are never exposed to the app. Someone browsing the app without an account can read sailing details and member counts, and nothing about any person.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell you and the ICO without undue delay.

13. Age

Out There is for adults. You must be 18 or over to hold an account. We do not knowingly collect data about anyone under 18, and we will delete any account we find belongs to someone under that age. You can browse sailings as a guest without an age check, because a guest sees nothing about any member. Anything involving other people needs an account, and seeing who is on board needs your age verified.

14. Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

15. Contact and complaints

Email hello@outtheretogether.com.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, by calling 0303 123 1113, or by writing to Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. We would rather you came to us first so we can put it right.