Privacy Policy

At MovieVerse, your privacy is fundamental to how we build our platform. This policy explains what information we collect when you use the MovieVerse website, download the Android APK, or interact with any of our services — and how we protect it.

MovieVerse is a movie discovery platform that combines a web catalog, a mobile app with swipe-based discovery, mood-driven AI recommendations, and syncable watchlists. We believe in keeping things transparent: this document spells out every data point we touch and why.

2.1 Account Information

When you create a MovieVerse account, we collect your email address, a display name, and an encrypted password hash. We never store your plain-text password. You may optionally provide a profile picture, which is stored securely and only displayed publicly if you choose.

2.2 Usage & Mood Data

To power features like mood-based recommendations, we record the mood profiles you select (e.g., happy, sad, romantic, action), your swipe decisions on movie cards, and the movies you add to your watchlist. This data builds a taste profile that makes our recommendations better for you over time. None of this data is sold to advertisers.

2.3 Device & Technical Data

When you use MovieVerse — whether on the web or through the Android app — we may automatically collect non-personal technical data such as your device type, operating system version, browser type, screen resolution, IP address, and approximate location derived from your IP. This helps us debug issues, improve performance, and understand which features people use most.

2.4 Cookies & Local Storage

The MovieVerse website uses essential cookies and browser local storage to maintain your session, remember your preferences, and keep your watchlist synced. We do not use third-party tracking cookies, analytics trackers, or advertising pixels. If we ever add analytics in the future, we will update this policy and ask for your consent first.

2.5 TMDB Data

Movie metadata, posters, ratings, cast information, and trailers displayed on MovieVerse are synced from The Movie Database (TMDB). When you browse our catalog, no personally identifiable information is shared with TMDB. MovieVerse is an independent platform and is not affiliated with or endorsed by TMDB.

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Account Management — Authenticate your identity, sync your watchlists and taste profile across devices, and let you access your saved movies from anywhere.
• Mood & Taste Recommendations — Our lightweight machine-learning model uses your mood selections and swipe history to rank movies from the catalog that match your current vibe.
• Service Improvement — Aggregate usage patterns help us identify bugs, optimize loading times, and decide which features to build next.
• Security & Abuse Prevention — Technical data like IP addresses helps us detect and prevent fraudulent activity, scraping, and abuse of our API.
• Communication — We may email you about critical account updates, security notices, or major product changes. We do not send marketing emails, and you will never receive spam from MovieVerse.

All user data is stored on secure servers with encryption at rest and in transit (TLS 1.3+). Passwords are hashed using bcrypt with a unique per-user salt. API endpoints that handle personal data require authentication tokens and are protected by rate limiting.

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, all associated personal data — including your watchlist, taste profile, swipe history, and mood records — is permanently deleted from our servers within 30 days. Anonymized, aggregated usage metrics may be retained indefinitely for analytical purposes.

The MovieVerse backend is built on FastAPI with PostgreSQL for persistent storage. Database backups are encrypted and retained for 7 days for disaster recovery. Access to production databases is restricted to authorized maintainers over secure, audited connections.

We do not sell your data. We do not share your personal information with advertisers, data brokers, or analytics companies. Here is the complete list of third-party services that may touch your data:

• TMDB API — Only non-personal metadata requests are sent to TMDB to fetch movie posters, ratings, cast, and trailers. No user identifiers are transmitted.
• Hosting & Infrastructure — Our servers are hosted on cloud infrastructure providers (e.g., Hetzner, Railway, or similar). These providers have industry-standard security certifications.
• Legal Obligations — We may disclose information if required by law, subpoena, or court order. We will notify affected users unless legally prohibited from doing so.

Depending on where you live, you may have specific rights under data protection laws such as the GDPR (EU/UK), CCPA (California), or similar regulations. These rights include:

• Access — Request a copy of all personal data we hold about you.
• Correction — Update inaccurate or incomplete personal information tied to your account.
• Deletion — Request deletion of your account and all associated personal data.
• Portability — Receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Opt-Out — You can browse the MovieVerse catalog without an account. Creating an account is entirely optional.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@movieverse.jefin.xyz. We will respond within 30 days and may ask you to verify your identity before processing your request.

MovieVerse is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal data, please contact us immediately. Upon verification, we will delete the data from our systems.

The MovieVerse app and website display movie metadata, posters, and trailers that are sourced from TMDB. While we do not host explicit content, some movie posters or trailers may contain imagery intended for mature audiences. We display age ratings and content descriptors where available.

The MovieVerse Android app is distributed as an APK file directly from our GitHub Releases page. It is not currently available on the Google Play Store. When you install the APK, Android may request the following permissions:

• Internet Access — Required to fetch movie metadata from our backend API and TMDB.
• Storage (optional) — May be used to cache poster images for offline browsing. You can deny this permission and continue using the app.

The APK does not request access to your contacts, camera, microphone, location, SMS, or any other sensitive device features. You can verify this by inspecting the AndroidManifest in the source code, which is open-source and available on GitHub.

The MovieVerse backend, website, and Android app are fully open-source under the MIT license. You can inspect every line of code — including how we handle authentication, store passwords, process mood data, and make API calls — at our GitHub repository.

We believe that transparency is the best privacy policy. By keeping our code open, we allow anyone to verify that we handle data exactly as described in this document. If you find a discrepancy, please open an issue or email us.

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page and, for material changes, notify registered users via email. We encourage you to review this policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect your data.

Continued use of MovieVerse after a policy update constitutes your acceptance of the revised terms. If you disagree with any changes, you may delete your account at any time.

If you have questions, concerns, or feedback about this privacy policy or how MovieVerse handles your data, reach out to us:

We read every message and typically respond within 2–3 business days. For urgent security concerns, please include “SECURITY” in your subject line for priority handling.