Privacy Policy

Last updated 3 September 2026

Offline is a technology platform that connects the members of a networking community in Abu Dhabi — it is not an organiser, host, venue, merchant or payment provider (see our Terms). This policy explains how Offline collects, uses and protects your information when you apply to, or use, our community via offline.ae and the Offline members app. The controller of your personal data is Offline Technologies FZ-LLC (licence no. [●]), a company incorporated in the Masdar City Free Zone, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, with its registered office at [●] ("Offline"). Offline handles your personal data in line with the UAE Personal Data Protection Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021, "PDPL") and its executive regulations once in force. If you are located in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we also handle your personal data in line with the EU / UK General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") — see "Your rights" below. Our members are mainly UAE nationals and residents living in the UAE; the PDPL is the law that governs how we handle your data, and the GDPR wording below applies only to the few members who are located in the EEA or the UK. This policy is a notice of how we use your information; where we need your consent for a specific use we ask for it separately, and you can withdraw it at any time (see "The legal bases we rely on").

Information we collect

• Your details: name, email address and LinkedIn profile, and (optionally) your role or company, industry, seniority and company stage. Also: the interests you select and any venture you add, your "what are you hoping to find" answer, and (for business accounts) the name and role of the person operating the account.
• Your profile photo or chosen avatar.
• Activity: the events, plans and branded sessions you join, and your check-ins at gatherings.
• Padel matching and ratings: the level, dates and time windows you pick, used to form games at your level. After a game you confirm took place, the other players may rate how you played (and you may rate them). We store each rating, show only the average — never who gave it — and it can only move your number within the level you chose, never out of it. Your level and rating show on your member card and profile by default; you can hide them from other members at any time in "What your card shares".
• Requests to providers: what you write when you ask a Linker for a quote, put an open (“Asks”) request to the Offline desk or to the room, and the private one-to-one conversations that follow, or request a pitching session with an investor. When you put an Ask to the Offline desk, Offline staff read it and may pass its content (not your contact details until you accept a quote) to a listed provider we think can help.
• Business accounts: for venue and firm accounts, the listing details you provide (brand, headline, services, website and business contact details) and a copy of your trade licence with its expiry date, kept to verify the licensing warranty you give. A trade licence shows the names of the licensee's owners or managers; we use those details only for that verification.
• Your application: what you tell us when you request membership — or apply to partner with Offline — on the website, including business details such as a brand name and what you’d host.
• Your connections: the members you connect with in the app, the connection requests you send and receive, and any private notes you keep on a connection (visible only to you).
• How you use the app: the screens you open, the gatherings you RSVP to or leave, the reports you make, and, when you connect by scanning another member's card, the place and time of that connection shown in your wallet. We use this, together with your profile and interests, to suggest members you may want to meet ("Your orbit") and to order waitlists. These suggestions are automated but have no legal or similarly significant effect on you.
• Your card & contact details: what you choose to put on and share via your Offline card — which may include your phone number, an email, your LinkedIn and your Telegram username — and any personalization (brand colour, logo, photo or tagline) you add.
• Content you share in the app: the Perks you post, the Plans you create or join, replies you make, and any feedback or suggestions you send the organizers.
• Photos at gatherings: Offline, a venue or a host may take photos or short videos at gatherings. We use an image in which you are identifiable for marketing only with your consent; you can tell the photographer or email us at any time that you do not want to appear.
• Notifications: if you turn on push notifications, a device notification token used only to deliver them.
• Technical data: your device type, browser, IP address, sign-in times and error logs, collected automatically by our hosting and authentication providers to keep the service running and secure.
• Essential cookies and local storage needed to keep the website and app working, including keeping you signed in — see our Cookie Policy.

Payments: when paid Premium membership is available, fees are taken by card by our payment provider, Stripe, under its own privacy policy. Stripe tells us whether a payment succeeded and keeps the card details itself; we never see or store your full card details. Fees charged to business accounts are invoiced and settled outside the app.

How we use your information

• To review membership requests and keep the room curated.
• To run events, manage RSVPs and door check-in, and contact you about gatherings.
• To let you connect with other members, and to show you relevant members and shared context — such as who you already know.
• To send you the app notifications you've turned on, such as event reminders and connection requests.
• To review the feedback and suggestions you send us and improve Offline.
• To operate, secure and improve the website and app. To investigate reports and breaches of the Terms, and to protect members, venues, hosts and Offline. To comply with law, including tax and record-keeping obligations. To send you service emails about your membership and, if you opt in, news about gatherings; you can opt out of the latter in any email.
• To produce anonymized, aggregated statistics about the membership as a whole.

Camera access (app)

The Offline app may ask permission to use your device's camera, solely to scan check-in QR codes at events. Images are used only to read the code at that moment — we don't store them or use the camera for anything else, and you can decline or revoke the permission in your device settings.

Push notifications (app)

The app can send push notifications — for example event reminders, connection requests and membership updates. If you turn them on, your device provides a notification token that we use only to deliver those messages. Notifications are optional: you can turn them off in the app or in your device settings at any time.

Your profile, directory and connections (app)

As an approved member, your profile — such as your name, photo, role and LinkedIn — is visible to other approved members inside the app, so members can find and connect with one another. The app records the connections you make and the requests you send and receive, and uses them to show shared context, such as members you may already know. Feedback and suggestions you send through the app go only to the Offline organizers and are not shown to other members. By default other approved members see your name, role, photo and LinkedIn profile; you can hide your LinkedIn at any time under Profile → Edit → Settings, and you can hide your upcoming gatherings from your profile there too. Your phone, email and Telegram are shown only if you switch them on in "What your card shares". If you are chosen as Member of the Month, your name, photo and venture are highlighted to the whole membership; tell us if you would rather not be featured.

Branded sessions & partner hosts (app)

Some sessions are hosted by partner businesses under their own brand, clearly labelled in the app. If you join one, that host can see the session’s confirmed list — your name and photo as they appear in the app — and, at the door, whether you checked in. Booking and payment happen on the host’s own website or system, under the host’s own terms and privacy policy: we don’t send the host your contact details, and we never handle the payment. If you apply to host sessions under your brand, we collect and keep the business details you give us to review and operate the partnership.

Anonymized, aggregated insights

We want to be open about this. Offline uses and shares aggregated, anonymized insights about our community — for example, the overall mix of industries, seniority levels and company stages, and how members engage with the platform. As part of our business, we may provide or sell these insights to partners and other third parties.

These insights are only ever group-level statistics. They do not contain, and cannot reasonably be used to identify, any individual member, and we exclude any group small enough that someone could be singled out. We never sell or share your personal information — such as your name, email address, LinkedIn or other contact details — and you are never identified to any partner.

Because the insights we share are fully anonymized, they are no longer "personal data" under the PDPL or GDPR. Compiling them involves a short statistical processing of members' data before it is anonymized; under the PDPL that processing falls within the exception for statistical purposes and, where it applies, the GDPR legitimate-interest basis. If you would prefer your information not to contribute even to anonymized insights, email us and we will exclude you.

When we share information

We share personal information only with the service providers that help us run Offline (our database and authentication provider, hosting and content-delivery provider, email and push-notification providers, and our payment provider), each under a contract that limits them to processing on our instructions and keeping the data secure; with a partner host, limited to what’s described in “Branded sessions & partner hosts” above; with a Linker or investor you approach — the content of your request and, once you accept a quote, the contact details needed for the engagement; with the organiser of a member-run gathering you apply to (such as the Pairing), who sees your profile and application; where we’re required to by law or to protect safety; and — in anonymized, aggregated form only — as described above. We do not sell your personal data. If Offline is sold or merges, your data may pass to the buyer under this policy; we will tell you first.

International transfers

Some of our service providers store or process data outside the United Arab Emirates: our database and authentication provider stores your data in Singapore, and our hosting, content-delivery, email and push-notification providers process data in the European Union and the United States. Where they do, we transfer your data only to a country the UAE Data Office treats as providing adequate protection or under a contract that gives your data equivalent protection, as the PDPL requires, and you can ask us for a copy of those safeguards.

The legal bases we rely on

Under the PDPL (and the GDPR where it applies), we process your personal data on the following bases: to perform our agreement with you as a member — running the community, events, connections and the app; your consent, which we ask for separately for optional features (push notifications, the contact details you choose to share on your card, marketing emails, and marketing use of photos) and which you can withdraw at any time in the app or by email, without affecting processing already carried out; the PDPL exceptions for processing needed to comply with law, to establish or defend legal claims, to protect the public interest or a person's safety, and for statistical purposes (anonymized insights); and, for members in the EEA or UK only, our legitimate interests in curating the room, keeping Offline secure and improving it, where those interests are not overridden by your rights.

Your rights

Wherever you are, the PDPL gives you the right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you and information about how we use it; to have it corrected or completed; to have it erased or its use restricted where the law allows; to receive the data you gave us in a portable format; to object to processing for direct marketing and to automated processing that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you; and, where a use is based on consent, to withdraw that consent at any time. We respond within 30 days, or tell you if we need longer. You can complain to the UAE Data Office. If you are in the EEA or the UK you have the equivalent rights under the GDPR, including the right to object to processing based on our legitimate interests and to complain to your local supervisory authority. The anonymized, aggregated insights we share are not personal data and so fall outside these rights. To exercise any right, email info@offline.ae.

Your choices

You can review and update your profile at any time in the app, and choose exactly which contact details your card shares. You can permanently delete your account and personal data yourself, at any time, in the app under Profile → Edit → Account → "Delete my account": this removes your profile, your Offline card (including from other members' wallets), your connections and your content. To ask a question about your data, request a copy, or ask us to correct or delete it another way, email us at info@offline.ae and we'll respond.

Keeping your information

We keep your information for as long as you're a member or applicant and for as long as we need it for the purposes above, after which we delete or anonymize it. In practice: when you delete your account we remove your profile, card, connections and content immediately, and any copy held in our providers' routine backups expires within 30 days; if your application is declined we keep your request only so that we can recognise a repeat application, and delete it on request; requests to Linkers that were not accepted, Asks and unconfirmed event proposals are deleted automatically 30 to 45 days after they were posted, while accepted Linker engagements are kept as the fee record; we keep invoices and payment records for 5 years as UAE tax law requires; we keep records of reports and breaches of the Terms for as long as we need them to act on them and to establish or defend a claim; and we keep a minimal record of your acceptance of the Terms (date, time, version) for as long as a claim could be brought.

Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep yours safe and to limit who can access it. If a breach of security affects your personal data in a way likely to harm you, we tell the UAE Data Office and, where the law requires, you, without undue delay.

Children

Offline is for adults. It is not intended for anyone under 18, and we don't knowingly collect their information.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We'll post the current version here with a new "last updated" date. If a change materially affects how we use your data we tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

For anything about your privacy, email info@offline.ae. The controller is Offline Technologies FZ-LLC (licence no. [●]), a company incorporated in the Masdar City Free Zone, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, with its registered office at [●].