Terms of Service

Sincera is operated by Rhodium Ventures, LLC, a Georgia (USA) limited liability company (“Sincera,” “we,” “us”). These terms cover sinceralove.com, the Sincera apps for iOS and Android, and everything we offer through them, including the dating side (one-to-one Introductions), the free couples check-up, the Journal, and The Wire. By creating an account, taking the couples check-up, or otherwise using Sincera, you agree to these terms, to our Privacy Policy, and to our Cookie Policy.

To become a Sincera member, you must:

• Be at least 21 years old. We check the date of birth you give us when you apply, against that floor; the identity check does not confirm it (see section 4). Sincera’s dating services are for adults 21 and over, full stop.
• Not be married. Sincera is for people who are free to date: never married, divorced, or widowed. When you apply, you affirm that you are not currently married, and we record that attestation with a timestamp. Making this attestation falsely is a serious breach of these terms and grounds for immediate removal.
• Be yourself. One application, one account, used only by you, with information that is true. You must also be legally able to enter into this agreement.
• Have no violent or sexual offense record. You have never been convicted of, or pleaded guilty or no contest to, a crime involving violence or a threat of violence, or any sexual offense, and you are not required to register as a sex offender anywhere. We do not check this (see section 5), so we rely on your word.
• Be in good standing. You have not been removed from Sincera before, unless we have told you in writing that you may return. You are not located in a country that is subject to a U.S. Government embargo or that the U.S. Government has designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and you are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

Each of these is a promise you make to us when you apply, and it continues for as long as you use Sincera. If any of them is untrue, or stops being true, you must stop using Sincera, and we may remove you without notice.

Everything you tell us in your application must be accurate, and you agree to keep it that way. Two things you declare are shown openly to other members by design: your marital history (never married, divorced, or widowed) and whether you have children. We built Sincera on transparency rather than penalty; members see each other’s declared history plainly, and honesty is the price of admission.

Beyond those two things, other members see your first name and age, the photos and any video you add, what you write or pick for your profile (a short bio, a longer about section, your answers to the two profile prompts, and your interests), a compatibility percentage we calculate for the two of you, and roughly how far away you are: a whole-mile distance worked out from the city you typed when you applied. If you tell us you’d like to meet someone, they can see that too. They see this on Sincera and in emails we send them. Unless you share them yourself, they never see your last name, your city itself, your address, or where you actually are, and neither the website nor the apps ever ask your device for your location.

A few of your assessment answers can also reach another member. Members can narrow their Introductions by how important faith is to the other person, so appearing in a filtered list reflects your answer. Once a connection is unlocked, the introduction email to each of you can point out where your answers about faith, children, or timeline differ, including the other person’s answer.

Membership opens once three things are complete: the application fee is paid, your identity is verified through Stripe Identity, and your assessment is submitted. No human decision stands between those three steps and your membership: the account normally opens on its own once the last of them lands. If yours does not, you can write to us at hello@sinceralove.com, and an administrator can open it by hand. Paying the fee on its own does not create membership, and we may decline an application or remove an account at any time, including for misrepresentation or for conduct other members report.

Every member verifies their identity through Stripe Identity, which compares a government-issued photo ID with a selfie you take during verification. That comparison (including the biometric processing it involves) happens on Stripe’s systems, under Stripe’s privacy policy and terms. Our servers receive the result of the check (whether it passed), not your legal name, your document, or the details on it. Stripe holds the images of your ID and your selfie, and the details it reads from your ID, for us; our Privacy Policy explains how. None of it is ever shown to other members.

Verification confirms that you are who your ID says you are. It does not confirm your age: our servers receive only whether the check passed, so the date of birth printed on your document is never compared with the one you gave us. The 21+ floor in section 2 rests on the date of birth you enter when you apply, which we check when you submit it and again when your application is written to your profile. Verification is also not a background check, and it doesn’t tell us (or you) anything about a person’s history or character.

We do not run criminal-background checks or screen members against offender registries. Identity verification reduces fakes and impersonation, but it cannot guarantee anyone’s intentions or past. You are responsible for your own interactions with other members, on and off Sincera, and you interact with them at your own risk.

A few habits we ask every member to keep:

• Get to know someone on a video date before meeting in person.
• Meet first dates in public places, and tell someone your plans.
• Never send money or share financial details with someone you haven’t met; no genuine match will ever ask.
• Report anything that feels wrong. We read every report.

Beyond the identity check in section 4, we don’t confirm that what members tell us is true, including their age, marital status, children, city, profile photos and video, or answers. We don’t supervise video dates, and we don’t arrange or supervise in-person meetings. If you decide to meet someone in person, that decision is yours, and you accept the risks that come with it.

To the extent the law allows, we aren’t liable for the conduct of any member, on a video date, in a conversation, or anywhere else, and you release Rhodium Ventures, LLC and its officers, employees, and agents from all claims, known or unknown, arising out of or related to your interactions with other members, online or in person. This release doesn’t reach anything the law doesn’t allow to be released, such as claims for our own gross negligence or willful misconduct. If you live in California, you also waive California Civil Code section 1542, which says: “A general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release and that, if known by him or her, would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party.” If you live in another state with a law like it, you waive that law too.

Applying to Sincera costs $3, paid once as part of your application, separately from the identity check itself. It covers the cost of the identity check, which confirms that your government ID is genuine and that the face on it is yours, and helps keep bots and fake profiles out. It does not confirm your age or your marital status: those are what you declare and attest to when you apply. It is not a subscription and it is non-refundable, including if your application isn’t accepted.

Introductions are one-to-one matches. When two members express mutual interest, unlocking the connection (which sets up your video date) costs $8. One member pays per match: whoever chooses to unlock it. The other member pays nothing.

On the website, the $8 moves in two steps. Unlocking places a $8 authorization on your card, which is a hold, not a charge; your bank may show it as pending. The money is only taken when one of you picks a time the other offered, which is the moment your video date is booked and is before the date itself happens. If the times are declined, or the offer expires before a time is picked, the hold is released and you are never charged. In the iOS and Android apps, the $8 is an in-app purchase charged by Apple or Google when you buy the unlock, and it becomes a credit on your account for one date. If you already have a credit on your account, unlocking uses that credit instead, on the website or in the apps, and no new hold or charge is placed.

An unlock is only ever spent on a date that actually happens. If your date doesn’t happen through no fault of yours (the other member declined, no date was booked within seven days of the unlock or of the most recent times offered, or the other member didn’t show up while you did), you don’t lose the $8: a card hold that was never captured is simply released, and an unlock that was already paid (an in-app purchase, a credit, or a card charge already taken) automatically carries over as a credit toward your next introduction, at no additional charge. The same is true if the introduction ends before your date because the other member deleted their account, or because either of you reported the other. If the member who missed your date asks to rebook instead, the new date costs you nothing more. Credits never expire, whether you bought one in the app or it carried over. A credit is not redeemable for cash, and it stays with your account: deleting your account forfeits any unused credits, and any unlock you paid for whose date hasn’t happened yet. If you no-show your own paid date, the unlock is spent.

All Sincera fees (the $3 application fee and the $8 connection unlock) are non-refundable once charged, except where the law requires a refund; when a paid date doesn’t happen through no fault of yours, the remedy is the carry-over credit described in section 7, not a refund. We may choose to refund a website charge as a one-time exception, for example one made in error; that is our decision alone, and it doesn’t oblige us to make another exception, for you or for anyone else. If a charge is reversed through your bank, or a store purchase is refunded by Apple or Google, after you have used what it paid for, we may suspend or remove your account. Nothing on Sincera is a subscription, and nothing auto-renews. Every charge is tied to one thing you chose to do.

One charge does land later than the moment you act, so we want it said plainly: on the website, the $8 connection fee is authorized when you unlock an introduction and taken when one of the offered times is picked and your date is booked, which can be days later. Unlocking is your authorization for that later charge. The $3 application fee is charged immediately. Purchases made through the iOS or Android app are charged by Apple or Google at the moment of purchase and are additionally subject to that store’s own payment terms; any refund of a store purchase is decided by Apple or Google, and a purchase the store refunds cancels the unused credit it created.

Each video date is one live call, booked for 25 minutes, on a third-party video platform, currently Zoom, including the date room on our website and in the apps. We don’t record video dates, and section 11 bars members from recording one without the other member’s permission. While you’re on a date, Zoom’s own terms and privacy policy apply to your use of it. We don’t control or guarantee its availability, and a platform outage isn’t within our power to fix. If one disrupts a booked date, write to us at hello@sinceralove.com.

Messaging on Sincera opens only after your video date, and only when you both say yes to staying connected. Conversations are private to the two of you, with two exceptions: we may review a conversation that has been reported to us, and we may preserve or disclose one when the law requires it, as our Privacy Policy explains. If something goes wrong, you can report another member from their profile or introduction card, from inside the video date, and from every conversation, and you don’t need a match to do it. Reporting and blocking are one step: a report ends any introduction and any conversation between the two of you, and permanently hides both members from each other, in both directions. If a report ends an introduction someone paid for before its date, section 7 explains what happens to the $8. We review reports and act on them, up to and including removal.

By using Sincera you agree that you won’t:

• Misrepresent yourself: your identity, your marital status, your age, or anything else material.
• Harass, threaten, bully, stalk, demean, or deceive other members.
• Post, send, or show, in your profile, in a message, or on a video date, any nudity or sexually explicit material, or anything that sexualizes, exploits, or endangers a person under 18.
• Post, send, or show hate speech, graphic violence, anything that promotes self-harm or illegal activity, or anything else objectionable.
• Offer or ask for sex or companionship in exchange for money or anything else of value.
• Ask another member for money, gifts, loans, or investments, or for their financial details.
• Record or screenshot a video date without the other member’s permission.
• Share another member’s photos, video, messages, or personal details outside Sincera without their permission.
• Add photos or video of anyone other than yourself without their permission, pass off someone else’s photos or video as your own, or add anything you don’t have the right to share.
• Use Sincera for commercial solicitation, promotion, or research.
• Scrape, copy, or collect other members’ information, or access Sincera with automated tools.
• Attempt to circumvent fees, safety features, or another member’s block.
• Use Sincera to break the law.

None of this stops you from telling someone you trust about a date for your own safety, or from sharing what you need to when you report a concern to us or to the authorities.

We have zero tolerance for objectionable content and for members who abuse others. We decide what crosses the line, and when something does we may remove it, end the introduction, and suspend or remove the account responsible, without warning. Child sexual abuse and exploitation ends a membership permanently, and we report it to the authorities as our Child Safety Standards describe. To report a member, use the report control on their profile or introduction card, in the video date, or in any conversation, or write to hello@sinceralove.com.

The couples check-up is free and doesn’t require an account. Each partner answers on their own; entries are linked by a couple code, and once both partners finish, you both receive the same report. It shows your combined scores, and the downloadable copy also shows each partner’s score in each area side by side, by first name. It does not show how either of you answered any individual question. Take it only with your partner’s knowledge; the whole point is that you both see the results. The check-up is for adults 18 and over. It is an educational reflection tool, not counseling, therapy, or clinical advice.

Our compatibility assessment informs how we curate your introductions, and we take that curation seriously. The curation is automatic: software scores your compatibility with other members from your assessment and theirs, and your Introductions feed only ever includes approved members of the opposite gender whose score with you meets a floor we set (currently 51%), narrowed by any filters you choose. But no assessment can promise chemistry, and we don’t guarantee matches, dates, compatibility, or outcomes of any kind, including that anyone will appear in your feed. What we promise is the effort; the rest is between the two of you.

We may suspend or remove a member at our discretion and without notice, for example: if we believe you have misrepresented yourself (including your age or the not-married attestation), harassed another member, broken these terms, or misused Sincera; while we look into a report about you; or to protect other members or comply with the law. While you are suspended, or after we remove you, you may not open another account or apply again without our written permission. If we remove you for cause, fees already charged are not refunded and any unused credits are forfeited.

You may delete your account at any time. In the Sincera app, open Profile and tap Delete my account. On the web, sign in at sinceralove.com/account and choose Delete my account. If you can’t do it yourself, email hello@sinceralove.com from the address on your account and ask us to delete it. Our Support page shows the same steps. Deletion is permanent and can’t be undone. It removes your introductions, any video date you have booked, and your conversations, for the other member as well as for you. It forfeits any unused credits (section 7), and deleting doesn’t refund fees already charged (section 8). If a safety report involves you, deleting your account does not delete that report or our copy of the messages it concerns; section 10 of our Privacy Policy explains what we keep, for how long, and why.

Sincera is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t warrant that Sincera will be uninterrupted or error-free, that anything a member tells you or shows you is true, or that anyone you meet through Sincera is safe. Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain warranties to be disclaimed; where that’s the case, this section applies to the maximum extent permitted.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Rhodium Ventures, LLC and its officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for the conduct of any member or third party. Our total liability for any claim arising out of these terms or your use of Sincera will not exceed the greater of one hundred U.S. dollars ($100) or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim. These limits apply whatever the legal theory, whether contract, tort (including negligence), or anything else, and even if we knew or had been told that the damage was possible. Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain limitations; where that’s the case, these apply to the maximum extent permitted.

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Rhodium Ventures, LLC and its officers, employees, and agents from claims, damages, losses, and reasonable legal costs arising out of your breach of these terms, your violation of law or of anyone else’s rights, anything you post, upload, or send on Sincera (including photos, video, profile text, and messages), or your conduct toward other members, on or off Sincera. We may take over the defense of any claim this covers, and if we do, you agree to cooperate with us. You won’t settle any such claim without our written consent.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, USA, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. If we have a dispute, contact us first, hello@sinceralove.com, and give us thirty days to try to make it right. Any dispute that can’t be resolved informally will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Georgia, and you consent to jurisdiction there.

Any claim arising out of these terms or your use of Sincera, whether yours or ours, must be filed within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred, unless the law requires a longer period. The thirty days you give us to make it right don’t count toward that year. Each of us may bring claims against the other only individually, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, or representative proceeding, to the fullest extent the law allows.

We may update these terms as Sincera grows. When we do, we’ll post the new version here and update the date at the top; for material changes we’ll give members reasonable advance notice by email or on the site. Continuing to use Sincera after a change takes effect means you accept it. A change doesn’t apply to a dispute that arose before the change took effect. If you don’t agree to a change, stop using Sincera and delete your account.

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, it will be enforced as far as the law allows, and the rest stays in effect. These terms, the Privacy Policy, and the Cookie Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about Sincera. You may not assign this agreement; we may assign it if our business changes hands, under the same protections.

If we don’t enforce part of these terms right away, or we make an exception to it, we haven’t given it up and can still enforce it later. We aren’t responsible for a delay or failure caused by something beyond our reasonable control, such as an outage at a company we rely on, a failure of the internet or of power, a natural disaster, or an act of government. Anything in these terms that by its nature should outlast your account or this agreement does, including what they say about your safety and other members’ conduct, refunds and credits, content we keep, returning after removal, what we don’t guarantee or warrant, the limits on our liability, indemnification, governing law and where disputes are heard, any other part about how a claim is brought or limited, and these odds and ends. Headings are for convenience only, and “including” means including without limitation.

You agree that we can communicate with you electronically: by email to the address on your account, in the app or on the site, and, if you use a Sincera app and allow notifications, by push notification. Notices and other communications we send this way satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing, and an email notice counts as given when we send it to the address on your account, so tell us at hello@sinceralove.com if that address changes. Messages about your account, your introductions, and your dates are part of how Sincera works; you can unsubscribe from the digest and turn push notifications off at any time, as the “How we contact you” section of our Privacy Policy explains. Legal notices to us must be sent to the same address.

You keep whatever rights you have in the photos, video, and words you put on your profile and in the messages you send. By adding or sending them, you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, resize, crop, shorten, reformat, send, and display them, including showing your profile to other members on Sincera and in the emails we send them, delivering your messages to the member you are writing to, and reviewing either one for safety or legal reasons, and to let the companies that run Sincera for us do the same on our behalf. We use this license only to run Sincera, enforce these terms, and meet our legal obligations. It ends when you remove the content or delete your account, except for emails we have already sent and anything we keep as our Privacy Policy describes.

You promise that you have the right to share everything you add, that your lead photo shows you, and that anyone else who appears in your photos or video has agreed to be shown. We aren’t obliged to review content before it appears, and we aren’t responsible for what members add or send, but we may remove or decline to show any content at any time, including anything we believe breaks section 11.

Our name, logo, design, writing, assessment, and software belong to Rhodium Ventures, LLC or to those who license them to us. We give you a personal, limited, non-transferable permission to use Sincera for its intended purpose, which we may withdraw at any time, including if you break these terms. You may not copy any part of Sincera except for your own personal use, and you may not sell it, build on it, or try to take apart its software, except where the law expressly allows it.

If you send us ideas or suggestions, we’re glad to have them, and we may use them freely without owing you anything.

We respect copyright, and we expect members to add only photos and video they have the right to use. If you believe something on Sincera infringes a copyright you own or manage, send a written notice by email to hello@sinceralove.com with “Copyright notice” in the subject line. Your notice needs:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• The copyrighted work you say is infringed.
• The material on Sincera you say infringes it, with enough detail for us to find it.
• Your name, address, phone number, and email address.
• A statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or are authorized to act for the owner.

If we remove material after a notice and you believe it was removed by mistake or misidentified, you can send a counter-notice to the same address, as the law allows. Knowingly and materially misrepresenting that something infringes, or that it was removed by mistake, can make you liable for damages. We end the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

Parts of Sincera are provided by other companies, including Stripe, which verifies identity and handles payments on the website; Zoom, which carries video dates (see section 9); and Apple and Google, which handle purchases in the apps and deliver the apps’ notifications. Their own terms and policies apply when you use their services, and to the extent the law allows, we aren’t responsible for those services or for what those companies do.

Sincera also links to articles and sites that other people run, such as the news stories we feature on The Wire, in the app’s Journal, and in our emails, and the sources our own articles cite. We choose which stories to share and add our own short note to each, but we don’t control those sites, we aren’t responsible for their content or accuracy or for how they handle your information, and a link isn’t an endorsement. Once you follow one, that site’s own terms and privacy policy apply, not ours. Nothing in the Journal or on The Wire, including our own articles and notes, is counseling, therapy, medical, legal, or other professional advice.

If you downloaded Sincera from Apple’s App Store or Google Play, the terms of that store also apply to your use of the app, alongside these terms, and the extra terms below apply too. Where they conflict with anything else in these terms about the app, the terms below control. They settle who is responsible for the app as between us and Apple or Google. They do not widen what we owe you: sections 15, 16, and 17 still apply between you and us.

• This agreement is between you and Rhodium Ventures, LLC only, not Apple or Google. Apart from charging for store purchases and deciding refunds on them, as section 8 describes, we, not Apple or Google, are solely responsible for the app and its content.
• We give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the app for your own personal, non-commercial use on a device you own or control and, for the iOS app, as the Usage Rules in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions allow.
• We alone are responsible for any maintenance and support of the app, to the extent these terms describe it or the law requires it. Apple and Google have no obligation at all to provide maintenance or support for it.
• If the iOS app fails to conform to a warranty that the law implies and section 15 does not effectively disclaim, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the price you paid for the app itself, if any. To the fullest extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, or expenses from that failure are our responsibility, subject to sections 15 and 16.
• We, not Apple or Google, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or anyone else relating to the app or your possession or use of it, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection, privacy, or similar laws.
• If anyone claims that the app, or your possession or use of it, infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple or Google, are solely responsible for investigating, defending, settling, and discharging that claim.
• The promises you make in section 2 about U.S. Government embargoes and restricted-party lists apply to your use of the app.
• When you use the app, you must also follow any third-party terms that apply to you, such as your mobile carrier’s data plan.
• If you use the iOS app, Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this agreement, and once you accept it, Apple has the right (and is deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce it against you as a third-party beneficiary.

Questions, complaints, or claims about the app come to us, not Apple or Google, using the contact details in section 25.

We want Sincera to be usable by everyone; our Accessibility Statement says how, and how to tell us when it isn’t.

For help with your account, reporting a member, deleting your account, or a payment, see our Support page.

Rhodium Ventures, LLC · Georgia, USA
hello@sinceralove.com