Beta terms

Pearmo is a dating app being built in Sri Lanka. It is not finished. We are inviting a small group of people to test an early build and tell us what breaks and what feels wrong. It is free, and there is no company behind it, just Sanuth Mandepa and Chanka Dewmina Herath, two people in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

This page is where you find out what you are signing up for. If you consent on the signup form, we email you an Android APK file to install by hand.

Read it properly before you tick anything. If something here is not acceptable to you, don't join. That is a completely fine outcome, and we would rather know now than after you have installed it.

Anything at all, including a bug, a question or a request to be removed: pearmo.app@gmail.com. It reaches both of us and nobody else.

You can take part only if all of these are true:

• You are 18 or older. This is a hard requirement with no exceptions, and it is the one thing on this list we cannot check. ID verification is switched off for this test, so we are trusting you.
• You are in Sri Lanka for the duration of the beta.
• You have an Android phone running Android 7.0 or newer. There is no iPhone build yet.
• You have a Sri Lankan mobile number that can receive an SMS, because that is how you sign in.
• You are joining as yourself, with real information about yourself, and one account only.

Pearmo is a slow, curated dating app. There is no swiping.

• Sign in with your phone number. You get an SMS code, not a password.
• Onboarding: you answer a personality questionnaire, set who and what you are looking for, and pick an animal character.
• Daily matches: each day you get a small set of suggested people, scored against your questionnaire answers. There are no photos to look at.
• Connections: you send or receive a connection request. Nobody can message you unless you both agree.
• Icebreaker games such as would-you-rather, 20 questions and draw together, which you can play at any point in a connection. Early chat is capped at a small number of messages.
• Verification: optional, and in this test it is a selfie and a liveness check only. Verified accounts get a badge.
• Reporting and rating: you can report someone, and rate a connection after it ends. Ratings feed an internal trust score.
• A check-in you can set around a date. Read the limitations section before you rely on it. It does not do what the name suggests.

The beta is free. There are no payments, subscriptions or card details anywhere in it.

• National identity document verification. We do not ask for your NIC, and we could not store it if you tried. ID verification comes after the beta.
• Profile photos. Your profile is an animal character, and there are no photos in this test at all, not on profiles and not in chat.
• Voice intro recordings.
• Payments of any kind.

So the only verification in this test is the selfie and liveness check. The liveness step, where you centre your face, blink and turn your head, runs entirely on your own phone. No video is recorded, and nothing from it is ever uploaded. The selfie is looked at by one of us, by hand, to confirm you are a real person, and is then deleted. We keep the decision, not the picture. There is no verification company involved and no automatic face matching anywhere.

None of this is collected silently. It all comes from you using the app.

Needed to use the app at all

• Mobile number, which is your account and how you sign in.
• Date of birth, used for age matching and the 18+ rule. Other people see your age, never the date.
• Gender, the genders you are open to, and your age range, used for matching only.
• Personality questionnaire answers. Your individual answers are not stored. Your phone turns them into six trait scores, and only those are saved.
• A short free-text piece about yourself, shown to your matches.
• The province or area you pick from a list, so you are matched with people you could actually meet. Pearmo does not use GPS. The app requests no location permission and we never see your position.
• Your animal character, shown to your matches.

Optional

• A selfie, for verification, plus the yes/no result of the on-device liveness check.
• Check-in times, and any contact number you type into the check-in note.

Recorded as you use the app

• Messages you send, stored on our server so we can deliver them.
• Icebreaker game answers, used to run the game.
• Reports you file and ratings you give, used for moderation and trust scoring.
• Basic account activity, such as when you were last active and how many matches you have had.

We do not read your phone contacts, we do not track your location in the background, and we do not connect to any social account. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising identifier and no crash reporter in the app.

Separately, the signup form is a Google Form with email collection switched on, so it records your Google account address as well as the answers you type. Those responses sit in a Google Sheet only the two of us can open, and we delete them when the beta ends.

Everything is stored in our Supabase project, a hosted Postgres database with file storage. The servers are in Singapore, on Amazon Web Services infrastructure, so your data leaves Sri Lanka.

• Your sign-in code is sent by Text.lk, a Sri Lankan SMS gateway, which sees your phone number. It is the only part of this chain physically inside Sri Lanka.
• Verification selfies sit in private storage and are reached only through short-lived signed links.
• Messages are stored in our database in plain text. Pearmo is not end-to-end encrypted. Assume we can technically read them, because we can.
• The two of us can access the whole database, including chat contents. We open it to debug something, to look at a report, or to review a verification. We will not browse your data out of curiosity and we will not show it to anyone outside the two of us.
• Verification selfies are reviewed by a person, one of us, not by any automated system.
• We may use anonymised, aggregated patterns from the test, such as “x% of testers stopped during onboarding”, to improve the product and in material we show investors. Your name, number, selfie, messages and profile are never part of that.
• We may email you during the beta about new builds, bugs and feedback. Nothing else, and never marketing from anyone but us.

Other testers see your age, your character, your about text, the traits your questionnaire produced, and your general area. They never see your phone number, your exact date of birth, your individual questionnaire answers, who you are open to, or your selfie.

The trust score is used internally to decide who gets shown to whom. It is not displayed anywhere in the app.

We would rather over-disclose than let you assume protections that do not exist yet. Every item here is something we know is missing.

• The app is installed outside the Play Store. You will have to allow installation from an unknown source, it will not update itself, and it has not been through Google's review. We will email you each new build.
• There is no automated harassment filtering in chat. The report button is the safety mechanism, and reports are read by a person when we see them, not instantly and not around the clock.
• There is no screenshot detection or blocking. Anything you send can be screenshotted or copied by the person you send it to. Treat everything as potentially permanent and send accordingly.
• There is no block button. Reporting someone removes them from your matches permanently, and ending a connection is also permanent. Those are your two options today. A proper block feature is not built yet.
• The check-in does not contact anyone. You can set a time and type in a number, but nothing calls, texts or alerts that person, and the alarm only sounds on your own phone. Do not rely on it as a safety net. Tell a real person where you are going, as you would anyway.
• Verification is not a background check. The badge means one of us looked at a selfie and believed a real person took it. It does not mean they are who they say they are (ID checking is off in this test), and it does not mean they are safe, single or honest. We do not check criminal records on anyone.
• Matching is experimental. The questionnaire and the algorithm are unproven. Bad matches are expected and are not a claim about you or anyone else.
• Expect bugs, crashes, failed uploads, missing notifications and lost messages. Some flows are half-built.
• We may reset the database during the test. Your profile, matches and chat history could be wiped without warning while we fix things. Do not keep anything in Pearmo that you would hate to lose.
• We cannot guarantee everyone here is who they say they are. The group is small and invite-only, which helps, but it is not a guarantee.

This is not a demo with fake profiles. You will have a real profile, you will be matched with other real testers, and you can genuinely end up talking to someone. Harassment, impersonation, unsolicited sexual content, scams, and sharing other people's details outside the app will get you removed, and in a group this small, we will notice.

Because it is a small group, there is a real chance you will be matched with someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know. Please think about that before you join rather than after.

Report anything that needs reporting. We read every report and we will act on it even when it is inconvenient for the test.

Pearmo introduces people. What happens after that is outside our control and outside our responsibility. If you meet someone from the app:

• Meet somewhere public, the first few times at least.
• Tell a friend or a family member where you are going and who with. Tell an actual person, not the app.
• Arrange your own transport.
• Never send money to anyone, for any reason.
• Do not share your NIC number, bank details, home address or workplace early.
• If someone makes you uncomfortable, report them in the app and email us directly.

If you are ever in immediate danger, call the Sri Lanka Police on 119. Not us. We are two people with a laptop, and we cannot help you in an emergency.

Telling us what broke is the job. We would rather have blunt feedback now than a polite version of it after launch.

• You give us permission to use your feedback to improve Pearmo, without owing you anything for it. Nothing you suggest creates a claim on the product.
• We will not quote you publicly, even anonymously, unless you ticked the box on the signup form saying we may. You can change your mind by emailing us.
• We will never attach your name, number or profile to anything we publish.

This is not a secret project and we are not asking you to sign an NDA. You can tell people you are testing Pearmo and what you think of it.

Please do not forward the APK to anyone. The build is tied to this group, it is unreviewed software, and it spreading around is bad for everyone including you.

What you must not do is share anything about another tester, including their character, their messages, their identity, screenshots of a conversation, or anything they told you inside the app. In a group this small, one screenshot can identify someone. Please also hold off on posting screenshots of unreleased screens publicly, since they will be out of date and misleading by launch.

Taking part is voluntary. You can stop at any time, for any reason, without explaining yourself to us.

Pause

Settings has a switch that hides your profile from matching without deleting anything. Fully reversible.

Delete

Settings, then Delete account. Be clear about what that does: your selfie and every file you uploaded are permanently deleted from storage, and your character, your about text and your profile are wiped. What is kept is your chat history, any reports about you, your ratings and your trust score. We do that on purpose. A full delete would let someone with a bad record erase it and sign up again clean. Messages you already sent also stay visible to the person you sent them to, because deleting them would delete their side of the conversation too. If you are not comfortable with that, please don't sign up.

Ask us anything

Email pearmo.app@gmail.com to get a copy of your data, ask what we hold, correct something, or ask us to erase what we are able to erase. We aim to reply within seven days and will not take longer than the Personal Data Protection Act allows.

When the closed beta finishes, we delete the beta data. Accounts, profiles, messages, connections, matches and any verification images created during the test are removed, not archived and not carried over. If Pearmo launches publicly you would sign up again from scratch, and we will tell you before we delete anything so nothing disappears as a surprise.

We can also end the beta, or remove any account from it, at any time and without notice, most likely because a build has a serious problem or because someone breached these terms.

You can leave whenever you like. Delete your account in the app, or email pearmo.app@gmail.com and we will remove you and your data.

Taking part does not entitle you to free or discounted access later, though we would think poorly of ourselves if we did not look after the people who tested it first.

The beta is provided as it is, free of charge, and explicitly without any promise that it works. To the extent Sri Lankan law allows, we are not liable for lost data, for the conduct of other testers, for anything that happens during or after a meeting arranged through the app, or for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

These terms are governed by the laws of Sri Lanka. The privacy policy applies in full alongside them.

Anything at all: pearmo.app@gmail.com.