Law Enforcement & Data Requests
Guidance for police, regulators and civil litigants seeking data from PickOk. Please read what exists before serving process — in most cases it is far less than you expect.
Where to send a request
Send all legal process to [email protected] with "Law Enforcement Request" in the subject line, on official letterhead, from an official domain, including your name, agency, badge or bar number, a direct callback number and the legal basis for the request. We do not accept requests by phone or social media.
What we require
We disclose user data only where we are legally compelled to do so, and only to the extent compelled.
- Basic account records: valid subpoena, court order, or equivalent instrument under the requesting jurisdiction’s law.
- Content, including a profile photo: a search warrant or equivalent judicial order based on probable cause.
- Requests from outside our jurisdiction: an MLAT request, letter rogatory, or a domestically enforceable order.
- Preservation: a written preservation request, honoured for 90 days and renewable once, pending valid process.
What data actually exists
PickOk is built to hold very little, which limits what any order can produce. There is no message content because there is no messaging. There is no location history: a user's position is a single row that is overwritten as they move and expires within minutes. A detection may record the venue it happened at, and is deleted after seven days. There is no list of who a user was near, because detections are deleted after seven days and are never linked to coordinates.
Realistically we can produce: the email address on the Google or Apple account you signed in with, an account creation date, a date of birth, a gender, a stated preference, an age range, one photo, and recent device and IP metadata. That is the whole universe of it.
Emergency disclosure
Where we receive a request in good faith concerning an imminent risk of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose the minimum necessary information without waiting for legal process. Mark such requests "EMERGENCY DISCLOSURE REQUEST" and describe the nature of the emergency, the person at risk and why the data will help.
Telling the user
Our default is to notify a user before disclosing their data, so that they can seek legal protection. We will delay or withhold notice where a court prohibits it, where there is a genuine emergency, or where notice would be counterproductive in a child-safety matter.
Costs and transparency
We may seek reimbursement of costs where the law permits. We publish an annual transparency summary of the number of requests received, the number complied with in whole or in part, and the number refused.