Lounge & Mingle

Law Enforcement Guidelines

Pre-publication draft updated: 17 August 2026

Lounge & Mingle is a UK-registered social discovery platform for adults aged 27 and over. This page explains how law enforcement agencies can request member data from us, what legal process we require, and what we will and will not disclose.

We take member safety seriously and we cooperate with lawful investigations. We also have obligations to the people who use our service under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Both of those things are true at once, and this page sets out how we reconcile them.

1. How to contact us

Send all requests to legal@loungeandmingle.com from an official law enforcement email domain.

We do not accept requests by telephone, social media, or through member support channels. Requests sent to support@, safety@ or privacy@ will be redirected, which costs time.

For requests involving immediate risk to life or serious physical harm, put EMERGENCY DISCLOSURE REQUEST in the subject line. See section 5.

Postal service can be made to the registered office below, but email is substantially faster and we treat it as the primary channel.

2. What to include in a request

A request we can act on tells us four things:

1. Who is asking— agency, officer name, rank, badge or warrant number, and a direct contact email and telephone number
2. Who the request concerns— the member’s registered email address, or the profile URL. A display name alone is rarely enough to identify an account, because display names are not unique
3. What is sought— the specific categories of data, and the date range. Requests for “all data” without a date range will be narrowed before we respond
4. The legal basis — the statutory power or court order relied on, attached as a PDF

Incomplete requests will be returned with a note on what is missing rather than refused outright.

3. Legal process we require

We handle three kinds of request, and the process required differs for each:

Tier 1 exists so that you can find out whether it is worth seeking an order at all, particularly where an account may already have been erased under our retention policy.

UK requests

A Schedule 2 request under the Data Protection Act 2018 is an exemption from certain data protection duties, not a compulsion. We assess each such request on its own facts, and we may decline where disclosure would be disproportionate. Where the matter is serious and the request is proportionate, we will ordinarily disclose.

Requests from outside the United Kingdom

We are a UK company and our members’ data is held under UK law. Overseas agencies should proceed by a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request through the UK Home Office, an order under the Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019 where a relevant international agreement applies, or a letter of request through the appropriate diplomatic channel.

We will consider voluntary disclosure to an overseas agency only in an emergency under section 5.

4. What data we hold

What we can produce is limited by what exists. Our published Data Retention Policy governs how long each category is kept, and it is enforced by an automated job rather than by intention.

Points that most often matter to an investigation:

• Deleted accounts. A member who deletes their account can restore it for 30 days. After that window the account is irreversibly anonymised. Once anonymisation has run, the personal data is gone and we cannot produce it, including under a court order
• Messages are retained according to the retention policy, not indefinitely
• Financial records relating to memberships and tickets are retained for seven years to meet HMRC obligations, and survive account deletion in de-linked form
• We do not hold payment card details. Card data is processed by Stripe and never reaches our systems. Requests for card numbers must go to Stripe
• Location. We hold approximate location for the discovery features, not a continuous location history

If you anticipate needing data that may be approaching the end of its retention period, send a preservation request (section 7) immediately, before serving process.

5. Emergency disclosure requests

Where we believe in good faith that there is a risk of death or serious physical injury to any person, and that disclosure without delay may prevent it, we may disclose the information reasonably necessary to address that risk. This reflects the vital interests basis in Article 6(1)(d) of the UK GDPR.

Mark the subject line EMERGENCY DISCLOSURE REQUEST and state the nature of the threat and why it is imminent, the person at risk, what data is needed to prevent the harm and why, and your agency, name, rank and a telephone number we can call back on.

We may call back on a published agency number to verify the request before disclosing. This is a verification step, not an obstruction, and it exists because impersonating law enforcement is a known method of obtaining personal data. Emergency disclosures are recorded and reviewed after the fact.

6. What we will not do

• We do not provide direct or bulk access to our systems or database
• We have no interception capability and cannot provide real-time monitoring of an account
• We cannot recover data that has been erased under our retention policy or by a member’s verified deletion request. This is a technical fact, not a position we are taking
• We do not disclose on the basis of an informal request from an individual officer without a stated legal basis
• We do not accept requests from private individuals, private investigators, or civil litigants through this channel. Civil parties should seek a court order and serve it at the registered office

7. Preservation requests

We will preserve a specified account’s existing data for 90 days pending service of legal process, on written request from law enforcement. A preservation request should identify the account precisely and state that process is being sought.

A preservation request freezes what exists at the time we act on it. It does not recover what has already been deleted, so send it early. We can extend a preservation period once on request where process is demonstrably in progress.

8. Notice to our members

Our members have a right to know when their personal data is disclosed. Our default is to notify the member of a request for their data before we disclose, so that they have an opportunity to seek their own legal advice.

We will not notify where:

• a court order or statutory provision prohibits it
• we reasonably believe notification would create a risk of death or serious physical harm, or of the destruction of evidence relating to a serious offence
• the matter involves child sexual abuse material or the exploitation of a minor

If you require non-disclosure, say so explicitly in the request and identify the legal basis for it. We will not infer a prohibition on notification from silence.

9. Child safety

We report suspected child sexual abuse material and the sexual exploitation of minors to the appropriate authorities, and we act on it without waiting for legal process. Our minimum age is 27, and accounts found to belong to minors are removed immediately. See our Age & Child Safety Policy for the full position.

10. Cost and timing

We do not charge for responding to requests concerning risk to life, or to requests relating to child safety.

For other requests we aim to acknowledge within five working days and to substantively respond within fourteen working days of receiving a valid request. Complex or broad requests take longer, and we will say so rather than let the clock run. We reserve the right to seek reasonable cost recovery for requests that are unusually voluminous, as permitted by law.

11. Transparency

We intend to publish periodic figures on the number of law enforcement requests received, the number complied with in whole or in part, and the number refused. The first report will follow the platform’s public launch.

Lounge and Mingle Ltd, 5 Brayford Square, London, England, E1 0SG. Registered in England and Wales, company number 15163115. Legal contact: legal@loungeandmingle.com