1. Who we are and how to contact us
Barter Kitchen is the data controller for the personal data described in this Policy. You can reach us, including for any privacy request, at support@barterkitchen.com.
2. Personal data we collect
- Account information. Email address, password (stored hashed), display name, profile photograph, bio, languages, role (Host, Guest, or both), and the timestamps of your actions.
- Verification information (optional, Hosts). Legal name, date of birth, government-issued identity document, and food-handler certificate. This category is handled with elevated safeguards: it is column-restricted at the database layer, accessible only through narrow paths reserved for human admin review, and never disclosed to any third party except a regulator that compels it.
- Event and interaction data. Events you host or apply to, offers you send, proposals you accept or decline, messages in your chat threads, reports you submit, and your reputation history on the Service.
- Device and log data. IP address, approximate location derived from IP, device type, browser type, operating system, referring URL, and the requests you make to the Service. Used to operate the Service, prevent abuse, secure your account, and diagnose problems.
- Ban-evasion device signals. To stop a banned account from simply re-registering, when you sign in or confirm a new account we derive a one-way hash of a small set of technical signals (such as your browser and device characteristics, IP address, and user-agent) and compare it against the same hashes for banned accounts. We store only the salted hashes — never the raw signals — they are used solely for safety enforcement (not advertising or analytics), a match is reviewed by a human and never auto-bans anyone, and the hashes are deleted on a rolling retention schedule once they are no longer needed for this purpose. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the community safe.
- Image safety review. Images you upload are screened for unsafe content before they are stored. An image our classifier flags as sexual is held privately (never shown to other members) for a brief human safety review; if it is not a violation it is deleted, and only suspected child sexual abuse material is preserved and reported as required by law. This data is used solely for safety and legal compliance, is accessible only to a small number of trained staff, and is retention-limited. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in safety and our legal obligations.
- Cookies and similar. A Supabase authentication session cookie (strictly necessary), a language-preference cookie (strictly necessary), and a cookie that records your analytics consent choice (strictly necessary). See section 5 below.
- Communications you send us. Support emails and any other correspondence.
We do not knowingly collect biometric data, government identifiers beyond the verification documents above, health data beyond dietary disclosures you choose to share, or any special category of data within the meaning of the GDPR except where you voluntarily place it in a profile or message.
3. How and why we use your data
We use your personal data for the following purposes and on the following legal bases (where the GDPR or a comparable law applies):
- To provide the Service — including hosting your profile, matching Hosts and Guests, and delivering messages. Legal basis: performance of the contract between you and us (the Terms of Service).
- To verify identity when you opt in to verification. Legal basis: your consent, and our legitimate interest in trust and safety.
- To send transactional emails (sign-in links, application updates, meal confirmations, policy-change notices). Legal basis: performance of the contract.
- To prevent abuse, fraud, and unsafe behaviour; investigate reports; enforce these policies. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in protecting the Service and its Users, and, where applicable, compliance with a legal obligation.
- To improve the product through privacy-preserving analytics, where you have opted in. Legal basis: your consent.
- To comply with binding legal obligations — tax, accounting, response to lawful requests from authorities. Legal basis: compliance with a legal obligation.
We do not sell your personal data for money, and we do not use it to train any third-party machine learning model. We also do not share your personal data with advertising networks for cross-context behavioral advertising. That said, "sell" and "share" are defined broadly under California law (the CCPA/CPRA): because we use product analytics — and could adopt similar technologies in the future — some of that activity could be treated as a "sale" or "share" even when no money changes hands. You can opt out at any time: our analytics stay off until you opt in, you can change your choice from the cookie preferences control, and we honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal as an opt-out. See your California rights in section 8.
4. Who we share data with
- Other Users. Information you choose to publish on your profile, plus the limited information the Service must share to coordinate a meal (for example, your display name and approximate neighbourhood until both sides have confirmed, and a meeting address only after both sides confirm).
- Service providers (processors). Companies we engage to host the database (Supabase), send email (transactional email provider), serve images (Cloudflare R2), and provide analytics (PostHog, only with your consent). Each is bound by a written agreement to process personal data only on our instructions.
- Authorities. Where we are compelled by a valid legal process or where disclosure is necessary to protect life, prevent fraud, or enforce these policies. We review every request and push back on overbroad ones to the extent the law allows.
- A successor. If Barter Kitchen is acquired or reorganized, your personal data may be transferred to the successor, subject to the same protections as this Policy.
5. Analytics (opt-in)
If you accept analytics, we use PostHog to understand how the Service is used: which pages get visited, how the apply-and-accept flow performs, where people drop off. With analytics on, your PostHog record is tied to your account via your email and display name. We do not record sessions. We do not capture chat messages, proposal text, addresses, legal names, dates of birth, identity documents, or food-handler certificates. There are no advertising trackers.
You can change your choice at any time: . We also honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal: if your browser or a browser extension sends it, we keep analytics off without any action from you.
6. International data transfers
The Service is operated internationally and uses processors located in multiple regions, including the United States. When personal data of a User in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with cross-border transfer rules is transferred to a country whose laws have not been deemed adequate by that User's regulator, we rely on appropriate safeguards: the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where relevant), supplemented as needed with technical and contractual measures, and on your explicit consent to international transfer when you create an account. You may request a copy of the transfer mechanisms in place for any specific processor by writing to us.
7. How long we keep data
We keep personal data for as long as your account is active and for the period after deactivation that is necessary to resolve disputes, support tax and accounting obligations, prevent evasion of bans, and comply with law. In practical terms: profile and event data are retained while your account is open; on deactivation, open events and applications are cancelled and conversations closed, and most personal data is purged within ninety (90) days, except that an authentication record is retained for ban traceability and may be hard-deleted on request. Verification documents are deleted shortly after the verification decision is recorded, retaining only a hash of the decision. Operational backups are rotated on a regular schedule; data deleted on the live system may persist in a backup until the next rotation.
8. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to:
- access the personal data we hold about you;
- request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete personal data;
- request that we delete your personal data (subject to exceptions such as legal-retention obligations and ban traceability);
- request that we restrict or object to certain processing;
- request a portable copy of personal data you have provided to us;
- withdraw any consent you have given;
- lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.
You can exercise most of these rights from account settings or by writing to support@barterkitchen.com. We respond within the time your local law requires; where no specific deadline applies, we aim to respond within thirty (30) days. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any right.
California residents (CCPA/CPRA). If you are a California resident, you have the rights to know and access the personal information we collect, to delete it, to correct it, to opt out of its "sale" or "sharing," to limit our use of sensitive personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights. The categories of personal information we collect, our sources, purposes, and the categories of recipients are described in sections 2 through 4, and how long we keep each category is described in section 7.
We do not sell your personal information for money and do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Because "sell" and "share" are defined broadly under the CCPA/CPRA, however, our use of analytics technologies could be considered a "sale" or "share." You can opt out — and exercise your right to limit the use of sensitive personal information — in any of these ways: turn analytics off (they are off by default) using the control, send a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal from your browser (which we honor automatically), or email us at support@barterkitchen.com.
The "sensitive personal information" we may collect is limited to the optional verification details you choose to provide (legal name, date of birth, government-issued identity document, and food-handler certificate) and, if you share it, precise location. We use it only for the limited purposes the CPRA permits — verifying identity, operating and securing the Service, and meeting legal obligations — and not to infer characteristics about you. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf; we may need to verify your identity and the agent's authority. We respond to verifiable requests within 45 days and will tell you if we need the additional time the law allows.
9. Security
We apply reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect personal data, including encryption in transit, encryption at rest at the database layer, column-level restrictions on the most sensitive fields, separation of admin access, and auditable access logs. No system is impenetrable; if a breach occurs that is likely to result in a risk to your rights, we will notify you and the relevant regulator within the period required by the law that applies.
10. Children
The Service is for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account, tell us and we will remove it.
11. Copyright complaints (DMCA)
We respect intellectual-property rights and respond to valid notices under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. §512. If you believe content on the Service infringes a copyright you own or control, send a written notice to our designated Copyright Agent at dmca@corporateshill.com that includes all of the following:
- your physical or electronic signature;
- identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed (or a representative list, if you are notifying us about multiple works);
- identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it (for example, the URL or where it appears on the Service);
- your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address;
- a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
- a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed, or are authorized to act on that owner's behalf.
We may remove or disable access to material we believe in good faith to be infringing, and we will make a reasonable effort to notify the person who posted it.
Counter-notification. If you believe your material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification, you may send a counter-notification to dmca@corporateshill.com that includes: your physical or electronic signature; identification of the material that was removed and the location where it appeared before removal; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed by mistake or misidentification; and your name, mailing address, and telephone number, together with a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district in which your address is located (or, if your address is outside the United States, any judicial district in which we may be found) and that you will accept service of process from the person who submitted the original notice or their agent. If we receive a valid counter-notification, we may restore the material in 10 to 14 business days unless the original complainant first notifies us that they have filed a court action seeking to restrain the allegedly infringing activity. When we forward a counter-notification — including the contact information you provide — to the person who filed the original complaint, we also tell them that we will restore the material unless they first file such a court action; that person may, in turn, bring a lawsuit against you to keep the material down.
Repeat infringers. In appropriate circumstances we will disable or terminate the accounts of users who are repeat infringers. Note that under 17 U.S.C. §512(f), anyone who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing — or that it was removed by mistake or misidentification — may be liable for damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, so you may wish to consult an attorney if you are unsure whether material infringes your rights or whether a use is permitted.
12. Changes to this Policy
We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version with a new effective date and, where the change is material, will notify you in the Service or by email. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.