Privacy Policy

AIDO Technologies Ltd, a New Zealand company, is the data controller for Joinza. We apply the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 as our baseline everywhere, and where the GDPR, UK GDPR, or another local privacy law gives you stronger rights, those apply too.

Because you gave it to us: your name, email address, and password (stored only as a bcrypt hash — we cannot read it). Optionally: profile photo and gallery, bio, interests, gender, age range, general location, phone number, and travel plans.

Because you used the service: listings you post or join — including the country and city each one is in — messages you send, reviews you write and receive, attendance records (marked by the host, or recorded as attended automatically if they don't), buddies and groups, notification preferences, and the join code of any private listing you host.

If you turn on push notifications: the subscription your browser creates — an endpoint address and two keys — and the browser it came from, so we can send to the right device and remove a subscription that stops working. Turn them off from your notification settings and it is deleted.

Because someone signed in with Google or Facebook: we receive the name and email address on that account. We never receive your password and never post anything on your behalf.

Automatically: a session cookie to keep you signed in, a CSRF token, and standard server logs including IP address, kept for security and abuse investigation. Your browser's language setting is read once to guess which country and currency to show you first; the guess, and any choice you make instead, are kept in your own browser's storage and are not sent to us.

If you split a private event's cost: what it cost, who you asked for how much, and — only if you offer bank transfer — the account details you type in. Those details are shown only to the people you ask to pay, and are kept with the event's records.

We do not collect precise GPS location, contacts, or card numbers. Location is the general area you type in yourself. If you choose to share your location so we can show prices in your currency, your device's position is rounded to about 11 km and sent from your browser to our lookup provider, BigDataCloud, only to find which country you are in. Joinza never receives the position, and keeps only the currency, in your own browser.

To perform our contract with you — running your account, showing listings, delivering messages, processing payments. Legitimate interests — keeping members safe, preventing fraud and abuse, improving the product. Consent — optional profile fields, notifications you opt into, and marketing, each withdrawable at any time. Legal obligation — retaining financial records.

Other members see what you publish: your name, photo, bio, badges, reliability score, reviews, and the listings you host or join. Precise addresses are shown only to the host and accepted participants. Your email address and phone number are never shown to other members.

Anyone with a link. Every listing has a share link. A public listing can be found by any signed-in member anyway; a private one is hidden from Discover and Search but is visible to any signed-in member who has the link, and its join code is shown only to its host. Both are the host's to share.

Processors acting on our instructions: Supabase (database hosting), Hostinger (application hosting), Stripe (payments and identity verification for hosts), Resend (transactional email), Twilio (verification SMS), OpenAI (drafting assistance and content moderation — listing text only, never your messages or profile), and the push service built into your browser or phone — Google, Apple or Mozilla, depending on the device — which carries push notifications. It sees that a message was sent to your device, not what it says beyond the notification text itself.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers.

Our database is hosted in Sydney, Australia. Our processors operate globally, so your data may be transferred across borders — including to the United States and the European Union. Where required, those transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent safeguard.

Account data is kept while your account is open. Payment records are retained for seven years to meet financial and tax obligations. Safety reports are retained while they remain relevant to protecting members. Server logs are kept for 90 days. Verification codes expire within minutes and are stored hashed. Push subscriptions are kept until you turn notifications off or the device stops accepting them.

You can access your data, correct it from your profile page, export it, ask us to restrict or object to certain processing, and withdraw consent at any time.

You can also ask us to erase your account. Because reviews, attendance and payment records involve other people, erasure anonymises your account rather than deleting rows that belong to someone else's history — the data deletion page sets out precisely what goes and what stays, and why.

Requests are actioned within 30 days. If you think we've got something wrong, tell us first at privacy@joinza.io — and you can complain to your local privacy regulator, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in New Zealand, the OAIC in Australia, the ICO in the UK, or your national supervisory authority in the EU.

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Accounts lock after five failed sign-in attempts. Verification codes are single-use, expire quickly, and are stored hashed rather than in plain text. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you we will tell you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.

Joinza is not for under-16s. If we learn that someone under 16 holds an account we will close it and erase the data.

Privacy questions, requests for your data, and any complaint about how we've handled your personal information or your safety go to privacy@joinza.io. We acknowledge every message within two working days. You can also write to AIDO Technologies Ltd, New Zealand.