Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data BUNK collects, why, how we use and share it, and the choices and rights you have. It applies to the BUNK website and services. BUNK is free and has no payments, so we never collect card or bank details.

Depending on how you use BUNK, we collect:

• Account data — your email address, your password (stored hashed by our authentication provider, never in plain text) and your account type.
• Profile data— what you add to your profile: name, photos, city and country, bio, and for volunteers languages, skills and the destinations you’re interested in; for hostels the hostel name and details.
• Listings & applications— what hostels post (including photos of where volunteers sleep), the messages volunteers send when applying, and each application’s status.
• Chats — messages between a hostel and a volunteer, or between a volunteer and a past guest, including any photos, voice notes and videos you send and any video-interview times and call links you share.
• Reviews — the public reviews and star ratings you write.
• Verification documents — if you ask to be verified: for volunteers a government ID and a selfie holding it; for hostels a listing link or business reference and any proof you choose to upload.
• Contact messages — your name, email and message when you use our contact form, and anything you send through the live-chat widget.
• Technical data — basic information such as IP address, browser type and pages viewed, used to keep the Service secure and to understand overall usage.

We use your data to:

• Create and manage your account and profile.
• Run the platform — show listings, deliver applications, open chats and show reviews.
• Review verification requests and show the “Verified by BUNK” badge.
• Send emails about your account and activity — new applications, status changes, new messages, reviews, verification decisions, and (if you choose) new listings in places you’re interested in.
• Answer your support requests.
• Keep BUNK safe — preventing fraud, abuse and security incidents.
• Understand how BUNK is used, in aggregate, so we can improve it.

We don’t sell your data, and we don’t use it for advertising.

BUNK is a two-sided community, so some information is public by design and may be shown in search engines:

• Your profile, photos and verified badge.
• A hostel’s listings, including sleeping-area photos.
• Reviews written about you and by you, with star averages.

Private: applications are visible only to the volunteer and the hostel they applied to. Chats — including photos, voice notes and videos — are visible only to the people in that conversation. Verification documents are never shown to other users.

If you’re a volunteer who has stayed at a hostel, other volunteers can see you as a past guest and message you about that hostel. You can switch this off in Settings.

We send emails about activity on your account, and — if you opt in — alerts about new listings in destinations you pick. You can turn email notifications off at any time in Settings. We may still email you about important account or security matters.

We use trusted providers to run BUNK. They process data on our behalf and are required to protect it:

• Supabase — database, sign-in, file storage and realtime chat.
• Vercel — website hosting, plus privacy-friendly, cookie-free usage and performance analytics.
• Resend — sending our emails.
• Tawk.to — the live-chat support widget on the site.

Video interviews happen on whichever service the hostel shares a link to (for example Google Meet or Zoom); that service’s own privacy policy applies to the call.

• Essential cookieskeep you signed in and your session secure. BUNK doesn’t work without them.
• Live chat — the Tawk.to widget may set its own cookies so it can keep your support conversation going.

Our analytics are cookie-free. We don’t use advertising or tracking cookies. Clearing your cookies will sign you out.

We keep your data while your account is active. You can delete your account at any time from Settings. When you do, we permanently delete your profile, listings, applications, chats and messages, verification requests, and reviews written by you or about you. Your uploaded files — photos, chat media and verification documents — are deleted at the same time, and anything left over is cleared automatically within about a day.

The people you chatted with will lose those conversations too. Contact-form messages are kept only as long as we need them to help you. We may keep limited information where the law requires it.

We protect your data with encryption in transit and row-level security on our database, so people can only see the data they’re allowed to. Chat media and verification documents are kept in private storage and shared only through short-lived links. No system is perfectly secure, but we work hard to keep yours safe and to act quickly if something goes wrong.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it.
• Correct inaccurate data — most of it you can edit yourself in Settings.
• Delete your account and data — you can do this yourself in Settings.
• Object to or restrict certain processing.
• Complain to your local data-protection authority.

To use any of these rights, email faragiayoubdev@gmail.com.

BUNK is used around the world, and your data may be processed in countries other than your own, including by the providers listed above. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for these transfers.

BUNK is not for anyone under 18, and we don’t knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a minor has given us personal data, contact us and we’ll delete it.

We may update this policy as BUNK evolves. We’ll update the “last updated” date above and, for important changes, take reasonable steps to let you know.

Questions or requests about your privacy? Email faragiayoubdev@gmail.com or use our contact form.