Privacy Policy and Personal Data Collection Notice

1. Who We Are

The data controller is Taiwan Life Buddy ("we"). Contact: service@taiwanlifebuddy.com.

2. Why We Process Data

We collect, process and use personal data to provide and improve our services, including: sign-in and identity confirmation; language exchange matching and invitations; exchanging contact details; customer support and notifications; safety and abuse prevention, including blocking, reporting and account actions; website analytics; and legal compliance.

3. What We Collect

• Account data: your Google account identifier, email address, display name and profile photo.
• Profile data: nickname, nationality, location, exchange mode, languages, personal tags, introduction and whether your profile is published.
• Contact details: the messaging accounts, email addresses or other contact details you choose to add.
• Interaction records: invitations, invitation messages, matches, blocks and reports, with their status and timing, and related activity such as whether something has been viewed.
• Report data: the reason for a report, any description or attachments (such as images) the reporter provides, and information relevant at the time of the report, such as the reported account's nickname and the invitation concerned.
• Account management records: suspensions, restrictions, appeals, deletions and other actions taken on an account, and internal notes written by our operators.
• Consent records: which versions of the Terms, the Privacy Policy and marketing preferences you agreed to, and when.
• Notification records: the address, subject, time and delivery result of notices we send.
• Usage and technical data: when you use the platform and how active you are, device and browser information, IP address, page views, and data from cookies and similar technologies.
• Contact form data: the name, email address and request details you submit on our website.

4. Who Can See Your Data

When you publish a profile, other members may see your nickname, profile photo (you can choose to hide it), nationality, location, exchange mode, languages, personal tags, introduction, the types of contact channel you offer, and indicators the platform generates, such as recent activity. This information may also appear in recommendation emails we send to other members. Your contact details are shared with another member only after you have both agreed to an invitation. Your email address and Google account identifier are never shown to other members.

Our operators can view account, invitation, match, block, report and account action records for support, dispute handling and safety.

5. Retention, Location and Recipients

We keep data for as long as we need it for the purposes above. When an account is deleted, or you ask us to delete your data, we stop showing it and delete or anonymise what we no longer need. The following records are kept as set out here:

• Notification records: kept for 90 days. After that we stop using them, and they are deleted shortly afterwards. If the account is deleted, the email address and subject are removed first.
• Re-registration records: if an account is suspended for breaking the rules, or is deleted while suspended, we may keep its email address and sign-in identifiers, with no fixed retention period, to stop the same person registering again. If we lift the restriction, the record is deleted. Deleting an account that is not suspended does not create this record.
• Safety and dispute records: reports, with any descriptions and attachments, account actions and operator notes are kept for dispute handling and safety audits, with no fixed end date. When an account is deleted, they are archived together with a record of the deletion; apart from the re-registration record above, the archive holds no nickname, no contact details and no email address. Text written by members or operators is kept as written.
• Block records: kept while the block is in place and deleted when it is lifted.

Data may be processed in Taiwan and wherever we or our service providers operate, back up or process data. It may be disclosed to us, to the service providers listed in section 8, and to authorities legally entitled to request it.

6. Notifications and Marketing

We send service notices about your account, your invitations and safety as part of providing the service. Marketing messages, such as regular suggestions of new people to connect with, are sent only if you agree to receive them. Every marketing message includes a way to unsubscribe, and you can also opt out at any time in your profile.

7. Cookies and Analytics

Our website uses Google Analytics 4 and our own analytics scripts to understand how it is used and to improve it. If we introduce advertising or cross-site tracking, we will ask for your consent first.

8. Service Providers

We use the following providers to process data on our behalf: Supabase (database and sign-in), Google (Google sign-in, website analytics, and storage for the contact form and some internal records), Resend (email delivery) and Cloudflare (website hosting and security). They process data under their own privacy terms and their agreements with us.

9. Your Rights

Under Taiwan's Personal Data Protection Act, you can ask to access or review your personal data, receive a copy, have it supplemented or corrected, have its collection, processing or use stopped, or have it deleted. You can also unpublish your profile or opt out of marketing messages at any time. Email service@taiwanlifebuddy.com; we may need to verify your identity first. Some data may be kept as described in section 5.

10. If You Do Not Provide Data

If you do not provide the data a feature needs, you may not be able to register, publish a profile, exchange contact details with other members, or receive a reply from us.

11. Deleting Your Account

You can ask us to delete your account by email, or use the deletion option where the platform offers one. We then remove your public data and handle the rest as described in section 5.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as our services or the law change. We will announce material changes on the website or in the service and ask for your consent again where needed.