Privacy Policy
OnlySwap is a campus marketplace for verified students. We collect only what we need to run it. We don’t sell your data, we don’t show ads, and we don’t track you across other apps or sites.
1. What we collect
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| School email address | To verify you’re a student and to sign you in with a code. Other students never see it. |
| Name you choose, class year, optional photo and interests | Your public profile. Others see your first name and last initial. |
| Age confirmation | To keep OnlySwap 18+. We don’t store your date of birth. |
| Listings, photos, prices, offers | To run the marketplace. Photo location data (EXIF) is removed before upload. |
| Messages and meetup plans | To let you arrange deals. Staff read a chat only when someone reports it, and every read is logged. |
| Photos you send in chat | To show an item’s condition. Stored privately, see section 4. |
| Quad posts, replies, polls, votes, hides and mutes | To run the Quad, your campus board. See section 4. |
| Around campus posts (free food, free items, Wanted) | To show them to students at your school. They’re listings, so they follow the listing rules. |
| Invite code and who invited you | To credit the person who invited you and to show campus progress. |
| Data export requests | To build your download and send you the link. |
| Reports, blocks, strikes and appeals | To keep people safe and enforce the rules. |
| Push token and notification settings | To send the notifications you chose. |
| Basic app usage events (18 kinds, like “listing posted”) | To understand what works. No content, no names, a hashed id only. You can turn this off. |
| Crash reports | To fix bugs. No personal data is attached. You can turn this off. |
We don’t ask for your location. We don’t collect contacts, and we don’t use advertising identifiers.
2. How we use it
To verify you, run the marketplace, send the notifications you allow, keep people safe, respond to reports and support requests, fix problems, and meet legal duties.
3. Who helps us run OnlySwap
These processors handle data only to provide their service to us:
- Supabase (database, sign-in, server functions)
- Cloudflare (photo storage, the website)
- Expo, Apple and Google (push notifications)
- Sentry (crash reports)
- PostHog (usage events)
- Our email provider (sign-in codes and account emails)
We share information with authorities only when the law requires it or someone’s safety is at serious risk. That includes, in those cases only, who wrote a Quad post (section 4).
4. Features with extra details
The Quad
The Quad is a board for students at your school. Posts and replies are anonymous to other students: they never see your name, profile or account, and replies show only a letter like “Anon A”.
Posts are not anonymous to OnlySwap. We keep the link between each post or reply and the account that wrote it so we can enforce the rules. A person on our team can see who wrote something only when:
- the law requires it, for example a valid request from the police or a court, or
- someone’s safety is at serious risk, for example a threat of violence or harm to a child.
Only the owner of OnlySwap can do this. Each time, they need a case reference and a fresh two-step sign-in check, the action is written to our audit log, and we email the account that wrote the post to say it happened.
We also store your votes on posts, replies and polls (so you can’t vote twice and so posts that drop to a score of -5 can be hidden for review), the people you hide (so you stop seeing them, without us telling you who they are) and the words you mute. Photos in Quad posts have location data (EXIF) removed before upload, and photos from accounts newer than 7 days wait for a person to review them.
Photos in chat
When photos in chat are on, photos you send are stored privately, not on a public link. The app gets a signed link that works for up to 2 hours and only for people in that chat. Location data (EXIF) is removed before upload. Photos may be checked automatically for illegal content, like child sexual abuse material, and a person reviews any photo that’s reported. Photos are kept with the chat and deleted with it.
Around campus
Free food posts show a place and disappear after at most 3 hours. Free items and Wanted posts (what you want and your budget) stay up for 60 days unless you take them down. When someone posts an item that matches your Wanted post, we may notify you.
Invites
Your invite link includes a short code. When someone joins with it, we record that you invited them and show you how many people joined. The invite page shows your first name and your school’s progress, nothing else.
Download your data
In Settings you can request a copy of your data once every 24 hours. It’s a JSON file with your account, profile and settings, your listings, offers, chats and messages, ratings, saves, saved searches, notifications, blocks, reports you made, strikes, appeals, and your own Quad posts, replies and votes. Other people appear only by the name you already see in the app, never by their account id, and never as the author of a Quad post. We email you a private link that works for 7 days; the file is deleted on day 8.
Price hints
When you set a price, we may show a range of what similar items sold for at your school. It’s built from at least 5 sold listings in the last 180 days and never shows who sold what or for how much.
Announcements
We may send campus announcements in the app. Safety announcements always go out. News and updates follow your Tips setting in Notifications.
Meetup share links
When you plan a meetup you can create a link to send a friend. Anyone with the link can see the meetup time, place and status until it expires. It doesn’t show your email or messages.
5. How long we keep it
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Account, listings, messages | Until you delete your account. Chats closed for 90 days move to private archive storage, which is deleted with your account. |
| Chat photos | Kept with the chat: until you delete your account. |
| Around campus posts | Like other listings: until you delete your account. Free food posts leave the app after at most 3 hours. |
| Quad posts and replies | Until you delete your account. A post you delete or that we remove leaves the Quad right away; we keep a private copy until then so we can act on reports. |
| Quad votes, hides and mutes | Until you undo them or delete your account. |
| Invite records | Until you delete your account. |
| Notifications | 60 days |
| Swipes (other than saves) | 30 days |
| Reports and evidence | 180 days after the report is resolved |
| Moderation audit log | 2 years |
| Age checks (a one-way hash only) | 365 days |
| Banned accounts (a one-way hash of the email only) | Kept to stop return sign-ups |
| Waitlist requests | Until we tell you your school opened, or 12 months |
| Data export files | Link works for 7 days; the file is deleted on day 8 |
| Backups | 30 days |
6. Your choices and rights
- See your data: Profile, Settings, Download your data (section 4).
- Change it: edit your profile any time.
- Delete it: in the app (Profile, Settings, Delete account) or on the web at /delete. Deletion is complete except the retention above (reports, hashes and backups).
- Notifications and analytics: turn them off in Settings.
7. Age
OnlySwap is only for people 18 and older. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 18, we delete it.
8. Security
We use encrypted connections, row-level access rules in our database, two-step sign-in for staff, and access logs for any staff action. No system is perfect, so please report anything suspicious through the Help page.
9. Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we’ll tell you in the app. The version and date are at the top.
10. Contact
Privacy questions or requests: use the Help page.