This Privacy Policy explains how Geniva accesses, collects, stores, uses and shares your personal information when you use our services (the "Services"), including when you download and use the Geniva mobile application, visit geniva.co.uk, or otherwise engage with us.
Geniva is a university social platform that brings together events, sports and group chat for student societies and their members. We are responsible for deciding how your personal information is processed. If you do not agree with this policy, please do not use the Services.
Who we are. The Services are operated by Joshua Hinder, trading as Geniva, a sole trader registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (registration number ICO00014031434), of 124 City Road, London EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom. Joshua Hinder is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy. If the controller ever changes (for example, if the business later incorporates), this policy will be updated to say so.
Questions? Contact us at [email protected].
Summary of key points
This summary highlights the main points. Use the table of contents to jump to any section in full.
What information do we collect? We collect the personal information you provide when you create an account and use the Services — such as your name, email address, username, society memberships and event activity. We do not collect your location.
Do we process sensitive information? We do not deliberately collect special category data. However, your membership of certain societies could reveal information such as religious belief or sexual orientation. We explain how we handle that below.
Do we collect information from third parties? No. We only collect information directly from you.
How do we process your information? To provide and run the Services, enable events and chat, keep the platform safe and secure, and comply with the law. We process information only when we have a valid legal basis.
Is any of it public? Yes. Societies, events and each society’s committee — including their names, usernames and photos — can be seen by anyone, with no account. Everything else needs you to be signed in.
Push notifications are off until you turn them on. When they are on, a chat notification carries the sender’s name and the first part of the message through Expo, Apple and Google to reach your phone.
Do we make automated decisions? Our systems automatically check what you write and the images you upload before they are posted, and can refuse them. A person reviews any appeal, and decisions about your account are always made by a person.
Who do we share it with? Only the service providers needed to operate Geniva (such as our hosting and notification providers). We do not sell your personal information or share it for third-party marketing.
Where is your data held? Your account, posts and messages are stored in Frankfurt, Germany, and our servers run in the Netherlands. Some providers operate globally; we explain the safeguards for those transfers below.
How long do we keep it? Mostly until you delete your account. An account whose university email is not confirmed within 30 days of sign-up is deleted, and an account unused for 2 years is deleted after we warn you by email.
What are your rights? Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete or restrict the use of your personal information. You can exercise these in the app or by contacting us.
Table of contents
- What information do we collect?
- What other people can see
- How do we process your information?
- What legal bases do we rely on?
- When and with whom do we share your information?
- Push notifications
- Is your information transferred internationally?
- How long do we keep your information?
- How do we keep your information safe?
- Do we collect information from minors?
- What are your privacy rights?
- Cookies, device storage and do-not-track
- Do we make updates to this policy?
- How can you contact us?
- How can you review, update or delete your data?
- How can you complain?
01What information do we collect?
Personal information you provide to us
In short: We collect the personal information you give us when you register and use the Services.
We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide when you register, use the Services, take part in activities (such as joining a society, posting, or RSVPing to an event), or contact us. This may include:
- names
- email addresses
- usernames
- passwords (stored only in encrypted, hashed form by our authentication provider — we never see or store your password in plain text)
- contact and notification preferences
- society memberships and the events you create, join or attend
- messages and content you post in society and event group chats
- whether you have confirmed your email address
- which version of our Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy you accepted, and when
Sensitive (special category) information
We do not ask for, or deliberately collect, special category data — for example information about your health, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation.
However, because Geniva lets you join societies, your membership of a particular society could indirectly reveal special category information — for example, joining a faith society may suggest a religious belief, or joining an LGBTQ+ society may suggest sexual orientation.
Where this happens, we rely either on the "not-for-profit body" condition in Article 9(2)(d) of the UK GDPR (which covers societies processing data about their own members) or on your explicit consent. For each society's membership list, the society itself decides how that data is used and acts as the data controller, and Geniva acts as its data processor — meaning we only handle that membership data on the society's instructions.
Information collected automatically
In short: We collect a limited amount of technical information needed to run and secure the Services.
When you use the Services, our hosting and infrastructure providers automatically record limited technical information in server logs — principally your IP address, basic device and operating-system information, and diagnostic data such as error reports. We use this only to operate, secure and troubleshoot the Services. We do not collect or track your location, and we do not use this technical data to build advertising profiles.
If you use the mobile application, we may also process the device identifiers needed to deliver push notifications you have asked to receive.
When we email you, our email provider tells us whether the email was delivered, bounced or marked as spam, and we store that status alongside our record of the email.
If you use the Android app, it checks geniva.co.uk for a newer version when you open it. Like any visit to our website, that request is recorded with your IP address in our website host's logs. We do not use it to identify you.
02What other people can see
In short: Some of Geniva is public. You can browse it without an account, and so can anyone else.
You do not need an account to look at Geniva, and neither does anyone else — including search engines.
- Public to anyone, with no account: society pages and their descriptions, logos and links; events, including their titles, descriptions, venues and times; our announcements; and, on each society page, the names, usernames, profile photos and roles of that society’s committee.
- Visible to signed-in members: the feed, posts, photos, dumps, comments, attendee lists and group chats of the societies you belong to.
- Visible only to you: your notifications, your settings, your email addresses and your verification status.
Profile photos and profile cover images are stored so that anyone holding the direct link to the image can open it, without signing in. Photos inside posts and dumps are not: those are served through links that expire after two hours.
If you join a society committee, your name, username and profile photo become part of a page that anyone on the internet can read. If you would rather they did not, step back from the committee role or change your display name and photo first.
03How do we process your information?
In short: We process your information to provide and improve the Services, communicate with you, keep the platform safe, and comply with the law.
We process your personal information for the following purposes:
- To create and manage your account and keep you logged in.
- To help you finish signing up. If our email asking you to confirm your address is delivered but not used after a while, our team is alerted — with your name, username and email address — so that we can help. We also send you reminder emails 7 and 21 days after you sign up if you have not confirmed yet.
- To keep a record of what you agreed to — which version of our Terms and this policy you accepted, and when.
- To deliver the Services — including events, society and event group chats, and the features you choose to use.
- To enable communication between users through group chats and related features.
- To respond to your enquiries and provide support.
- To send you administrative messages about your account, changes to our terms, and other service-related matters.
- To keep the platform safe and lawful — including moderating content, preventing fraud and abuse, and meeting our obligations under the Online Safety Act 2023.
- To protect vital interests where necessary to prevent harm to you or others.
Automated checks and decisions
To keep Geniva safe, some decisions about your content are made automatically, without a person looking first:
- Text. Everything you write — posts, comments, messages, society pages and profile details — is checked by a content filter on our servers before it is saved. Hate speech, threats and child-safety terms are refused. Other explicit or offensive language is accepted but flagged for our moderation team to review.
- Images. Every image you upload is checked by an automated image-safety service (Amazon Web Services, in London) before it is stored. Images that clearly break our community standards — such as explicit nudity, graphic violence or hate symbols — are refused; borderline images are accepted but flagged for review. If the check cannot be completed, the upload is refused and you can try again. We keep a record of each check's result, but not the image itself.
These checks only decide whether a piece of content can be posted or needs a closer look. Decisions to warn, suspend or ban an account are always made by a person. If you think an automated check got it wrong, you can ask for a person to look at it again, explain your side, and challenge the decision — see Appeals on our Support page. We rely on legitimate interests and our legal duties under the Online Safety Act 2023 for these checks.
04What legal bases do we rely on?
In short: We only process your personal information when we have a valid legal reason to do so under the UK GDPR.
The UK GDPR requires us to explain the legal bases we rely on. Depending on the activity, these are:
- Performance of a contract. We process your information to provide the Services you sign up for and to fulfil our agreement with you — for example, creating your account, recording your RSVPs, and recording which version of our Terms you accepted.
- Legitimate interests. We process some information where it is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your rights — for example, to keep the Services secure, prevent fraud and abuse, check content automatically before it is posted, make sure our emails reach you and help you finish signing up, and find and fix crashes and performance problems in the app using crash and performance reports. We do not use advertising or analytics tracking.
- Consent. We rely on your consent for specific activities, such as sending you push notifications or, where relevant, processing data revealed by your society memberships. You can withdraw consent at any time.
- Legal obligations. We process information where necessary to comply with the law, including our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023 and to cooperate with law enforcement or regulators.
- Vital interests. We process information where necessary to protect someone's life or safety.
05When and with whom do we share your information?
In short: We share information only with the service providers that help us operate Geniva, and in a few specific legal situations.
We use a small number of providers to run Geniva. They may access your personal information only to perform tasks for us, on our instructions, under contracts that require them to protect it. They may not use it for their own purposes, and none of them pays us for your data.
| Provider | What it does for us | What reaches it | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in and file storage | Your account, profile, posts, photos and messages | Frankfurt, Germany |
| Railway | Runs the Geniva API | Every request you make, as it is handled | Netherlands |
| Cloudflare | Security and content delivery in front of our sites, and storing and delivering the Android app download | Your IP address and the requests you make | Global |
| Expo | Delivers push notifications | Notification text, including a message preview | United States |
| Apple, Google | Deliver notifications to your device — Apple on iPhone, Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android | The same notification text, and your device's notification token | Global |
| Amazon Web Services | Automated image safety checks | Each image you upload, at the moment you upload it | London, UK |
| Sentry | Crash and error reporting from the app | Crash reports, app performance measurements and the screens visited beforehand | Germany |
| Resend | Sends our emails and tells us whether each one was delivered | Your email address, the message we send you, and its delivery status | United States |
| Vercel | Hosts geniva.co.uk, including the Android download page and the Android app's update check | Your IP address when you visit the website or the Android app checks for an update | Global |
| Termly | Runs the form you use to make a data request | Your name, email address and what you are asking for — only if you use that form | United States |
We may also disclose your information:
- To comply with the law or respond to lawful requests from public authorities.
- In connection with a business transfer — for example if Geniva is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, in which case your information would remain protected by a policy at least as protective as this one.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.
06Push notifications
In short: They are off until you turn them on, and they carry your message text to Expo, Apple and Google.
Push notifications are off until you switch them on. We never ask for permission when you first open the app, and we do not register your device until you choose to enable them in Settings.
When they are on, a notification about a new chat message contains the sender’s name, the name of the society or channel, and up to the first 140 characters of the message. To reach your phone it passes through Expo and then Apple (on iPhone) or Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging (on Android), so those companies handle that text.
Messages are encrypted while they are stored on our systems, but a notification is not — that is true of every push notification on every phone. If you would rather your messages did not appear on a lock screen, turn notifications off in Settings, or hide message previews in your phone’s own notification settings.
07Is your information transferred internationally?
In short: Everything that matters most is held in the UK or the EEA. Some providers operate globally, with safeguards.
Your account, profile, posts, photos and messages are stored in Frankfurt, Germany. The servers that handle your requests run in the Netherlands, and automated image safety checks run in London. Crash reports from the app are held in Germany. All of these are in the UK or the European Economic Area, and transfers from the UK to the EEA are permitted under the UK's data protection adequacy regulations without any further safeguard.
These providers operate globally and may process some information outside the UK and EEA: Cloudflare, which protects and delivers our sites and the Android app download; Vercel, which hosts geniva.co.uk; Expo, together with Apple and Google, which deliver push notifications; Resend, which sends our email; and Termly, which runs our data-request form, and receives your details only if you use it. Where information is transferred outside the UK, the transfer is covered by safeguards recognised under the UK GDPR — the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK Addendum — as set out in each provider's data processing terms. Ask us and we will tell you which applies to which.
08How long do we keep your information?
In short: Most things go when you delete your account. A few are kept longer, and we say which and why.
Different information is kept for different lengths of time.
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Your account and profile | Until you delete your account, which takes effect immediately — or until it is deleted for inactivity (next row) |
| An account with no activity for 2 years | Deleted automatically. We email you 30 days beforehand, and signing in or using Geniva in that time cancels the deletion |
| An account whose university email address is not confirmed | You can use the account while it is unconfirmed, but if you do not confirm within 30 days of signing up, the account and everything in it are deleted automatically, as if you had deleted it yourself. We send reminder emails 7 and 21 days after you sign up |
| Which version of our Terms and this policy you accepted, and when | Until you delete your account |
| Our record of the emails we send you, and whether each was delivered | Until you delete your account |
| Posts, comments and photos | Until you delete them, or until you delete your account |
| Photos posted in a dump window | Deleted when the window closes — between 1 and 168 hours after it opens, 24 by default — or at once if the committee closes it early |
| Messages you send in a group chat (society, committee and topic chats) | Kept so the conversation stays readable for everyone else. If you delete your account, your name and photo are removed and your messages show as “Deleted user” |
| Direct (1-to-1) messages you send | Until you delete your account, when they are deleted |
| A copy of a message someone reported | Kept with the report as evidence. If the sender deletes their account, the copy is kept without their name or any identifier for 3 years after the report is closed, then deleted. Messages reported as child sexual abuse or exploitation are kept as described in the row about that material |
| Notifications | Until you delete your account |
| Reports about content or people, and our record of what we did about them | Kept after the account involved is deleted, with names and identifiers removed, because we must be able to show how we handled a safety report |
| Privacy complaints you make to us, and our record of how we handled them | 3 years after we close the complaint, then deleted. We keep them for that time even if you delete your account, because we must be able to show the Information Commissioner's Office how we handled a complaint |
| Material reported as child sexual abuse or exploitation, the account details of the person who posted or sent it, and the username of the person who reported it | Kept for as long as needed to report it to the National Crime Agency and support any investigation, and not deleted or anonymised on request during that time. If the person who posted or sent it asks to delete their account, the account is closed and they are signed out, but these details are kept for that period unless we conclude the report was unfounded. If the person who reported it deletes their account, only their username is kept with the report |
| The email address of a banned account | Kept after the account is deleted, so that the ban cannot be evaded by signing up again |
| Our internal record of moderator and administrator actions | Kept as a record of how decisions were made. If you delete your account, your name is removed from these records |
| Server logs, crash reports and database backups | Kept for a short operational period by our hosting providers, for security, troubleshooting and recovery |
Where we cannot delete something immediately because it sits in a backup, we isolate it from further use until that backup is overwritten in the normal cycle.
09How do we keep your information safe?
In short: We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information.
We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational security measures designed to protect the personal information we process, including encryption in transit, access controls and authentication safeguards. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. You should always access the Services within a secure environment.
10Do we collect information from minors?
In short: The Services are intended for users aged 18 and over.
We do not knowingly collect data from, or market to, anyone under 18 years of age. By using the Services, you confirm that you are at least 18. If we learn that we have collected personal information from someone under 18, we will deactivate the account and take reasonable steps to delete that information. If you believe we may hold information about someone under 18, please contact us at [email protected].
11What are your privacy rights?
In short: In the UK, EEA and Switzerland you have rights over your personal information, including access, correction and deletion.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- request access to, and a copy of, your personal information;
- request that we correct or delete your personal information;
- restrict or object to how we process your information;
- request portability of your information;
- ask a person to review a decision made about you by automated means, give your point of view, and challenge it (see Automated checks and decisions); and
- withdraw consent where we rely on it (this does not affect processing that already took place).
You can exercise these rights in the app or by contacting us — see section 15. We will respond in line with applicable data protection law.
If you are unhappy with how we have used or looked after your information, you can complain to us — see section 16.
If you are in the UK and believe we are processing your information unlawfully, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). If you are in the EEA, you may complain to your local supervisory authority; if you are in Switzerland, to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.
Withdrawing your consent
Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time by updating your preferences in the app or by contacting us. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdrew it.
Notifications
You can turn push notifications on or off at any time using the notification settings inside the Geniva app, or in your device's system settings.
Marketing communications
We do not send marketing emails. If we ever start, we will ask for your consent first where the law requires it, and every marketing email will have an unsubscribe link. We will still send you service-related messages necessary to run your account, such as confirmation emails and notices about changes to our terms.
12Cookies, device storage and do-not-track
In short: We only store what is strictly necessary to make Geniva work. No advertising or analytics cookies.
Our website. geniva.co.uk does not set cookies and does not use analytics, advertising or tracking tools.
The app. The app keeps your sign-in session in your phone's secure storage, so you stay logged in, and remembers a few settings on your device (for example, whether you have seen a tip). This is strictly necessary to provide the Services you asked for, so we do not ask for consent to it. Crash and performance reports are sent to Sentry as described in section 5; they are not used for advertising or to track you across other apps or websites.
Do-not-track. Most browsers and some operating systems include a "Do-Not-Track" (DNT) setting. As no uniform standard for DNT signals has been agreed, we do not currently respond to them. If a standard is adopted that we are required to follow, we will update this policy.
13Do we make updates to this policy?
In short: Yes — we will update this policy as needed to stay compliant.
We may update this policy from time to time. Every version is dated at the top, and earlier versions stay available at geniva.co.uk/legal.
If we make an important change — for example, collecting a new kind of information, using it for a new purpose, or sharing it with a new kind of recipient — we will tell you in the app and ask you to review the updated policy the next time you open it. For minor changes, such as clearer wording, we will update the version date. We encourage you to review this policy from time to time.
14How can you contact us?
If you have questions or comments about this policy, you can email us at [email protected] or write to us at:
Geniva
124 City Road
London EC1V 2NX
United Kingdom
15How can you review, update or delete your data?
You have two ways to review, update or delete the personal information we hold about you:
- In the app (recommended). Log in and go to your account settings, where you can review and update your details, export a copy of your data, or request deletion of your account and information.
- By contacting us. If you cannot access your account, email us at [email protected] and we will help you. You can also submit a data subject access request.
When you delete your account in the app, we delete your account, profile, uploaded photos, posts, comments, RSVPs, society memberships and your direct (1-to-1) messages straight away, and you are signed out. Messages you sent in group chats are kept so the conversation stays intact for other members, but they are anonymised: your name and profile are removed and they are shown as "Deleted user". If a message you sent was reported, the copy kept with the report is anonymised in the same way and deleted 3 years after the report is closed. Reports you submitted are kept for moderation with your identity removed. We may retain limited information where necessary to prevent fraud, resolve disputes, comply with legal obligations (including keeping material reported as child sexual abuse or exploitation, and the identities of the people who posted and reported it, available to the National Crime Agency, as described in section 8), or enforce our terms.
16How can you complain?
In short: You can complain to us using our online form or by email, and we'll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days.
If you're unhappy with how Geniva has used or looked after your personal data, you can complain to us directly using our complaints form at geniva.co.uk/privacy/complaints or by emailing [email protected]. We'll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it without undue delay, keep you updated, and let you know the outcome. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
We keep your complaint, our messages to and from you about it, and our record of how we handled it for 3 years after we close the complaint, and then delete them. This applies even if you delete your Geniva account in the meantime.