Privacy — seeking.community

The short version

We only ask for what we need to point people toward a community that fits.
A person reads everything and does the matching. Nothing about you is ever listed publicly.
Community profiles are seen only by seekers we matched with that community. Seekers are never shown to communities.
We don't sell or rent your data, and we don't advertise.
You can ask us what we hold, correct it, or have it deleted at any time: write to hello@seeking.community.

1. Who is responsible

The data controller is seeking.community, run by the people behind EcoHubs.community, based in Ecuador. Questions, requests and complaints about your data: hello@seeking.community. We have not designated a Data Protection Officer. Everything about your data goes to the contact address above, and a person answers.

2. What we collect

If you are looking for a community

Your answers to our ten questions and your email address, so we can find matches and send them to you.
The matches we send you, when you last looked at them, how you rated each one (with any reasons or notes), and anything you write to us about them.
If you leave a review: your ratings and comment and, only if you choose to, a display name and photo for a testimonial.
If you send a community one message from its profile: the message, when you sent it, and your agreement to share your email address with that community. We email it to the community with your address, so they can reply to you directly. We don't read messages, unless the community reports one to us.

If you are part of a community

The community's profile: name, website, location, the details and answers in it, and which of them you chose to show to matches.
Up to five photos the community adds. We remove all hidden information from them (like the location a phone saves) before storing them, and show them only to people we match with the community.
The email addresses of the people who can edit it, and a contact name and address for the community.
Profiles we drafted for you: for some communities we prepare a first draft from information they have published themselves (their website or public listings), and invite them to review it. Until you claim it, a draft is used for nothing else and is visible to no one but us.
For invitations: which emails we sent, and the steps of claiming (link opened, claim started, signed in, claimed, published), so we can see where the process is unclear.
Feedback you send us about the process.

If someone tells us "this is not my community"

If you use that option and give us the email of the right person, we store that address only to get in touch with the right person, show it only to our team, and delete it with the profile. We never write to it automatically.

Everyone who visits

When you sign in with an email code: the session, plus the IP address and browser it started from, to keep your account secure.
Your IP address, briefly and in memory only, to stop the same address from sending hundreds of requests. It is not stored.
In your own browser: your answers while you are still writing them, and your cookie choice. These stay on your device.
Our server's access logs (IP address, time, page requested), kept for security and to fix problems.

3. Sensitive information

Our questions are about how you want to live, so your answers may include things like your faith, health, sexuality or family situation. Communities may describe their spirituality. Share only what you are comfortable with. Whatever you write is used only to find matches, is read only by the person doing the matching, and is never published.

4. Why we use it, and on what basis

We ask for your consent separately for each purpose, and never bundle them:

Finding your matches (including the AI service that helps suggest them): your consent, given with a checkbox when you send your answers.
Your community's profile: the community's consent, given when it claims or adds its profile and when it publishes it for matching.
Sending a community a message: your consent, given with a checkbox for each message, to share your email address with that one community.
Analytics: your consent through the cookie banner. Declining changes nothing else.
Security (sign-in sessions, blocking abuse, logs): our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe.
Legal obligations, where the law requires us to keep or share data.

You can withdraw any consent at any time by writing to us. Withdrawing doesn't affect what happened before.

5. How matching works

A person reads your answers and compares them with the communities we know. To help with that, we give your answers and the community profiles to an external AI service, which suggests possible matches. It works only on our behalf and only for this. A person checks every suggestion, decides, and writes to you. We send you a short list; you decide whether to contact a community. Communities never see who was matched with them unless you write to one, and your answers are never shared with them.

6. Cookies and analytics

We only use Google Analytics 4 if you accept it in the cookie banner. It starts with tracking denied, uses no advertising features, and helps us see which pages actually help people. Everything works the same if you decline. We host our own fonts, so loading the site doesn't contact Google otherwise.

7. Who else handles your data

Our server: the website and database run on a server we manage ourselves, rented from IONOS (ionos.de) and located in the United States.
Email: messages are sent through the mail server of Mediakular, which delivers them on our behalf.
AI assistance: an external AI provider processes intake answers and community profiles to suggest matches, on our behalf and under a data processing agreement.
Google: only for analytics, and only if you accepted. Emails we send may load their typefaces from Google Fonts when you open them.

We don't sell, rent or trade personal data, and nobody else gets it.

8. International transfers

Our server is located in the United States. Our email service and the AI service we use may also process data outside Ecuador, and Google processes analytics data in the United States. Where data leaves Ecuador, we only use providers that protect it with appropriate safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses.

9. How long we keep it

Your intake answers, matches, match ratings and notes to us: Until you ask us to delete them, and at most two years after your last visit to your matches.
Reviews and testimonials: Until you ask us to remove them. A published testimonial comes off the homepage as soon as you ask.
Sign-in codes: 10 minutes, or until used.
Sign-in sessions (with the IP address and browser they started from): Until you sign out or the session expires.
A community profile, its photos and its editors: As long as the community keeps it. Deleting it removes everything at once.
A profile we drafted that nobody claimed: Deleted three months after we first invited the community.
Invitations, the emails we sent, the claim timeline, "not my community" reports and community feedback: Deleted together with the community profile they belong to.
Messages a seeker sends to a community: The text is deleted about 30 days after sending (a reported message is kept until we have looked at it). The note that a message was sent is deleted with the community profile, or when the seeker asks us to delete their data.
Analytics (only if you accepted): Detailed, user-level data: 2 months (Google's default). Google's summary reports keep only aggregated numbers.
Our server's access logs (IP address, time, page requested): Rotated monthly; at most 10 months.

10. Your rights

Under Ecuador's Personal Data Protection Law (LOPDP) you can ask to see the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, receive it in a portable format, object to or restrict how we use it, and withdraw your consent. Write to hello@seeking.community. We answer within 15 business days. Communities can also delete their profile themselves at any time.

11. Security

The site is served only over HTTPS. Access to our admin area is limited to our team and protected by email codes. We keep a record of what we process and why, collect as little as we can, and delete what we no longer need.

12. Children

seeking.community is for adults. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.

13. Changes to this policy

When we change something that matters, we update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects what we do with data you have already given us, we ask you again.

14. Complaints

If you think we have handled your data wrongly, please tell us first. We'd like to put it right. You can also complain to Ecuador's Superintendencia de Protección de Datos Personales (SPDP).

What we keep, and why.