Privacy Policy
Last updated: 5 November 2026
Inboard is an app for travellers staying at hostels and colivings: you check in, and for your stay you can see what's on, who else is there, the plans other travellers make, and chat. Hostels use it to post events and talk to their guests. This policy explains what we collect, why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and your rights.
Who we are
Inboard is run by Andrea D’Arpa, 259 Bergen Street, Apt 11, Brooklyn, NY 11217, United States, which is the data controller for the personal data described here. Contact: privacy@joininboard.com.
Each hostel is a separate controller for what it takes out of Inboard on its own account — for example the email list of guests who chose to hear from it, or a guest's last name it uses to match a booking.
What we collect
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your email address (and your name from Apple or Google, if you sign in with them) | To sign you in. Your email is never shown to other travellers. |
| Your profile: first name, last name, country, and optionally a photo, languages, interests, a short "about", what you're up to this week, and your Instagram handle | So travellers at your hostel can get to know you. First name, last name and country are needed to use the app; the rest is optional. |
| Your last name | So reception can match you to your booking. Only the staff of a hostel you have stayed at see it in full; other travellers see only its first letter ("Maria F."). |
| Your stays: which hostel you checked in to, when, for how many nights, and how the stay ended | Your stay is what gives you access to that hostel's space in the app. |
| Plans you make or join, and messages, photos, places, polls and votes you share in chats; reactions, and which chats you have read, muted or archived | That is the app. They are seen by the people in that chat or plan (below). |
| Your location — only when you choose to share a place in a chat | To show that place. We never track your location in the background. |
| A notification token for your phone or browser, if you turn notifications on | To send you notifications. It is deleted when you turn them off, sign out or delete your account. |
| Whether you have paid reception for an event | So the hostel knows who has paid. We never handle card details or money. |
| A rating of your stay (1 to 5, and a comment if you write one), if you give one | The hostel's staff read it, with your first name and last initial, in the app, and its managers in their summary email. If you delete your account it stays, signed the same way. |
| A rating of a hostel event you signed up for (1 to 5, and a comment if you write one), or that you skipped it — asked once in the app after the event | The hostel's staff read it, with your first name and last initial, in the app, to plan better events. If you delete your account it stays, signed the same way. |
| Reports you make, people you block, and wrong check-in codes typed | To keep the app safe. A person you block is never told. |
| Whether you said yes to a hostel's emails | Only if you tick that box. The hostel then receives your name and email address. You can say no at any time from your profile; the hostel then sees that you did, with your address, so that it can take you off any copy of its list. |
| Emails you send us | To answer you. |
If you work at a hostel
For a hostel's staff login we collect your work email, your name, and optionally a photo; the details the hostel gave when it signed up, including a phone number we use only to reach you about your hostel; and what you do in the app — events you post, payments you mark, messages you send as the hostel, the hostel's page, guests you check in or remove, check-in codes, invite links, handover notes, and the hostel's team log, which your hostel's managers can read. Every staff login receives an email when a guest reports something. Managers also receive a summary of the last 7 days by email once a week, on the day and at the hour they choose (on unless they turn it off); it includes guests' stay ratings and comments, with their first names. If you turn on notifications for the hostel (when a guest writes to reception or reports something, or a colleague mentions you), we keep this phone's notification token or this browser's subscription until you turn them off, sign out, or delete the login; the notifications name the guest by first name and show the start of what they wrote.
On your device
The app keeps on your phone or computer only what it needs: your sign-in, a few preferences, messages and answers waiting to send while you are offline, a plan you have not finished writing, and, in the iPhone and Android apps, the notification token. We do not use advertising, tracking or analytics services, there are no tracking cookies, and we do not sell your data.
Who can see what
- Travellers at your hostel see your profile in People while you are checked in, unless you turn off Show me to people at my hostel. Travellers at other hostels in the same city see you only if you say yes: Show me to people at other hostels in the city is off until you tick it, when you join or later in your profile. An account made before November 2026 keeps the setting it had.
- Chats are seen by the people in them: the hostel chat by everyone checked in there, who can read it from the start of the day they checked in, and by the hostel's staff, who can read all of it (a message the hostel pins stays for everyone); a plan's chat by the people going (and, until 12 hours after it starts, those who can see the plan); a group by its members; a direct chat by the two of you.
- Anyone who can read a message of yours can open your profile (first name, last initial, photo, country, about, Instagram) — even if you are hidden from People. On a plan you join, your name and photo appear under "Who's going" to everyone who can see the plan.
- Your private chat with reception is seen by you and that hostel's staff. Hostel staff also see who is checked in, your full last name, your stays at their hostel, whether you have paid for their events, your rating of your stay and of their events (with your name), and the hostel chat and plan chats. They never see your direct or group chats, with one exception: a line somebody reports, from any chat, reaches that hostel's staff and us, so it can be acted on. Hostels also see statistics about their guests in Insights: how many came, from where, speaking what, interested in what, and which events they signed up for and how they rated them. If you said yes to a hostel's emails, it sees your email address and first name, and can download them. The hostel's managers also see its team log, which notes your first name when staff mark you paid or end your stay, and the first words of a message of yours that staff delete or pin.
- When your stay ends, you no longer see that hostel's space, and its travellers no longer find you in People; what you wrote in its chats stays readable to the people in them. The staff of a hostel you stayed at can still see your profile and your stays there, under Past guests.
- Chats are not end-to-end encrypted. They are stored on our servers. We only look when we need to: a report, a safety problem, or the law.
Our service providers
We use these companies to run Inboard. They handle your data to provide their service to us, under their own data-processing terms where they offer them:
- Supabase — database, sign-in and file storage, hosted in Canada.
- Netlify — hosting the website and its server functions.
- Brevo — sign-in emails, and the emails hostel staff receive (reports from guests, the summary email).
- Forward Email — delivering mail sent to our support and privacy addresses.
- Google (Gmail) — the mailbox where that mail and our copy of each report arrive.
- Apple and Google — sign-in, if you choose them; Apple Push Notification service and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging deliver notifications in the apps, and Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla's push services in browsers.
- Google Maps Platform and OpenStreetMap/Photon — place search. What you type is sent to find the place, and not stored by us.
- Pexels — stock photos for events and plans: what you search for goes to Pexels, and the photos load from Pexels's servers.
Like any website, our providers keep technical logs — IP addresses, the browser or phone used, the time of each request — for a limited time, for security and to fix problems.
Inboard is run from the United States and used by travellers from everywhere, so your data leaves the country you are in. The database is hosted in Canada, which the European Commission recognises as protecting personal data adequately; providers that process data in the United States or elsewhere do so under the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.
How long we keep it
- Your account and profile: until you delete your account. Your past stays, plans that already happened, ratings, reports and payments marked for events that already started: for as long as that hostel uses Inboard — they stay after you delete your account, under "Deleted user" (a rating is signed "Former guest"; see Deleting your account).
- Notifications: kept until you read them, then 30 days. Queued notifications: 2 days.
- Notification tokens: until you turn notifications off, sign out, or delete your account.
- Messages: for as long as the chat exists. If you delete your account, the messages you sent stay in their chats, from "Deleted user", so the conversation still makes sense to the people in it — your name, photo and profile are removed. Tick Also delete my messages and photos when you delete it and each one reads "Message deleted" instead; or write to us and we delete them.
- A hostel's team log and handover notes: for as long as the hostel uses Inboard. Write to us and we remove your name from a hostel's team log.
Your rights
You can see and change your profile in the app at any time, and delete your account from You → Delete my account (staff: Settings → Delete this login) — how, and what it deletes. You can also ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to restrict or object to how we use it, or to delete it, by writing to privacy@joininboard.com — we answer within one month. If you think we have not handled your data properly, you can complain to your local data protection authority.
Legal bases: providing the app you signed up for (contract); keeping it safe and working, and the team log for hostels (legitimate interests); hostel emails and notifications (your consent, which you can withdraw).
Age
Inboard is for people aged 18 and over: you confirm it when you sign in, and we do not check it. If we learn that an account belongs to someone younger, we remove it. Tell us at privacy@joininboard.com.
Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date above and, for important changes, tell you in the app.