Privacy Policy

Everything we hold about you, in one list:

• Your name. A first name is fine. It is what appears on a roster after a gathering is over.
• Your email address. How you sign in, and how we tell you a night is happening.
• Your phone number, optional. Held for a future text-alert option that is not switched on. Leave it blank and nothing is missing.
• Your interests, optional. What you are usually up for on a free night, in your own words, so the host can plan something people actually want to do.
• When you are usually free, and what you would rather be doing. Both optional. A set of recurring weekly slots, and six fixed kinds of thing put in the order you want them. Standing answers rather than a commitment to any particular week. They are what the host builds small groups from, and leaving them blank keeps you out of grouping entirely.
• Your age range, optional. A band, never an exact age, and only ever shown as part of a mix (“3 aged 25–34”). Never next to your name.
• Your flare and attendance history. Which nights you said you were free, which gatherings you confirmed for, whether you showed up, which small groups you were put in, and when you last opened one of those chats.
• Messages you send. Anything you write in a gathering's chat, in a small group's chat, in a private thread with the host, or to someone you have both friended.
• Requests you make. Anything you ask for as something to do, any note you add to it, and the days you say would suit you.
• Your settings. Which emails you want, and the record that you accepted these documents and when.

That is the whole list. There is no profile to build beyond it, and we do not buy or import information about you from anywhere else.

To run the thing you signed up for: to know who is in the pool, to tell you when a night goes on the calendar, to count how many people are free without revealing who they are, to seat people at a gathering that has a cap, to put a few people who want the same kind of evening into a group that can plan one, and to open names and chat to the people who were actually there once it is over.

We also look at the totals (how many people showed up, how many came back) to work out whether Bondfire is working. Those are counts, not case files.

This is the part that makes Bondfire different, so here it is precisely:

• Your flares are visible only to the host. Other members see a number (how many people are free that night) and never a name, a face, or anything that could identify you.
• What you ask for is never shown with your name. If the host puts your request to the pool, everyone sees the idea and your note and nobody is told who asked. The days you said would suit you are not shown to anyone but the host. A request the host does not put up is seen by nobody except the two of you.
• Your name is visible only after you have met, with one exception. First names appear on a gathering's roster once the host marks it complete, and only to the people who held a seat at it. The exception is a small group: the four to eight members the host puts in one can see each other's first names, and what each other writes, from the moment it opens. Nothing else about you goes with it, the host is in every group chat, and nobody outside that group can read any of it.
• A group tells the people in it one thing about you. That you picked the kind of evening the group was formed around and are usually free at that time. It shows nobody your full set of answers, and being left out of a group is never announced to anyone.
• Your phone number, your written interests and your age range are never shown to other members. The host can see them. Your age range reaches other members only as part of an aggregate count. Your free evenings and your ranking are the host's to read too; other members see only the one slot and the one kind of evening a group they share with you was built on.
• Private feedback stays private. Vouches you leave about the host reach them as a tally, never attributed to you. Friending or passing on someone is never disclosed to them.
• There is no directory. Members cannot look each other up, browse the pool, or search for anyone. The database enforces this, not just the interface.

We do not sell, rent, trade or share your personal information with anyone for money or for their own marketing. Not now, and not as some future change of policy. If that ever became the plan, this service would not be worth running.

Only the two companies it takes to run the service, and only what they need:

• Supabase hosts our database and handles signing in. Everything in the list above is stored there.
• Resend sends our email. They get your email address and the contents of the message.

Both are bound to use it only to provide the service to us. Beyond them, we share personal information only if the law requires it, or if we genuinely believe it is needed to stop someone being hurt.

Our site is hosted on Vercel, which keeps ordinary server logs and basic, non-identifying page-view analytics. We do not use advertising trackers or cookies for anything but keeping you signed in.

Your profile stays as long as your account does. Messages stay until the account of someone in the conversation is deleted. Flare and attendance records are kept indefinitely, because they are what the totals are counted from. But see below for what happens to them when you leave.

Email is retained by Resend for a short period as delivery logs, on their schedule rather than ours.

There is a Delete my account button in Settings. It takes a typed confirmation and then does the following, immediately and permanently:

• Your name, email address, phone number, interests and age range are erased.
• Your messages are deleted: the group chats, the host threads and the direct threads with people you friended.
• Your friend and pass decisions are deleted, in both directions.
• Requests the host never put to the pool are deleted. One that did go up stays, because it was never shown with your name and a gathering may have come out of it, but nothing connects it to you once your profile is erased.
• Your sign-in stops working and you are out of the pool. No further email of any kind is sent to you.
• Your flare and attendance rows are anonymised rather than deleted. What is left is a record that a seat was taken on a given night, attached to nothing that identifies you. This keeps the totals honest: a gathering eight people came to should not retroactively become a gathering seven people came to.

If you would rather someone did it for you, or you want a copy of what we hold first, email dan@bondfire.club and we will handle it.

Access rules are enforced in the database itself, so a bug in the interface cannot expose a member to another member. Connections are encrypted. Sign-in is by emailed link or a password you choose, and we never see your password.

None of that is a guarantee. No service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise. If something goes wrong that affects you, we will tell you.

Bondfire is for people 18 and over, as set out in the Terms. We do not knowingly collect anything about anyone younger. If you believe we have, email dan@bondfire.club and it will be deleted.

Bondfire is run from North Carolina and intended for people in and around Chapel Hill and Carrboro, so our data is stored and processed in the United States.

If you are in the UK, the EU or the EEA, the GDPR may give you rights beyond the ones described above: to access a copy of your data, to correct it, to have it erased, to restrict or object to how we use it, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw consent at any time. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Where GDPR applies, our lawful bases are performing the agreement between us (running the service you joined), your consent (the optional fields and marketing email), and our legitimate interest in keeping gatherings safe and understanding whether Bondfire works.

To exercise any of these, email dan@bondfire.club. We will respond within 30 days and we will not charge you for it.

If we change what we collect or who we share it with, the version and effective date at the top of this page change and we will email members about anything significant.

Daniel Meskill, 1100 W North Carolina Hwy 54 Bypass, Apt 41, Chapel Hill, NC 27516. Privacy questions and requests go to dan@bondfire.club.