CampusStay Privacy Policy

CampusStay (“we”, “us”) runs the website campusstay.website and the CampusStay app. We handle your personal information with Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) in mind. You can reach us at richardassietbe@gmail.com.

When you create an account: your full name, email address, password (we store only a scrambled version of it, never the password itself), your campus, and, if you give them, your phone number, gender and profile picture. We also give you a member ID.

When you sign in with Google: your name, email address, profile picture and Google account ID (see the Sign in with Google section below).

When you use CampusStay: your hostel bookings, marketplace orders, payment records (amount, reference and status), chat messages with sellers, providers, hosts, hostel managers and admins, reviews, reports, listings you post, applications to sell, provide services, host rentals or work as an agent, news posts, comments, reactions and poll votes you make, and the notifications we send you.

If you earn money on CampusStay (as a seller or agent): the mobile money or bank account number and account name you give us, so we can pay you.

If you apply for Campus Verification: photos of your student ID and of you, a photo of an ID card, and your phone number for a verification call. These are kept private and are deleted 30 days after we decide your application.

Files you upload (photos, short videos, voice notes, documents) and what is in them.

Technical information: your IP address and browser details when you log in or use the service, which we use to keep accounts safe and to slow down abuse. In your browser we keep your login, your display preferences and a random device code that helps us keep accounts safe and prevent abuse.

• To create your account, log you in and keep it secure.
• To run hostel bookings, marketplace orders, refunds, disputes and payouts.
• To let you chat with the people you deal with on CampusStay.
• To contact you about your account, orders, bookings and payments (by in-app notification and email).
• To check that listings, uploads and users follow our rules, and to investigate reports.
• To understand how the service is used and to fix errors.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it to show you advertising.

If you choose “Continue with Google”, we receive your name, email address, profile picture and Google account ID (we ask Google only for the openid, email and profile permissions). We use this only to create and sign you in to your CampusStay account and to contact you about it. We do not sell it, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not ask for any other access to your Google account.

CampusStay's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Other CampusStay users. Sellers, providers and hosts see only what they need to deal with you: for example your name and, once an order is paid, your phone number so they can arrange delivery. Hostel managers see your booking details. Reviews and comments you post show your name. Your email address and payout details are never shown to other users.

CampusStay admins can see account, order, booking, report and verification information when they need it to run the service, and their actions are recorded in an audit log.

Companies that help us run CampusStay. They only receive what they need to do their job:

• Paystack processes payments. It receives your email address, the amount and a payment reference. You enter your card or mobile money details on Paystack's page, not ours.
• Resend sends our emails, so it receives the email address and the content of the message.
• PostHog receives records of actions taken in the app (for example “order completed”) with your account ID and the ID of the thing involved. It does not receive your name or email.
• Sentry receives technical error reports when something breaks, which can include IDs and technical details.
• Cloud file storage (an S3-compatible service) stores the files you upload.
• VirusTotal receives a fingerprint (hash) of each uploaded file to check for known malware. It does not receive the file itself.
• Google, if you use Google sign-in.
• Vercel hosts the website and Railway hosts our server and database.

We may also share information when the law requires it, or to protect people from fraud or harm.

Some of the companies above store information outside Ghana. We use them because they provide secure services, and we only share what they need.

We keep your account information while your account is open. Payment, order, refund and payout records are kept after an account is closed, because we need them for accounting, disputes and legal reasons. Campus Verification photos are deleted 30 days after our decision. For most other information we do not yet delete things automatically, so if you want something removed, please ask us (see below).

You can ask us to show you the information we hold about you, to correct it, to stop using it in a way you object to, or to delete it. You can update your name and phone number in your profile, and you can mute some notifications in Notification settings.

To use any of these rights, or to ask us to delete your account, email richardassietbe@gmail.com from the email address on your account. At the moment account deletion is done by us, not by a button in the app. We will delete what we can; we may need to keep payment and order records, and we will tell you if so.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, you can also complain to Ghana's Data Protection Commission.

Passwords are stored in scrambled form. Connections to CampusStay are encrypted. Access to information inside CampusStay depends on a person's role, and admin actions are logged. Uploaded files are checked before they are used. No online service is perfectly secure, so please choose a strong password and keep it private.

We use your browser's storage to keep you logged in, remember your display choices, and for the device code described above. We use one small cookie that only tells our website whether you are logged in. We do not use advertising cookies, and we do not put advertising trackers on the website.

CampusStay is for university students. It is not meant for young children, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If the change is important we will tell you in the app or by email.

Questions about your privacy? Email richardassietbe@gmail.com.