This policy describes how the personal data of people who use the Kobond app and the kobond.app website is processed, pursuant to Articles 13 and 14 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR). The Italian version is the reference version; this English translation is provided for convenience.
The joint controllers (Art. 26 GDPR) are Edoardo Tuccio, a natural person, and Andrea Sartoni, a natural person, who jointly determine the purposes and means of processing; you can contact either of them.
For any request concerning personal data: [email protected] (alternatively [email protected]).
The service is reserved for adults. We do not knowingly process data of people under 18; if we become aware that a minor has registered, the account is removed.
Kobond can only be used with an account: without signing in, the app and its content (dinners, profiles, chats) are not visible.
Required and optional data. email (or Google/Apple identifier), password, confirmation that you are 18 or older, name, nickname, age, province and bio are required; without them the service cannot be used (you cannot apply, accept invitations or create dinners). All other data (photo, cooking, interests, face verification; with the 1.0 app also allergies) is optional.
| Category | Data | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Email address, encrypted password or Google/Apple identifier, registration date | Provided by the user |
| Profile | Name or nickname, age, city, bio, profile photo, cooking level, favourite cuisines, signature dishes, availability, dish photos | Provided by the user |
| Dishes | Dishes prepared or brought to a dinner and their allergens (information about food, not about a person's health) | Provided by the user |
| Personal allergies (1.0 app only) | Allergies and intolerances, if indicated by the user with version 1.0 of the app | Provided by the user, optional |
| Biometric data | Mathematical model of the face (template) generated from a short video selfie during verification (optional, only for the "Face verified" badge), used only to prevent multiple accounts by the same person | Provided by the user with explicit consent |
| Dinners and participation | Dinners created, applications, confirmations, cancellations, address and coordinates of the dinner venue | Generated by use of the service |
| Communications | Messages in group chats, reports submitted, communications with support | Generated by use of the service |
| Reviews | Ratings and comments left after dinners | Generated by use of the service |
| Location | GPS location, only if authorised, to suggest addresses and nearby dinners; on the map, dinners are shown to everyone only as an approximate area (a 500 m circle that is not centred on the home) | Collected automatically, with permission |
| Technical data | Device identifier, push notification token, registration IP address, language, technical logs | Collected automatically |
The biometric face template falls within the special categories of data (Art. 9 GDPR) and is processed solely on the basis of the explicit consent given in the app, which can be withdrawn at any time by writing to [email protected], in the app under Settings › Face data (see 7.6) or by deleting the account. The video and images are not stored: they are analysed by the recognition service, a non-reversible numerical code is derived from one frame and the rest is discarded. Any allergies are optional information provided voluntarily: those in the profile are visible only to the person themselves, those indicated in an application only to the host of that dinner.
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Creating and managing the account, taking part in dinners, chat | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Verifying that a face is unique to prevent fake or multiple accounts | Explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)) |
| Platform security, abuse prevention, handling of reports, suspensions | Legitimate interest in user safety (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Push notifications and service emails (confirmations, reminders, alerts) | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Internal statistics in aggregate form (overall numbers only on sign-ups, logins and activity; no external analytics tools or tracking cookies) | Legitimate interest in running and improving the service (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Legal obligations and defence of legal claims | Legal obligation / legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(c), 6(1)(f)) |
We use providers acting as data processors, bound by agreements under Art. 28 GDPR:
Every provider is bound by a written agreement requiring it to process the data only on our instructions and to provide the same or greater protection than described in this policy.
Some providers are based in the United States: transfers take place on the basis of the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.
Data is not sold or transferred to third parties for marketing purposes.
The kobond.app website uses no profiling cookies or analytics tools and loads no fonts, scripts or other resources from Google or other external servers: everything is served from our own servers.
Whoever organises a dinner can invite their housemates with a link (kobond.app/invito/…). Whoever opens the link can join the dinner without creating an account, by filling in a temporary profile valid only for that dinner.
| Aspect | How it works |
|---|---|
| Data collected | Name, age (adults only), an optional short sentence, optional photo, an anonymous code generated by the browser to prevent duplicate sign-ups from the same device (stored in the browser as the technical cookie kobond_device_id for 12 months; it is not used to track you and needs no consent), date and time of consent. |
| Purpose | Showing dinner participants who will be there. |
| Legal basis | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) given by ticking the relevant box before submitting. Consent is recorded with date, time and version of the accepted text. |
| Who sees it | Name, age, sentence and photo are visible to registered users viewing that dinner. The data is not verified by Kobond: the dinner page states this explicitly. |
| Retention | The data and photo are deleted automatically within 24 hours of the end of the dinner, or immediately after it is cancelled. The organiser can remove a housemate from the dinner at any time, and their data with them. |
| Real profile (optional) | At the end of sign-up the housemate can choose to create a Kobond account with email and password: in that case name, age, sentence and photo are copied to the new profile and from then on the rest of this policy applies. |
To withdraw consent or request early deletion, just write to [email protected] or ask the organiser to remove you from the dinner.
7.1 What data we collect. Face verification is optional. If you choose to complete it, the app records a short video selfie for a liveness check, which confirms that a real person is in front of the camera. The video is sent directly from your device to Amazon Rekognition over an encrypted connection. From one frame of the video, Amazon Rekognition computes a numerical representation of your face (the "face vector"). We do not store the video, the frames or any photo of your face: the frame is used only in memory for a few seconds and then discarded.
7.2 How we use it. We use face data exclusively to: (a) verify that you are a real person; (b) prevent the same person from creating multiple accounts or returning after being banned, by comparing your face vector with those of other Kobond accounts. We do not use face data for advertising, profiling, marketing or to train artificial intelligence models, we do not sell it and we never show it to other users.
7.3 Legal basis. We process face data only with your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR), collected before verification through an unticked checkbox. You can withdraw it at any time (see 7.6).
7.4 Sharing and storage location. The only providers involved are:
Both act as data processors under Art. 28 GDPR, under agreements that require them to process the data only on our instructions and to provide the same or greater protection than described in this policy. We do not share face data with anyone else.
7.5 Retention.
7.6 Withdrawing consent and deletion. You can withdraw consent and delete your face data at any time in the app under Settings › Face data › "Withdraw consent and delete data". Withdrawal immediately deletes your face vector from Amazon Rekognition and the related data from our database; you will lose the verification badge. The same data is deleted when you delete your account. If deletion at AWS fails on the first attempt, it is automatically retried every day until it succeeds. You can also contact us at [email protected]. Permanently banned accounts are an exception: the face vector is kept as long as the account exists, to prevent the same person from signing up again (see 6-ter), and is deleted when the account is deleted.
7.7 Security. Face data is encrypted in transit and at rest and is accessible only to our server functions, never to the app or to other users.
You can exercise at any time the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability (Arts. 15–22 GDPR), as well as withdraw any consent given. Write to [email protected]: we reply within 30 days.
You can delete your account directly from the app, under Settings → Delete account.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, garanteprivacy.it).
Data is protected with encryption in transit and at rest, row-level access controls on the database, rate limiting and access restricted to authorised personnel. No system is completely secure, however: in the event of a data breach we will inform the people concerned and the supervisory authority within the terms set by Art. 33 GDPR.
Any updates to this policy will be published on this page with the new update date; substantial changes will be communicated in the app or by email.