Who is responsible for your data
Agora is built and run by Can Nalbantoğlu, an individual developer based in Türkiye. Under the GDPR I am the data controller for the information described here.
For anything about your data, write to agora.exchange14@gmail.com. That address reaches a person, not a ticketing system.
What Agora collects, and why
Everything below is collected because a feature needs it. Nothing is collected "just in case", and none of it is used for advertising or sold to anyone.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address | Identifies your account, lets you sign in and reset your password, and is how you are contacted about the account. Supplied by you, or by Google or Apple if you sign in that way. |
| Password | Only if you sign up with email. Stored as a salted hash by the authentication service; it is never visible to me in readable form. Accounts created through Google or Apple have no password at all. |
| Name and username | Shown on your profile so other readers know who they are trading with. |
| Profile photo, banner image, bio | Optional. Shown on your profile. |
| Approximate location | A place label (neighbourhood or city) plus its coordinates, so the app can show books near you and how far away another reader is. See Location, in detail. |
| Book listings | Title, author, category, condition, your short review, and details pulled from the book catalogue (publisher, year, page count, ISBN). This is the content of the app. |
| Book photos | Photographs you take of your own copies, so other readers can see the actual condition. |
| Wishlist and favourite genres | Used to tell you when a wanted book is listed nearby, and to order your home feed. |
| Messages | The content of direct messages between you and another reader, so a conversation persists across devices and sessions. |
| Trades, requests, follows | Who requested what, the state of each trade, and who follows whom. Without these there is no swap and no shelf to browse. |
| Blocks and reports | Who you have blocked, and any report you file — the reason, your note, and what it was about. Required to keep the app usable and to meet the App Store's moderation rules. |
| Push token and notification settings | Only if you allow notifications. An anonymous device token used to deliver alerts you asked for, plus which categories you turned on. |
| Terms acceptance | The date you agreed to the Terms and which version, so both sides can tell what was agreed to. |
| Technical logs | Created automatically by the hosting providers when your app talks to the server: IP address, timestamps, and the type of request. Used for security, abuse prevention, and diagnosing faults. |
What Agora does not do
- No analytics SDK. The app contains no analytics, attribution, or crash-reporting service. Nothing measures how you move around the app.
- No advertising and no tracking across other apps or websites. Nothing goes to data brokers, and the app does not use the advertising identifier.
- Nothing is sold. Not your data, not aggregated versions of it.
- No continuous background location. The app asks for location once, when you set your area, and does not follow you around.
- No contacts, no photo library scanning, no microphone. Camera access is used only when you actively take a picture of a book, and photo access only for a picture you choose yourself.
The legal basis for each use (GDPR)
- Performing our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b)) — your account, profile, listings, messages, trades, follows, and the location used to show nearby books. Without these the app cannot do what you installed it to do.
- Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — push notifications, optional email alerts, and access to your camera or photo library. Each is asked for separately and can be withdrawn at any time in Settings or in iOS Settings.
- Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — keeping the service secure, preventing abuse and fraud, and reviewing reports. The interest is in Agora remaining a place people can use safely.
- Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) — responding to a valid legal request, where one is ever received.
Where your data lives, and who else touches it
Agora has no data centre of its own. It runs on services operated by other companies, listed here in full. Each one only ever receives what it needs to do its job.
Supabase — database, accounts, and file storage
Nearly everything is stored in a Supabase project: your account and password hash, your profile, listings, messages, trades, follows, blocks, reports, and your uploaded images. Supabase Inc. acts as a processor on my instructions under its data processing terms. Access inside the database is restricted by row-level security rules, so one account cannot read another's private data.
Expo — push notification delivery
If you turn notifications on, Expo's push service delivers them to Apple, which delivers them to your phone. Expo receives the device token and the notification text — for example "you have a new message" and the sender's name. If notifications are off, Expo receives nothing.
Apple and Google — sign-in
If you use Sign in with Apple or Google Sign-In, that provider confirms to Agora that you are who you say you are and passes across your name and email address. Agora never sees your Apple or Google password. Sign in with Apple lets you hide your real address behind a relay address, and Agora works normally if you do.
Google Books — the catalogue search
When you search for a book to list or to add to your wishlist, the words you type are sent to the Google Books API to fetch matching titles and covers. Google receives the search text and the request itself (which includes your IP address); it does not receive your Agora account details, and Agora does not tell Google who searched.
Other readers
The largest audience for your data is other people using the app. Your username, photo, banner, and bio are visible to other signed-in readers. Your listings and wishlist are also visible unless you switch on Private Account in Settings → Privacy & Visibility, in which case they are visible only to followers you have approved. Location visibility is narrower and is explained below. Messages are visible to the reader you sent them to. Your email address, password, exact coordinates, and street address are never shown to anyone.
Legal requests
Data may be disclosed if a valid legal process requires it, or where it is necessary to protect someone's safety. Nothing else is shared with anyone.
Location, in detail
Setting an area is part of onboarding and it drives one feature: showing you books near enough to swap.
- You can let the app read your device location, or type a place in yourself. Either way you confirm the result before it is saved.
- A city label and the coordinates of the point you confirm are stored in a private location record. Only your account can read that raw record.
- The server can return a city label and a coarse five-kilometre distance band, such as 10–15 km. Signed-in readers can receive this for public accounts; private accounts share it only when both people follow each other. The other reader never receives either person's coordinates.
- Location is read when you set it, not continuously. The app does not track your movements and has no background location access.
- You can change your area from Edit Profile, subject to a 24-hour change limit, and iOS Settings can revoke location permission entirely.
If you would rather not give a real neighbourhood, pick a nearby landmark or a district centre instead. Distances will be a little off, and everything else works.
How long it is kept
| What | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Your account and everything in it | As long as the account exists. Deleted when you delete it. |
| Messages | Until you delete the message, or until either participant deletes their account. |
| Book listings | Until you remove the listing or delete your account. |
| Reports you filed | Deleted with your account. |
| Reports filed about you | Kept as a moderation record for up to 12 months after your account is deleted, with no profile left to identify you. Keeping them is what makes it possible to act on abuse. |
| Infrastructure logs (IP addresses, request records) | Up to 90 days, then discarded by the provider. |
Deleting your data
You can delete your account and its data from inside the app, without asking anyone: Settings → Delete Account. It is immediate and permanent.
Deleting removes your profile, your listings and their photos, your profile and banner images, your messages and conversations, your trades and requests, your follows in both directions, your blocks, the reports you filed, your push token, your notification settings, and finally the login itself. There is no deactivated state and no recovery period — once it is gone, it is gone.
Step-by-step instructions, including how to delete your account after uninstalling the app.
Security
Traffic between the app and the servers is encrypted with TLS. Passwords are stored as salted hashes and are not readable by me. Database access is governed by row-level security rules so that an account can only reach its own data, and your session token is held in the iOS keychain rather than in ordinary storage.
No system is perfectly secure and it would be dishonest to promise otherwise. If you find a security problem in Agora, please email agora.exchange14@gmail.com rather than posting it publicly, and I will fix it as quickly as I can.
Children
Agora is not for children. It carries unmoderated messaging between strangers and shows approximate locations, so the Terms require you to be 16 or older and the App Store rating says the same.
Personal information is not knowingly collected from anyone under that age. If you believe a child has created an account, email agora.exchange14@gmail.com and the account and its data will be removed.
Your rights under the GDPR
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the following rights over your personal data. Several of them you can exercise yourself, immediately, without contacting anyone.
- Access — a copy of the personal data held about you.
- Rectification — correction of anything inaccurate. Most of it you can edit directly in Profile → Edit Profile.
- Erasure — deletion of your data. Settings → Delete Account does this in full.
- Restriction — asking that processing be limited while a dispute is worked out.
- Portability — your data in a machine-readable format, or sent to another provider where that is technically feasible.
- Objection — objecting to processing based on legitimate interests.
- Withdrawing consent — turning off notifications, email alerts, or camera, photo, and location permissions at any time, in Settings or iOS Settings. Withdrawing consent does not undo processing that already happened lawfully.
- Complaint — lodging a complaint with your national data protection authority.
To exercise any of these, email agora.exchange14@gmail.com. You will get a reply within 30 days, usually much sooner, and there is no charge. You may be asked to confirm the request from the email address on the account, so that nobody can request your data by pretending to be you.
International transfers
The providers listed above operate internationally, so your data may be stored or processed outside your own country, including outside the European Economic Area and outside Türkiye. Where that happens, the transfer relies on the providers' standard data protection terms, including the European Commission's standard contractual clauses where they apply.
Changes to this policy
This policy will change when the app does. When it does, the effective date at the top of this page changes with it, and the current text is always the text on this page.
For a change that materially affects what is collected or who receives it, you will be told inside the app before it takes effect, and asked to agree again where the law requires it. Nothing in a revision is applied retroactively to data already collected under an earlier version.
Contact
For privacy questions, GDPR requests, and anything else about your data. Replies within 2 business days; formal data requests are answered within 30 days.