1. Data Controller

DearAuPair is operated by DIFIA Limited, a company registered in the United Kingdom ("the Company", "we", "us", "our"). We are the data controller responsible for your personal data.

Contact: [email protected]

2. Information We Collect

Information you provide directly:

Account information: email address, password (stored as a secure hash, never in plain text), role (au pair or family)
Profile information: name, date of birth, nationality, languages, experience, bio, photos, videos, reference letters
Messages sent through the platform
Payment information: processed securely by Stripe — we do not store credit card numbers, CVVs, or full card details on our servers
Referral source (how you heard about us)

Information collected automatically:

IP address, browser type, device information, operating system
Pages visited, time spent on pages, referring URLs
Last active timestamp

3. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

We process your personal data under the following legal bases:

Contract performance: Processing necessary to provide you with the Service (account management, profile display, messaging, payments)
Legitimate interests: Fraud prevention, security, platform improvement, and analytics
Consent: Sending non-essential notifications (you can withdraw consent at any time via Settings)
Legal obligation: Compliance with applicable laws, tax requirements, and legal requests

4. How We Use Your Information

Operate and maintain the platform
Display your profile to other users (according to your visibility settings)
Facilitate messaging between au pairs and families
Process payments and manage memberships
Send transactional emails (verification, notifications, hire requests)
Prevent fraud and enforce our Terms of Service
Improve the Service through anonymous usage analytics
Respond to support requests and reports

5. Information Sharing

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information.

We share data with the following third-party service providers, solely for the purposes of operating the Service:

Stripe (Dublin, Ireland / San Francisco, USA) — payment processing and card verification
Resend — transactional email delivery
Cloudflare (global network) — DNS, CDN, security, captcha (Turnstile), and file storage (R2)
Hetzner (Falkenstein, Germany) — server hosting
Sentry — error monitoring (no personal data is sent to Sentry)
Google Ads & Google Analytics (Google LLC, USA / Google Ireland Limited) — measuring the performance of our advertising campaigns and understanding how visitors use the Service. For Enhanced Conversions, your email address is hashed (SHA-256) in your browser before being transmitted; Google receives only the hash, not your email in readable form. Used to attribute sign-ups and memberships to the advertising campaigns that led to them.
Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Corporation, USA) — anonymous behavioural analytics including heatmaps and session replays of how visitors interact with our pages. Clarity automatically masks all form input values (passwords, emails, names) so they are never recorded. Used to identify usability issues and improve the Service.

We may also disclose your information if required by law, court order, or governmental authority, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others.

6. International Data Transfers

Your data is primarily stored and processed on servers located in Germany (EU) via Hetzner Cloud. Files (photos, videos) are stored on Cloudflare R2, which operates globally.

Some of our service providers (Stripe, Sentry, Google, Microsoft Clarity) may process data in the United States. Where data is transferred outside the EU/EEA, we ensure adequate safeguards are in place, including Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) as approved by the European Commission.

7. Data Retention

Active accounts: Data is retained as long as your account is active
Deleted accounts: Personal data is permanently deleted within 30 days of account deletion
Payment records: Retained for 7 years as required by tax and accounting laws
Reports and blocks: Retained for 2 years for safety purposes, even after account deletion
Backups: Database backups are retained for up to 7 days and are automatically overwritten

8. Your Rights (GDPR)

If you are in the EU/EEA or UK, you have the following rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

Right of access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
Right to rectification: Correct inaccurate or incomplete data (via your profile edit page)
Right to erasure: Delete your account and all associated data (via Settings or by contacting us)
Right to restrict processing: Request that we limit how we use your data
Right to data portability: Receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
Right to object: Object to processing based on legitimate interests
Right to withdraw consent: Withdraw consent for non-essential processing at any time (e.g., notification emails via Settings)

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. For UK residents, this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

9. Cookies

Optional cookies (analytics and advertising) only load after you click "Accept all" in our cookie banner. If you click "Reject optional" or close the banner without choosing, no analytics or advertising cookies are set, and Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Microsoft Clarity are not loaded on the page.

We use the following cookies:

Session cookie (essential) — maintains your login session
Locale cookie (essential) — remembers your language preference
Cookie consent cookie (essential) — remembers that you accepted the cookie notice
Attribution cookie (utm) (analytics) — stores the marketing campaign parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, gclid) from the URL you arrived on, so we can attribute your sign-up to the campaign that referred you. Expires after 30 days.
Google Ads & Google Analytics cookies (analytics / advertising) — set by Google's gtag to measure ad performance and website usage. These include _ga, _gid, _gat, and Google Ads conversion cookies. See Google's cookie policy for details.
Microsoft Clarity cookies (analytics) — set by Clarity to record anonymised session replays and heatmaps so we can identify usability problems on the Service. Form fields (passwords, emails, names) are automatically masked and never captured. Cookies include _clck and _clsk. See Microsoft Clarity's documentation for details.

Cloudflare may set security-related cookies to protect against malicious traffic.

10. Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your data, including:

All data transmitted over HTTPS (TLS encryption)
Passwords stored using bcrypt one-way hashing
Credit card data processed by Stripe (PCI DSS compliant) — never stored on our servers
Regular automated backups stored in encrypted storage
Access controls limiting who can access user data
DDoS and bot protection via Cloudflare

While we take security seriously, no system is 100% secure. If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it to [email protected].

11. Children

The Service is not intended for users under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we become aware that we have collected data from a person under 18, we will delete that data and terminate the associated account immediately.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify registered users of material changes via email at least 14 days before the changes take effect. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised.

13. Contact

For privacy-related inquiries, data access requests, or complaints:

DIFIA Limited
Email: [email protected]