Privacy Policy

Who is responsible

The person who runs Divelance is responsible for your personal data on Divelance (the “controller”). Divelance is not a company; we give the controller’s name on request. For any privacy question or request, write to privacy@divelance.com or use the contact page.

What we collect

• Account details: your name, email address, account type, language, time zone and settings. Businesses also give a business name, business email and address.
• Profile details you choose to add: photos, nickname, bio, certifications and card images, experience, skills, work rights, documents, availability, emergency contacts, students you teach, and the like.
• What you do in the app: messages, photos and videos, bookings, postings, applications, references, ratings, favourites and reports, and what you send us as feedback or in your chat with Divelance Support.
• Verification material from businesses: documents, links and affiliation numbers, kept only as long as needed for the check.
• Security and activity data: when you log in, which device and browser, IP address and approximate location, and key actions (such as sending a message or changing your profile), to keep accounts safe and to look into abuse.
• If you set a password, only a scrambled form (a hash) that nobody can read back.

Why we use it

• To provide Divelance: show your profile to the people it is meant for, run search, messages, bookings and notifications.
• To keep Divelance safe: verify businesses, stop spam and fraud, and handle reports of abuse.
• To improve Divelance, using counts and trends rather than looking at individual people.
• To meet legal obligations, such as tax records once payments exist.

Where the law asks for a legal basis: running the service you signed up for (contract), keeping it safe and improving it (legitimate interest), analytics cookies (your consent, which you can take back at any time), and legal duties.

Who can see your data

Divelance exists to connect people, so some of your data is shared on purpose:

• Divers: your profile, certifications, experience and availability can be seen by dive centers and agents on Divelance. Your name, photos and other identity details are shown only to friends, people you chat with, and verified businesses on a paid plan. Your private documents and emergency contacts are shown only to a business you are working with that day, and you can see each time they were viewed.
• Businesses: your business profile is seen by divers through your postings and conversations, and by your partners and staff.
• Messages are seen by the people in the conversation, and in a business by the people allowed to handle it.
• Your chat with Divelance Support is seen by you and the Divelance team.
• Shared album and trip links are seen by whoever you give the link (and password) to.

We do our best to check businesses before they can see diver identities, but we cannot promise that everyone you meet is who they say they are. Please share only what you are comfortable with.

We never sell your personal data, and we never share it with anyone for their marketing or advertising.

Services that help us run Divelance

We use a small number of trusted providers who process data only on our instructions and only to provide their service:

• Vercel (hosting, run in Frankfurt) and Vercel Web Analytics (anonymous visit counts, no cookies);
• Neon (database, Frankfurt);
• Cloudflare (file storage in the EU, live chat, and the bot check on forms);
• Resend and Mailgun (sending email);
• Google Analytics (Google Ireland), only if you accept analytics cookies, without its advertising features;
• the push services of your browser or phone (Apple, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft) to deliver notifications;
• Have I Been Pwned, to check a new password against known leaks without the password ever leaving Divelance.

Some of these providers are based in the United States or may handle data outside the European Economic Area. When they do, your data is protected by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission’s standard contract terms, which each provider includes in its published data processing terms. Write to privacy@divelance.com if you’d like the links.

We may also share data when the law requires it, or when needed to protect someone’s safety or to defend against a legal claim.

Cookies

We use essential cookies and local storage to keep you logged in and remember your settings. Google Analytics cookies are set only if you accept them; you can change your answer at any time in Settings › General or with the Cookies link at the bottom of the public pages. The cookies question in our FAQ lists them in detail.

How long we keep it

• Your account and content: for as long as you have the account.
• IP addresses, browser and place details in activity records: shortened or removed after 90 days.
• Business verification documents: deleted 30 days after the check.
• Deleted photos and videos: kept out of sight for 14 days in case they are reported, then deleted for good. Reported content is kept until our review is finished.
• When you delete your account, your personal details and content (including your feedback and your chat with Divelance Support) are deleted. Messages you sent, bookings and ratings stay with the other people involved, shown as from a “Deleted account”, because they are part of their history too.

How we protect it

Data is encrypted in transit, files are private and only opened with short-lived links, and every database query runs with rules that only let each person read what they are allowed to. Log-in uses one-time email codes or a strong password, and every step that matters is logged. No system is perfect; if we ever learn of a breach that puts you at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Your rights

You can:

• see and correct most of your data yourself in the app;
• download a copy of your data under Account › Data;
• delete your account under Account › Delete account;
• withdraw consent to analytics cookies at any time;
• ask us to restrict or stop using your data, or object to how we use it;
• complain to your data protection authority.

For anything you can’t do in the app, write to privacy@divelance.com. We answer within one month.

Age

Divelance is for people aged 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone younger; if you think we have, tell us and we will delete it. Students a diver records on a booking are noted by that diver, not by the student.

If Divelance is sold

If Divelance is sold or taken over, or moves to a company set up to run it, your data may pass to the new owner so the service can carry on. We will tell you before the hand-over, by email and in the app, who the new owner is, so you can choose to stay, or to download your data and delete your account first. The new owner must keep to this policy, or ask for your agreement to a new one.

Changes to this policy

We will tell you in the app or by email before any important change to this policy takes effect. The date at the top shows when it was last updated.