Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Tambay is operated by Acqron, a business registered in the Philippines with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) (we, us). We decide why and how your personal information is used in tambay, which makes us the controller of it (in the Philippines, the personal information controller). This policy explains what we collect, why, who sees it, and your choices. It applies to tambay's website and apps.

2. What we collect

Only what the service needs to work:

• Account: your email address and password. Your password is handled by our authentication provider and stored only as a secure hash; we never see or store it in readable form.
• Age and agreement: your date of birth (private: never shown to other people) and a record of when you agreed to the Terms and Privacy Policy and which version. We use your date of birth to keep under-13s out and to apply the extra safety settings for under-18s.
• Profile: your display name and username, and your avatar (a cat picture you choose, or a picture you upload).
• What you post: messages in text rooms (including the earlier version of an edited message), pictures you send (compressed in your browser first, with their location and camera data removed), Buddy messages, and your feedback notes.
• Who you are connected to: the tambayans you belong to and your role in each, your buddies, and who you have blocked.
• Voice: live audio in a voice hut is relayed to the other people in it. We do not record it or store it. We do keep, for as long as you are in a hut, who is in it.
• Safety records: reports (including a full copy of the reported message, the few messages just before and after it with their authors' names and times, the reason and any note), moderation actions, bans, and an internal log of what platform admins do, including each time one of them opens a report.
• Basic activity: the times you signed in and posted (for example, when you last read a room, so we can show unread badges), how long the app is open for you each day (a running total of seconds per day, kept only to work out averages for running the service; if you choose the Invisible status it is not recorded), and counters that limit how fast one account or network address can do things, to stop abuse.
• Technical data: your network (IP) address, browser and device type, which our hosting and security providers process to deliver the service and protect it. We keep our own logs minimal and remove sensitive details such as tokens, emails and message text from them.

We do not ask for your real name, phone number, contacts, precise location, or payment details, and we do not use advertising or analytics trackers.

3. Why we use it

We use your information to:

• create and secure your account and log you in;
• deliver messages, pictures, voice, unread badges and notifications;
• show your name to the people you chat with;
• keep people safe: review reports, enforce our Terms, block spam and abuse, and comply with the law;
• understand overall use in aggregate (for example, how many people were active this week) and fix bugs, using data we already hold rather than extra tracking;
• answer your feedback and requests.

Our reasons (legal bases) are: providing the service you asked for, our legitimate interest in keeping it safe and working, complying with the law, and your consent where we ask for it. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it to show ads.

4. Who can see what

• Other members: the people in a tambayan or Buddy chat you are in can see your display name, username and what you send there. Anyone who can see a message can copy or screenshot it.
• Tambayan moderators: the owner, admins and co-admins of a tambayan can see reports about that tambayan, including the reported text.
• Tambay platform admins: a small number of people we authorise can see, to run and protect the service, account details such as your email address, date of birth and sign-in dates, overall activity counts, reports (including the saved messages in them), feedback, and block relationships. Their admin tools cannot browse or search chats: they can only read a chat through a report, and every time an admin opens a report it is written to a log. See the next section.
• Authorities and others: we may share information when the law requires it, to respond to valid legal requests, to protect someone's safety or the service, or in a sale or restructuring of the business (with the same protections).

5. Who can read your messages, plainly

We would rather tell you the truth than a comforting story, so here it is.

• tambay chats are NOT end-to-end encrypted. Messages are encrypted on their way to and from us and are stored in our database, which means the few people at Acqron with access to that database could technically read them. What limits that is our rules and our tools, not mathematics.
• The rule: we do not read your chats. We do not run keyword scanning or automatic reading of your text messages, and we do not use them for ads, selling, or training. Voice calls are not recorded.
• The only times our team reads a chat are: (1) someone reported a message, and we read it together with the few messages around it to judge it fairly; (2) a serious safety matter, such as a child in danger or a threat of violence, that has come to our attention; (3) investigating a security problem or abuse of the service; and (4) a valid legal request, described below.
• Our admin tools are built to match that rule: there is no screen for browsing or searching chats. Content appears only inside a report, and each time an admin opens a report, it is recorded in an audit log with who and when.
• If you report a message from a Buddy chat, you are choosing to show it, and a few messages around it, to our team. Reports in a tambayan are seen by our team and that tambayan's moderators. The person you reported is not told who reported them.
• Anyone in a chat or tambayan can copy or screenshot what you send there, and a tambayan's owner and moderators can remove messages in it. We do not control what other people do with what you send.
• We do not currently scan pictures or messages automatically. If we ever add automated checks aimed only at known illegal material (such as child sexual abuse images), we will say so here before we switch them on.

6. Requests from the authorities

We may be asked by the police, a prosecutor, a court or another authority for information about an account. We respond to valid legal process only (a court order, a subpoena, or a lawful request from a competent authority), in writing, which you can send us at the contact below. We give only what the request lawfully covers and that we actually hold (for example account details, reports and the messages in them, and what is still stored), we may push back on requests that are too broad or unclear, and we keep a record of each one.

We do not give anyone a live view of chats or a way to search everyone's messages. If it may help a criminal investigation, we may preserve (keep) an account's information for a reasonable period while a request is handled. Unless we are legally stopped, or it could put someone at risk, we may tell the person concerned about a request.

In an emergency with a risk of death or serious harm to someone, especially a child, we may share what is needed with the authorities without waiting for a court order. Where the law requires us to report something (for example child sexual abuse material), we do.

7. Service providers we use

We use trusted providers who process information for us, only to run tambay, under their own security and privacy commitments:

• Supabase: sign-in, our database, private file storage for pictures, and realtime delivery (data is hosted in the Tokyo region);
• Vercel: hosting of the website and app;
• LiveKit: relaying live voice audio;
• Upstash: short-lived counters that limit abuse.

Because these providers operate internationally, your information may be processed in countries other than yours. We choose providers that protect it appropriately.

8. Cookies and similar storage

We use only what is needed to make tambay work:

• a secure sign-in session cookie that keeps you logged in;
• a small cookie that remembers whether you chose the light or dark theme;
• if someone enters a date of birth under 13 when signing up, a small cookie that only says "blocked", so the same browser cannot simply try another date (it holds no date and no personal information);
• your browser's local storage keeps the position of the Buddy window on your screen.

tambay shows a small sponsored banner on our website and while you use the app, to help pay for running it. It is either an advertisement from Google AdSense or our own promotion of Acqron. Google's ads can use cookies and similar technology to show and measure ads; Google's own notice explains what it collects and how to control it (google.com/policies/technologies/ads). If you are under 18, or we don't know your age (which includes everyone who has not signed in), we ask Google to show only ads that are not personalised. You can close the banner after 30 seconds. Inside the Windows and phone apps we show only our own promotion.

9. How long we keep it

• Account and profile: while your account exists.
• Messages and pictures: until you or a moderator delete them, or the tambayan is deleted. Deleting a picture message also deletes the file when nothing else uses it. Buddy chats keep only the newest 200 messages.
• Daily time in the app: while your account exists, and it is deleted with it.
• Date of birth and the record of your agreement: while your account exists. If an account belongs to someone under 13, we keep only the date of birth needed to keep it blocked until the account is deleted.
• Reports, moderation records and the admin log: kept as long as needed for safety, to spot repeat abuse, and to meet legal duties, even if the message has been deleted, and longer if the law or an investigation requires it.
• Feedback: kept until we have dealt with it and it is no longer useful; it stays even if you delete your account, but is no longer linked to you.
• Backups and provider logs: removed on the provider's normal schedule.

When information is no longer needed, we delete it or make it anonymous.

10. Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the Philippine Data Privacy Act, or the GDPR in Europe), you can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct information that is wrong (you can change your name and username yourself in Settings);
• delete your account and personal information;
• stop or limit certain uses of it, or withdraw consent you gave;
• move your information to another service, where that applies.

To use these rights, contact us as described below. We may need to check that it is really you first, and we will answer within the time the law requires (normally within 30 days). Some information, such as reports and moderation records, may have to stay for safety or legal reasons. If you are unhappy with how we handled your information, you can also complain to your data protection authority, such as the National Privacy Commission in the Philippines.

11. Children and young people

tambay is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. We ask for a date of birth when someone signs up and refuse anyone under 13. We can only rely on what people tell us; if you think a child under 13 has an account, tell us and we will delete it.

If you are 13 to 17, you should use tambay only with a parent or guardian's permission. Under-18 accounts get extra protection: adults and under-18s cannot search for each other or send buddy requests unless they already share a tambayan, and under-13s are never listed.

Parents and guardians can contact us (use the feedback form in Settings, or reach us through acqron.com) to ask what we hold about their child, to have it corrected, or to have the account deleted. We may ask for proof that you are the parent or guardian first.

12. How we protect it

We use measures such as encrypted connections, secure hashed passwords, sessions that are not readable by scripts, access rules that keep each person's data private to those allowed to see it, private storage for pictures, rate limits, limited admin access with an audit trail, and regular dependency checks. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot promise it, but if a breach affecting you happens we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Please use a strong, unique password, and never share it or send sensitive information (passwords, IDs, card numbers) in a chat.

13. Changes and contact

We may update this policy. When we make an important change, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect where we reasonably can, and the date at the top will change.

To ask a question, use your rights, or send a legal request or safety concern, use the feedback form in Settings, or reach us through acqron.com. Please say clearly what you need (for example, "delete my account") and the email address of your account.