Home/Privacy policy

What we hold about you, and who can see it.

A separate document from the terms, on purpose. Folk.Share does not sell personal information, and most of what it holds is seen by nobody but you and the person you are dealing with.

DraftWorking wording for legal review under British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act. The providers and the contact address below are the real ones as of 29 September 2026. Most of this page describes Folk.Share once it opens; the section straight below describes what is collected now, before it does.

Before Folk.Share opens: your founding profile

Folk.Share is run by Sydney Woodward on Salt Spring Island. Until it opens, the only personal information it collects is what you choose to give in these four places.

Where	What	Who sees it
Your profile	Your name, email address and general area; what you offer, what you can lend, with photographs, and one thing you need; where and when your portrait might be taken, with any access notes; up to three neighbours you name, with no contact details; and which permissions you gave, with the exact words you agreed to	Sydney, to build your profile and to arrange your portrait. Nothing is published until you have seen how it will look, and never before Folk.Share opens.
The newsletter box	Your email address, and the words you agreed to	Sydney. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link, and one click takes you off.
The feedback box	What you write, and an email address only if you leave one	Sydney
Page views	Which page was opened, on a phone or a computer, with a random number your browser forgets when the tab closes	Sydney, as counts. No name, no email address and no IP address is kept. The profile pages count nothing at all.

If you change your mind about your profile, write to sydney@folklorecreativecompany.com and it is deleted, photographs included.

What we collect once it opens

What	Why	Who sees it
Your name	So people know who they are dealing with	First name and the initial of your surname in public. Your full name to members who are signed in.
Your email address	Sign-in, and the messages you have chosen to get	Nobody but us
Your general area, and a connection line if you live elsewhere	So things nearby are found	Public. Never an address.
A photograph of you	So a face goes with a name	Public, on your profile
Your phone number, if you give one	Text alerts, if you ask for them	Nobody but us. Never shown to another member.
Listings, requests, updates	They are the noticeboard	Public, according to your visibility settings
Messages and arrangements, including exact pickup places	So the two of you have the same record	The two of you. An administrator only where a report requires it, and only what the case needs.
Reports, evidence, moderation notes	Keeping people safe	The administrator. Never the reported person, never the public.
Which document versions you agreed to, and when	Our record of your consent	You and us
Technical and security logs	Keeping the site working and safe	Us, for about 90 days

What we do not do

We do not sell personal information, and we do not show adverts.
We do not give one member another member's email address, phone number or home address. Those travel only in messages you choose to send.
We do not read private messages as a matter of course. An administrator may see specific messages when a report makes that necessary, limited to what the report is about.
We do not score, rate or rank anybody, and no count of reports is ever shown.

Who helps us run it

Folk.Share runs on services that hold data on our behalf, each holding only what it needs to do its job:

Vercel serves the website.
Supabase holds the database and the photographs, stored in Oregon, in the United States.
Twilio SendGrid sends the emails, from updates@folkshare.org and, for the newsletter, from news.folkshare.org.
IONOS is where the folkshare.org name is registered. It holds none of your information.

These providers are in the United States, so what they hold may be reachable by authorities there under United States law.

Your choices

Your profile can be hidden from People, from the map and from search engines, in your settings.
Text messages and the social roundup are optional and separate from agreeing to the terms. Turning them off changes nothing else.
You can ask to see what we hold about you, and to have it corrected. Write to Sydney Woodward at sydney@folklorecreativecompany.com. We answer within the time the law allows. What we hand back is your own information; other people's messages, reports and identifiers are reviewed and redacted rather than exported wholesale.

Deleting your account, and what stays

You can ask to delete your account from your settings. It cannot finish while an item is out or a return is unconfirmed, or while a report touching your account is being looked at. When it goes through your public profile and listings are removed promptly, everywhere the site shows them.

Some records are kept for a while afterwards. The periods below are what we propose for review, not a settled schedule, and they are not a promise that everything is erased on a fixed day: British Columbia's law requires information used to make a decision about somebody to be kept for at least a year after that use.

Record	Roughly how long
Limited account information	Up to about 12 months, for fraud, security, unresolved reports and legal duties, then reviewed
Ordinary messages	Deleted or anonymised where that can be done properly. The other person keeps their side.
Messages and evidence tied to a report	As long as the report needs, with the reason recorded
Reports and moderation records	About a year after they are resolved, then reviewed
Technical logs	About 90 days

When we would share something

We keep reports and safety records private. We do not promise that nothing could ever be disclosed: where the law requires it, or where somebody's safety requires it, we may have to. When that happens we share the least we can, and the privacy contact above can tell you what our obligations are.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, you are told. The version you acknowledged, and when, is on your account.