Privacy Policy

• Account info: name, university email (uoguelph.ca), program, year, profile photo, bio.
• Landlord info: name, email, phone, company name, government ID, and ownership documents (for verification). The ID is read automatically by Amazon Textract, and the fields it extracts are stored alongside the document. See section 4.
• Listings: property address, photos, rent, amenities, lease terms, viewing availability.
• Roommate quiz answers: lifestyle preferences used for compatibility matching.
• Messages: contents of conversations between students and landlords, marketplace buyers and sellers, and messages posted in a roommate group chat (including pinned messages and read state).
• Community content: posts and comments you write in The Bubble, and the votes you cast on them.
• Marketplace and auction activity: items you list, and for auctions your bid history, the maximum amount you set for a proxy bid, and any no-show strikes recorded against your account (see section 7a of our Terms).
• Usage data: pages viewed, searches performed, listing saves, IP address, browser type, and the interaction data described in section 5.

• To operate the platform: show listings, run the roommate match, deliver messages.
• To verify landlord identity before allowing them to publish listings.
• To send transactional emails (verification, password reset, viewing reminders).
• To detect abuse, fraud, and violations of our Terms.
• To understand how cribb is used and improve it. This is product analytics, and while you are logged in it is linked to your account rather than anonymous. Section 5 explains exactly what is collected.

We do not sell your personal information. We share data only with:

• Service providers used to run cribb: Neon (database), Render (hosting), Resend (email), Cloudinary (image storage), Amazon Web Services (document storage and automated document processing via Amazon Textract, see section 4), Anthropic (AI features), Cloudflare (security and Turnstile bot protection), Sentry (error monitoring and session replay on errors), PostHog (product analytics), Formspree (delivers form submissions to our inbox), Upstash (caching), Google Maps (maps and address lookup).
• Form submissions: when you send a tip to The Bubble, apply to write, or ask for writing access, the form goes through Formspree so it reaches our inbox. Formspree receives what you wrote, and the email address on the writer forms. The Bubble tip form is submitted straight from your browser, so Formspree also sees your IP address and browser details.
• Other users, only where you choose: landlords see your name and program when you message them; group members see your roommate quiz answers if you join a group.
• Authorities: only when legally required (court order, lawful warrant).

Some of these providers process data in the United States. By using cribb you consent to your data being transferred and processed outside Canada under contractual safeguards.

Landlord identity verification (Amazon Textract). When you register as a landlord you upload a government ID and a proof-of-ownership document. Both files are stored in Amazon S3, and the ID is then processed by Amazon Textract, an automated document-analysis service that reads the document and extracts its fields as text. We compare the extracted name and phone number against the details you typed into the registration form using an approximate text match, and we store both the extracted fields and the result of that comparison. If every field matches closely enough, your account is marked identity-verified automatically. If anything does not match, cannot be read, or the check fails to run, nothing is decided automatically: the account stays unverified and a person on the cribb team reviews the documents and makes the decision. You can ask us to have a person re-review an automated outcome by emailing the address in section 11. We do not use these documents, or the data extracted from them, for anything other than checking that you are who you say you are.

AI listing comparison (Anthropic). Our AI listing comparison feature uses Anthropic's Claude model. When you compare listings, the relevant listing data (rent, amenities, location, Cribb score, landlord verification status) is sent to Anthropic to generate the comparison. We do not send your name, email, or messages to Anthropic. Anthropic does not train its models on this data under their commercial terms.

Staying logged in. We do not use a session cookie to keep you logged in. Your session lives in your browser's local storage as an access token and a refresh token (cribb_token and cribb_refresh_token, with separate keys for writer and admin sessions). Clearing your browser storage signs you out, and logging out revokes the refresh token on our side.

Product analytics (PostHog). On the live site we load PostHog and record how cribb is used: page views and, through PostHog's autocapture, clicks and other interactions with elements on the page, along with the technical details your browser sends (IP address, browser and device type, referring site). While you are logged in these events are tied to your account: we pass PostHog your cribb user id, your email address, and your role (student, landlord, writer, or admin). This is behavioural analytics linked to you, not anonymous analytics. Analytics requests are sent to a cribb address on our own domain (/ingest) which forwards them to PostHog, so blocking analytics domains in your browser will not stop them. When you log out we reset the identity, so later activity in that browser is no longer linked to your account.

Session replay (PostHog). PostHog session recording is switched on, so ordinary visits are recorded, not only ones that go wrong. A recording is a replayable reconstruction of your visit: the pages you moved through, your mouse movement, scrolling and clicks, and what you typed into fields that are not masked. It is captured continuously while you use the site, and while you are logged in each recording is attached to your account alongside the events above. If you want to browse without being recorded, use a browser or extension that blocks/ingest on this domain, or browse while logged out (recording still happens, but it is not tied to your account).

Error monitoring and session replay (Sentry). When something breaks we send Sentry a report about the error, including technical context about your browser and the request, your IP address, and account identifiers where we have them. Sentry is also configured to record a session replay when an error happens, a reconstruction of the pages you were on and the actions you took in the moments leading up to the failure. Sessions that do not produce an error are not recorded.

We do not run third-party advertising, ad-tech pixels, or cross-site tracking on cribb.

Under PIPEDA, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate information.
• Withdraw consent and delete your account at any time (Settings → Delete Account).
• File a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Account data is retained while your account is active. When you delete your account, we remove your profile, listings, messages, and uploaded images within 30 days. Some records may be retained longer where required by law (e.g. fraud investigation).

Landlord ID and ownership documents. These are held separately from the rest of your account data and we treat them as the most sensitive thing we store. The files sit in Amazon S3, encrypted at rest, and the fields Textract extracted plus the comparison result are stored as a record in our database. We keep both for as long as your landlord account exists. They are not deleted once verification completes, because a verification decision can be re-checked or disputed later. We do not delete them on a timer, and no automatic expiry currently applies.

If you delete your landlord profile yourself in Settings, the document record is removed from our database, but the underlying files in Amazon S3 are only purged when we delete the account from our side. Email the address in section 11 if you want your documents removed and we will delete both the files and the record. We will also delete them on request while your account stays open, but your account will lose its verified status and you will not be able to publish listings until you verify again.

We use industry-standard practices including bcrypt password hashing, JWT authentication, HTTPS encryption in transit, and AWS S3 server-side encryption at rest. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a unique password and report suspicious activity.

cribb is restricted to verified students and landlords. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 17.

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced via email and the "Last updated" date above.

Questions or requests: hello@findyourcribb.com

You can also reach the people behind cribb directly: Adeoluwa Ojulari (adeoluwaojulari@gmail.com) and David Amaefula (professionaldavid14@gmail.com).