Privacy Policy

Rent a Local Friend ("RALF", "we") runs this platform, which connects travelers, Local Friends and travel agencies. We decide how and why your personal data is used, so we are responsible for it under the Brazilian General Data Protection Law (LGPD) and, where it applies, the EU and UK GDPR.

For anything about your data, write to us at the contact address at the end of this page.

We only collect what we need to run the community:

• Account: name, e-mail address, password (stored only as a secure hash), country, phone number when you give it, and your type of membership.
• Profile: for Local Friends, Gurus and agencies, the photos, biography, city, languages, interests, suggested prices, videos and social links you add. A published profile is public.
• What you share: Tips & Traps (text, photos and the place), trips on the Connection Board and the messages you exchange in the chat.
• Payments: Stripe processes your card. We only receive the plan, the amount, the status, the card brand and its last four digits; we never see the full card number.
• Usage and device: IP address, browser, pages visited and, according to your cookie choice, the link or campaign that brought you to RALF.
• Activity on RALF: the profiles, cities, countries and Tips & Traps you open, and the searches that find nothing. For visitors without an account we also note the country of the connection, worked out from the IP address on our own server (IP geolocation by DB-IP, db-ip.com); we don't keep the IP address for this.
• E-mails: the messages we send you, your e-mail preferences and whether a message was delivered or bounced.

Each use has a legal basis:

• To create your account, show your profile, deliver your messages and manage your membership (performance of our contract with you).
• To keep the community safe: prevent fraud, spam and abuse, block repeated failed logins and check, without revealing it, whether a new password has appeared in a known data breach (legitimate interest).
• To review a report, answer a support request, check the safety of the community or the quality of the service, someone from our team may open a conversation. Each opening needs a reason and is recorded, and we never use your messages for advertising (legitimate interest).
• To review Tips & Traps before and after they go live. An automated check can hold a post for review; the final decision is always made by our team (legitimate interest).
• To send the e-mails you need about your account and payments, and, unless you turn them off in your e-mail preferences, community news and notifications (contract and legitimate interest; you can opt out at any time).
• To understand how the site is used and improve it, with analytics cookies (your consent in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland; legitimate interest elsewhere, with the option to decline).
• To understand how the community connects and make it work better: how many people view each profile, city and country, whether messages get a reply, and to reach out to members whose messages go unanswered. We use your activity on RALF, not cookies, and after 180 days we keep only totals (legitimate interest).
• To keep the records the law requires, such as payment and tax records, and to answer requests from authorities (legal obligation).

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

• Other members: your public profile, your published Tips & Traps and the messages you send to someone.
• Stripe, to process payments and invoices.
• Amazon Web Services, to send e-mails and store photos and files.
• Our hosting and database providers, which run the website and store the data.
• Google: Google Analytics (through Google Tag Manager) for statistics, and Google Maps to show where a tip is.
• Microsoft Clarity, to understand how pages are used, only with analytics consent.
• Cloudflare, for the automated review of Tips & Traps.
• A real-time messaging provider, to deliver chat messages and notifications instantly.
• Authorities, when the law requires it.

Most of these providers are in the United States, so your data may be processed outside your country. We only work with providers that protect it with appropriate safeguards, such as the standard contractual clauses approved for this purpose.

We use few cookies:

• Essential: keep you signed in, protect your account, remember your language and your cookie choice. They are always on, because the site does not work without them.
• Analytics: Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland they are only used after you accept; everywhere else they are on until you decline.
• First visit: a cookie that remembers, for 90 days and according to your choice, the link or campaign that brought you to RALF.

You can change your choice at any time in Cookie settings.

We keep your data while your account exists. You can delete your account at any time in your account settings: we stop your membership billing, delete your account, profile, photos and content, and remove your customer record at Stripe.

We keep only what the law requires for longer, such as payment and tax records, and messages you already sent stay in the conversation history of the people who received them.

After you delete your account, we keep a short record of the deletion: your email address, your name, your account type and whether it had a membership, when the account was created and deleted, who deleted it (you or our team) and the reason, if you gave one. We use it only to show that the deletion happened and to answer requests about it. It holds no profile, photos or content.

Reports about a member stay with our team after either account is deleted, with the names and e-mail addresses at the time of the report, so we can keep the community safe.

Records of the profiles, pages and Tips & Traps you open are deleted after 180 days. After that we keep only totals by day and by country, which don't identify anyone.

Under the LGPD and the GDPR you can:

• Confirm whether we process your data and get a copy of it.
• Correct incomplete or outdated data (most of it you can edit yourself in your profile).
• Delete your account and data, or ask us to delete data we hold without a reason.
• Receive your data in a portable format.
• Object to a use based on our legitimate interest, and withdraw a consent you gave.

To exercise any of these rights, write to info@rentalocalfriend.com. We answer within the time the law sets.

You can also complain to the data protection authority: the ANPD in Brazil or the authority of your country.

The website only works over HTTPS, passwords are stored as secure hashes, sign-in attempts are limited, and only the people who need it can access your data. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

RALF is only for people aged 18 or over, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe someone under 18 has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

When we change this policy we update the date at the top of the page, and, if the change is significant, we let you know by e-mail or on the website.

Questions about your privacy or this policy: info@rentalocalfriend.com.