What information we collect
- Account information: When you sign up or sign in with Google, Facebook, or email, our authentication provider (Clerk) receives your name, email, and profile photo.
- Content you submit: Experiences, reviews, ratings, and images you post in the student experiences section.
- Contact messages: Your name, email, and message text when you use the contact form.
- Newsletter subscription: The email address you register to receive our newsletter.
- Automatically collected technical data: IP address, browser and device type, pages visited — via analytics tools and cookies.
How we use this information
- To provide, maintain, and improve the site
- To review and publish experiences and reviews after moderation
- To respond to your contact messages
- To send our newsletter — only with your consent, with an unsubscribe link in every email
- To analyze overall site usage to improve the user experience
- To show relevant ads through Google AdSense — currently on the English version of the site only — to help cover running costs, and only with your consent to advertising cookies
Cookies and your consent
The site uses three categories of cookies:
- Essential — for your sign-in session and language preference; always on, since the site can't function without it.
- Analytics — to understand which pages are visited most; only enabled with your consent.
- Advertising — to show more relevant ads (Google); only enabled with your consent.
You can change your choice at any time using the "Cookie settings" link at the bottom of the site.
Sharing with third parties
We do not sell your information. To run the site, we rely on the following services, each with its own independent privacy policy:
- Clerk — authentication and account management
- Neon (database) — stores experiences, reviews, and messages
- Resend — sends email (newsletter, confirmations)
- Amazon S3 — hosts uploaded images
- Vercel — site hosting and traffic analytics
- Google AdSense — to show ads on the English version of the site, under Google's own privacy policy
Your rights
You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data at any time via Contact us. You can also delete your account, your submitted experiences, or unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.
Children's privacy
GermanyBia is built for adult students and does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.
International data transfer
The servers that store your data (Vercel, Neon) may be located outside Afghanistan or Germany. These providers operate under recognized international security standards.
Changes to this policy
If we make a material change to this policy, the "Last updated" date at the top of this page will change.
Contact us
For any privacy questions, reach the GermanyBia team via the contact page.