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Last updated: 25 May 2026

Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information Startender ("we", "us") collects when you use startenderapp.com, how we use it, who we share it with, and what rights you have over it. Startender is a marketplace connecting bartenders with venues.

What we collect

  • Account details — your email address and a password (stored only as a bcrypt hash; we never see your plain-text password).
  • Two-factor authentication secrets — if you enable 2FA, the shared secret used to generate your one-time codes is stored encrypted at rest using Active Record encryption. We cannot read it back as plain text even from a database backup.
  • Profile information — names, postcodes, bios, photos, CVs, video uploads, hourly rates, availability, skills, and certifications you choose to add.
  • CV import data — if you use CV auto-import, we store the uploaded CV file, the text extracted from it, and the structured draft suggestions generated from that text until they are replaced, removed, or your account is deleted. Before any CV text is sent to a third party for AI assistance, we run it through an in-house redactor that strips email addresses, UK phone numbers, and address lines (see "Third parties we use" → OpenAI for details).
  • Venue verification data — if you list a venue, we look up the company number you provide against the UK Companies House public register to confirm it is an active company. We store the resulting verification status, the company number, and registered address details. We do not see or store any data Companies House does not publish openly.
  • Payment-method details (venues only) — if you save a card to your venue account, the card data is collected directly by Stripe in a Stripe-hosted form ("Stripe Elements"). Card numbers, CVV, and expiry never touch Startender's servers. We only store the Stripe customer/payment-method reference identifier and a description of the card (last 4 digits, brand, expiry month/year).
  • Messages — the content of conversations you send through the platform.
  • Application data — gigs you apply to, cover notes, application status.
  • Technical data — IP address and user agent at the time of requests, used for security and abuse prevention (rate-limiting login, signup, password reset, and contact-form abuse). We also store a small audit trail of sensitive actions such as data-export requests (request IP, parsed user-agent, timestamp) so you can verify on-account whether a request was made by you.

How we use it

We use your information to provide the service: showing your profile to relevant venues or bartenders, delivering messages, processing applications, and sending transactional emails (e.g. confirming your email address, notifying you of new messages or applications). If you choose the CV auto-import feature, we also use the text extracted from your CV to generate draft profile suggestions for you to review. Those suggestions are assistive only: nothing is applied to your live profile until you confirm it.

Who can see your information

Your profile information is shown to other users according to the product's visibility and access rules. If you upload a CV, authorised users on the platform may be able to preview or download that CV where the service allows it. We recommend that you do not include unnecessary direct contact details in documents you upload.

Where your data lives

Startender is hosted on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany (EU). Database, file storage, and email infrastructure are all in the EU or operated under UK-adequacy / EU-adequacy regimes — see the list below.

Third parties we use

  • Cloudflare R2 — file storage (photos, CVs, venue logos). Files are served via Startender on signed, time-limited URLs.
  • Cloudflare Stream — hosting and delivery of bartender video uploads.
  • Cloudflare Turnstile — privacy-friendly bot protection on sign-up and application forms. Turnstile does not track users.
  • Amazon Web Services — Simple Email Service (eu-central-1, Frankfurt) — sending transactional email (sign-up confirmation, password reset, message and application notifications, data-export confirmations).
  • OpenAI — processing redacted CV text (never the raw file) when you opt in to automatic profile suggestions. Before transmission, our redactor replaces email addresses with [EMAIL], UK phone numbers with [PHONE], and address-style lines with [ADDRESS]. OpenAI is contracted under their API data-processing terms, which do not use API inputs to train their models by default.
  • Stripe — collecting and storing venue card details for future gig-related charges, via Stripe Elements (a Stripe-hosted iframe). Card data is transmitted directly from your browser to Stripe and is never seen, transmitted, or stored by Startender's servers. This keeps Startender within the lightest PCI DSS compliance scope (SAQ A).
  • UK Companies House API — used to verify a venue's company registration. We send the company number you provide; we receive back public-register data (company name, status, registered office, incorporation date). Responses are cached for up to 6 hours.
  • postcodes.io — UK postcode autocomplete and lookup (operated by Ideal Postcodes Ltd). Free, cookieless; no API key is used and no user identifiers are sent. Postcode-to-coordinate results are cached locally for up to 30 days to minimise repeat lookups.
  • Sentry (Frankfurt, EU) — error tracking. When the app raises an unhandled exception, Sentry receives the stack trace, request URL, and the signed-in user's id + email so we can investigate. We do not send message bodies, CV contents, or other user payloads to Sentry.
  • Umami (self-hosted) — anonymous, cookieless analytics. No tracking cookies, no cross-site identifiers.

Cookies

We set a single strictly-necessary session cookie to keep you signed in. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.

How we protect your account

  • Encryption in transit — every request to startenderapp.com is HTTPS-only with HSTS.
  • Encryption at rest for sensitive fields — passwords are bcrypt-hashed; two-factor authentication secrets are encrypted with Active Record encryption.
  • Optional two-factor authentication — you can enable TOTP-based 2FA from your settings page.
  • Step-up authentication on sensitive actions — requesting a download of your data triggers an email-confirmation step (a single-use, time-limited link sent to your account email) even if you are already signed in. This prevents anyone with brief access to your unlocked session from exfiltrating your data silently.
  • Rate limiting — sign-in, sign-up, password-reset, contact-form, and data-export endpoints are rate-limited to defend against brute force and abuse.
  • Bot protection — Cloudflare Turnstile guards sign-up, contact, and application forms without using tracking cookies.

Data retention

We keep your account data for as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, your profile, uploaded CVs, CV import drafts, messages, and application data are removed. Email delivery logs are retained by Brevo according to their own retention policy. Third-party processors may keep limited logs for security, abuse prevention, or operational reasons according to their own policies.

Automated assistance

When you choose CV auto-import, we use automated tools to extract draft suggestions such as work history, languages, skills, and profile summary text. These suggestions are not final decisions about you and are shown for your review and editing before they are applied.

Your rights (UK GDPR)

If you are in the UK or EU, you have the following rights over the personal information we hold about you. Most of these are self-service from your account; for anything else, email privacy@startenderapp.com.

  • Right of access — download a copy of your data at any time from your settings page ("Your data" → "Download as ZIP"). Each request triggers a confirmation email (see "Step-up authentication" above) so an unauthorised exfiltration attempt is surfaced to you immediately.
  • Right to rectification — edit your profile, account preferences, applications and messages directly from the app.
  • Right to erasure — delete your account from the "Danger zone" in settings. This removes your profile, applications, conversations, favourites, feedback you authored, uploaded files (photo, CV, logo) and venue records.
  • Right to data portability — your export is provided in standard JSON (and the original binary files), suitable for re-use in another system.
  • Right to restrict or object to processing — email privacy@startenderapp.com.
  • Right to lodge a complaint — with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) if you believe we have not handled your data correctly.

Contact

Privacy questions or data rights requests: privacy@startenderapp.com. If you are signed in, you can also use the in-app contact page, but email is the best route for privacy and ICO-related queries.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes we will update the "Last updated" date and, where appropriate, notify you by email.