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Controller and contact
SawaLife Ltd is the controller for the processing described here. For any question, request or complaint about your personal data, contact [email protected] or use the "Personal data" area of your dashboard; the registered address is 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom.
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Data we collect
Depending on your use of the service, we process: your identity and account details (name, email, hashed password), your language and preferences, the account details you choose to provide (date of birth, country of residence, nationality, preferred language, and optionally a postal address and phone number — kept private, never shown on your profile or to other members, visible only to you and our support team and used only to check age-limited features such as Sawa+ or to reach you about your account or a legal matter), the city you choose for weather alerts, the content you publish (listings, messages, reviews, Sawa+ profile), the Sawa+ network data you choose to provide (goals, skills, availability, projects and applications), your messages with support, your consents (cookies, terms, Sawa+), your security and login logs, and any marketplace contact requests you choose to send to another member or a partner. If you click "Use my location" on the weather tile of your dashboard, your browser shares your approximate position (rounded to about 1 km) once, only to find the nearest weather point; that position is not stored or logged. Only the place found (for example "Chiang Mai") and the approximate distance are remembered, in your session and in your browser's local storage, and you can reset them at any time from the tile. If you voluntarily join the Rewards program, we process your points balance, confirmed Partner interactions and voucher history. Members never pay on SawaLife. If a business subscribes to a partner (B2B) plan, our provider Stripe processes its card data; SawaLife never receives or stores it and only has access to a transaction identifier and payment status. If you voluntarily go through identity verification (KYC), you send us an identity document (passport, ID card or driving licence) processed under the enhanced retention rules described below.
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Purposes and legal bases
We process this data to: provide and secure the features you request (contract), process your payments (contract), respond to your support requests (contract or legitimate interest), prevent fraud, abuse and prohibited content (legitimate security interest), comply with our legal and tax obligations (legal obligation), and, where you explicitly consent, send you marketing communications or set analytics cookies (consent).
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Optional identity verification (KYC)
Some features may offer voluntary identity verification by submitting a document (front, and back if required depending on the document type). This document is used solely for verification and is never published or shared with other members. It is kept only for as long as necessary for review by our team: once a verification or rejection decision is made, the document is automatically and permanently deleted from our systems within 48 hours.
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Marketing and optional sharing
Marketing emails rely on a separate consent, withdrawable at any time via the unsubscribe link or by contacting us. A marketplace contact request is only shared with the member or partner you chose to contact, with only the information necessary for that exchange; that recipient then applies their own terms and privacy policy for the rest of the relationship.
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Restaurants and business contacts
To build our restaurant guide and invite restaurants to manage their page, we process the business contact details of restaurants and of the people who run them: business name, address, business e-mail, phone, website and social links. These details come from public business information (such as the restaurant's website or a public listing), from recommendations sent by members, or from the restaurant itself. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in contacting businesses about a free listing (business-to-business contact). Every invitation e-mail contains a link to stop further invitations, and we then keep the address on a do-not-contact list; you can also ask [email protected] to correct or delete these details at any time. If a restaurant manages its page or its offers, we also process the account of the person who manages it. Restaurants receive no personal data of members: when a member uses a restaurant offer, the restaurant only checks that the coupon or QR code is valid.
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Recipients and providers
Access to your data is limited to authorised staff within SawaLife and to providers who help us host the platform, secure accounts, process payments (Stripe), send transactional emails, provide weather/air quality/geolocation data, automatically translate certain content, and operate support. Where you have given cookie consent, we also use Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to measure audience and usage of the site; no such tool loads, and no analytics data is sent, before you give that consent, and you can withdraw it at any time from the "Cookie preferences" link in the footer. We do not sell your data and do not use it to build advertising profiles for third parties.
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International transfers
Some of our providers may process data outside your country of residence, in particular for hosting, security or payment processing. Where such a transfer applies, SawaLife uses the mechanisms and safeguards required by applicable law (standard contractual clauses or equivalent) and can provide further information on request.
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Retention and security
We keep your data only for as long as necessary for its purpose, then delete or anonymise it, unless a legal obligation, security reason or ongoing dispute justifies longer retention. As a guide: account, support and marketplace data is kept for up to 12 months after account closure or the end of the relationship; identity verification documents are deleted within 48 hours of a decision; security logs are kept for a limited period necessary to detect abuse. We use access controls, password hashing, backups and security logging appropriate to the risk, without being able to guarantee absolute security in all circumstances.
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Your rights
Subject to the law applicable in your country of residence, you may request access to your data, its rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, portability, or object to certain processing based on our legitimate interest. You can exercise some of these rights directly (data export and account deletion) from the "Personal data" area of your dashboard, or contact us for any other request. You may withdraw your consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing already carried out; we may verify your identity before acting on a request and explain any legal limit that applies to it.
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Automated decisions, minors and cookies
SawaLife does not make any decision based solely on automated processing that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you; the automated safety check on certain content may, in case of doubt, be followed by human review before any decision. The service is not intended for minors, except for its public editorial content; Sawa+ is strictly reserved for people aged 18 or over. Do not provide a third party's data without their authorisation. The cookies used by SawaLife (necessary, and, with your consent, analytics) are described in the dedicated Cookie notice.
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Complaints, changes and contact
Please contact [email protected] first so we can review your request. You may also lodge a complaint with the data protection authority competent for your country of residence. We may update this policy; the applicable version is always the one published on this page, with its effective date.
Legal information
Privacy Policy
This policy explains how SawaLife Ltd processes the personal data necessary to run SawaLife: account creation, marketplaces, optional identity verification, the Sawa+ network and audience measurement. The Sawa+-specific privacy notice supplements this document for data specific to that space.
Publisher SawaLife Ltd 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom [email protected] Effective date : 2026-11-07
