BARkada

Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173)

Privacy notice

Version 2026-09-29

BARkada is a small, invite-based study tool for Philippine law students, run by its owner (the “personal information controller”). This notice explains what we collect, why, and your rights as a data subject.

What we collect

  • Account: your email address, sign-in codes (stored only as one-way hashes, deleted after use or expiry) and your consent record.
  • Profile: full and preferred name, law school, year level, and optionally student number, section and target bar year.
  • Study material: subjects, outlines, notes, flashcards, quiz and essay attempts, and study material you generate (explainers, digests, quiz and essay feedback).
  • Account signup: your email (and profile fields you choose) when you create an account. Older invite-request records (name, email, school, note), if any, are kept only to review or contact you; ask the owner to delete a request at any time.
  • Plan requests: if you ask for BARkada+, the date and the optional note or payment reference you type, so the owner can check it. A cancelled or declined request is deleted; an approved one is kept with your account.
  • Reminders: if you turn on email reminders in Settings, we read your exam and deadline dates to email you the evening before. Off unless you turn it on.
  • Your ka-BARkadas: your chats with them and short notes they keep are stored with your account; you can delete them in the chat menu or Settings → Your ka-BARkadas. Unless you turn off "Help your ka-BARkadas learn from my chats", a daily job turns recent chats into general, anonymous tips per topic (no names, schools, professors, grades or quotes, and chats about distress are skipped). Those tips are not linked to you.
  • Usage: counts of study-tool requests (for daily limits), last sign-in time, and IP address for rate-limiting abuse.
  • Email and job logs: which kind of automatic email was sent and when, and what the daily automatic jobs did (counts only, no addresses or content), to stay within sending limits and keep BARkada healthy. Kept for up to 90 days.

Why we use it

To create and secure your account, show your study material only to you, enforce fair-use limits on shared study tools, and keep the service running. We do not sell your data or use it for advertising.

Who else processes it

  • Hostinger hosts the app and its database, in a server we control (an earlier copy ran on Cloudflare). Country counts for anonymous site visits come from an offline table on that server; no outside lookup is made.
  • Google Gemini API (Google LLC) writes the AI replies. What is sent, only when you use an AI feature: the message you type to your ka-BARkada and the recent conversation in that chat, your recit answers for grading, the topic, outline and notes you pick for a study tool (explainers, digests, cards, quizzes, essay practice), syllabi you upload or paste, and your display name so replies can address you. Your email address, password, payment receipt and IP address are not sent. Syllabi are fine to send; avoid personal or sensitive information in notes and answers. Retention: on Google's paid tier, Google keeps prompts for a limited time to detect abuse and does not use them to train its models; on the free tier, prompts and replies may be kept and reviewed to improve Google's products. BARkada keeps your own chats and study material in your account until you delete them or your account.
  • Email provider (Brevo) delivers sign-in codes and account notices, such as your invite, invite-request replies, plan changes, reminders you turned on, and account-deletion confirmation. Brevo keeps a delivery log (address, subject and status) under its own policy.

Retention

Your data is kept while your account exists. Sign-in codes expire in 10 minutes and are cleared daily. An account that was started but never set up (no profile and nothing saved) is removed after 14 days. When you delete your account, your profile, study material and any invite or invite request with your email are erased from the live database, and we email you a confirmation. Database backups (automatic ones by our host and ones we make before updates) are kept for up to 30 days, then deleted.

Your rights

Under RA 10173 you may be informed, access, object, correct, and request erasure or blocking of your data, and to data portability. In BARkada you can edit your profile at any time, download all your data (Settings → Privacy → Download my data) and delete your account (Settings → Privacy → Delete my account; you are offered the download first). For other requests, contact the owner who invited you. You may also lodge a complaint with the National Privacy Commission (privacy.gov.ph).

Security

Passwordless sign-in, signed session cookies, hashed one-time codes, encrypted API keys, per-account data isolation and HTTPS everywhere.

BARkada is a study aid for law students. It is not legal advice.

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