Privacy Policy

Last Update: September 28, 2026

1. Information you provide directly

You give us the following information when you create an account and use Lobi:

• Email address and password. Used to create your account, sign you in, and send you confirmation and password-reset codes. Your password is stored only as a one-way hash; we cannot read it.
• Username and display name. Created during sign-up and shown on your profile.
• Bio and profile photo. Optional, and displayed on your public profile.
• Stays and rankings. The hotels you log, the score each one receives, the comparisons you make while ranking, your notes and highlights, the dates of your stays, and the visibility you choose for each stay. These are the core of the App.
• Your read on a hotel. The trip type, hotel class and price impression you record on a stay. These three are only ever shown to you.
• Photos. Pictures you attach to a stay from your camera or photo library, shown with that stay to whoever can see it.
• Social activity. The members you follow, the stays you like, the comments you write, the hotels you save to your wishlist, and the members you tag as companions on a stay.
• Phone number. Optional. If you enter your number so that friends can find you, we keep only a one-way keyed hash of it, generated with a secret that never leaves our database. The hash cannot be turned back into a number, and the number itself is not stored.
• Contacts. If you choose to find friends from your address book, the phone numbers in it are hashed on your device before anything leaves it. The hashes are sent only to ask which of them belong to Lobi members, are used only for that request, and are not stored.

2. Information collected with your permission

Contacts. Described above. iOS asks for permission before the App can read your address book, and the App works without it.

Location. If you grant location access, Lobi reads your approximate location while you are using the App to show hotels near you and to suggest your current city. The location is converted to a city name on your device. We do not send your location to our servers and we do not keep a history of where you have been.

Photos and camera. Used only when you choose to attach a picture to a stay or set a profile photo.

Notifications. If you allow notifications, we store the device token Apple gives us so we can send you the alerts you have switched on. Each kind of notification can be turned off in Settings.

3. Information collected automatically

• Crash and error reports. If the App crashes or an action fails, a report goes to our error-reporting provider containing the device model, iOS version, App version, the screens leading up to the problem, the error itself, and your account's internal identifier. Reports never include your email, name, contacts, location, photos or the text of anything you wrote.
• Product analytics. We record which screens are used, how long they are open, and key actions such as rating a hotel or following a member. This is first-party data collected under our own account and is never shared with advertisers or combined with data from other apps or websites. It contains no content you wrote and no session recordings.
• Server logs. Like every online service, our servers record the IP address, time and nature of each request for security and debugging. These logs are kept only briefly.
• Data kept on your phone. Recent searches and cached hotel details are stored on your device so the App feels fast. They stay on your device.

4. Information from other sources

Hotel information. The names, addresses, photos and descriptions of hotels shown in the App come from Google Places, requested through our own server so that no Google key ever lives on your phone. When you search for a hotel or a city, the text of that search is sent to Google to find a match, and Google's privacy policy (https://www.google.com/policies/privacy) applies to what Google receives. We store Google's answer on our server so that a hotel is fetched once and never billed to your searches again.

Other members. When another member tags you as a companion on a stay, we record the tag so that the stay can be shown to you and you can accept or decline it.

5. How we use your information

We use your information to:

• Provide and operate the App: your account, your profile, your rankings, your feed, and what other members see of you according to the visibility you chose
• Enable social features: following other members, seeing friends' stays, tagging companions, likes and comments
• Match you with people whose taste is similar to yours and recommend hotels from their rankings, using only your ratings and theirs
• Compute community figures, such as a hotel's average score or typical class and price, without identifying anyone
• Find hotels near you when you use location-based search
• Help you find friends through the contact-matching feature
• Send you the notifications you have switched on
• Send essential account messages: confirmation codes, password resets, and important notices about your account or these policies
• Find and fix problems, and understand which parts of the App are used
• Enforce our Terms of Service, including reviewing reports of abuse

6. What we do not do

We do not:

• Sell or rent your personal information to anyone
• Build advertising profiles or show you advertising
• Track you across other companies' apps or websites
• Send marketing email unless you explicitly opt in

7. What other members can see

Your username, display name, profile photo, bio, follower and following counts, and the stays, rankings, photos, comments and likes you have made visible are shown to other members. Every stay carries a visibility you choose: public (every member), friends (only members you follow who follow you back) or private (you alone, plus anyone you tag). You can also make your whole account private so that only approved followers see your activity. Our database enforces these settings on every request, not just the App.

Your email address, your phone hash, your location, your contacts, and the trip type, hotel class and price impression on your stays are never visible to other members.

8. Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run Lobi. Each receives only what it needs, and none may use your data for its own purposes.

• Our hosting and database provider: stores your account and content, handles sign-in, and holds your photos, with row-level access rules on every table.
• Google (Places API): hotel names, addresses, photos and descriptions, requested through our server. Receives the hotel and city names you search for.
• Apple (App Store, Push Notifications, MapKit): distributes the App, delivers notifications, and renders maps on your device under Apple's own policies.
• An error-reporting service: receives crash and error reports, as described above.
• An analytics service: receives the first-party usage data described above, under our own account.
• An email delivery service: sends confirmation and password-reset emails. Receives your email address and the code.
• A bot-protection service: guards sign-up and sign-in against automated abuse. Receives standard connection data when the check runs.

9. Legal disclosures and business transfers

We may disclose your information if the law requires it, or where we believe in good faith that doing so is necessary to protect our rights, your safety or the safety of others.

If Bela Via is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. This policy continues to apply to it, and we will let you know of any such change.

10. Security

Your data is stored with a cloud hosting provider that encrypts it in transit (TLS) and at rest. Every table in our database is protected by row-level security, so a stay you marked private cannot be read by anyone else even by bypassing the App. Photos on stays are served through short-lived signed links. Sign-up and sign-in are protected by a bot check, and no third-party API key is embedded in the App.

We take reasonable measures to protect your information, but no method of electronic storage is completely secure. If a breach affects you, we will tell you.

11. Your rights and choices

Access and update your data. You can view and change your profile, stays, rankings, photos and settings at any time in the App.

Delete your account. Settings ▸ Delete account permanently removes your account and everything attached to it: profile, stays, ratings, posts, photos, comments, likes, saves, follows, notification tokens and your phone hash. Deletion is immediate and irreversible, and you do not need to contact us to do it.

Withdraw from contact matching. Revoke the Contacts permission in iOS Settings. Because contact hashes are never stored, there is nothing left behind to remove.

Location and notifications. Both can be revoked at any time in iOS Settings, and each kind of notification can be switched off inside the App.

Other rights. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to obtain a copy of your data, to correct it, to object to or restrict its processing, and to complain to a data-protection authority. Email us at lobi.support@belaviatravel.com and we will respond within 30 days. We will never treat you differently for exercising these rights.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, Bela Via, Inc. is the controller of your data. Our legal bases are the performance of our contract with you (running the App), your consent (contacts, location, notifications), and our legitimate interests (keeping the App safe and working). Your data is processed in the United States.

12. Children

Lobi is for adults. It is rated 18+ on the App Store, our Terms of Service require members to be 18 or older, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe someone under 18 has an account, contact us at lobi.support@belaviatravel.com and we will delete it.

13. California residents

If you live in California, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, to request its deletion, to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information (we do not sell or share it), and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. Use the App's deletion tool or email us to exercise them.

14. Data retention

We keep your data for as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, your personal data is permanently removed from our systems. Crash reports are deleted automatically after 90 days, and database backups age out after 7 days, so deleted data leaves them on that schedule.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we will notify you through the App or by other reasonable means, and the date at the top of this page will change.

16. Contact us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, contact us at:

Bela Via, Inc.
lobi.support@belaviatravel.com