Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

av8db.com (the "Platform") is a social and professional network for pilots in Canada and the United States. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and share it, and the choices you have. It applies to anyone who visits the Platform, registers an account, or interacts with us. By using the Platform you agree to the practices described here.

If you have privacy questions or want to exercise a right described below, contact the platform operators via the in-app feedback form.

2. Information we collect

Account & profile information. First name, last name, optional handle, email address, password (stored hashed), account type (pilot / student pilot / enthusiast / business), home airport, country, timezone, profile photo, bio, qualifications, employment history, ferry-pilot details, and any other content you choose to add to your profile.

Content you post. Feed posts, comments, reactions, photos, videos, embedded links, aircraft you list, business listings, reviews, fuel reports, flight logs, job postings, events, messages and chat content.

Activity & relationships. Connections, follows, endorsements, business memberships, ownership claims, votes on feedback items, notifications, and similar interaction records.

Technical information. IP address at signup (for spam prevention), browser and device user-agent, log timestamps, the cookies described in §7, and request metadata such as the pages you visit on the Platform.

Information from third parties. If you sign in through a third-party authentication provider or your employer claims a listing on your behalf, we receive only the data needed to complete that operation (e.g. a verified email address).

We do not knowingly collect special-category data (race, religion, health, sexual orientation, etc.). Please do not post such information.

3. How we use your information

• Operate the Platform: create and maintain your account, render the feed and profile, deliver messages, store the content you post.
• Identity and trust: support the peer-endorsement / verified-pilot system and let other users see who has vouched for you.
• Communication: send transactional emails (password reset, email verification, notification digests, security alerts) and, where you have opted in, optional digests.
• Safety, security, and moderation: detect abuse, enforce our Terms, run automated content filtering, investigate reports, and prevent fraud or spam.
• Improve the Platform: aggregate usage statistics, debug errors, and prioritise the features that get built next.
• Comply with legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

4. Information visible to others

Your profile, qualifications, endorsements, employment history, public posts, aircraft listings, business memberships you own or manage, ferry-pilot listing (if enabled), reviews you leave, and your activity on the platform are visible to other signed-in users. Some material — such as public posts and verified-business listings — may be visible to anyone with the page URL, including search engines, unless we explicitly mark a page as logged-in-only.

Direct messages are visible only to the participants and to platform staff acting on a moderation or legal request. Flight logs default to private.

Admin / staff accounts are hidden from the public pilots directory unless they opt in. Otherwise, what appears in your profile is what you put there — review your settings before posting anything you wouldn't want a fellow pilot, an employer, or the public to see.

5. How we share information

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only as follows:

• With other users — as described in §4.
• With service providers who help us operate the Platform — for example our hosting provider (HostGator), email delivery provider (Mailgun), backup storage, and payment processors (Stripe) if you use paid features. Each is bound by confidentiality and may only process your data on our instructions.
• For safety and legal reasons — to comply with a valid legal request, enforce our Terms, protect the rights, safety or property of users, the public, or av8db, or investigate suspected fraud or abuse.
• In a business transfer — if av8db is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing or sale, your information may be transferred to the successor on the same privacy terms.
• With your consent — for anything else, we ask first.

6. Where your information is stored

Our primary servers and database are located in the United States. If you are outside the US (for example, in Canada or the EU/UK), your information will be transferred to and stored in the United States and processed under US law. We rely on standard contractual protections with our service providers to safeguard transferred data.

7. Cookies and similar technologies

We use a small set of cookies that are essential to the service: a session cookie to keep you signed in, a CSRF token cookie to protect form submissions, and (if you tick "remember me") a long-lived remember-me cookie. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Disabling cookies will prevent you from signing in.

Browser-level Do Not Track signals are honoured to the extent practical — we already do not run cross-site tracking.

8. Data retention

We keep your account and content for as long as your account is active. When you delete content (posts, comments, photos, listings, businesses, reviews, your account) it is soft-deleted — kept in the database for a limited period so it can be recovered after an accidental delete — then permanently removed. Moderation logs, security logs and records we are legally required to keep are retained longer.

Aggregated or de-identified data that cannot reasonably be tied back to you may be retained indefinitely for analytics and product improvement.

9. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights:

• Access — request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction — update inaccurate or incomplete information. Most fields can be updated from your profile-edit page directly.
• Deletion — request that we delete your account and associated personal information, subject to legal retention requirements.
• Portability — request a machine-readable export of the personal information you provided.
• Withdraw consent — opt out of optional email digests at any time from your notification settings; opt out of cookies as described in §7.
• Complain — Canadian users may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca); residents of other jurisdictions have analogous regulators.

To make a request, contact us via the in-app feedback form. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

10. Security

We use industry-standard safeguards — HTTPS in transit, hashed passwords, encrypted backups, rate limiting on sensitive endpoints, and access controls on staff systems — to protect your information. No system is perfectly secure; you accept some inherent risk by transmitting information over the internet.

If we discover a breach affecting your personal information we will notify you and the appropriate regulators as required by law.

11. Photos of identifiable individuals

If you upload a photo that shows other people, you confirm that you have the necessary permissions to do so. PIPEDA, GDPR and similar regimes can apply to photos of identifiable individuals — please respect the privacy of others when posting.

12. Children

The Platform is intended for users aged 16 and over. If you believe a child under 13 has registered an account, contact us and we will delete it. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the new version here with an updated "Last updated" date. Material changes will be flagged on the Platform.

14. Contact

For privacy questions or rights requests, contact the platform operators via the in-app feedback / bug-report form.