This privacy policy identifies how we gather and use the information you enter in our site. HomestayBay is committed to protecting your privacy. We comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (2000, c. 5) Canada.
This policy was written in English. To the extent any translated version of this policy conflicts with the English version, the English version controls.
1. Information we receive
Homestay Hosts
When you register your homestay with HomestayBay, you will provide details about yourself and your home, including your name, email address, and home address.
- Email addresses are never shared with third parties and are not displayed on the HomestayBay website. They are used as login IDs for account management and to send email notifications when an event occurs requiring your attention. An example of such an event would be a guest requesting contact with you on the HomestayBay website: you will receive an email notification with contact information for the guest, but the guest will not have your contact information unless you reply to the email.
- Home addresses are required to generate location-based data, such as to list homestays that are near yours and to list your homestay when it is near others. Addresses are not published on the HomestayBay website. When displayed on a map, a pointer is shown that indicates a rough location for your home but is generally not specific enough to identify your exact location.
By default, your homestay listing will contain your first name in the title of the listing (e.g., "John's Homestay"). You have the option to change this to display an alias or any other name that you feel is appropriate, as long as it conforms to the HomestayBay Terms of Use.
Homestay Guests
You may use HomestayBay anonymously to search for homestays. However, when you contact a homestay host through HomestayBay, your email address and optionally your phone number will be sent to the homestay host as a way for the host to contact you.
Submitting Site Feedback
You will be asked for your email address when you submit feedback to HomestayBay, such as inquiries about our service. This email address is used to reply to your feedback and will not be shared with third parties or displayed on the HomestayBay website.
We'd love to hear your success stories with our service and publish them on our site. However, we'll ask for your permission first, and we'll respect your privacy by showing only the city you live in and your first name and initial of your family name (e.g., your comment might be attributed as 'John D., Vancouver').
2. Changing your information
Any information you provide to HomestayBay, even if changed or deleted, may still exist in backup copies for up to 90 days. However, backed up information is kept in offline storage and not accessible to any user of the HomestayBay service. The purpose of these backups is to restore the service in the event of a system failure.
You may update or action your information on HomestayBay at any time. You may only perform this action by logging on to HomestayBay with the email address and password associated with the account that owns the information.
When you update or action your information, your changes generally take effect immediately. However, links from search engines such as Google or Bing may still exist for a period of hours or days. This is because search engines maintain a cache of website content in their search indexes, and may not update this cache for a period of time. HomestayBay has no control over this.
3. Information we collect
Cookies. Like many websites, we use browser cookies to improve your experience on this Website. Cookies are small pieces of information that a website stores on a user's computer for a period of time or until the web browser is closed. An example might be remembering the language you have selected for your next visit. If you do not wish to store this data, you can configure your web browser to block cookies.
Third Party Services. HomestayBay uses services hosted by third parties to help provide our services, such as displaying homestays on a map. These services may collect information sent by your browser as part of a web page request, such as your IP address.
4. Information security
HomestayBay has implemented procedures and security measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized misuse of our system. These measures include access control to sensitive data, network perimeter protection, encrypting highly sensitive information, and storage only of hashed user passwords. To hash a password means that a one-way mathematical process is applied to the password to convert it into a digital fingerprint. It is nearly impossible to recover the original password from this fingerprint and this is a proven and effective way to prevent access by any party to users' passwords.
This policy will be updated from time to time, as new features are introduced. You may access the current copy of this policy at https://www.homestaybay.com/en/privacy.