Privacy Policy

Trade By Barter Network, Inc. is the data controller for the marketplace at tbbnetwork.com, TBBN Space, and our developer surfaces. Reach us at privacy@tbbnetwork.com.

Account details. Your name and email address, and your phone number if you verify one. We do not store a password, because we do not use them — we send a one-time code instead. If you add more email addresses (a school or work address, say), we keep those too, and which Organizations you joined with them.

What you put on the network. Your listings, the items you say you want, offers you send and receive, trades you take part in, reviews you write, posts you make in the developer community, and items or Spaces you save to your Wishlist.

What you send us directly. If you contact us, file a dispute, or report something, we keep your name, email address, and whatever you told us, so we can respond and review it properly.

Space bookings and messages. Which Space you booked, when, and for what; the booking terms you agreed to; and the messages you exchange with a host on TBBN Space. Card details go straight to Stripe — they never reach our servers. Where tax applies to a booking or a business plan, Stripe calculates it from the billing address you give at checkout.

Affiliate referrals. If you arrive on TBBN Space through an affiliate's link, we record that visit — which affiliate, which page you landed on, and the address of the page that linked to you, without its query string — so the affiliate can be credited if you book. If you apply to be an affiliate, we keep your application and your referral results.

Payout details, if you earn on TBBN. A record of what you earned and when we paid it. To connect a bank account you go through Stripe, which verifies it and holds the account details; TBBN stores only a reference to the connected account and the last few digits, never your full account number or banking login.

Activity, if you allow it. Which listings you view, so we can recommend better trades. This is off until you turn it on in the cookie banner, and you can turn it back off at any time.

Your country. The marketplace shows listings from your country, and our prices in its currency: the country you pick, or else the country your connection appears to come from. We work that out from your IP address on our own servers, using a country lookup table we hold ourselves — your address isn't sent to anyone else for it. If you save a location in your account settings (approximate, to about a kilometre), we use it to apply the distance limit some members' listings have. Other members never see it, and you can clear it at any time.

This site or product includes IP2Location LITE data available from https://lite.ip2location.com.

Blog comments and likes. If you comment on or like a post on the TBBN blog, we keep the comment, the like and when you made them. Comments are public and show your first name and the first letter of your last name. You can delete your comments at any time, and deleting your account removes them.

Approximate location, if you allow it. Only when you press “Find Spaces near me,” and only to sort results by distance. Your browser asks you first, every time.

Technical basics. The usual server-side request information any website receives.

This is the part of TBBN worth reading closely, because it is unusual.

TBBN connects stores that already have their own sellers. When a merchant tells us about one of its sellers, we check whether the verified email or phone matches an account we already know. If it does, we can recognise that the same person sells in more than one place — which is what lets a trade cross from one store to another.

We ask you to approve that link. A merchant cannot silently attach its records to your account: the connection is completed through a consent step you complete yourself, while signed in.

What a merchant sees about you stays limited to what it needs to run the trade, and what it was already entitled to know about its own seller. We do not hand one merchant another merchant's customer list.

For this linking, TBBN and the merchant each act as a data controller for their own side of the relationship: the merchant for its records of its seller, and TBBN for the account and trade history held on the network. You can withdraw a link at any time from your account settings, which stops further data being matched against it.

To run your account and the trades you ask for (performing our contract with you); to keep the network safe and lawful, and to improve it (our legitimate interests); and, for activity tracking and location, because you gave consent — which you can take back.

Essential. A secure, HTTP-only session cookie so you stay signed in across tbbnetwork.com and its subdomains. No consent prompt, because the site cannot work without it.

Your choice, stored locally. We keep your cookie decision in your browser's local storage so we stop asking.

Activity, only if you opt in. A visitor identifier cookie that lets us tailor recommendations, and Google Analytics cookies that measure how our sites are used. Set only after you say yes, and they expire on their own. Your choice applies across tbbnetwork.com and its subdomains; if you change your mind, the Google Analytics cookies are removed.

Referral. When you arrive on TBBN Space through an affiliate's link, a cookie holding that affiliate's code, kept for the referral window shown in the affiliate program, so the booking can be credited to them. It holds nothing about you.

Country. If you pick a country on the marketplace, a cookie remembers it.

We do not sell your data. We share it only with services we need to run TBBN:

Stripe processes payments and host payouts. Amazon Web Services hosts our systems and sends our emails and text messages. Google Maps turns a Space's address into coordinates so distance search works.

Google Analytics, only if you opt in to activity cookies, measures how our sites are used: the pages you visit (without the private parts of their web addresses, such as sign-in links or email addresses), how you arrived, and your device and browser. Nothing is sent to it until you opt in, and it is never used for advertising.

Other members and merchants see what you would expect them to: your listing and display name are public, and a trading partner or the host of a Space you book sees what they need to complete it, including the messages you send them.

Organizations you join see your name, the email address you joined with, and your membership status. Your members-only listings are seen only by fellow members.

Affiliates see totals and the bookings they referred — the Space, the date, and the amount — but never who made the booking.

Merchants, hosts, and Organizations handle what you share with them under their own privacy policies, which this policy does not replace. A Space that has its own privacy policy links to it on its page.

We also disclose data where the law requires it — see the next section.

We may access, preserve, and disclose your account information and activity on TBBN — including your identity, contact details, listings, offers and trades, messages, Space bookings, payout records, and connection or device information — where we have a good-faith belief that doing so is required by law, such as in response to a valid subpoena, warrant, court order, or other lawful request from a government, regulatory, or law enforcement authority, or where necessary to comply with legal process.

We may also access, preserve, and disclose this information where we reasonably believe it is necessary to detect, investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud, a threat to the safety of any person, or a violation of our Terms of Service, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of TBBN, our users, or the public, as permitted or required by applicable law.

Where the law allows it, we try to notify you before disclosing your information in response to a legal request. We may not be able to do that where we are legally prohibited from notifying you, where notice could endanger someone or interfere with an investigation, or in an emergency involving a risk of harm.

Account and trade records stay while your account is open. Some things go sooner: sign-in codes after a day, signed-in sessions 30 days after they end, the record of what you viewed after 13 months, notifications after a year, and the text of trade and Space messages two years after the conversation ends. Payment, booking and invoice records are kept for seven years for tax law. When you delete your account we remove your name and contact details, your messages, comments and saved items, and take down your listings; what we must keep is no longer linked to you.

You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to how we use it, withdraw a consent you gave, or ask for it in a portable form. Email privacy@tbbnetwork.com and we will respond within the time the law allows. If you are unhappy with our answer you can complain to your local data protection authority.

TBBN is built to work across borders, so your data may be stored and processed in a country other than the one you live in, including the United States.

Where we transfer personal data out of a region that restricts such transfers, we rely on appropriate legal safeguards — including the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or an equivalent mechanism recognised in your region — and we require the same protections from the providers who process data on our behalf.

TBBN is not for under-18s, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

If we change this policy in a way that matters to you, we will tell you before it takes effect rather than quietly updating the date. See also our Terms of Service.