Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

TheRobotBay (therobotbay.com) is an online marketplace for buying, selling, and renting robotics equipment. We are operated by Daniel Andrei R. Garcia (“we”, “us”, “our”).

For questions about this policy, contact us via the Contact Us page.

2. Information We Collect

Account Information

When you register, we collect your name, email address, and a hashed password. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email from Google — no password is stored in that case.

Profile Information

You may optionally provide a phone number, bio, and location (city, state, country). This information is visible on your public profile.

Listing Data

When you create a listing, we store all information you submit: title, description, category, pricing, condition, specifications, location, and images.

Messages

Messages exchanged between buyers and sellers through the platform are stored in our database to support the messaging threads feature.

Contact Form Submissions

If you submit the Contact Us form, we store your name, email, subject, and message.

Usage Data

We record listing view counts and page view metadata (IP address, user agent, referrer) for analytics purposes.

3. How We Use Your Information

• To create and maintain your account
• To display your listings and public profile to other users
• To facilitate buyer-seller communication via the messaging system
• To send email notifications for new messages (if enabled in settings)
• To respond to contact form submissions
• To monitor and improve platform performance
• To prevent fraud and enforce our terms of service

We do not sell your personal data to third parties. We do not use your data for advertising profiling.

4. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate the platform:

5. Cookies and Sessions

We use a single session cookie to keep you logged in. This cookie contains a signed JSON Web Token (JWT) and does not track you across other websites. No advertising or analytics cookies are set.

6. Data Retention

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. Listing data is retained until you delete the listing. Messages are retained to preserve thread history for both parties.

If you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal data within 30 days, except where retention is required by law or for legitimate fraud prevention purposes.

7. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data via your account settings
• Delete your account and associated personal data
• Export a copy of your data upon request
• Opt out of email notifications via account settings

To exercise any of these rights, contact us via the Contact Us page.

8. Security

Passwords are hashed using bcrypt before storage — we never store plaintext passwords. All data is transmitted over HTTPS. Access to our database is restricted to the production server only.

While we implement reasonable security measures, no system is completely secure. We will notify affected users promptly in the event of a data breach.

9. Children's Privacy

TheRobotBay is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top. Continued use of the platform after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact

For any privacy-related questions or requests, please reach out via our Contact Us page.