Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information Kabul Jan collects, why we collect it, who it is shared with, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have. We have written it in plain language wherever possible.

1. Who we are

Kabul Jan LLC ("Kabul Jan", "we", "us"), a limited liability company registered in the State of California, United States, operates the Kabul Jan website and mobile application at kabuljan.app. Kabul Jan is a social platform for Afghans in Afghanistan and across the diaspora, offering a public feed, short videos, live audio rooms, a marketplace, and events.

For the purposes of data protection law, Kabul Jan is the controller of the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us at support@kabuljan.app.

2. Information we collect

2.1 Information you give us

• Account details — your name, email address, and password. Passwords are handled by our authentication provider and are stored only as salted hashes; we never see them.
• Profile information — your province, interests, profile photo, background image, biography, social links, and optional phone number.
• Content you post — text posts, photographs, videos, voice recordings, comments, marketplace listings, event listings, and messages you send in private chats or live audio rooms.
• Identity verification documents — if you apply for a verified badge, a photograph of your national identity document (Tazkira) or passport, and a live selfie. See retention for how briefly we keep these.
• Support correspondence — problem reports and messages you send us.

2.2 Information collected automatically

• Approximate and precise location, and IP address. Kabul Jan automatically collects your device's location and IP address when you use the service. This is used for member safety, content moderation, showing content relevant to your region, and improving the platform. It is visible only to Kabul Jan administrators and is never displayed publicly.
• Device and technical data — device type, operating system, browser, language preference, and app version.
• Usage data — posts viewed, likes, follows, and similar interactions, used to order your feed and to produce the analytics shown to you about your own posts.
• Push notification tokens — if you enable notifications, so we can deliver them.
• Local storage — we store your session, language choice, theme, and drafts on your own device. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.

2.3 Payment information

Payments for Kabul Jan Plus, verification fees, gifts, marketplace purchases, event tickets and advertising credit are processed by Stripe. Card numbers are entered on Stripe's own systems and are never transmitted to or stored by Kabul Jan. We receive only the outcome of a payment and limited details such as the amount, currency, and last four digits.

3. Summary table

This summary reflects the disclosures we make on the Apple App Store.

4. How we use information

• To create and operate your account and deliver the features you use.
• To show content relevant to your region and stated interests.
• To keep the community safe — detecting and reviewing prohibited content, investigating reports, and enforcing our Community Guidelines.
• To process payments, subscriptions, payouts and refunds.
• To verify identity when you voluntarily apply for a verified badge.
• To send service messages and, if you opt in, push notifications.
• To diagnose faults, prevent abuse and fraud, and improve the platform.
• To comply with legal obligations and to respond to lawful requests.

5. Legal bases

Where the EU or UK GDPR applies to you, we rely on the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract — operating your account and providing the service.
• Legitimate interests — safety, moderation, fraud prevention, security, and improving the platform, balanced against your rights.
• Consent — push notifications, precise location where your device asks you, and identity verification. You may withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation — where we must retain or disclose information by law.

6. Who we share with

We do not sell personal information. We share it only with service providers who process it on our behalf under contract, and only as needed to run the platform:

We may also disclose information where we believe in good faith that it is necessary to comply with law, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, safety or property of our members or the public. Content that constitutes a credible threat of violence may be escalated to the appropriate authorities.

Publicly visible information. Your name, profile photo, biography, social links, public location if you choose to set one, and anything you post to a public audience are visible to other people. Please treat them as public.

7. Moderation and safety

For everyone's safety, Kabul Jan moderators may review posts, photographs, videos, voice recordings and chat messages, including private ones, when investigating a report or a suspected breach of our Community Guidelines. Access is limited to administrators and is logged.

8. How long we keep data

• Account and profile data — for as long as your account exists.
• Posts and messages — until you delete them or your account is deleted.
• Identity verification documents and selfies — reviewed by an administrator and then permanently deleted once a decision is made. They are never shown publicly and are not used for any other purpose.
• Location and IP records — retained only as long as needed for safety and moderation purposes.
• Transaction records — retained as required by financial and tax law.
• Backups — deleted content may persist in encrypted backups for a limited period before being overwritten.

9. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• delete your account and personal information;
• obtain a copy of your information in a portable format;
• object to or restrict certain processing;
• withdraw consent where processing is based on consent;
• complain to your local data protection authority.

You can edit most of your information directly in the app under Settings. For anything else, contact support@kabuljan.app. We will respond within 30 days.

10. Deleting your account

You may delete your Kabul Jan account at any time from Settings → Delete my account. You will be asked for your password to confirm.

There is a 30-day grace period. The moment you confirm, your profile, posts, comments, marketplace listings and events are hidden from everyone else — to the rest of the community your account is gone. Nothing is destroyed yet. If you sign in again within 30 days you can reactivate the account and everything returns exactly as it was.

After 30 days the account is permanently deleted. An automated process removes your profile, posts, comments, messages, likes and all uploaded photographs, videos and voice recordings from our servers — including any identity documents or verification photographs you sent us, whether or not that verification was ever reviewed. This cannot be undone and we cannot recover it.

If you have an active Kabul Jan Plus subscription, it is cancelled at that point, so you are never charged for an account that no longer exists. Note that this happens when the account is deleted at the end of the 30 days, not the moment you request deletion — if you want billing to stop immediately, cancel Plus yourself before requesting deletion. Cancelling only stops future payments; payments already taken are not refunded.

Some records may be retained after deletion where we are legally required to keep them, such as transaction records for tax and accounting purposes. Anonymised or aggregated data that cannot identify you may also be retained. Deleted content may persist in encrypted backups for a limited period before being overwritten.

11. Children

Kabul Jan is not directed at children. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, or older where your country requires it. If we learn that we hold personal information from a child below the applicable age, we will delete it. If you believe a child has created an account, please contact us.

12. International transfers

Kabul Jan serves a global community, and our service providers operate infrastructure in several countries. Your information may therefore be transferred to and processed in countries other than your own. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

13. Security

We protect information in transit using HTTPS, restrict database access with row-level security policies, and limit administrative access to sensitive data such as verification documents and location records. No online service can be completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

14. California privacy rights

Kabul Jan LLC is based in California. This section explains the rights California residents have over their personal information, and how to use them. We give the same rights to every member, wherever they live.

What we collect, and why

In the past 12 months we have collected the following categories of personal information, as described in section 2:

We collect this information from you and from your device, and use it for the purposes set out in section 4. We keep it for the periods set out in section 8. We disclose it for business purposes only to the service providers listed in section 6.

We use sensitive personal information only to run your account, keep members safe, verify identity when you ask us to, and prevent fraud. We do not use it to infer things about you.

We do not sell or share your personal information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are defined in California law. We have not done so in the past 12 months. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. Because of this, there is nothing to opt out of, and we do not show a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link.

Your rights

• Right to know what personal information we have collected about you, where it came from, why we collected it, and who we disclosed it to.
• Right to a copy of that information in a portable format.
• Right to delete personal information we collected from you, subject to legal exceptions such as tax records.
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information.
• Right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. We do neither.
• Right to limit the use of sensitive personal information. We already use it only for the purposes California law allows.
• Right not to be discriminated against for using any of these rights. We will not deny you the service, charge you a different price, or give you a lower quality of service because you made a request.

How to make a request

Email support@kabuljan.app from the email address on your account, and say which right you want to use. You can also delete your account yourself from Settings (see section 10). To protect your account, we confirm a request by checking that it comes from the account's email address, and we may ask for more information if we cannot.

You can ask someone to make a request for you. They will need your signed permission, and we may still ask you to confirm your identity directly.

We will confirm that we received your request within 10 business days and answer within 45 days. If we need longer, up to a further 45 days, we will tell you why. Requests are free.

Shine the Light

California residents may ask whether we disclosed personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing. We do not.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the version and date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify you in the app. Continuing to use Kabul Jan after a change takes effect means you accept the revised policy.

16. Contact us

Questions, requests or complaints about privacy: support@kabuljan.app. You may also use Report a problem in the app's Settings screen.