Privacy Policy

Who runs HakkaYin

HakkaYin is run by William Yip. You can reach us any time through the Contact page.

When you contact us we use your message only to answer you.

Information you give us

• Account basics — your email address (used to log in), your name, and your language preference.
• Profile details you add — a profile photo, an “about” paragraph, contact details, your home country and (optionally) your city.
• Village membership — the villages you ask to join and the membership you are granted.
• Family tree entries — the names, origins and notes you add about your relatives, and the invitations you send to connect them.
• Contact messages — anything you write to us through the contact form.

Photos you upload

When you upload a photo to a village we store the image, your caption and where you placed it on the map. If your device adds GPS information, we may store that too — you can remove location data before uploading, and your photo pin only shows the position you choose.

Please only upload photos you have the right to share, and get the people in them to agree (see the Terms of Use). We do not want photos of children uploaded by anyone other than their own family, with a parent or guardian’s knowledge.

How your information is used

• To run HakkaYin — showing profiles and village pages to members, placing your photo pins, sending login links and family invitations.
• For the HakkaYin Tracker — an anonymous map of the diaspora. It shows counts by country (and by city only if you choose to share your city). It never shows your name.
• To moderate the site — investigating reports, and acting against misuse.
• To answer you — replying to contact messages.

Who can see what (your visibility choices)

• Your name and village badges are public.
• Your profile photo and country are shown to logged-in members.
• Your city and your contact details are shown only to members who share one of your villages — unless you tick “hide”, in which case they are private.
• A photo you pin is “public” (anyone visiting the village page) or “village members only”, as you choose for each photo.
• Your family tree is shown to people you connect (by inviting them) and to members who share a village with you; site administrators can see it for safety.
• We never sell or rent your information to anyone.

Where information is stored

Your data is hosted with Cloudflare (Pages, D1 database and R2 storage). Transactional email (login links and invitations) is sent through Resend. Both providers process data under their own standard security commitments; we choose them for their privacy posture.

How long we keep it

We keep your account and the content you add while your account is active. If an account is deleted, we remove the member’s own content we can and keep only limited records where we need them for safety (for example, the reason an account was moderated). You can ask us to delete your account at any time through the Contact page.

Your choices and rights

• You can edit or remove most profile details yourself, hide your city and contact details, and delete photos you have uploaded.
• You can ask us (through the Contact page) to access, correct or delete the information we hold about you, and we will act on reasonable requests.
• If you believe content about you was uploaded without permission, tell us — we will review it and remove it where the Terms require.

Children

HakkaYin is for people aged 16 or over. If you are under 16, please do not create an account; a parent or guardian may use the site on your behalf.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update this page and note it in the site. Material changes will be announced before they take effect.