Legal

Privacy policy

In force since 21 October 2026.

This explains, in plain English, how Financial Network Zurich (FNZ) and Zürich Spontaneous Meetup (ZSM) handle your personal data under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP) — and, where you are in the EU/EEA, the GDPR.

The controller is The Swiss Standard by Alessandro Scire Calabrisotto, c/o Alessandro Scire Calabrisotto, Seebahnstrasse 121, 8003 Zürich, Switzerland, UID CHE-228.447.426. Contact for any data question: a.scire.c@icloud.com. We are not required to appoint a data protection officer and have not appointed one; the address above reaches the person responsible.

What we collect

Account & profile — the email you sign up with, and the profile details you choose to add: your name, a member display name (we show “Firstname L.” or your chosen nickname to signed-in members; your full name is stored privately), an optional nickname, your handle, headline, bio, pronouns, the city you enter, interests, links (your website and social profiles), and any avatar or banner image you upload. Member identities and profiles are available only after signing in. You can hide your profile from other members in settings.

Contact sharing — contact email, phone number, LinkedIn and other contact links are private unless you choose to share each one with signed-in members. Your login email is not automatically shared. You can switch sharing off or remove a contact method at any time in settings; this stops future access on the platform. Other members may retain information they already received or use an external service when you choose to connect.

Date of birth — collected to confirm you are 18 or older. Only your derived age (never the raw birthdate) is ever shown, and only if you make it visible.

Approximate location — if you enter a city, we geocode it to a coordinate rounded to roughly one kilometre (city-level, never a street address) to place a map pin. That pin is visible to signed-in members who can view your profile.

Participation — events you RSVP to or buy tickets for and the attendee details on those tickets; anything you post (threads, comments, ideas, poll votes, classified listings, gallery photos); and any business listing you create.

Usage & technical — which member profiles and business listings you view (so founders can see interest in their listing), plus the IP address and standard server logs our hosting records to run and secure the site.

Payment — card and TWINT details are entered directly with our payment processor and never reach us; we store only the processor's transaction identifiers and the billing email.

If you contact us without an account — the proposal form on Get involved accepts submissions from people who are not members. It records the name, email, topic and free-text message you enter, so that we can reply. You do not need an account to use it, and we do not create one for you.

Why we are allowed to use it

Swiss law lets us process personal data where doing so is proportionate and recognisable. Where the GDPR also applies, these are our legal bases:

To run your account and the community — performance of our contract with you (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)). Without this data there is no account and no membership.

To sell and honour tickets — performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b)), and for keeping the resulting accounting records, our legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)).

Age verification — legal obligation and our legitimate interest in running an adults-only network (Art. 6(1)(c) and (f)).

Security, abuse prevention and server logs — our legitimate interest in keeping the platform safe and available (Art. 6(1)(f)).

Optional profile fields, your map pin, and notification emails — your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), given by filling the field in or switching the notification on. You can withdraw it at any time in settings, without affecting anything done beforehand.

Replying to a proposal you send us — steps taken at your request before any contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in answering correspondence (Art. 6(1)(f)).

Who processes it

Supabase — authentication, database and file storage, hosted in the Zürich, Switzerland region. Netlify — website hosting and delivery through a global content delivery network; server-side requests are processed in Ohio, United States. Stripe — payment processing; card and TWINT details go to Stripe, never to us. Resend — transactional email such as confirmations and receipts. Our sending region is Ireland; Resend stores email and log data in the United States. OpenStreetMap / Nominatim (operated in the UK) — turns the city you enter into a map coordinate and serves the map tiles shown on profiles; when a map loads, your browser's IP address is visible to that service.

Some of these providers are outside Switzerland and the EU/EEA — including Netlify, Resend and Stripe (United States), and OpenStreetMap (United Kingdom). For those transfers we rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses together with the transfer mechanisms recognised by the Swiss authorities, and we send each service only what it needs to do its job.

We do not sell your data, do not share it for advertising, and use no advertising or analytics trackers.

How long we keep it

Account and profile — while your account exists. Delete your account and we remove it within 30 days, apart from anything covered below.

Orders, tickets and receipts — 10 years, because Swiss accounting law (Art. 958f CO) requires it. When you delete your account we sever the link to you, so what remains is a financial record rather than a record about you.

Posts, comments and photos — until you delete them, or your account. Threads that others have replied to keep the reply structure, with your authorship removed.

Server and security logs — up to 90 days, then discarded.

Proposals sent through Get involved — up to 24 months from your last message, then deleted.

Moderation records — reports and the decisions on them, up to 24 months, so repeat problems can be recognised.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, correct it, have it deleted, restrict or object to how we use it, and receive it in a portable format. You can withdraw consent at any time. We answer within 30 days and it costs you nothing.

Much of this you can do yourself: edit or clear profile fields and notification settings in settings, and delete your own posts, listings and photos wherever they appear. For an export or a full account deletion, email a.scire.c@icloud.com and we will do it for you.

If you think we have handled your data wrongly, please tell us first — we would rather fix it. You may also complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) in Bern, or, if you are in the EU/EEA, to your local supervisory authority.

Cookies

We use only the cookies strictly necessary to run the site — chiefly to keep you signed in. There are no advertising or third-party tracking cookies, which is why you are not asked to click through a consent banner. Stripe and our hosting providers may set their own strictly necessary cookies when you pay or load a page.

Changes

If we change how we handle your data we will update this page and change the date at the top. If a change materially affects you, we will tell you before it takes effect.

Questions about your data? Email a.scire.c@icloud.com.