Privacy Policy

To create an account, we ask for your email address. Authentication is passwordless, using a login code sent by email.

Depending on the features you use, we also collect: first name, last name, date of birth, country of nationality, and your WHV start date — this information is used to personalise your tracking (remaining days calculation, regional work eligibility, etc.).

This data is strictly tied to your account and is never shared with other users, except for what you explicitly choose to make public in a community or 88Workers profile (see sections 3 and 4).

The app requests access to your GPS location (via your phone's location service) to show you regional work zones, spots, job listings, and community profiles near you.

You can deny or revoke this access at any time from your phone's settings — some proximity-based features will then be unavailable.

Your precise location is never shared with other users. Depending on your visibility settings, only a city or an approximate distance may be visible to the community.

If you fill in your community profile, you may provide: city, status message, Instagram/Facebook accounts, and a profile photo.

This information is voluntarily made public to other app users, according to the visibility settings you choose yourself: "everyone", "my language", or specific languages.

You can change these settings or fully hide your community profile at any time from the app.

The 88Workers profile lets you create an application profile for employers. It can include: first and last name, photo, nationality, age, current city and search area, availability and how long you can stay, types of jobs wanted, skills, experience, qualifications (RSA, White Card, driver's licence, etc.), English level and regional work days already completed.

When your profile is activated, it appears in the employer area of join88mates.com ("Browse backpackers"), which is only open to employers whose ABN has been verified with the Australian Business Register (ABR). Your last name is shortened there and your contact details (email, phone) are never displayed. You can also share your profile yourself through a link or QR code.

An interested employer sends you a contact request (business name, ABN, contact details, message) that you receive in the app: you decide whether to accept or ignore it. You can deactivate or delete your profile at any time from the app; it then disappears immediately from the employer area.

If you enable notifications, we store a push notification token (a unique technical identifier for your device) to alert you about new jobs and spots near you.

Enabling notifications is an explicit opt-in choice, and you can disable them at any time from your profile settings in the app.

The app lets you track your regional work days (88/179 days) and your personal budget (transactions, income, expenses).

This data is strictly tied to your account and is never shared with other users, employers, or third parties.

88mates offers premium features through a one-time in-app purchase, with no subscription. Purchases are managed by RevenueCat together with the App Store (Apple) or Google Play, which only share the status of your purchase with us (transaction ID, product, date).

88mates never stores any card details: payments are fully processed by Apple or Google, under their own privacy policies.

Some information stays only on your phone and is never sent to our servers:

We never sell your personal data to third parties for advertising purposes. However, we do rely on technical providers to operate the app:

join88mates.com is the employer area of 88mates. When an employer posts a job, browses 88Workers profiles or sends a contact request, we process: the business name, the ABN, the name and contact details of the contact person (email, phone), the job location, and the content of job posts and messages.

The ABN is verified with the Australian Business Register (ABR). Job locations are converted into geographic coordinates using OpenStreetMap (Nominatim). Service emails are sent through Resend, and any information emails to employers through Brevo, with an unsubscribe link in every message. Voluntary contributions are paid through Stripe: we never receive card details.

This data is only used to run the hiring service, verify employers and protect backpackers; it is never sold. An employer can remove their job post using the link received by email, and request access to, correction or deletion of their data at simon@join88mates.com.

Your data is stored via Supabase (PostgreSQL, AWS infrastructure), with strict access rules (Row Level Security) ensuring each user can only access their own private data.

Data you voluntarily choose to make public (visible community profile, shared 88Workers profile) is accessible according to the visibility preferences you set yourself.

All communications between the app and our servers are encrypted (HTTPS).

The database is hosted in Singapore. Data transfers outside the European Union (Singapore, United States) are covered by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses provided by our service providers.

When you delete your account, your data is kept for 30 days in a deactivated state (to allow restoration in case of accidental deletion), then permanently deleted from our servers.

Expired job listings may be retained for anonymised statistical purposes beyond this period.

If you reside in the European Union or in a country with equivalent legislation, you have the following rights regarding your personal data:

You can access, rectify, or delete your data directly from your profile settings in the app, or by contacting us at contact@88mates.com.

88mates is not intended for people under 18, in line with the minimum age required to obtain a Working Holiday Visa. We do not knowingly collect data about minors.

The 88mates.com website only uses cookies essential to its operation (login session). No advertising cookies are used on the site.

We may update this privacy policy to reflect changes in our features or legal requirements. The last update date is shown at the top of this page.

For any question about this privacy policy or your personal data, contact us:

The controller of your personal data is Simon Marion, trading as 88mates, a self-employed sole trader registered in Malta: 45, Loredana Court, Flat 10, Triq Giuseppe Calì, Ta' Xbiex XBX 1420, Malta.