Privacy Policy

Italy Lions is a community platform for Sri Lankans living in Italy. This page says exactly what we collect, why we collect it, who can see it, and how to get it back or have it erased. It is written in plain language on purpose.

Last updated: 2 October 2026.

1. Who is responsible — the data controller

Italy Lions operates this platform and decides what is collected here, so Italy Lions is the data controller for the personal data described on this page.

• Controller: Italy Lions
• Contact for all privacy matters: info@italylions.com
• Data protection officer: none appointed. Privacy questions go to the address above.

Operator details are in the Legal Notice.

For anything in this policy — a question, a correction, a copy of your data, or a deletion request — write to info@italylions.com. You also have the right to complain to the Italian supervisory authority; see your rights.

2. What we collect, and why

When you register

• Your name and surname. So other members can find the right person. Shown publicly.
• Your city in Italy. So the community can be browsed by place. Shown publicly.
• An Italian mobile number. One number, one account — this is how we keep a single person from running many accounts, and how we limit scams. Never shown publicly.
• Your email address. Used to sign in, to reset a password, and to reach you about your account. Never shown publicly.
• Your password, if you register with one. It is handled by Google Firebase Authentication and Italy Lions never sees it.
• A profile photo, if you choose to add one. Shown publicly.
• The date you joined, a member number, and a permanent ItalyLions ID (IL-004 and so on).

If you sign in with Google

Google tells us your name, email address and profile picture, and confirms the account is yours. We do not receive your Google password and we cannot read anything else in your Google account. You still have to complete registration here — a Google sign-in on its own does not make you a member.

What you add later, if you want to

• A short biography, your region and province, a chosen @handle, a cover photo.
• Your date of birth. Never shown publicly — members may choose to show only the day and month.
• Languages you speak.
• Your journey: the towns you have lived in and the years. Town, province, region and country only — never a street or an address.

What you do on the platform

• Posts, comments, reactions, Stories, photos and videos you publish.
• LionGram photographs (one a day), their caption, the place and category you chose, likes and comments. Photos are public. Before upload the photo is resized on your own phone and the hidden camera data inside it — GPS position, phone model, the time it was taken — is removed; a place is only shown if you type it. We keep a small record that you used a day's upload (not the photo), so that deleting a photo does not reset the one-a-day limit. Reports you make are seen only by LionGram administrators.
• Who you follow, your friendships, and anyone you have blocked.
• Private messages you send to other members or to businesses.
• Businesses, shops, events, jobs and rentals you create or interact with.
• If you turn on notifications, a device token so your phone can receive them. You can turn this off at any time.

Location — what Italy Lions does and does not collect

Italy Lions does not track where you are. There is no background location collection anywhere on this platform. Your device's position is read only when you press a button that says so, and your browser asks your permission the first time. You can take that permission back at any time in your browser's settings for this site.

• Your city, province and region are things you type in, not things we detect. They are how the community is browsed by place, and they are public.
• Sending your location in a chat. In Lion Messenger you can send one pin of where you are to the person you are talking to. Before anything is read you choose an exact spot or an approximate area (about 1 km). The pin is a message: it stays in that conversation like any other message, and in a chat with a business that business's team can see it. Deleting the message removes it from the chat for both of you; as with every deleted message, the record, including the position, is kept for safety and moderation.
• Lion Meet Up shares a live position, and only when you deliberately start a meet-up with another member and press Share my location. While it is running, your position, as precise as your phone's GPS, is shared with that one member only, for the 15, 30 or 60 minutes the two of you agreed. The location row expires by itself — the expiry is enforced by the database, not by the app, so it ends even if your phone loses signal or the tab is closed — and ending the meet-up deletes it immediately. No history of where you were is kept.
• A meeting point for a Meet Up is either an address you search for or, with Use my current location, your position read once. It is visible to the two of you and stays in the record of that meet-up, which only the two of you can read. Either of you can remove it while the meet-up is running. Use my current location is a switch: while it is on, your position is read once each time you open an invitation, and the on/off choice is remembered on this device only. Switching it on sends nothing to anyone — the point goes only with an invitation you send.
• Finding an address. Meet Up looks addresses up with two OpenStreetMap services: suggestions while you type come from Photon, run by komoot, and Nominatim, run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, is used when Photon is unavailable. When you search, the words you type are sent to them, together with the area around you if the meet-up already knows where you are, so that "via Roma" finds the one nearby. Use my current location sends Nominatim your position, rounded to about 10 metres, to find the street name. Nothing about your account is sent.
• Directions, the finder arrow and the screen. Directions opens your own maps app (Google Maps, or Apple Maps on an iPhone) with the agreed meeting point as the destination, and only when you tap it; it never includes anybody's live position. The Finder arrow uses your phone's compass to point towards the other member or the meeting point; the compass reading stays on your device and is never sent or stored. While you share your location, Meet Up can keep your screen on so your position keeps updating; you can turn that off on the card, and the choice is remembered on this device only. Quick updates such as "On my way" are ordinary chat messages.
• Lion Radar works from the city on your profile. If you press its button to measure distance from where you are, your position is read and stays on your device: it is never sent to Italy Lions or to anyone else. It is forgotten when you leave the page, unless you tick Remember my location on this device, which keeps it on this device only, rounded to about 100 metres.
• Italy Lions Air finds the airports near you from the city or region on your profile. If you press Use my location, your position is read once and stays on your device: it is used only to pick the nearest airports, never sent to Italy Lions or to anyone else, and forgotten when you leave the page. Only the airport codes you chose are remembered on this device.
• Lion Rates shows the money-transfer shops in the city or region on your profile; it never reads your position. The amount you type and the place you pick are remembered on this device only. The market reference rate is fetched from ExchangeRate-API (open.er-api.com), as in Lion Wallet — nothing about your account is sent.
• Your journey — the towns you have lived in — is town, province, region and country only. Never a street and never an address.
• Where an event page shows a weather forecast, the event's town name is sent to Open-Meteo to get the forecast. Your own location is not involved and nothing about you is sent.

3. Why we are allowed to process it — legal bases

The GDPR requires a lawful basis for each use of personal data. These are the bases Italy Lions relies on:

• Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — running your account and providing the platform you signed up for: your name, city, email, mobile number, profile, posts, listings, messages and bookings. Without this data there is no account.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — for things you switch on yourself and can switch off again: a profile or cover photograph, your biography, your date of birth, your languages, your journey, push notifications, the live location used by Lion Meet Up, and any location you choose to send in a chat. You can withdraw consent at any time by removing the information or turning the feature off, and that does not affect anything done before you withdrew it.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — keeping the platform safe and usable: preventing duplicate accounts and scams by registering one mobile number per account, moderating reported content, keeping records of moderation decisions so they can be reviewed and appealed, and protecting the platform against abuse and attack. We consider this necessary and proportionate, and it is balanced against your interests. You may object — see your rights.
• Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) — where we must retain or disclose something because the law requires it.
• Vital interests (Art. 6(1)(d)) — in the rare case where disclosure is necessary to prevent serious harm to someone.

4. What is public and what is not

Public means visible to anyone on the internet, including people who are not signed in: your name and surname, your @handle, your city, your profile and cover photos, your ItalyLions ID, and anything you post publicly.

Private means stored where only you — and, where there is a genuine safety reason, a moderator — can read it: your email address, your mobile number, and your full date of birth. These are held separately from your public profile. When you switch one of these to private, the value is deleted from the public record rather than merely hidden.

Your private messages are readable by you and the person you wrote to. Moderators cannot browse them, cannot search them, and cannot open one because of the badge they hold. There is no screen anywhere on Italy Lions that lists somebody else's conversations.

Lion Messenger privacy and safety reviews

Lion Messenger conversations are private between the members taking part in them. Italy Lions staff do not routinely read members' private messages.

Authorised Italy Lions moderators may access a specific Lion Messenger conversation where this is necessary for safety, moderation or enforcement purposes, including when:

• a participant asks Italy Lions to review that conversation; or
• a message or conversation is reported for a possible breach of our rules.

Those are the only two ways in. If we hear about something serious in another way, the conversation still has to be reported by one of the people in it before anything can be opened — that is how the system is built, not only how we promise to behave.

Access is limited to the conversation the report or review concerns. A report or a review request does not give Italy Lions access to either member's unrelated private conversations.

Where a conversation is reviewed, authorised moderators may examine the information reasonably necessary to investigate the issue and decide whether Italy Lions policies have been broken. That normally means the reported message and the messages around it; where a member has asked us to review a conversation, or where the wider exchange is genuinely needed to understand what happened, it can mean the whole of that conversation, including the messages the reporting member sent themselves.

Moderator access is controlled and logged. Before any private message can be opened, a record is written of which moderator is opening it, when, which conversation, which report, and the reason they gave — and that record is technically what unlocks the messages, so a read that leaves no trace is not possible. Access belongs to the moderator handling the case and ends when the case is closed.

Italy Lions does not tell the other participant who reported them merely because that member asked for a review. A moderator also cannot mark a conversation as reported themselves: only somebody taking part in it can do that, and it is enforced by the database and not only by the screen.

The language switch applies to the interface, not private messages. Italy Lions does not send Messenger messages to an external translation provider and does not create translated copies of them. Changing the site language never opens a message to a moderator or any other person. Every moderation review still starts with a participant asking for one and is carried out by a person under the logged-access controls above.

Reports everywhere else on Italy Lions

The same principles apply to everything else you can report — a Feed post, a comment, a Story, a Market listing, a Community idea, or a member's profile. A report goes to the same moderation queue, an authorised moderator opens the thing that was reported, and the action taken is recorded. Public content is public: unlike a private conversation, a moderator does not need a report in order to be able to see a post or a comment, because anyone on Italy Lions can already see it.

If our rules are broken

Italy Lions is a meeting place for Sri Lankans living in Italy — for finding work, a home, a shop from back home, an event, and each other. That is what these rules protect.

Harmful words, threats, insults, harassment, hate, scams and fraud are not tolerated here, in public or in a private message. Where we decide that our rules have been broken, Italy Lions may:

• issue a warning, which the member sees on every page until they read it;
• remove the post, comment, Story or listing;
• close a conversation, so that nobody can write in it again;
• restrict features, such as sending messages;
• suspend or remove the account; and
• where the law requires it, cooperate with the Italian authorities.

What we do depends on what happened — the action is meant to fit the breach. A warning or a decision is issued in the name of Italy Lions: we do not tell the member which moderator acted, and we do not tell them who reported them. If you believe a decision about you was wrong, write to info@italylions.com and it will be looked at again.

5. How you get back in

If you forget your password, Italy Lions emails you a link and you choose a new one. Nothing else is asked of you, and Italy Lions never sees your password — not the old one and not the new one.

Italy Lions used to ask four personal questions at registration as a second way back in. That has been removed. Members who joined while it existed may still have a fingerprint of those answers stored from that time — never the answers themselves, and nothing here reads it any more. Ask us at info@italylions.com and it will be deleted.

6. Where your data is stored, and who else processes it

Italy Lions does not run its own servers. These are every company involved in handling your data, and what each one does. They act as our processors — they handle data on our instructions and for no purpose of their own.

• Google (Firebase) — Authentication for sign-in, Cloud Firestore for the database, and Cloud Storage for photographs. This is where your account, your posts, your listings, your messages and your photographs actually live. Stored on servers in the European Union.
• Hostinger — serves the website itself and keeps standard server logs (including IP addresses and requested pages) for security and diagnostics, as any web host does. To keep the service free, it also keeps a copy of public photographs (never private ones, such as photos in messages) so they are not downloaded from Google on every view. That copy is checked against the original every 10 minutes and removed when the photo is deleted.
• Google Fonts and Cloudflare cdnjs — serve the typefaces and the icon set. Your browser fetching a file from them means they receive your IP address, as is unavoidable for any file loaded from another server. They receive nothing about your account.
• Open-Meteo — where an event page shows a weather forecast, the event's town name is sent to get it. Nothing about you is sent.
• komoot (Photon) — suggests addresses while you type a Meet Up meeting point. It receives what you type and, when the meet-up already knows where you are, the area to prefer; like any website your browser contacts, it also receives your IP address. Nothing about your account is sent. What is sent, exactly.
• OpenStreetMap Foundation (Nominatim) — looks up addresses for Lion Meet Up's meeting point, only when you search or press Use my current location. It receives what you typed or a position rounded to about 10 metres, and, as with any website your browser contacts, your IP address. Nothing about your account is sent. What is sent, exactly.

There is no analytics provider, no advertising network and no data broker in this list, because Italy Lions does not use any.

Transfers outside the European Union

Your Firebase data is stored in the European Union. However, Google is a company with operations worldwide, and its support and infrastructure functions can involve access from outside the EU. Google publishes the safeguards it applies to such access, including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.

7. What we do not do

• We do not sell your personal data. Not to anyone, for any price.
• We do not run advertising networks and do not build advertising profiles about you.
• We do not track you across other websites. Italy Lions sets no third-party tracking cookies.
• We do not verify phone numbers by SMS, so a registered number proves the number is not registered to somebody else — it does not prove who holds the SIM.

8. Cookies and local storage

Italy Lions uses your browser's storage for things the site needs to work: keeping you signed in, remembering that you dismissed a banner, and holding a draft you have not posted yet. These are set by Italy Lions and by Google Firebase Authentication. There are no advertising or analytics cookies. Clearing your browser storage signs you out and forgets those preferences; it does not delete your account.

The full detail — every mechanism, every third party whose files this site loads, and how to control it yourself — is in the Cookie Policy.

9. How long we keep it

• Your account and what you posted — kept until you delete them, or until you ask us to delete the account.
• Some photographs expire automatically — where that applies, the platform tells you before you post. A Story's photograph expires with the Story.
• LionGram photographs do not expire — they stay until you delete them or they are removed under the community guidelines. Deleting one removes the photo files, its likes and comments from LionGram and the Lion Feed post that showed it. A photo that won a monthly award is deleted like any other when you ask; the award record then keeps your name and the month, not the picture.
• Live location in Lion Meet Up — deleted when the meet-up ends, and in any case when the 15, 30 or 60 minutes you agreed run out. The expiry is enforced by the database. No location history is kept.
• A location you send in a chat — kept as part of that conversation, like any other message (see Location).
• Drafts, dismissed banners and interface preferences — held on your own device until you clear your browser storage.
• A deleted account releases your mobile number and your @handle so they can be used again.
• Your ItalyLions ID is never reused. After an account is deleted the number is retired, not given to somebody else. Nothing personal stays attached to it.
• Records of moderation decisions are kept so those decisions can be reviewed and appealed, and so that a pattern of behaviour can be recognised. They are kept even where the account is closed, because a record that disappears with the account cannot prevent the same conduct returning under a new one.
• Server logs are kept by our host for its own security and diagnostic periods.

10. Your rights under the GDPR

Because Italy Lions serves people living in Italy, the General Data Protection Regulation applies. You have the right to:

• Access (Art. 15) — be told what we hold about you and get a copy of it.
• Rectification (Art. 16) — have anything inaccurate corrected. Most of it you can edit yourself in your profile, straight away.
• Erasure (Art. 17) — have your account and your personal data deleted. Note that we may keep a moderation record where we have a legitimate interest or legal obligation to do so, and that content another member has lawfully quoted or shared may persist.
• Restriction of processing (Art. 18) — ask us to stop using certain data while a dispute about it is resolved, for example while a correction is being checked.
• Objection (Art. 21) — object to processing we carry out on the basis of a legitimate interest. Tell us why, and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds that override your objection.
• Data portability (Art. 20) — receive the data you gave us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable form, and have it sent to another service where that is technically feasible. This applies to data processed on the basis of your consent or of the contract with you.
• Withdraw consent (Art. 7(3)) — at any time, for anything we process on the basis of consent: your photographs, your biography, your date of birth, your languages, your journey, push notifications and Lion Meet Up's location. Withdrawing is as easy as giving it — remove the information or turn the feature off — and it does not affect what was done before you withdrew.
• Not be subject to automated decision-making (Art. 22) — Italy Lions makes no decision about you by automated means alone. Moderation decisions are taken by a person. The word filter refuses a message on your own device before it is sent and produces no decision about you and no record.

How to exercise them. Write to info@italylions.com, saying which right you are exercising. We will answer as soon as we can, and in any event within the period the GDPR allows — one month, extendable where a request is complex, in which case we will tell you. Exercising these rights is free; we may charge only where a request is manifestly excessive or repetitive. We may need to confirm you are the account holder before acting, and we will not ask for an identity document to do it.

11. Age requirement — Italy Lions is 18+

Users must be at least 18 years old to create or use an Italy Lions account. The platform is not intended for, and must not be used by, anyone under 18. Everyone confirms their age at registration before an account can be created.

We do not ask for a passport, an identity document, a photograph of your face or any other identity verification to check this, and we do not collect a date of birth in order to check it either — the confirmation at registration is a declaration you make, and we do not store it as a verified fact. This means we cannot prove any individual member's age.

If you believe someone under 18 has registered, tell us at info@italylions.com and we will close the account and delete the personal data held for it.

12. Changes to this policy

If what we collect changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top is updated. Significant changes will be announced on the platform rather than made quietly.

See also the Terms & Conditions, the Cookie Policy, the Community Guidelines, the Event & Ticket Terms and the Legal Notice.