Protecting your data and community trust

Name, email address, password, WhatsApp number, and optional Telegram handle for seller contact. Sellers may also provide city, country, biography, specialties, and product imagery.

Product titles, descriptions, pricing, category, sizing, shipping regions, and images uploaded for display on Derbaba.com.

When you use Design Studio we store the design brief you build, which covers the garment type, fit, colours, tibeb placement and widths, your occasion and needed-by date, any budget figure you state, and your own notes. We also store the private messages in that conversation and any reference, pattern-proposal or completed-garment photographs uploaded to it. Every uploaded photo is re-encoded on upload, which removes embedded camera metadata such as GPS location before anyone else can see it. Contact details typed into a message, such as a phone number, email address or social handle, are hidden from the other person until you have both written at least once; the message itself is stored unchanged so that we can help if there is a dispute. A design brief and its conversation can be seen only by you, the designers you chose to send it to, and authorised Derbaba staff supporting the service or reviewing a report. None of it is public, indexed, or shown to designers you did not select. We keep this material while a request is active and for up to 24 months afterwards for support, dispute handling and audit, and a designer who withdraws has her messages, quotes and photographs removed from live conversations within 14 days.

We process the $5 listing fee through Stripe. Stripe stores your payment method details and shares limited payment status information with us.

Server logs and reliability metrics from Vercel, aggregate analytics via Google Tag Manager, and error diagnostics via Sentry. Analytics scripts load only after you accept cookies. We do not sell your data or use it for cross-site advertising.

Strictly-necessary cookies keep you signed in and are always active. Analytics cookies (Google Tag Manager) load only after you accept them in the cookie banner; choosing “Decline” prevents them. You can clear cookies in your browser at any time. If you sign in as a seller or staff member, we set a cookie on that device so that your own clicks on your listings are not counted as buyer interest. We also set a small cookie on any browser that visits the site, holding the date of that visit and nothing else — no name, no number, nothing that distinguishes you. Every browser marked on the same day holds an identical value, so it cannot identify you or link one visit to another. It exists only so that a real person tapping a seller’s contact button can be told apart from automated traffic, which is most of what that button currently receives; sellers are otherwise shown inflated interest. Because it identifies nobody and is used solely to prevent that fraud, it is treated as strictly necessary.

The garment and its fit, where the tibeb goes and how wide, colours, photographs of your own tibeb and of the design, anything you draw on a design in the sketch tool, and — if you choose to record them — a customer's name, phone number, notes and measurements, the date the garment is needed, and the price and deposit you agreed. Prices and deposits are your own record; Derbaba does not handle that payment.

A customer's name, phone number and measurements are personal information about someone who has no account with us. We never use them for analytics, never include them in our logs or error reports, and never share them. They exist only so you can make the garment.

When you share a design, the picture is made on your own device and sent by you. The image for a customer never contains measurements, prices or phone numbers; the image for a tailor or weaver never contains a price or a phone number, and omits the customer's name unless you turn it on.

A sketch is unreleased work, and it is treated as such: it is stored privately against the design, only you can open it, and no Derbaba staff member can. It is drawn and saved on your own device first, so nothing is lost if your connection drops, and the copy on your phone or computer is removed when it has been saved. Your typed notes are stored exactly as you wrote them, in whatever language you wrote them in. Nothing about what a sketch depicts reaches our records of how the tool is used — we count that a drawing was saved, never what was in it. A sketch never appears on a shared design page.

If you withdraw your shop, everything in the designer tool is erased along with it — the designs, the tibeb photographs, the design photographs and the sketches — within the same 14 days as the rest of your data. Deleting a single design deletes its photographs and its sketch at the same time.

Display listings, connect buyers and sellers, and keep your account secure. Authentication and account management are handled by Clerk.

Send transactional emails via Resend about listing status, account access, and security alerts.

Process listing fees with Stripe and reconcile those charges in our Neon Postgres database.

Maintain records required under Canadian law (PIPEDA) and respond to lawful data requests from regulators.

Manages authentication, sessions, and your account profile (name, email, avatar). Clerk is the source of truth for your login credentials.

Processes listing fee payments and stores payment method information. Stripe may collect additional verification information in accordance with its own privacy policy.

Delivers transactional and support emails on our behalf.

Creates Design Studio briefs and, only when a participant selects translation in a private conversation, translates that message between English and Amharic. Original messages remain visible in the thread.

Loads aggregate website analytics, and only after you accept analytics cookies. It is not used for advertising retargeting.

Captures application error diagnostics so we can fix bugs. Configured to avoid collecting personal identifiers; session replay is disabled.

Hosts Derbaba.com infrastructure and collects server logs and performance metrics.

Hosts our Postgres database where account, listing, and seller records are stored securely.

View and update your account details at any time from the account dashboard. Contact us if you need help editing seller information or listings.

Request an export of your personal data, including listings and conversations facilitated through Derbaba.

Email privacy@derbaba.com with the subject “Data deletion” and the email address linked to your account. We will confirm identity, remove active listings, and delete your account within 30 days unless retention is legally required.

You can disable marketing emails at any time and may close your account if you no longer wish to participate in the marketplace.

Listing data is retained for audit purposes up to 24 months after it expires or is removed. Private Design Studio messages and images are retained while a request is active and for up to 24 months afterwards for support, dispute handling, and audit purposes, unless deletion is required sooner by law. Payment records follow Stripe’s retention schedule.

All traffic is encrypted via HTTPS. We use role-based access controls, secure development practices, and regular backups of the Neon database.