Privacy Policy

Babela (“Babela”, “we”, “us”) operates the Babela website and services from India and makes them available to users worldwide. Babela decides how and why your personal data is processed, so it is the Data Fiduciary under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act”), the controller under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), and the “business” under US state privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). You can reach us at babela.career@gmail.com.

Information you give us

• Account details: name, email address and password (or your Google sign-in), and whether you use Babela as a job seeker or an employer.
• Career profile: headline, location, work experience, education, skills, certifications, projects, career breaks, professional links, job preferences, and your date of birth (used only to check that timeline dates are plausible).
• Documents: resumes and other files you upload, and the details we extract from them to fill in your profile.
• Applications and activity: jobs you save, view or apply to, applications you track, notes and explanations you add to your timeline.
• Messages: messages and connection requests exchanged with recruiters on Babela.
• Employer information: for employer accounts, company details, team members, job postings and candidate notes.
• Feedback and support: anything you send us through feedback forms or email.

Information from services you connect

• Google sign-in: your name, email address and profile picture.
• Gmail (optional, read-only): job-application emails, described in detail in section 5.
• GitHub (optional): your public GitHub profile information.

Your Babela email address

• Each job-seeker account gets an address at mail.babela.net that you can use when applying. Emails sent to it are received by Babela, shown in your Inbox, and forwarded to your personal email.

Information collected automatically

• Basic technical data needed to run the service securely: IP address, browser and device type, pages visited, and timestamps. We also record searches and job interactions on Babela to improve which jobs we show.

• To create and run your account and show you your profile, dashboard and inbox.
• To match you with relevant jobs and calculate match scores and career insights.
• To let recruiters find and contact you, only within the visibility you choose.
• To track your applications and organise application emails.
• To send service emails (for example, forwarded emails, recruiter requests and account notices).
• To keep Babela secure, prevent fraud and abuse, and fix problems.
• To comply with the law and respond to lawful requests.

We do not sell or “share” your personal data (as those terms are defined in US state privacy laws), and we do not use it for third-party or cross-context behavioural advertising.

Where the law requires a legal basis (for example under the GDPR or the DPDP Act), we rely on:

• Contract: to provide the account and features you sign up for, such as your profile, job matching and application tracking.
• Consent: for optional features you switch on, such as connecting Gmail or GitHub, and for making your profile visible to recruiters. You can withdraw consent at any time in Settings.
• Legitimate interests: to keep Babela secure, prevent fraud and abuse, and improve the service, in ways that do not override your rights.
• Legal obligation: where we must process or keep data to comply with the law.

Connecting Gmail is optional and only happens when you choose “Connect Gmail” in Settings and approve Google’s consent screen. You can disconnect at any time.

What we access. We request the read-only Gmail scope (gmail.readonly) and your email address. Babela cannot send, delete or change any email in your Gmail account.

What we read. We search your mailbox only for job-application messages: emails from recruiting and applicant-tracking systems, and emails whose subject refers to applications or interviews (for example “Thank you for applying” or “Interview invitation”). Other emails are not read or stored.

What we store. For each matching email: the sender, subject, date, a short text excerpt and the application status it relates to, so it appears in your Babela Inbox and updates your application tracker. We store the access tokens Google gives us, protected in our database, so the sync can keep working.

How we use it. Only to show you your job-application emails in Babela and keep your application tracker up to date. We do not use Gmail data for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models.

Who can see it. Only you. Babela staff do not read your Gmail data, except with your explicit permission for support, when needed for security, or when required by law.

Disconnecting and deletion. Disconnecting Gmail in Settings stops all access immediately and deletes your stored Gmail tokens. You can also revoke access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions. To delete emails already imported, delete them from your Inbox, delete your account, or email us and we will remove them.

Babela’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Some features use artificial intelligence to help you:

• Resume reading: text from a resume you upload is processed to fill in your profile. You review everything before it is saved.
• Bela, the career assistant: your questions and relevant parts of your profile are processed to generate answers.
• Babela email address: emails received at your Babela address are processed to recognise the type of message (for example an interview invitation) and match it to your applications.

These features are provided through AI service providers (OpenAI and Anthropic) under their business API terms, which do not allow them to use this data to train their models. Gmail data is never sent to these features. AI output can be wrong; please check anything important before relying on it.

• Recruiters and employers, only as described in section 8 and when you apply to their jobs through Babela.
• Service providers who run parts of Babela for us, under contracts that limit their use of your data: Supabase (database, authentication, file storage), Vercel (website hosting), OpenAI and Anthropic (AI features), Mailgun (receiving emails at Babela addresses) and Resend (sending service emails).
• Services you connect, such as Google and GitHub, under their own privacy policies.
• Authorities, when required by law or to protect the rights, safety and security of our users or Babela.
• A successor, if Babela is involved in a merger or acquisition; this policy will continue to apply to your data.

You control your visibility in Settings → Profile visibility:

• Private: recruiters cannot find your profile in search.
• Recruiters only: signed-in employers on Babela can find your profile and send you a connection request.
• Public: your public profile page can be viewed by anyone with the link, and recruiters can find you as above.

Recruiters see your career profile (such as headline, experience, education, skills and projects). They do not see your date of birth, your uploaded documents, your Gmail data or your private messages with others. Your contact details are shared with a recruiter only after you accept their connection request or apply to their job.

We use only cookies that are needed for Babela to work: sign-in session cookies, and a small preference cookie that remembers whether you last used Babela as a job seeker or an employer. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

• We keep your account data for as long as your account is open.
• When you delete your account (Settings → Delete account), we delete your account and profile data. Copies in routine backups are removed within 30 days.
• Gmail tokens are deleted as soon as you disconnect Gmail.
• We may keep limited records longer where the law requires it, or to resolve disputes and prevent abuse.

Wherever you live, you can:

• Access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it.
• Correct or update your data; most of it you can edit directly in your profile.
• Delete your data by deleting your account or by asking us.
• Withdraw consent for optional processing (for example Gmail or GitHub) by disconnecting it; this does not affect processing already done.

Depending on where you live, you may also have these rights:

• India (DPDP Act): to nominate another person to exercise your rights if you die or become unable to, and to complain to the Data Protection Board of India if we do not resolve your grievance.
• European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland (GDPR): to object to or restrict processing based on legitimate interests, to receive your data in a portable format, and to complain to your local data protection authority.
• United States (California and other states with privacy laws): to know what personal data we collect and how we use it, to delete and correct it, and to opt out of its sale or sharing (we do neither). We will not treat you differently for using these rights. An authorised agent may make a request for you.
• Other countries: any additional rights your local law gives you. We will honour them.

To use any of these rights, email babela.career@gmail.com from your registered email address. We may need to confirm your identity first. We respond within 30 days, or sooner where your local law requires.

We protect your data with encryption in transit (HTTPS), access controls that limit each account to its own data, and restricted access for our team. No online service can be completely secure; if we become aware of a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

Babela is for people aged 18 and over, in every country. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

Babela is operated from India, and our service providers store and process data in several countries, including India, the United States and countries in the European Union. So your data may be processed outside the country where you live.

Wherever it is processed, we protect it as this policy describes. When we transfer personal data out of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we use safeguards recognised by those laws, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses. We also comply with any transfer restrictions notified under Indian law.

We may update this policy as Babela changes. We will change the “Last updated” date above and, for significant changes, tell you by email or in the app before they take effect.

For questions, requests or complaints about your personal data, from any country, contact our Grievance Officer and privacy team at babela.career@gmail.com. We acknowledge messages within 72 hours and aim to resolve them within 30 days. You also have the right to complain to the data protection authority where you live. See also our Terms of Service.