Legal
Privacy
What information AKAL collects, why, and who can see it. Interim draft, pending legal review.
Pending legal review
Who is responsible
AKAL is in beta, and the company that will operate it is being registered. Until then, Shenouda Bertel is responsible for AKAL and for the personal information described on this page.
What we collect
- Account details: your email address, name, and optionally your phone number and organization.
- Inquiries: the details you enter in an inquiry form, including your message and indicative budget if you give one.
- Submissions: the information, photos and documents sellers provide about an opportunity.
- Usage: a limited set of first-party events, such as viewing an opportunity or applying a filter, linked to a random anonymous identifier (see Cookies), and page visits measured with Google Analytics (see Analytics).
How we use it
- To operate AKAL: signing you in, publishing opportunities and handling inquiries.
- To review submissions and qualify inquiries before sharing them with sellers.
- To understand, in aggregate, how the marketplace is used.
Buyer requests
- What we collect: the answers you give in the form “Tell us the farm you're looking for”, including your budget range, how much of it you could pay within 12 months and how you would pay, your nationality and country of residence, and your name, email address and, if you give it, your phone number. We also record how you reached the form (for example a link with campaign tags) and each consent you give or withdraw, with the wording you saw.
- Why: to reply to your request and match you with farm options that fit it; and, only if you agree, to contact you for a short research conversation and to email you when matching farms are published. De-identified answers help AKAL understand what buyers are looking for.
- Who sees it: only the AKAL team, and each time the team opens a request it is recorded.
- Sharing: your details are shared with a developer only after a separate consent from you that names the developer and the project, and your budget only if you agree to that too.
- Introductions: if you ask AKAL, on the introduction page, to introduce you to a developer, AKAL emails that developer only the details you ticked there and copies you. AKAL keeps a record of each introduction (the developer, the project, which kinds of details were shared, when, and the wording and language of your consent) and of the introduction email it sent, even if you later delete your request, because it shows what you agreed to share. If you agreed to research contact, AKAL may email you after 30, 90 and 180 days to ask what happened; answering is optional. The visits, reservations and purchases reported after an introduction are kept as codes and dates after you delete your request, without your contact details or notes. AKAL receives no payment from developers.
- Retention: a request you don't confirm is deleted 7 days after you sent it, and a request replaced by a newer one you confirmed is deleted 30 days after that confirmation. A confirmed request is kept for 6 months unless you renew it; AKAL emails you a reminder 14 days before. After that your name, contact details, notes and the link to your account are deleted, and only de-identified answers are kept for analysis.
- Your choices: the link in your confirmation email opens your request page (a request you sent while signed in also appears in your account), where you can stop research contact or match emails, renew the request, or delete it. Every match email also has a link to stop match emails. Deleting removes your answers, contact details and consents, including any earlier request it replaced. AKAL keeps a record that a request existed and was deleted, and technical security logs of each action (such as the IP address), without your answers or contact details.
- A developer you were introduced to already has the details you approved, and deleting your request on AKAL can't reach them. To have your details deleted there, ask the developer directly.
Analytics
AKAL records a small allow-listed set of events in its own database. These events do not contain your name, email address, phone number or search text.
When you follow a link from AKAL to another website, AKAL records that the link was used, in the same way. The link tells the other website only that you came from AKAL; AKAL does not send it your details.
AKAL also uses Google Analytics 4, a Google service, to count visits and see how pages are used across the whole site, including signed-in pages. Before anything is sent, AKAL removes search text and other details from page addresses and replaces record identifiers. Google Analytics sets cookies only if you accept them in the cookie banner; if you decline or don't choose, Google receives only measurements without cookies. Advertising features and Google signals are switched off, and AKAL does not send Google your name, email address or phone number.
Access and audit logs
- When a private document is opened, AKAL records who opened it, when, and the IP address and browser details used.
- Administrative actions, such as status and label changes, are recorded in an audit log together with the IP address they came from.
- Sign-in sessions record the IP address and browser details used.
Where information is processed
AKAL is hosted on Vercel and its database on Neon, and site usage is measured with Google Analytics. These providers may process and store information outside Egypt.
Retention
Retention periods will be set out after legal review. Until then, information is kept only as long as it is needed to operate AKAL and meet legal obligations.
Your choices
You can change your profile details after signing in. Requests to access or delete personal information will be handled once the request process is published after legal review.
Security
Sign-in uses one-time email links rather than passwords. Documents are held in private storage, and administrative actions are recorded in an audit log.