Private by Default: How Robin Handles Your Details
How Robin lets coaches meet, message, and video call practice partners without sharing an email address, phone number, or anything else they did not choose to share.
Finding practice partners used to mean posting in a public Facebook group under your real name, then handing your email address to a stranger so you could send a Zoom link.
Most coaches did it anyway, because there was no alternative. Plenty of others didn't, and quietly gave up on peer practice rather than advertise themselves to the internet. Coaches told us this was a genuine safety concern, not a preference, and it shaped how Robin is built. Here's the actual design, stated plainly so you can judge it.
Your contact details stay yours
On Robin, coaches connect through the platform, not around it. Messaging, scheduling, and video calls all happen inside Robin, which means your email address and phone number never appear on your profile, in a booking, on a calendar invite, or anywhere else another coach can see.
The only way another coach learns your contact details is if you type them into a message yourself. Some partners do exactly that once they know each other, and that's their call to make. The point is that it's a choice you make, not a toll you pay to participate.
Calls are private rooms, not public links
Practice sessions run on private video rooms that only the two participants can enter, each with their own access token. There's no guessable link floating around, and no third person can join. Nothing is ever recorded or transcribed by default — capture only happens when the coach hosting the session starts it, and never silently.
Recording and transcription are optional features, off by default. If the host starts one, everyone on the call sees a clear on-screen banner the whole time — nobody is ever captured without knowing. Transcripts are encrypted at rest and stored in the UK (London), both participants can read and download them, and the host looks after them — including deleting them, which any participant can ask for. Deleted means deleted. Transcripts from before this model changed keep their original shared rules. The full picture is on Who controls your data.
Robin only knows what you tell it
A design rule we hold ourselves to: Robin's data about a coach is what the coach wrote and what they ticked. Your profile says what you chose to say. Search finds the words you actually used. Robin doesn't generate hidden labels, summaries, or inferences about who you are, and there's no secret version of your profile that an algorithm wrote for you.
The same spirit applies to leaving things. If you delete your logbook entries, your sessions, or your account, that data is removed, not archived out of sight. Your practice record is yours, not evidence we keep about you.
You don't owe anyone a reason
If someone makes you uncomfortable, you can block them in one click. No form, no justification, no notification fanfare. It works instantly and you don't need to explain yourself to them or to us.
Why we work this way
Robin serves a profession built on confidentiality; a platform for coaches that was casual about privacy would deserve to fail. But there's also a simpler reason. Sharing your personal details is trivial for a platform and lifelong for you, and asymmetries like that are exactly where a product shows what it thinks of its users.
If you have a question about any of this, ask us. Otherwise: join free, and practise without handing your details to strangers.