About Chowk

A handbook and a meeting place for everyone who studies in Padova, whether they came from another continent, another region of Italy or the next town. It began with the students who had the most to work out, those arriving from abroad, and it is written and kept up to date by students who have already been through each of these processes. It is free, it carries no advertising, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Università degli Studi di Padova, any consulate, or any government body.

We do not give immigration or legal advice. What we do is report what official sources say, link to them, and separately record what students actually experience, always labelled so you can tell which is which.

Without an account: nothing. There are no tracking pixels, no advertising network and no analytics that identify you. Your page, your arrival date, your ticked checklist, your avatar, your photo journal and your focus timer settings are stored in your own browser and never sent to us. Clearing your site data clears them. So are your exam radar, your grades and anything you type into a calculator.

Three things do reach us, none of which say who you are. The site counts page visits without cookies and without following you from page to page or site to site (Vercel Web Analytics). If you tap "Was this page useful?", we receive the page and your answer, nothing else. And if a page breaks in your browser, it reports which page and what went wrong, so we can fix it: the error message and the kind of browser, never anything you typed.

With an account (only needed for the things students share with each other: buddies, photo walls, letters, queues, rides and the bike register), we keep the least that makes those work:

• Your email address, to sign you in and to tell a student account from a guest one. It is never shown to other students.
• A handle, and a name and avatar only if you choose to share them.
• What you add: photos (resized, with the hidden location data in the file removed; a place you type for "You are missing this" is rounded to about 100 metres), letters, and buddy requests. A buddy only sees your contact details after they accept.
• A letter to your future self is sealed by the database until the day it opens. Not even you can read it early.
• A queue report, a ride and a stolen-bike report are made of choices from lists, not text. Readers never see who made them. On a ride, the driver and the passenger see each other's university address only after the driver says yes.
• Moderators can see who posted something, including anonymous posts, so that a community board in Italy can be run responsibly. They cannot see your email.

Things your browser fetches from elsewhere. The map loads its street tiles from OpenStreetMap's tile servers, and the home page asks Open-Meteo for the weather in Padova, sending the coordinates of the city centre, never yours. Like any website, those services see your IP address when your browser asks. Neither sets a cookie.

Verification is by university email rather than by identity documents, because an email address proves you are a student here and a date of birth does not. You can delete your account from your page at any time, and everything it shared goes with it.

If something here is wrong, please say so. It is the single most useful contribution anyone makes. Report a change, or write to support@unichowk.com.