PL8Z Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

To operate PL8Z, we collect account information (name, email), listing content you post, messages you send through the app, and your location, rounded to roughly a mile so it’s never your exact address, used to show distance to nearby listings and to estimate your local time zone, so non-urgent notifications (like a new listing matching your saved search) can wait until morning instead of arriving overnight. If you allow notifications, we also store a device push token so we can alert you about things like new messages, new posts from sellers you’ve favorited, someone favoriting you, or a new listing matching a saved search. New posts from favorited sellers, being favorited, and saved-search matches can each be turned off individually anytime in the app’s Settings tab; new-message notifications don’t have their own in-app toggle today, but you can turn off all notifications at once anytime in your device’s notification settings. Separately, PL8Z may occasionally show an in-app announcement (for example, a reminder about what PL8Z Pro offers) — this is controlled by the “Promotional emails & messages” toggle in Settings, on by default, and turning it off stops these without affecting notifications about your own account, messages, or orders.

Messages you send through the app are stored on our servers to power the messaging feature and aren’t monitored as a routine matter. Like the reports and support messages described further below in this section, PL8Z may access message content to look into a report, address a safety or legal concern, or help resolve a problem with your account.

If you purchase a Boost or PL8Z Pro, that payment is handled entirely by Stripe, our payment processor — PL8Z never sees or stores your card details. Stripe receives your email and whatever billing information it requires to process the charge (such as a billing address, for tax purposes). See Stripe’s own privacy policy for how they handle that information.

If you choose to add one, we also store a profile photo and a short bio you write about yourself.

If you and a buyer or seller both confirm in the app that a pickup happened, we store that confirmation — this is what powers the completed-pickup count described in Section 2. If someone reports a no-show against you, we also store that report; it isn’t shown to you directly, but a pattern of them can suppress the completed-pickup count from displaying.

If you report a listing or another user, or contact support directly, we store the message you write along with your account information — this is visible only to PL8Z admins reviewing it, never to the person you reported. Once a report you filed is resolved, deleting your own account later doesn’t delete the report itself — it stays on file (no longer linked to your account) as a record of what was reviewed. If your account is suspended for violating our Terms of Use, we store the reason and any corrective action required to be reinstated; this is visible only to you and to PL8Z admins.

If you block or mute another user, we store that so it takes effect throughout the app — a block also hides your listings from that person and theirs from you, not just messaging. This is never shown to the person you blocked or muted, or to anyone else.

If the app crashes or hits an unexpected error, we automatically collect a crash report through Firebase Crashlytics — including what happened, your device model and OS version, and the app version — to help us find and fix bugs. Crash reports don’t include your listing content or messages.

2. What’s shown publicly to other users

Your public seller profile shows:

• Display name, general area, profile photo, and bio
• The month and year you joined
• Your star rating, including any written reviews you leave for or receive from other users, and any reply you post to a review you’ve received
• Your cottage food permit number, if you’ve chosen to add one
• A completed-pickup count, once you and a buyer both confirm in the app that a pickup happened
• A general response-time indicator (for example, “usually responds within a few hours”), shown once there’s enough message history to compute one — this reflects how quickly you reply, never the content of any message
• Whether you’ve turned on “away mode”

This is visible to anyone using the app, including someone browsing without a PL8Z account of their own — this is separate from the internal analytics use described below, and is information you’re choosing to share by using the app’s public-facing features.

Listings can also be shared as a link to a public web page outside the app — no PL8Z account or the app itself required to view it. That page shows the listing’s own details (photos, price, description) along with the seller’s display name, general area, and profile photo — the same information already described above as publicly visible, just reachable by anyone with the link instead of only people using the app.

If you turn on “Share to Facebook” when posting a listing, that listing’s cover photo and details are also posted to the PL8Z Facebook Page, visible to anyone on Facebook, including people without a PL8Z account.

3. Address search (Google)

When you use the address search field while posting or editing a listing, what you type — along with your device’s rough location, used only to prioritize nearby results — is sent through our own servers to Google’s Places service to suggest matching addresses. Google does not receive your name, email, or any other account information as part of this. The lookup runs as you type, as soon as you’ve entered a few characters, so choosing not to tap one of the suggestions does not prevent it — by that point what you typed has already been sent. Because a pickup location is required in order to post a listing, there is currently no way to post one without the address text reaching Google.

4. Usage information

We also collect usage information to understand how people use PL8Z and to guide decisions about the app and business, including:

• Which categories you browse or filter by
• Which search radius you select
• Listings you view, including their category, price, and approximate distance from you
• When you start a conversation with a seller (used as a signal of buying interest — beyond the optional pickup confirmation described in Section 1, which only reflects that buyer and seller met up, PL8Z isn’t part of the food sale itself and doesn’t automatically track what was actually exchanged or agreed — that only exists in whatever you and the other person wrote to each other, same as any message described in Section 1)
• General timing patterns of when you use the app

5. How we use this information

This usage information is used internally — to understand demand by category and region, typical price ranges buyers engage with, how far people are willing to travel for a listing, and how often people are actively looking versus browsing. We use it to improve the app and to make business decisions, such as which categories to expand or where to focus growth.

6. What we don’t do

We do not sell this information to third parties, and we do not use it for third-party ad targeting. If that ever changes, we will update this policy and notify users before the change takes effect.

7. Your choice

You can opt out of usage-analytics collection at any time from the Settings tab. Opting out does not affect your ability to use PL8Z — listings, messaging, and your account continue to work normally either way. Opting out only stops the usage-pattern logging described in Section 4; PL8Z still needs your listing content, messages, and account information to function, as described in Section 1.

You can also permanently delete your account at any time from the Settings tab — see How to Delete Your Account & Data for the full details.

8. Data retention

We retain this information for as long as your account is active, or as needed for the purposes described above.

If you DEACTIVATE your account, nothing is deleted at that point — your profile, listings and messages stop being visible to anyone else, and we keep them for one year from the day you deactivate and then delete them permanently. You can turn your account back on yourself within 90 days, and after that by contacting support, at any point during that year. If you delete your account instead, deletion is immediate and permanent as described in Section 7.

Listings have their own schedule. An active listing that has not been posted or bumped for 45 days is removed automatically, with a warning 7 days beforehand; bumping it resets the clock. This does not apply to listings already marked as sold, or while your account is deactivated.

Two categories are deleted automatically on a fixed schedule regardless of account status: the usage information described in Section 4 is deleted after 90 days, and the technical log used to rate-limit the address-search feature described in Section 3 — which records your device’s IP address and nothing else — is deleted after 2 days.

When you delete an individual listing, it’s immediately hidden everywhere in the app — nobody can see it anymore, including you. Internally, we retain the underlying record rather than instantly erasing it, so a deletion can be looked into if it’s ever in question. This is separate from deleting your account entirely, described just above in Section 7, which immediately and permanently erases your listings along with everything else. Deactivating your account does neither — your listings are hidden but kept, and they come back if you reactivate.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected here with an updated date.

10. Children’s privacy

PL8Z is intended for use by adults — you must be at least 18 to create an account (see our Terms of Use). We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us using the information below so we can delete it.

11. Legal terms

This policy is about how we handle your information — for the legal terms governing your use of PL8Z itself (including the platform disclaimer, assumption of risk in buying home-prepared food, limitation of liability, and how disputes are resolved), see our Terms of Use.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy can be directed to the app’s support contact.