Privacy Policy

We collect the following categories of information:

• Account information. Your email address, and any public display name and profile photo you choose to add. We use passwordless sign-in, so we do not collect or store passwords. If you sign in with Google or Apple, that provider sends us your name and email address (Apple may send a private relay address instead of your real one); we use them only to create and sign you into your account. If you change your public display name, we keep your previous name and may show it next to your new one on your past posts (“was Mark”) for up to 14 days, so neighbors reading a conversation can tell who said what. This does not apply if you remove your name entirely: choosing to be anonymous is never disclosed.
• Address and location information. When you add a home, you provide a street address. Your exact street address and its precise geocoded coordinates are stored privately and are never published; we use them only to derive your neighborhood, place an approximate neighborhood-level map pin, and enforce our one-account-per-home rule. Public pages show only neighborhood-level location.
• Content you submit. Project details, contractor names and contact information you enter, ratings, notes, photos, vouches, and questions and answers you post to Asks. Photos may contain embedded metadata (such as EXIF GPS coordinates); we may read this metadata to flag content whose location appears mismatched with a listing for moderation review.
• Information from public records and permission-based listings. Because WhichCrew is a directory, we also gather some listing information from sources other than your own account. To help homeowners find contractors, we may compile contractor listings from publicly available sources, such as state contractor-license records (for example, the California CSLB) — including a business name, trade or license classification, license number, and business contact details. We may also create a home or project listing on a resident's behalf when that resident has authorized us to do so, in which case we store the attribution name they ask us to display, the neighborhood or cross-street information needed to place the listing, and an internal record of the permission we relied on. Individuals described in these listings may not have a WhichCrew account; see Section 7 for how anyone can access, correct, or delete information about themselves.
• Photos a contractor sends you. A contractor may attach photos of the work they did at your home to a vouch request they send you. Those photos are only shown to whoever opens that link until you choose to post them; you can remove any of them, and nothing is published without you.
• Vouching from a contractor's link. If you start a vouch from a link a contractor sent you, before you have an account, we hold what you enter (your first name, email address, street address, notes, and photos) and the IP address you used, so we can send you a sign-in link and limit abuse. If you don't finish within 7 days, we delete the photos and erase the name, email, address, and IP address.
• Verification documents. If you request a Verified Home badge, you may submit proof of residence (such as a utility bill or ID). These are stored in restricted, non-public storage and are automatically deleted after review, and in any event within 30 days.
• Usage and technical information. IP address, browser and device information, and log data. We record authentication attempts (including IP address) for security, abuse prevention (including spotting vouches that appear to come from the same person or from a business vouching for itself), and rate limiting. When you open the site, our hosting provider gives us an approximate city-level location derived from your IP address; we use it in the moment to order homes by distance from you and to let you tell us you would use WhichCrew in your area. If you let your browser or our app share your device location (for example by tapping the location button on the map), we keep a rounded version of it (to about half a mile) in a cookie on your device for one day and use it the same way, in place of the IP estimate. If you tap “I'm at the house now” while entering an address, we use your device location once to look up the nearest street address and fill it in for you to check; the location itself is not kept. While you type an address, what you've typed is sent to Mapbox to suggest matching addresses. We do not store your IP-derived or device location with your account.
• Camera and photos. If you use the iOS app and choose “Take Photo,” the app asks for camera access to capture that photo; choosing from your library uses the system picker and shares only the photos you pick. If you share photos to WhichCrew from your phone's share sheet (the iOS app's “Share to WhichCrew” or the installed site on Android), those photos are kept on your device until you add them to a project (on iPhone, for up to an hour); they are uploaded only if you post them. Nothing is read from your camera or library otherwise.
• Push notifications (optional). If you turn on notifications, we store the address your phone or browser gives us for delivering them (an Apple device token in the iOS app, or a browser push subscription on Android) with your account. We use it only to notify you about activity on your own account, such as an answer to your ask, a vouch, or kudos. You can turn notifications off at any time in your device settings. We delete the address when you delete your account, or when Apple or the push service tells us it no longer works.
• Locally stored identifiers. To let you react to projects (“kudos”) and save homes without an account, and to remember your feed layout, we store small identifiers and preferences in your browser's local storage. These stay on your device.

• Operate and provide the Service, including creating listings, placing approximate map pins, and enforcing listing uniqueness.
• Authenticate you and secure your account, and prevent fraud, abuse, and spam (including rate limiting).
• Review Verified Home requests and moderate reported content.
• Send you communications about the Service (see Section 4 below).
• Analyze and improve the Service.
• Comply with law and enforce our Terms.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share information only as follows:

• Service providers. Companies that help us run the Service, under contracts limiting their use of your data: Vercel (hosting, file storage, and privacy-focused analytics), our managed database provider, Mapbox (address geocoding), and Resend (email delivery). If you sign in with Apple or Google, or turn on notifications, Apple and Google (including the push service your browser uses) handle that sign-in or deliver those notifications. Sending an address to Mapbox for geocoding and an email to Resend for delivery are the main data transfers involved.
• At your direction. Content you post to a public listing (neighborhood-level location, display name, ratings, notes, and photos) is, by design, publicly visible.
• Legal and safety. When we believe disclosure is required by law, or reasonably necessary to protect the rights, safety, or property of WhichCrew, our users, or the public.
• Business transfers. In connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.

We send transactional and service messages that are necessary to operate your account — such as sign-in links, security and account notices, and updates about your listings or claims. You cannot opt out of these while you maintain an account.

We may also send optional “neighborly” update emails (such as summaries of activity on your projects). You can turn these off at any time using the unsubscribe link in the email or in your account settings, without affecting transactional messages.

Public: your neighborhood-level location, public display name and avatar, project details, ratings, notes, and photos, vouches, questions and answers you post to Asks, a short summary of your activity shown next to your vouches (such as how many projects you have posted and the month you joined), contractor information you enter, and contractor directory information compiled from public records (such as a business name, trade, license number, and business contact details).

Private (never published): your exact street address and precise coordinates, your email address, verification documents, the internal permission and consent records for any listing we create on someone's behalf, and technical data such as IP addresses.

We keep account and content information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service. Verification documents are deleted after review, and in any event within 30 days. When you delete content or your account, we remove it from the live Service, though residual copies may persist in routine backups for a limited period before being overwritten. We retain certain records (such as authentication logs) as needed for security and legal compliance.

If you are a California resident, you have the right to:

• Know and access the personal information we have collected about you, and the categories of sources and recipients.
• Request deletion of your personal information, subject to legal exceptions.
• Request correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information — though we do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA/CPRA.
• Not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at hello@whichcrew.com. We will verify your request using the email associated with your account and respond as required by law. You may use an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf.

If you do not have a WhichCrew account — for example, a contractor whose listing was compiled from public records, or a resident whose listing was created on their behalf — you may still request access to, correction of, or deletion of information about you. Use the “Is this your home?” or claim option on the relevant listing, or email us at the address above, and we will verify your request by reasonable means before responding. A contractor may also claim or request removal of a card directly from that card's page.

We use strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in and to secure your session. We use Vercel's privacy-focused analytics to understand aggregate usage; it does not use cookies to track you across other sites. As noted above, we also store small preference identifiers in your browser's local storage. Most browsers let you control or delete cookies and local storage through their settings. Because we do not sell or share personal information, a Global Privacy Control or “Do Not Track” signal from your browser does not change how we treat you; there is nothing to opt out of.

We also keep our own anonymous record of how the site is used — for example, that a contact button was tapped on a contractor's page, or that someone started adding a project, along with which version of WhichCrew was used (the iOS app, the installed Android app, or the website). This tells us whether the site actually works. These records are tied to a one-way identifier derived from your network address and browser, scrambled with a secret that changes every day. It cannot be reversed to identify you, it cannot be linked to your account, and once the day rolls over it can no longer be connected to anything recorded before it. Nothing is stored on your device for this. We do not sell or share these records. A contractor who has claimed a card may see totals for that card (for example, how many times it was viewed or its call button was tapped in a month), never who viewed it or who called.

We take reasonable measures to protect your information, including storing exact addresses and verification documents in restricted, non-public storage. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

The Service is not directed to children, and is intended only for users who are at least 18 years old. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, provide additional notice. Your continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.

Questions about this Privacy Policy or your information may be directed to hello@whichcrew.com.