Privacy

What you give us

Creating an account and filling in a profile gives us the following.

• Your email address and password, handled by our authentication provider. We never see your password.
• Your date of birth, used once to confirm you are 18 or older. It is stored on our servers, it is never shown to anyone, and it is never sent to your browser or to another user.
• Your display name, a short bio, and optionally a photo, a phone number, and a link to a social profile.
• Your ZIP code, which we convert into approximate coordinates and a metro name so we can show you people nearby.
• Your answers to the onboarding questions, the score calculated from them, and the trades you picked.

What the product records as you use it

Using Plain Trades creates records we need in order for it to work.

• Who you expressed interest in, and who you matched with.
• Messages you send inside a match.
• Checklist progress and milestones for a match.
• Which profile cards you have already been shown, so the feed does not repeat itself.
• A record of which emails we sent you, so we do not send the same one twice.
• Blocks and reports you make.
• Product analytics events, described below.

What other users can see

Someone browsing or matched with you sees your display name, your photo if you added one, your bio, your trades, how committed you say you are, and a rough distance band such as under 5 miles. They see your social link only if you added one.

They never see your email address, your date of birth, your exact location, your ZIP code, or your phone number. If you want someone to have your phone number, you have to send it to them yourself.

Analytics

We record product events, for example that an account finished onboarding or that a milestone was reached, so we can see where people get stuck and fix it. This is first party. There are no third party trackers, advertising pixels, or session recorders in Plain Trades.

Analytics events are stripped of identifying content before they are stored. Message text, report details, profile fields, contact details, and precise location are removed automatically and never reach the analytics record.

Who else touches your data

We use a small number of providers to run the product: a hosting and database provider, an email delivery provider, and an application hosting provider. They process data on our behalf so that Plain Trades can function.

We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles.

Your controls

You can do all of the following from inside the product.

• Edit or clear your profile fields at any time.
• Turn off email notifications in Settings.
• Hide yourself from browsing so no new people can find you.
• Block another user, which immediately ends any match between you and prevents further contact.
• Delete your account.

Deleting your account

Deleting your account removes your profile, your answers, your photo, and your messages, and removes you from the matching pool. This cannot be undone.

Analytics rows created before deletion are kept, but the link to you is severed so they can no longer be traced back to a person. We keep them because deleting the history of everyone who left would make our own numbers look better than they are, and we would rather measure honestly.

We may also retain a limited record of blocks and safety reports. Deleting an account should not erase a safety history that protects someone else.

Security

Access to data is enforced at the database level, so one account cannot read another account’s data even if the application has a bug. We use encrypted connections throughout.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise that a determined attacker will never succeed.

People under 18

Plain Trades is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor we remove it. If you believe a minor is using Plain Trades, report the account and we will act the same day.

Changes and contact

We may update this policy. If a change materially affects how we handle your information we will tell you in the product before it takes effect. Privacy questions and requests go to support@plaintrades.com.