Privacy Policy

Information you give us directly:

• Account information: name, email address, password (stored as a salted hash, never in plain text), and role (Expert, Company Admin, or Technician).
• Company information: company name, and the domain of the email used to sign up (used only to flag likely-duplicate company signups, not shared publicly).
• Profile information you choose to add: a bio/description and an avatar or logo image.
• Guide content: video files (sent directly to Mux, our video host), titles, descriptions, tags, prices, and any step-by-step text or photos you add.
• Messages you send to other users through the in-app messaging feature.
• Anything you submit in a support request.

Information collected automatically:

• A session cookie set by our authentication system (NextAuth) so you stay logged in. This is a functional cookie required for the Service to work.
• A first-visit attribution cookie that remembers, for up to 90 days, which ad, link, or referring site first brought you to the Service (if any) — used only in aggregate to understand which marketing channels are working, never to identify or target you individually.
• Aggregate visit/pageview analytics through Vercel Web Analytics — this does not use cookies or collect information that identifies you individually.
• If you arrived through a Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ad, a Meta Pixel records that visit and, if you register, that a registration happened — used to measure ad performance and to show ads to similar audiences on Meta's platforms. See Meta's own privacy policy for how it uses this data.
• Standard server logs (IP address, browser type, pages requested, timestamps) for security and debugging.

Information we do not collect or store ourselves:

• Full payment card numbers — these go directly to Stripe, our payment processor, and we never see or store them.

• To provide the Service: create and manage your account, process subscriptions and payouts, host and stream Guide videos, and power features like Groups, trial/preview requests, notifications, and messaging.
• To communicate with you: transactional notifications (e.g., a trial request, a new message), and — if we add email in the future — service updates and support responses.
• To keep the platform safe: detect fraud, abuse, or violations of our Terms of Service, including the duplicate-company check described above.
• To improve the Service: understand usage patterns and fix problems.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

• Stripe — processes payments and payouts, and, for sellers, may collect additional identity/tax information directly from you as part of its own Know-Your-Customer requirements. Stripe's use of that data is governed by Stripe's own privacy policy.
• Mux — hosts and streams Guide video content.
• Vercel — hosts the Service and provides aggregate, non-identifying web analytics.
• Meta (Facebook/Instagram) — if you arrive through a Meta ad, receives visit and registration events through its Pixel, for ad measurement and audience targeting on Meta's own platforms. See Meta's privacy policy for its use of this data.
• Our hosting and database providers — store application data and infrastructure logs.
• Other users, where the product is designed to show it: a technician's name to their Company Admin and group; a Company's name to a seller when it subscribes, requests access, or sends a message; a seller's display name/bio and guide catalog publicly on their profile.
• Law enforcement or other parties, if required by law, subpoena, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Manual Marketplace or others.

We keep account and transaction data for as long as your account is active and as needed to comply with legal, tax, and accounting obligations (subscription and payout records in particular may need to be retained for several years for tax purposes). If you close your account, we'll delete or anonymize personal information that we're not otherwise required to keep, within a reasonable time.

• You can review and update your profile information from your account settings at any time.
• You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or request that we delete it (subject to what we're legally required to retain), by contacting us below.
• If you're a Company Admin, removing a technician from your team removes their access to every group immediately.

Under PIPEDA, you have the right to know why we collect your information, to access the personal information we hold about you, and to challenge its accuracy — the request process above covers this. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Depending on where you live, you may also have additional rights under laws like the GDPR or CCPA/CPRA (e.g., a right to data portability, or to opt out of certain processing). [Placeholder: the specific mechanisms to honor those rights — a self-serve export/delete tool, a "Do Not Sell/Share" link, a designated EU/UK representative — aren't built yet and should be added based on where your users are located, with legal input.]

We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including password hashing and encrypted connections. No system is perfectly secure, though, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

Manual Marketplace is a business-to-business service intended for people 18 and older. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children.

Our infrastructure providers may process and store data in the United States or other countries. [Placeholder: if you have users in the EU/UK/other regions with data-transfer restrictions, you'll need appropriate transfer mechanisms (e.g., Standard Contractual Clauses) — confirm with counsel.]

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We'll update the "Last updated" date above when we do, and, for material changes, try to notify you in-app.

Questions about this Policy, or a request about your data: founder@manualmarketplace.io (placeholder — replace with your real contact).