Privacy Policy

1. Summary

• We collect only what is needed to run the marketplace: your account, profile, inquiries and messages.
• We do not sell or share your personal information for advertising, and we use no advertising or tracking cookies.
• You can access, correct or delete your data at any time.

2. Information we collect

• Name and email address (passwords are stored hashed by Firebase Authentication)
• Phone number, if you enter it
• Event details you provide (date, type, number of guests, location, budget)
• Professional profile data for Pros (category, city and service area, description, prices, portfolio photos and videos, business details such as an EIN, social media links)
• Inquiries, offers and messages exchanged on the Platform
• Reviews you leave and Pros' replies to them
• Payment records (amount, date, billing state and city) - card details are handled by Stripe, never by us
• Technical data: device type, operating system, IP address and the approximate city and country derived from it; sign-in dates and times
• Pages visited on the site and the referring domain (we keep only the domain, e.g. "facebook.com", never the full address)

3. Early access list

If you sign up for early access on relatedapp.net/us, we store your name, email, phone (if given), city, specialty, website or social link (if given) and your note. We use it only to contact you about the launch of RELATED in your area. We keep it until launch plus 12 months, or until you ask us to delete it.

4. How we use information

• To provide the marketplace: profiles, search, availability, inquiries, offers and messages
• To send important notifications (new inquiry, accepted offer, payment confirmations) - you can turn most of them off in your profile
• To verify your email address and keep your account secure
• To process payments for plans through Stripe
• To show a Pro's "online" status and approximate city
• To detect abuse - fake profiles, fake bookings and fake reviews (see section 9)
• To understand which pages are used and improve the Platform
• To comply with legal obligations

5. Who we share information with

Your profile and the information you choose to publish are visible to other users. Inquiries and messages are visible to the people in the conversation. Otherwise, we share information only with service providers that help us run the Platform, under contracts that limit their use of it:

• Google Firebase - database and authentication, servers in the EU (europe-west1) · Privacy
• Stripe - payment processing · Privacy
• Vercel - website hosting · Privacy
• Cloudinary - storage and processing of portfolio photos and videos · Privacy
• Resend - delivery of the emails we send you · Privacy
• ipapi.co - approximate city and country from an IP address · Privacy

We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the rights and safety of our users. We do not sell personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

6. Where data is stored

RELATED is operated from Bulgaria (EU). Our main database is in the European Union. Some service providers listed above are based in the United States or process data there.

7. How long we keep data

• Account data - while your account is active
• After you delete your account - deleted within 30 days (backups within 90 days)
• Payment records - up to 5 years, as required by accounting law
• Technical data (IP addresses, sign-in records) - up to 12 months
• Early access list - until launch plus 12 months, or earlier on request

8. Cookies and similar technologies

We use no advertising or tracking cookies - no Google Analytics, Meta Pixel or similar, no profiling and no tracking across sites. We store only what the site needs to work:

• Sign-in (Firebase) - keeps you signed in
• rel_market - remembers that you use the U.S. site
• Session number - a random number so one visit isn't counted several times in our statistics
• Last profile, role and chat - opens the right view and your last conversation

YouTube videos are embedded in privacy-enhanced mode and Vimeo with tracking turned off. Videos from Facebook and Wistia load only after you click "Play". Because we do not track, we treat browser signals such as Global Privacy Control as already honored.

"Near me":if you tap "Near me" in search, your browser asks for permission to share your location. It is used once, in your browser, to find the nearest city, and is never stored. If location is not available, we use the approximate city of your internet connection for that search only.

9. Preventing fake reviews and accounts

Badges such as "Worked through RELATED" are given after a real booking with a client review. To keep them meaningful, we keep a list of IP addresses used to sign in to each account and may compare them - for example, when a review comes from an account created minutes before the booking, from the same address as the Pro. A person reviews these cases; a matching IP address alone never leads to a decision.

10. Children

RELATED is intended only for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or anyone under 18). If we learn that such an account exists, we delete it.

11. Your rights and choices

Wherever you live in the United States, you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct inaccurate information;
• delete your information (see Delete your account);
• stop non-essential emails - use the link or your notification settings.

Residents of California and other states with privacy laws have these rights by law, including the right not to be discriminated against for using them. Since we do not sell or share personal information, there is nothing to opt out of. Write to hello.relatedapp@gmail.com; we answer within 30 days and may need to verify your identity first.

12. Security

We use technical and organizational measures to protect personal information, including encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and access controls. If a security breach affects your information, we will notify you as required by law.

13. Changes

If we make significant changes to this policy, we will notify you by email or on the Platform. The date at the top shows the latest version.