Privacy Policy

1. Scope

This policy explains how APM Apps LLC handles information through TownChirp's apps, website, marketplace, and support services. Our contact is legal@townchirp.com; general support is support@townchirp.com. Accepting service terms does not waive statutory privacy rights or constitute consent to every possible future data use.

2. Information collected and its sources

We obtain information directly from you, from your use of the service, from people who interact with you, and from providers supporting sign-in, billing, security, and other requested features.

• Accounts and verification: user identifiers, names and profile details, email addresses, phone numbers, sign-in provider information, verification status, and acceptance records. We do not ask for your Google or Apple password.
• Marketplace and business information: service inquiries, descriptions, generated job titles, profession selections, profile qualifications, business affiliations, rosters, verification documents, preferences, status, and engagement records.
• Communications and content: messages, uploaded photos and files, support requests, safety reports, and associated recipient, time, and delivery metadata. Other users may submit information about you in these features.
• Location: selected ZIP code, city or region and, when permission is granted for a feature, GPS coordinates and location-verification records. Exact location may be sensitive information. Device permission can be withdrawn, though features that require it may stop working.
• Technical and usage information: device and operating-system information, app version, network/request metadata, IP addresses where supplied by infrastructure, notification tokens, security and access events, crash traces, and feature interactions captured by enabled services.
• Transactions: purchase identifiers, product and subscription status, billing ledger references, and store verification results. App stores handle payment details for store purchases; do not send card numbers in messages or support requests.

Do not upload unnecessary sensitive information or information about someone else without authority. Device permission to access media is not permission to use that media for model training.

3. Purposes

We use information to authenticate and recover accounts; display profiles and marketplace content to intended recipients; match inquiries to service categories; deliver communications and notifications; verify eligibility and affiliations; administer purchases; respond to support and rights requests; investigate abuse; enforce rules; protect the service; maintain acceptance and audit records; comply with law; and diagnose reliability problems. We use only information reasonably relevant to these purposes and the choices described below.

4. AI processing and model development

Requested features may send relevant service inquiry or profile text to contracted AI providers, including OpenAI where that integration is enabled, to identify professions, suggest titles, or support matching. Running a model on your service text is different from training a model on it. If you choose photo-assisted registration, the submitted card, flyer, or other registration photo is sent to OpenAI to extract relevant profile and service information for your review. The scanning endpoint records a usage counter rather than saving the submitted scan or extracted personal information in its rate-limit record; profile information you subsequently save is retained as account information. This requested processing does not authorize photo training. Future photo-based problem-identification features are outside the current policy scope. Providers' retention and permitted uses must be governed by the applicable provider agreement and configuration; this policy does not promise zero provider retention without verification.

Our service categorization systems process service inquiry and responder description text and associated profession labels and confidence measures. Optional collection of service text for future model-training datasets is disabled pending the required permissions and safeguards. The code supports identifier redaction and application-layer encryption for training examples when that collection is enabled in the future. Redaction is imperfect: an unusual description, location clue, or contextual detail can still identify a person. Redacted or encrypted information is treated as personal information unless it has actually been de-identified.

Private chats, chat attachments, and all uploaded photographs are excluded from model training. Precise GPS coordinates, identity documents, intimate content, passwords, verification codes, payment information, and content identifying a known minor are also excluded. Photos may still be stored and displayed to intended recipients for ordinary marketplace features, support, and safety handling. These operational uses do not authorize training. Introducing future photo-based problem identification or photo training requires updated disclosures and any necessary separate permission.

We may develop, evaluate, and improve TownChirp-related matching, categorization, search, and safety models using genuinely de-identified service text and aggregate usage data. We will remove direct identifiers, assess contextual identification risk, restrict access and recipients, and prohibit re-identification. Pseudonymous IDs, hashed text, and encryption alone do not establish de-identification.

Optional training using identifiable text requires a clear explanation and affirmative opt-in before collection for that purpose, with appropriate guardian involvement where required. Declining optional text training does not prevent ordinary marketplace access. We will not sell training datasets or license your identifiable information to third parties for unrelated model training under this policy. Material expansion requires new notice and any legally required permission, including for previously collected data.

To ask about training inclusion, withdraw an applicable optional permission, or request deletion, contact legal@townchirp.com. We will stop future consent-based use and handle affected source data and downstream obligations as applicable law requires. We do not claim that deletion from a source dataset automatically removes every influence from a trained model; we also do not treat that technical limitation as a waiver of rights or an exemption from required remedies.

5. Recipients and visibility

Relevant profiles, inquiries, messages, and attachments are disclosed to users participating in the associated feature, including authorized business representatives where the feature permits. Visibility is not the same as confidentiality: recipients may copy or disclose content outside TownChirp. We enforce our rules but cannot guarantee a recipient's independent behavior.

We use contracted providers for hosting, storage, authentication, notifications, diagnostics, security, billing verification, and enabled AI features. Current integrations include Google/Firebase services, Cloud KMS, Apple and Google sign-in/store services, and OpenAI for enabled categorization features. Providers receive information relevant to their functions, subject to applicable agreements. We may disclose information in response to lawful process, to address safety or fraud, to establish or defend legal claims, or in a business transfer with appropriate safeguards and legally required notice. These provisions do not create unrestricted access to private communications.

We do not sell personal information to data brokers or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Any future change requires the notices, choices, and consent required by applicable law.

Business transfers and assignment

To the extent permitted by applicable law, APM Apps LLC may sell, assign, or transfer TownChirp, all or part of its business or assets, these Terms and associated rights and obligations, and related user accounts, content, and personal information in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, financing, bankruptcy, or asset sale, without obtaining your separate consent or providing transaction-specific notice, except where notice or consent is required by law or an applicable binding commitment.

We may disclose information reasonably necessary for due diligence to prospective transaction parties and their advisers under appropriate confidentiality, security, and use restrictions. A successor receiving personal information must honor applicable privacy commitments, user choices, and legal obligations. A transaction does not authorize retroactive expansion of data uses, cancellation of statutory rights, or use of private chats or photos for model training contrary to the applicable policy. Any materially different data use requires legally required notice and, where required, consent. This provision concerns a genuine business transaction and does not authorize an independent sale of personal information to data brokers.

6. Storage and safeguards

We store service information using cloud infrastructure, including Firebase/Google Cloud databases and object storage. Access controls and encryption protect information where deployed. Selected sensitive content uses server-side envelope encryption with Google Cloud KMS; operational metadata needed for queries can remain accessible to authorized systems. This is not end-to-end encryption: authorized backend services can decrypt protected content for legitimate operations, support, safety, and legal requirements.

Firebase App Check helps verify legitimate requests. Firebase Crashlytics receives crash reports, device/app information, traces, and diagnostic identifiers. Diagnostics are not intended to include private conversation or job content. No safeguard guarantees absolute security. We respond to incidents and provide notifications when required.

Processing may occur in the United States and other locations used by authorized providers. TownChirp currently launches in the United States. Applicable safeguards and legal obligations govern transfers of personal information.

7. Retention and deletion

We retain information only for a documented operational, safety, legal, accounting, or dispute purpose. Account and active marketplace information generally remain while needed for service use. We evaluate retention by data category, taking account of the purpose, sensitivity, ongoing user relationships, applicable legal requirements, and whether deletion or de-identification can satisfy the purpose.

The current account-deletion workflow is designed to disable access upon confirmed deletion and schedule associated active-system deletion within seven days. Failed deletion may require support intervention. Records subject to a lawful preservation requirement, necessary transaction/compliance records, and copies held independently by recipients may remain. Backup and provider copies follow their applicable retention cycles rather than being erased immediately. If backups are restored, applicable deletion requests continue to govern the restored data.

Training source information remains subject to applicable deletion rights; changing its collection name, hashing it, or removing a user ID does not automatically remove those rights. Truly de-identified aggregates may be retained where permitted, with safeguards against re-identification. We do not retain personal information indefinitely solely for unspecified future needs.

8. Your choices and rights

You can manage device permissions, notifications, editable account information, and account deletion in the app. Use the account-deletion instructions at townchirp.com/delete-account.html or email legal@townchirp.com for assistance. Depending on your residence and the law's applicability, you may request access, correction, deletion, portability, restriction, withdrawal of consent, or appeal of a decision, and may have rights concerning sale/sharing, sensitive information, and certain automated decisions. We will verify identity proportionately, honor authorized-agent rights where applicable, and respond within applicable deadlines. We will not unlawfully discriminate for exercising a privacy right. Some information may be retained or a request limited where law permits; we will explain the basis.

Device permission withdrawal affects future collection through that permission; it does not by itself delete existing information. Account deletion does not cancel an app-store subscription. Mandatory rights remain available regardless of anything in the Terms.

9. Teen users and children

TownChirp is intended for users age 13 and older. Users under 18 require parent or guardian permission as described in the Terms. We do not knowingly allow children under 13 to use the service. If we learn that we collected a child's information in circumstances requiring parental consent that we did not obtain, we will restrict the account and take appropriate deletion or other legally required steps. Contact legal@townchirp.com with concerns.

We exclude content identifying known minors from model training and do not authorize targeted advertising or sale/sharing of teen personal information under this policy. Eligibility language is not a substitute for age handling, teen privacy safeguards, applicable parental-consent requirements, or child-safety controls.

10. Changes and contact

We will identify the effective date of adopted updates and provide appropriate notice of material changes. We will obtain additional permission when required, rather than retroactively treating existing users' silence as agreement to expanded data use. Privacy questions and requests: legal@townchirp.com. Support: support@townchirp.com.