NYC Classifieds — Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

Account Information

When you sign up, we collect your name and email address. Business accounts also provide a phone number and business details for their public profile page. This is the minimum needed to create your account and enable messaging.

Geo-Verification Data

During verification, we access your device camera (for a selfie) and GPS location. The selfie confirms you are a real person, and it also becomes your profile photo — it's shown publicly next to your listings, Porch posts, and reviews, alongside your verified badge. It is not a one-time check we discard afterward.

Your GPS coordinates at the moment of verification are stored as part of that verification record. We use them only to determine your borough and neighborhood, which is what's shown publicly — your exact address and coordinates are never shared with other users or displayed anywhere on the platform. We're working on reducing how long exact coordinates are retained after verification; this section will update when that ships.

Content You Create

Listings, Porch posts, replies, and messages you create are stored to operate the platform. Your listings and Porch posts are publicly visible. Messages are private between sender and recipient. You can also message a business directly from its profile page, without a listing; those messages are private in the same way.

Video Reviews

If you leave a video review, we collect and store the video (which may show your face, your voice, and your surroundings, along with anything you say or show), your 1–5 star rating, and the length of the video. Video reviews are public: anyone who visits the business's profile can watch yours, shown with your name and the borough you were in when you made the request. The video file is served from a public web address, so once it is published it can be viewed, copied, or shared by others. Please don't say or show anything you wouldn't want public, including other people's faces, addresses, or license plates.

Review Requests

To leave a video review you first ask the business (or accept its invitation), and the other side confirms that you worked together. We store the request and who confirmed it. If you ask to review a business, we also store your answers to the screening questions (whether you worked with the business, roughly when, and a short description of the work, up to 200 characters), and the business can see them. The request appears as a card in your private chat with the business, and we may send you an in-app notification and an email about it.

Location When You Request a Review

When you ask to review a business, your browser sends us your current location so we can check that you are in New York City. We send those coordinates to Nominatim/OpenStreetMap to look up which borough you are in. We keep only the borough, the time of the check, and how precise the reading was — not your coordinates or your address. The borough is shown with your review (for example, “GPS-verified in Queens”) and is visible to the business and to our moderators. We don't check location when a business invites you and you confirm.

Transcripts and AI Overviews

We automatically transcribe the audio of every video review using a speech-to-text provider (Deepgram), which receives the video's web address in order to do so. Transcripts are stored, visible to our moderators, and not displayed publicly as text. Once a business has at least three transcribed reviews, we send the transcript text to an AI provider (Anthropic) to write an overview of what customers said, shown on the business's profile as a short summary and themes with counts (for example, “9 of 12 mention fast arrival”).

Usage Data

We keep a record of the signup process itself — which step you're on, whether it succeeded, and your IP address at that step — so we can find and fix places where signup breaks. We do not use third-party tracking pixels or behavioral advertising networks.

How We Use Your Information

• Operating the platform — displaying your listings and posts, delivering messages, sending notifications you've opted into.
• Verification — confirming you are a real person located in NYC.
• Reviews — showing video reviews on business profiles, checking that a review comes from a customer the business confirmed and from someone in New York City, transcribing reviews, and summarizing what customers say.
• Safety and moderation — detecting spam, fraud, and policy violations.
• Improving the service — understanding how the platform is used so we can make it better.
• Communication — sending essential account emails (verification codes, security alerts) and notification emails you can turn off (new messages, replies, saved-search alerts, listing reminders). We do not send marketing emails.

What We Do NOT Do

• We do not sell your personal information to anyone.
• We do not share your data with third-party advertisers.
• We do not use behavioral tracking or retargeting ad networks.
• We do not show your exact address or GPS coordinates to other users — only your neighborhood.
• We do not use your verification photo for anything except your own public profile.
• We do not sell your video reviews, transcripts, or review location to anyone. See Selling Your Information for details.

Data Sharing

We share data only in limited circumstances:

• Service providers — we use Supabase (database and file storage, including video reviews), Vercel (hosting), Resend (email delivery), Nominatim/OpenStreetMap (turning the address you type into map coordinates during signup, and working out which borough you are in when you request a video review), Deepgram (transcribing the audio of video reviews), Anthropic (writing the AI overview from review transcripts), and Google Fonts (loading the fonts on this site, which sends your browser's IP address to Google). These providers process data on our behalf to provide their service to us.
• Legal requirements — we may disclose information if required by law, court order, or to protect the safety of our users.
• With your consent — we will not share your information for any other purpose without asking you first.

Data Security

We use industry-standard security measures to protect your data, including HTTPS encryption, secure authentication, and access controls. Passwords are hashed and never stored in plain text. While no system is 100% secure, we take reasonable measures to protect your information.

Your Choices

• Access and update — you can view and edit your account information from your account settings.
• Delete your account — you can request account deletion by contacting us through our Contact page or by email. This is currently a manual process on our end, not an automated one; we aim to complete it within 30 days.
• Remove a video review — you can ask us to remove a video review you posted by contacting us through our Contact page or by email. We delete the video file and its transcript; we aim to do this within 30 days. There is no self-service delete button yet.
• Notifications — you can turn off email notifications (new messages, replies, saved-search alerts, listing reminders) from your account settings, or with the unsubscribe link in any of those emails. Push notifications can be turned off in your browser or device settings.

Cookies

We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in. We don't use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or any third-party analytics cookies.

Data Retention

Active listings expire after 30 days. Porch posts expire based on their type (48 hours for alerts, up to 30 days for other posts). Messages are retained while your account is active.

Video reviews (the video, rating, and borough) stay on the business's profile until a moderator removes them or you ask us to remove yours; when a review is removed we delete the video file and its transcript. A video you upload but never finish submitting is deleted automatically within about two days. Review requests, including your screening answers, are kept as a record of the confirmation.

If you ask us to delete your account, we remove your name, email, phone number, address, photo, and business profile details, and we aim to complete this within 30 days, except where we are legally required to retain something. Some content stays so that other people keep what they relied on: messages you sent remain, and a video review you posted stays on the business's profile so the business keeps the feedback it received. Both are shown as “Deleted User”. The exception is an account we remove for spam or abuse, whose reviews we may remove as well. If you want a video review removed, ask us and we will delete it, including when you ask us to delete your account.

Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify users through the platform. Continued use of The NYC Classifieds after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Use our Contact page or email hi at thenycclassifieds dot com. See also our Terms of Service and Legal page.