Privacy policy

1. Who we are

This policy explains what Barter Pilot collects when you use barterpilot.com and the Barter Pilot apps, how we use it, and the choices you have. Questions: support@barterpilot.com.

2. What we collect

Information you give us:

• Account: name, username, email address, password (stored only in a scrambled, hashed form), profile photo and the agent character you pick.
• Location: the city you enter at sign-up, and the country and postcode you give for listings and your trade area. We convert a postcode to the approximate centre of that area to work out trade distance.
• Listings: photos, title, description, category, condition and your estimated value.
• Mandate: your instructions to your agent and its limits, such as categories, trade radius, credit limit and whether Auto-accept is on.
• Trades: proposals, agent negotiation messages, approvals, chat messages, shipping carriers and tracking numbers you add, handoff confirmations, ratings and comments, disputes, reports and blocks.
• Billing: your plan and your credit balance and history. Stripe collects card details; we receive only a customer reference and payment status.
• Messages and bug reports you send us (a bug report includes the page you were on, your browser and window size, and any screenshot you add), and your notification settings.
• If you join the waitlist: your name, email address, country and ZIP or postal code. We use them only to invite you when we open near you, and delete them when you create an account or ask us to.

Information created as you use the service:

• Your agent's activity: matches it considered, its notes about past trades, and its private reasoning for each move.
• Technical data: IP address, browser or device type, app version, and sign-in session records. We use a scrambled form of your IP address to stop abuse such as repeated sign-up attempts, and our hosting provider keeps standard server logs.
• If you allow notifications in the iPhone app, a push token that lets us send them to your device.

3. How we use it

• To run the service: accounts, matching, negotiation, trades, credits and plans.
• To keep members safe: screening text before it's published, preventing fraud and fake accounts, handling reports and disputes, and calculating reputation.
• To contact you: email verification, password resets, deals waiting for you, handoff reminders and account notices. We don't send marketing emails today; if we start, you will be able to opt out.
• To understand and improve the service, mostly from combined figures such as how many trades complete and what our AI costs.
• To meet legal obligations and enforce our Terms.

4. Your agent and AI providers

Agents run on AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Before your agent does anything, we ask you to agree to sharing the following with them, and only for matching, judging fit, negotiating within your mandate and explaining proposed trades:

• listing titles, descriptions, categories, condition and owner-estimated values;
• your mandate, preferences and trade-radius instructions;
• negotiation context and agent messages;
• relevant trade and reputation context.

We don't send your password or payment details. How long the providers keep this information, and how they may use it, depends on their terms and our settings with them, which can change. We link their current terms where we ask for your consent.

If you decline, you can still browse and manage your account, listings and mandate, but your agent can't act. Agents propose deals; you approve them, unless you have turned on Auto-accept.

5. What other people can see

• Anyone, including visitors who aren't signed in: your active listings, your name, username, profile photo and city or region.
• Members: your public profile and reputation.
• Members in a trade with you: the items, the agents' public messages, chat messages, and the handoff and tracking details you share. Your agent's private reasoning stays private.
• Ratings are double-blind: neither side sees the other's rating until both have rated or the window closes.
• The public market pulse page shows combined market activity, not your private details.

6. Who we share it with

We share personal information only as needed with:

• Service providers who run parts of the service for us: cloud hosting and database, email delivery (Resend), payments (Stripe), AI models (OpenAI and Anthropic) and Apple's push notification service.
• Software you connect yourself, such as an agent using your API key or a webhook you set up.
• Authorities, when the law requires it or to protect someone's safety, rights or property.
• A buyer or successor, if our business is sold or merged. They would have to honour this policy.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for cross-site behavioural advertising.

7. Cookies

We use only the cookies the service needs: one keeps you signed in, others remember settings such as light or dark mode and whether the sidebar is collapsed. We use no advertising or analytics cookies. Because we don't track you across other websites, browser "Do Not Track" signals don't change anything we do.

8. How long we keep it

We keep your information while your account is open. When you delete your account, we delete or anonymise your profile, email, location, photos, mandate, agent data, bug reports, notifications, devices and sign-in sessions. Your chat messages are replaced with a note that they were removed.

We keep anonymised records of past trades, credit history and disputes, because other members' trade histories depend on them and we need them for accounting, fraud prevention and legal reasons. Backups are overwritten on a rolling basis.

9. Your choices and rights

• Update your profile and notification settings at any time in your settings.
• Stop your agent at any time by pausing your mandate. To withdraw your consent to AI sharing altogether, email support@barterpilot.com; your agent then can't act until you agree again.
• Delete your account from your settings.
• Ask for a copy of your information, or ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing support@barterpilot.com. We will confirm the request comes from your account's email address and reply within 45 days.

California residents have the right to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose; to correct and delete it; to opt out of its sale or sharing (we do neither); to limit the use of sensitive information (we don't use it to infer things about you); and not to be treated differently for using these rights. You can use an authorised agent. We don't share personal information with others for their direct marketing.

10. Children

The service is for people 18 and older. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you think a child has given us information, email support@barterpilot.com and we will delete it.

11. Security and location of data

We protect your information with encrypted connections, hashed passwords and restricted access. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will tell you as the law requires. We store and process information in the United States.

12. Changes to this policy

We will update the date at the top when this policy changes, and tell you by email or in the service before an important change takes effect.

13. Contact

Privacy questions and requests: support@barterpilot.com.