Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

HelpMeConstruct ("HMC", the website helpmeconstruct.com and the HMC mobile app) is operated by Aunaza. Aunaza is responsible for the personal information described in this policy.

2. Information you give us

Account: your name, email address and/or phone number, a password (stored only as a one-way hash), your role (client, worker or shop), city and country, and a profile code (for example TM-XXXXXX) that identifies your account. If you sign up with a phone number, you can add a recovery email later: we keep it as pending and send a 6-digit code to that address, and it becomes your verified recovery email only after you enter the code.

Sign in with Google or Facebook: we receive your name, email address and profile picture from that provider. We do not receive or store your Google or Facebook password.

Profiles: worker and shop details such as business name, skills, rates, bio, portfolio photos, ratings and reviews.

Jobs, properties and orders: job posts, descriptions, budgets, bids and quotes, material requests, property names and addresses, Quick Job site addresses, delivery addresses, and the dates and notes you add.

Photos and videos: profile photos, job, property, bid, material, invoice, progress and portfolio photos, progress videos, and photos you send in chat.

Verification documents: if you choose to verify, photos of an ID card or business registration that you upload.

Voice notes: short recordings you choose to attach to a job, bid, material request or quote.

Messages: chats with other users, including images and locations you choose to share.

Payment records: the amounts, dates, notes and receipt photos that you or the other party record for agreed work or orders. HelpMeConstruct does not process card or bank payments and never holds money; we only keep the records you enter.

Crew and attendance: if you are a hired worker and use Crew & attendance, the names, roles and daily wages of the people working with you, and which days they were present or absent. These are your own records for that job; the client does not see them.

Quotes: the prices, delivery charges, delivery time, notes, photos and voice notes a shop adds to a quote.

Hidden requests: if your shop marks a material request "Not for us", we keep that choice privately for your shop so the request stays hidden on all your devices. The client is not told.

Feedback and support: messages you send through the contact or feedback forms, and an optional screenshot.

Reports and blocks: if you report a user or something they posted, we keep your report (the reason you chose and any details you add), the text of the reported content as it was at that moment, and links to any photos or files it contained. We do not make separate copies of those photos or files; if they are later deleted, the link stops working. If you block someone, we keep a record of the block until you unblock them or either account is deleted.

3. Location

Precise location: only when you choose to use your current location (for example to place a job, property or profile pin, to share your location in a chat, or, for hired workers, to share live location while travelling to a job). We do not collect location in the background when the app is closed.

Approximate location: your city and country, the country and city derived from your IP address when you sign in, and, on the website, the country of your IP address as an automatic hint for your local currency and the default country on public lists (neither that automatic hint nor the IP address itself is stored). If you choose a country or currency yourself, that choice is saved in your browser: the country in a cookie and the currency in local storage.

Exact addresses and pins are not shown to other users before a hire or an accepted order; until then they see only the city and an approximate distance. After a hire or accepted order, the address is shared with the other party so the work or delivery can happen.

4. Information collected automatically

Device and notification data: a push notification token so we can send you alerts.

Crash reports and diagnostics: when the app crashes or hits an error, Firebase Crashlytics collects technical details such as the error, device model, operating system version and an installation identifier.

Usage records: sign-in events (role, country, city), profile views, and pages visited on the website.

We do not use an advertising identifier and we do not show ads.

5. How we use your information

To run the service: create and secure your account, match clients with workers and shops, show jobs and requests nearby, handle hires, orders, messages and notifications, and show the right address to the right person at the right time.

Safety and fraud prevention: verify accounts and documents, review reports, hide content that breaks our Terms of Service, suspend accounts, and keep the platform secure.

Support and communication: answer your messages and send account emails such as password resets.

Improvement: understand crashes and how features are used so we can fix and improve them.

Optional writing help: if you use the "help me write" option when posting a job, the job title, category, property name or city and your draft text are sent to our AI provider to suggest a description.

6. Who processes your information

We do not sell your personal information. We use the following service providers, who process data on our behalf to run HelpMeConstruct:

Railway (application hosting); Neon (PostgreSQL database); Cloudflare R2 (storage for photos, videos, voice notes and documents); Vercel (website hosting; it also gives our website the country of your IP address, used as an automatic hint for your local currency and the default country on public worker, shop and job lists); Google Firebase (crash reporting, notification delivery and phone sign-in); Expo (app updates and push notification delivery); Resend (account and support email); Geoapify (address search and map lookups, called from our servers); Mapbox (map images, loaded by your device); OpenStreetMap Nominatim (address search on some website property pages); Google Fonts (web fonts on our website); Google Tag Manager (on our website); Google and Facebook (only if you choose to sign in with them); Google Play (app distribution); Anthropic (only for the optional job-description writing help).

Other users see the information needed for the marketplace to work, for example your public profile, ratings and reviews, and, after a hire or accepted order, your name, contact details and the job or delivery address.

Reports can be seen only by HelpMeConstruct staff with administrator access, and are stored and processed for us by the hosting and database providers listed above. We do not tell the person you report who reported them, unless we are required to disclose it by law.

We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the rights and safety of our users.

7. Security

All data between the apps and our servers is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Passwords are stored as one-way hashes. Verification documents, certificates, payment receipts and feedback screenshots are kept in private storage and shown only through short-lived links.

Other uploaded media (such as job, chat and progress photos, videos and voice notes) is stored at hard-to-guess web addresses that can be opened by anyone who has the link. No online service can guarantee absolute security.

8. How long we keep information

We keep your information while your account is active.

When you delete your account, your account name, email address, contact phone number and profile photo are removed or replaced, and the account can no longer be used to sign in. Records that are also part of another user's history or needed for security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution or legal obligations are kept, linked to the closed account. They no longer show your account name, email, contact phone number or photo, but they can still contain details you entered yourself, such as a shop or company name, an address or text in messages. These include jobs, bids, orders, reviews, messages, payment records, related addresses and locations, uploaded media, verification documents, your client, worker or shop profile details, and the phone number you sign in with (for phone accounts).

Reports and the reported content we keep with them are deleted 12 months after the report is closed, unless the reported account is suspended or we must keep them for a legal reason. Blocks are deleted when either account is deleted.

Deleted information is removed from our live database, but it can remain for a limited time in database backups, including backup copies we make before larger updates, until those copies are deleted.

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, maintain security, prevent fraud, resolve disputes, and meet legal obligations. The period may vary depending on the type of information and why it is retained.

9. Your choices and rights

You can update your profile, change your notification settings, choose whether to share your location, and turn off live location sharing at any time. You can report users or content and block or unblock people from inside the app. You can hide your work photos from your public profile (Draft) without deleting them.

You can delete your account in the app (Profile, then Profile settings, then Delete my account) or request deletion online at helpmeconstruct.com/account-deletion. You can get a copy of your data: on the website, download it from your account settings; in the app, use Settings › Security › Download my data, and we email it as a file to your account's own email address (phone-only accounts must add an email first).

Depending on where you live, you may have other rights, such as access, correction or objection. Contact us to use them.

10. Children

HelpMeConstruct is not intended for children and is for people who can enter work agreements in their country.

11. Changes

We may update this policy as the service changes. We will update the date above when we do.