Privacy

• We ask for a phone number, because that is how the whole site works.
• We never ask for an email address.
• A business listing is public and is meant to be found by search engines. That is the point of it.
• We look at an identity document once, then destroy it. What we keep is a one-way fingerprint that can confirm two accounts are the same person and can never be turned back into the number it came from.
• We do not sell anything about you to anybody.

Trustline, Harare, Zimbabwe. You can reach us through the contact details on the site.

Your phone number. It is your username and how customers and businesses reach each other. To prove the number is yours we send it a code through an SMS company, so that company sees your number and the message. We send you a code twice: when you join, and if you forget your password.

Your name. Optional, but it is shown next to any review you leave and on your business listing.

Your password. Stored scrambled, in a way that cannot be reversed. Nobody at Trustline can see it or tell you what it is. If you forget it, we can only help you set a new one.

Your business details. Name, description, trades, phone, WhatsApp number, address, suburb, map position, opening hours, prices and photos. All of this is public and is indexed by search engines. Do not put your home address on a listing if you do not want it published.

Photos you upload. Resized and re-saved by us, which strips out the hidden data cameras attach — including the GPS position where the photo was taken. Logo, cover and gallery photos are public. The photo of an identity document is not, and is covered below.

Messages, quote requests and quotes. Kept so both sides have a record of what was said. A message is visible to you and to the business you sent it to. Our staff only read a conversation when they are investigating a complaint or a dispute about it.

Reviews. Public, with your name and the date. A review is part of the public record of that business and we do not remove it just because you changed your mind about them.

How often a listing is viewed. Counted once per visitor per day, so the owner can see whether the platform is doing anything for them. For a signed-in person we count the account; for everyone else we scramble the network address into a short code, and the address itself is not stored.

Where a code request came from. When somebody asks for a verification code we record the number, and the network address it came from as a scrambled code rather than the address itself — enough to tell that two requests came from the same place, never enough to say where that was. This is the only thing standing between us and somebody running a script that sends thousands of text messages at our expense. These records are deleted after 30 days.

Deleting them does not touch your account. Your phone number is your username and stays for as long as your account does. What is cleared is the record of individual messages; what we keep is a count of how many went out each day, which is a number with nobody attached to it and is how we check the bill.

If you use the Android app. Android gives the app a code that identifies your phone, and we keep it against your account so we can send you a notification when a job comes up in your trade. It says nothing about you or where you are. Signing out removes it, and so does turning notifications off in your phone's settings.

Your location, if you let it. The app and the website can ask your phone where you are, to sort businesses by how near they are. That happens on your phone and the answer is not sent to us or stored anywhere. Saying no simply means the list is not sorted by distance.

Money on your business account. Credit, leads bought, placement bought, and any fines. Kept as long as the account exists, because it is a financial record.

A business owner can be asked to send a photo of a national ID, passport or driving licence along with the number on it. Somebody at Trustline looks at it, checks the number matches the photo, and makes a decision.

When the check is approved, the photo is deleted from our server and the number is erased from our database. We do not keep either. If the check is turned down, the photo is deleted when you replace it or when the account is closed.

What we keep permanently is a fingerprint of the number — the number put through a one-way calculation with a secret only we hold. Two accounts belonging to the same person produce the same fingerprint. The fingerprint cannot be turned back into the identity number, by us or by anybody who stole our database.

It can answer exactly one question: is this the same person as that account?

That question is the whole reason identity checks exist here. Without it, somebody suspended for fraud signs up again the next morning on a new phone number and carries on, and every promise on this site about who you are dealing with is worthless. It is kept even after an account is closed, for the same reason.

• Anyone, including search engines: business listings, photos, prices, opening hours, reviews, and the public bid board.
• The business you contacted: your name, your phone number, and what you wrote. A business that pays for a job you posted gets your contact details — that is what it paid for, and it is said plainly before you post.
• Our SMS company: your phone number and the code we send you.
• Our hosting provider: holds the server the site runs on.
• Nobody else. We do not sell or rent your information, and we do not hand it to advertisers.

We will hand over information if a court or the law requires it, and we may use it to investigate fraud or abuse on the platform.

• Verification codes: valid for 30 minutes; the record of the request, 30 days. A count of how many were sent each day is kept for good — it is a number, not a person.
• Identity photo and number: destroyed as soon as the check is decided.
• Identity fingerprint: kept permanently, for the reason above.
• The code identifying a phone with the app on it: until you sign out, turn notifications off, or the phone stops checking in for four months.
• Listings, messages, reviews and financial records: while the account exists, and after closure where we need them for a dispute, a complaint, or the books.

• To see what we hold about you.
• To correct anything wrong.
• To close your account and take your listing down. Reviews you wrote about other businesses stay, without your name attached if you ask.

Two things we will not do, and would rather say now than argue about later: we will not remove an honest review of your business because you do not like it, and we will not delete an identity fingerprint for an account suspended for fraud.

Write to us through the contact details on the site and we will get back to you.

Passwords are stored scrambled and salted. Identity documents are held outside the public part of the server and can only be fetched by a signed-in reviewer. Uploaded photos are re-saved under a random name with their hidden camera data stripped. The site is served over an encrypted connection.

No site is perfectly safe. If something happens that puts your information at risk, we will tell you.

Trustline is for people 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect anything about a child.

If we change what we collect or what we do with it, we will say so on the site before it takes effect. See also our terms of use.