Privacy Policy — Tech Help Local

Tech Help Local ("we," "us," "our") provides in-home and small-business technology services. We respect your privacy and only collect what we need to schedule a visit, complete a service call, and stay in touch about your account. This Privacy Policy explains what we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

1. Who this policy covers

This policy applies to techhelplocal.com and any subdomain we operate (including admin., tech., and api.), to our customer portal, our contractor PWA, and any phone or in-person interaction tied to a Tech Help Local appointment.

2. Information we collect

You give us directly when you book, contact us, or open an account:

Name, email address, phone number, ZIP code, service address.
What's going on with your tech (the message field on contact forms and tickets).
Account credentials handled through our identity provider (see §4).
Payment information you submit through our payment processor (see §4 — we never see or store your full card number).
If you apply to be a contractor: résumé content, work history, references, and consent for background checks where applicable.

We collect automatically when you use our sites and apps:

Device and browser metadata (user-agent, IP, locale).
Approximate location derived from your IP — and, only if you grant the permission, precise GPS coordinates from a contractor's PWA while clocked in to a job.
Pages viewed, links clicked, and basic session telemetry needed to keep the site functional and secure.
Server logs of every API request, including a redacted preview of error conditions.

We collect from service providers we work with, such as identity verification, fraud signals, and address geocoding for routing.

3. How we use your information

To respond to your inquiry, schedule a visit, and complete the service.
To verify coverage in your ZIP code and route a contractor to your address.
To process payment, issue invoices, and handle refunds.
To send transactional messages (booking confirmations, technician on-the-way notices, follow-ups, the 30-day fix guarantee, and receipts).
To run the Tech Help Concierge AI assistant — your chat messages are sent to our AI provider (see §4) only for the duration of the conversation.
To prevent fraud, abuse, and unauthorized access (e.g., rate limiting, bot detection, audit logging).
To comply with our legal obligations and enforce our Terms.
To improve the service, in aggregate and de-identified form.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own advertising.

4. Service providers (subprocessors)

We rely on a small set of vetted vendors to operate the service:

Cloudflare, Inc. — DNS, edge delivery, bot mitigation, Turnstile (CAPTCHA), and zero-trust access controls for staff tooling.
Clerk, Inc. — customer account sign-up, sign-in, and session management.
Anthropic PBC — Claude AI model that powers the Tech Help Concierge chat. Conversations are processed under Anthropic's commercial terms; they are not used to train Anthropic's models.
Stripe, Inc. — payment processing. Card data is collected directly by Stripe; we receive only a token and the last four digits.
Mapbox, Inc. — address autocomplete, ZIP-to-coordinates geocoding, and routing.
Resend (or equivalent) — transactional email delivery.

Each subprocessor receives only the minimum personal information required to perform its function, under a written data-processing agreement.

5. Cookies and similar technologies

We use a small number of strictly-necessary cookies and local-storage tokens to keep you signed in, remember your preferences (e.g., dark mode), and protect forms from spam. We do not use third-party advertising or behavioral-tracking cookies. You can disable cookies in your browser, but parts of the site — including the customer portal and the AI assistant — may not function without them.

6. How long we keep your information

Account records — kept while your account is active and for up to seven years afterward to satisfy tax and accounting requirements.
Service tickets and appointments — kept for up to seven years for warranty, dispute, and tax purposes.
AI chat transcripts — kept for up to 30 days for quality and abuse review, then deleted.
Edge logs — retained for 30 days, then purged.
Contractor location pings — kept for 90 days, then purged. Pings outside an open clock-in window are dropped at the edge and never stored.
Marketing emails — until you unsubscribe.

7. Your privacy rights

Regardless of where you live, you may ask us to:

Confirm whether we hold personal information about you and access a copy of it.
Correct inaccurate information.
Delete information we no longer need to keep.
Restrict or object to certain uses.
Receive your information in a portable, machine-readable format.
Withdraw consent for any optional processing.

California residents (CCPA / CPRA). California law gives you the rights described above plus the right to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined under California law.

Illinois residents (PIPA / BIPA). We do not collect biometric identifiers or biometric information. Photos taken by contractors during a service visit (for example, of a damaged jack or a mounted display) are stored as ordinary images and are not processed for facial recognition or other biometric purposes.

Other U.S. states. If your state grants additional privacy rights, we will honor them on the same terms.

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@techhelplocal.com from the address on file or use the request form in your customer portal. We will respond within 45 days.

8. Security

We use TLS in transit, encryption at rest for sensitive data, scoped server roles with role-based access control, multi-factor authentication for staff, and rate-limiting and bot-detection on every public endpoint. No system is perfect; if you suspect your account has been accessed without your authorization, contact us at security@techhelplocal.com immediately.

9. Children's privacy

Tech Help Local is intended for adults (18+) booking services for a household or business. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

10. International users

Our services are operated from the United States and intended for U.S. customers. If you use the site from outside the U.S., your information will be processed in the U.S. under U.S. law.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and, where required by law, notify you by email. Continued use of the service after the effective date of an update constitutes acceptance.

12. Contact us

Tech Help Local
Privacy Officer
privacy@techhelplocal.com
General questions: hello@techhelplocal.com