1. Scope of this policy
This Privacy Policy explains how Contractors Watch collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information through its website and contractor platform. It applies to visitors to our website, to contractors who hold an account, and to property owners and representatives who submit a challenge.
Contractors Watch is a United States service. If you do not agree with this policy, do not use the service.
2. Information we collect
Account and business information: your name, email address, the legal and trading names of your business, your primary trade, your business address, your organization role, authentication records, and account status.
Verification information: business or trade licence details, insurance information, government identification where we specifically request it, and the verification documents you upload.
Report information: the property address, project type and date, the issue categories and severity you select, your factual description, the workflow history of the report, and any evidence you upload together with its metadata.
Challenge information: where a property owner or representative submits a challenge, their name, contact details, relationship to the property, the reference of the report or property concerned, their explanation, the resolution requested, supporting information, and our correspondence with them.
Billing information: Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, the price and interval you selected, subscription status, billing period dates, and payment event references. Stripe handles your full payment card details; we never receive or store them.
Technical information: IP address, device and browser information, request timestamps, security events, and the cookies or comparable storage needed to keep you signed in and to protect the service.
3. How we use information
We use information to create and secure accounts; verify contractors; resolve and normalize property addresses; provide eligible contractors with approved property intelligence; receive, review, and audit reports; protect contributor identity; store and control access to evidence; process challenges; administer memberships and payments; send transactional messages about your account, verification, reports, and membership; detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents; maintain and improve the service; comply with legal obligations; and establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not sell it.
4. How property intelligence is presented
Contractor-facing intelligence is designed to exclude homeowner and occupant contact details, the identity of the reporting company, and all private evidence. Approved reports identify a contributor by trade or category rather than by company or personal name, and this is enforced by the way the information is stored and retrieved rather than by hiding fields in the interface.
Searching is by property address. The service does not support searching by a person's name and does not maintain a directory of individuals.
Authorized administrators may access additional information, including contractor identity, where it is necessary for verification, moderation, support, disputes, security, or legal compliance. Administrative actions of this kind are recorded.
5. Sharing and service providers
We share limited information with the vendors that provide our infrastructure and essential operations: Supabase for database, authentication, and file storage; Vercel for application hosting; Stripe for payments and billing; Google Maps Platform for address search, normalization, and map imagery; Resend for transactional email; and Sentry for error monitoring. Each processes information under its own terms and our contractual arrangements with it.
We may also disclose information where the law requires it, where it is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of Contractors Watch, our users, or others, in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, or at your direction.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are used in United States state privacy laws.
6. Security
Verification documents and report evidence are held in private storage and are reachable only through short-lived, individually authorized links. Access to data is constrained at the database level rather than only in the application, privileged operations run server-side, administrative actions are recorded in an audit log, and all submitted information is validated on the server.
No system is completely secure. Protect your credentials, use a unique password, and tell us promptly if you believe your account has been compromised.
7. How long we keep information
We keep information for as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected for, and then for as long as we need it to meet legal, accounting, dispute, fraud-prevention, and security obligations.
In general: account and business records are kept while the account is open and for a reasonable period afterwards; verification documents are kept while verification is relied upon and for a period after it lapses; approved reports are kept as part of the property record; declined and withdrawn reports and their evidence are kept for a shorter period sufficient for audit and dispute purposes; challenge records are kept alongside the report they concern; billing records are kept for the period required by tax and accounting rules; and audit and security logs are kept for a period appropriate to their purpose.
Where information is subject to an active dispute, investigation, or legal hold, we keep it until that concludes. Backups are cycled on their own schedule and deleted information is removed from them as they are overwritten.
8. Cookies
We use only the cookies and comparable storage needed for authentication, session continuity, security, and core functionality. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking cookies.
If we introduce analytics or any non-essential cookie in future, we will update this policy and provide the notice and controls required where you are.
9. Your choices and rights
You can review and update much of your account information, and manage or cancel your membership, through the controls in your account.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to obtain a portable copy, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. To make a request, write to support@contractorswatch.com. We will verify your identity before acting, and we will respond within the period the applicable law allows.
Some information cannot be deleted on request, including records we must keep for legal, accounting, security, or dispute reasons, and information that forms part of another person's record, such as a report a different contractor submitted.
You can opt out of non-essential email at any time. Transactional messages about your account, verification, reports, and billing are part of the service and cannot be switched off while your account is open.
10. Property owners and representatives
If you are a property owner or an authorized representative and you believe published information about a property is inaccurate, incomplete, or improperly submitted, you can submit a challenge through our challenge process without holding an account. A challenge opens a review of the information concerned.
A privacy request and a content challenge are different processes with different outcomes, although one matter may involve both. If you are unsure which applies, write to us and we will point you to the right one.
11. Children
Contractors Watch is a professional business service. It is not directed to children, we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, and we will delete such information if we learn we have it.
12. Where information is processed
The service is designed for the United States, and information is processed in the United States and in other locations used by the service providers listed in section 5.
13. Changes and contact
We may update this policy. Where a change is material we will give notice through the service or by email before it takes effect, and the date at the top of this page shows when it was last updated.
Privacy questions and requests may be sent to support@contractorswatch.com.