Trove

Privacy Policy

Effective date: [EFFECTIVE DATE] · Last updated: November 10, 2026

Draft for legal review. Highlighted items in brackets still need to be filled in, and a lawyer licensed in your state should review this document before Trove launches publicly.

This policy explains what personal information Joseph Preston, doing business as Trove Marketplace (“Trove”, “we”) collects when you use the Trove website and apps, how we use and share it, and the choices you have. It is part of our Terms of Service. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

1. Information we collect

Information you give us

  • Account: email address, display name and password (stored only as a secure one-way hash we cannot read), plus optional profile details (bio, photo, general area). We also record the date you agreed to the Terms and which version.
  • Listings: titles, descriptions, prices, categories, condition, photos and videos. We remove location data (GPS/EXIF) embedded in photos and videos when you upload them.
  • Approximate location: the general area you choose for listings and searches, rounded to about 1 km. The app asks only for approximate (not precise) location, and only if you choose to use it. Your exact address is never shown.
  • Messages, offers, trades, reviews and reports you send through Trove, including photos you attach.
  • Saved items, collections and saved searches, and the alerts you ask for.
  • Promotions and purchases: promotions you buy, ad-credit balances and history, receipts, and purchase records from Stripe, Google Play or Apple (such as order IDs and amounts).
  • Sales paid through Trove: what was bought and sold, the amount, fees, when it was paid, released or refunded, problems reported and what you wrote, and non-payment strikes. For sellers who set up payouts: the ID of your Stripe account and whether Stripe has approved it for transfers and payouts. For bidders: your Stripe customer ID, the brand, last 4 digits and expiry of the card you saved for bids (Stripe keeps the full card details), and a record of each hold placed, renewed, released or charged.
  • Messages to us: anything you send when you contact us or report a problem.

Information collected automatically

  • Sign-in and security records: sessions, IP address, browser or device type, and times of sign-in, used to keep accounts secure, limit abuse and investigate fraud. Administrator actions are logged.
  • Anonymous usage statistics: daily totals of things like page or screen views (as page types such as “listing page”, never the specific listing or your search words), searches, listing views, messages and offers, and an estimate of how many different people did each per day. We keep only these daily numbers: no record of who did what, no user IDs or IP addresses, and no way to link one day to another. You can turn this off (see “Your choices”).
  • Usage of promoted listings: counts of how often promoted listings are shown and clicked. To avoid counting the same person twice we use a short-lived hashed key that expires within an hour, not a tracking profile.
  • Push notification token: if you turn on notifications in the app, a token for your phone issued by Apple or Google (through Expo) so we can send you notifications. It is deleted when you sign out or turn notifications off.
  • Technical logs from our servers (requests, errors) used to run and fix the Service.

Information from others

  • Other users may send you messages, review you or report you.
  • Payment providers tell us whether a payment succeeded, was refunded or was reversed, and Stripe's fee. We never receive your full card number, and we don't receive sellers' bank account numbers or ID documents: sellers give those to Stripe directly.

We don’t use third-party advertising or analytics trackers (our statistics are counted on our own servers), and we don’t buy personal information from data brokers.

2. How we use it

  • To provide the Service: create your account, publish your listings, show results near you, deliver messages, offers and trades, save items and searches, and send the alerts you ask for. (Legal basis where one is required: performing our contract with you.)
  • To process purchases of promotions and ad credit, give receipts, refund payments and prevent payment fraud.
  • To run held payments for item sales: collecting payment, holding it, paying sellers, refunding buyers, handling problems and chargebacks, and enforcing the 24-hour rule for auction winners.
  • To keep Trove safe: screen listings for prohibited items, review reports, detect scams, spam, fake accounts and abuse, enforce our Terms, and protect users. (Our legitimate interest in a safe marketplace.)
  • To communicate with you: account verification, password resets, security notices, changes to our Terms, and the notifications you choose. We don’t send marketing emails unless you opt in.
  • To improve the Service: fix bugs, measure performance and plan features, using aggregated information where possible.
  • To meet legal obligations: keeping tax and payment records, answering valid legal requests, and handling legal claims.

We don’t make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you based solely on automated processing. Automated screening only flags listings for a person to review or asks the seller to change them.

3. Who we share it with

We share personal information only as follows:

  • Service providers that process data for us under contract: hosting and databases (Render), photo and video storage (Cloudflare), email delivery (Google), card payments and seller payouts (Stripe; when a seller sets up payouts, we give Stripe their account email address and name so Stripe can set up their payout account, and Stripe collects the rest directly), app-store purchases (Google Play, Apple), and push notifications (Expo, which passes them to Apple or Google for delivery; a notification contains its title and a short preview, such as the first words of a message). They may only use it to provide their service to us.
  • Other users, when you choose to interact with them (see the next section).
  • Law enforcement and safety: when we believe in good faith that disclosure is required by law (for example a subpoena or court order), or is needed to prevent death, serious harm, fraud or crime (including investigations of stolen property), or to protect the rights and safety of Trove, our users or the public. Where allowed, we tell the user about legal requests for their data.
  • Business transfers: if Trove is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing or sale of assets, information may be transferred, subject to this policy.
  • With your consent, for any other purpose we describe when we ask.

4. What other users can see

  • Your display name, profile photo, bio, general area, join date, ratings and reviews, and your active listings are public, including to people who are not signed in and to search engines.
  • Listings show an approximate area and distance, never your exact location.
  • Messages, offers and trades are visible only to the people in the conversation (and to Trove as described in our Terms).
  • Your email address is never shown to other users.
  • When you share a listing, the link preview shows its title, price and main photo.

5. Cookies and device storage

  • Website: we use a secure, HTTP-only cookie to keep you signed in. It is strictly necessary and is not used for tracking. Your browser also stores your last search area and your accessibility settings so they are remembered on that device.
  • Apps: sign-in tokens are kept in the phone’s secure storage, and accessibility settings in app storage.
  • We don’t use advertising cookies or cross-site tracking. We treat “Global Privacy Control” and “Do Not Track” as a request not to sell or share data, which we already honor for everyone, and also as a request not to be counted in our usage statistics.

6. How long we keep it

  • Account and profile: while your account is open.
  • Listings: until you delete them or your account; sold and expired listings stay in your history until then.
  • Messages, offers and trades: while either participant’s account is open, so the other person keeps their conversation history.
  • Payment and purchase records, receipts and ad-credit history: for as long as tax, accounting and payment-network rules require (generally up to 7 years).
  • Security, fraud and moderation records (including records about suspended accounts and reported content): as long as needed to protect users and Trove and to handle legal claims.
  • Backups are overwritten on a rolling schedule.

7. Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in Account → Delete my account. When you do:

  • your email address, password, profile details, photo, bio and location are removed, and your profile shows as “Deleted user”;
  • your listings are taken down, and your saved items, collections and saved searches are deleted;
  • your sessions are signed out, and promotions stop (remaining ad credit ends);
  • your conversations are closed; messages you already sent stay visible to the people you sent them to, shown as from “Deleted user”, and reviews you wrote may remain under that name;
  • we keep the records described in “How long we keep it” where the law or safety requires.

8. Your choices

  • Edit your profile, notification settings and privacy settings (read receipts, who can message you) in Account.
  • Block users you don’t want to hear from.
  • Turn off anonymous usage statistics in Account (website: “Share anonymous usage statistics”; app: Account), or by turning on Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track in your browser.
  • Turn location permission on or off in your phone’s settings; you can always type an area instead.
  • Turn push notifications on or off, by type, in the app (Home → Notifications) or in your phone’s settings. To hide message previews on your lock screen, use your phone’s notification preview setting.
  • Turn off optional emails (such as saved-search alerts) in your notification settings. We will still send essential account and security emails.

9. Your privacy rights (including California and other US states)

Depending on where you live (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon and other US states with privacy laws), you may have the right to:

  • know and access the personal information we hold about you and how we use it, and get a copy in a portable format;
  • correct inaccurate information;
  • delete your information (you can do this yourself in Account, or ask us);
  • opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, targeted advertising and profiling (we don’t do these);
  • limit the use of sensitive personal information (we only use it to provide the Service); and
  • not be discriminated against for using these rights.

To make a request, email noreply.trovemarketplace@gmail.com from your account’s email address. We will verify your request by confirming control of that email, and respond within 45 days (or the time your state’s law requires). You can use an authorized agent with your signed permission. If we refuse a request, you may appeal by replying to our answer; if we still refuse, you can contact your state attorney general.

California notice: in the past 12 months we collected the categories described in section 1 (identifiers, customer records, commercial information, internet activity, approximate geolocation, audio-visual content you upload, and inferences limited to fraud signals), for the purposes in section 2, from the sources in section 1, and disclosed them to the service providers in section 3. We have not sold or shared personal information, and we have no actual knowledge of selling or sharing information of people under 16.

10. Security

We use encryption in transit (HTTPS), hashed passwords, short-lived sign-in tokens, rate limiting, access controls and audit logs for administrator actions. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your personal information, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires. Use a unique password and never share verification codes.

11. Children

Trove is only for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, and never from children under 13. If you believe a child has an account, contact us and we will delete it.

12. Where data is stored

Trove is operated in the United States and your information is stored and processed in the United States by us and our service providers. If you use Trove from outside the US, your information will be transferred to the US, where the law may differ from where you live.

13. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when our practices change. If a change is material, we will tell you in advance by email or in the Service. The “Last updated” date above shows when it last changed.

14. Contact

Joseph Preston, doing business as Trove Marketplace
[MAILING ADDRESS]
Email: noreply.trovemarketplace@gmail.com