BinBuddies Privacy Policy

BinBuddies LLC ("we," "our," or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights regarding your data when you use the BinBuddies mobile application, the binbuddiesapp.com website, and related services (together, the "Services").

1. Information We Collect

Account & Contact Information

• Name, username, email address, phone number, and password when you create an account
• Home or service address
• Access and service instructions you choose to provide about your property — for example, where your bins are kept or how to reach them. Please do not include security codes or other sensitive access credentials in these notes
• If you sign in using Apple or Google, we receive your name and email address (or, for Sign in with Apple, the private relay address you choose to share) from that provider
• Information you submit through forms on our website, such as service-area waitlist requests, contractor applications, and investor update signups

Payment & Financial Information

• Credit and debit card details collected securely through our payment processor for membership, recurring service plan, and one-time job charges
• Bank account information provided by contractors through our payout provider for direct deposit
• Transaction history and payout records

Identity Verification Information (Contractors Only)

• Government-issued photo ID (e.g., driver's license)
• Selfie / facial image, captured and checked against your ID by our identity verification provider on its own secure pages. BinBuddies does not receive or store your ID image or your facial image — we receive only the verification result and the document details listed below
• Driver's license state, number, and expiration date
• Your date of birth and the address shown on your identification document, as reported to us by the identity verification provider. Your date of birth is also provided to the background check provider to run the screening described in Section 4
• Vehicle and auto insurance information including carrier name and policy expiration

Background Check Information (Contractors Only)

• Personal history data submitted to a licensed consumer reporting agency for contractor eligibility screening
• Background check results used solely to determine eligibility to provide services on the platform

Location Information

• Contractors' device location, used within the app to show the jobs nearest them and to order the stops on a route for efficient driving
• While a contractor is actively running a route, their position is shared with the customers on that route so they can see the contractor approaching
• Service address coordinates for customers, used to locate the property and dispatch service

Location is never collected in the background or while the app is closed. See Section 5 for details.

Photos and Media

• Photos taken by contractors during job completion, uploaded to confirm service delivery
• Photos of items or debris submitted by customers when requesting a junk removal quote, used to estimate volume and price
• Insurance card photos uploaded by contractors for verification purposes
• Profile photos (avatars) optionally uploaded by any user
• Limited technical information recorded with each job photo, including the location where the photo was taken, used only to confirm that work was performed at the correct address and to protect the platform against misuse

Property Assessment & Automated Pricing

• To price service at a given address, we process that address together with information about the property associated with it, including imagery obtained from publicly available sources through our mapping provider
• This assessment is produced automatically, with the assistance of an AI analysis provider, and it affects the price quoted for service at that address. You may contact us at any time to have a person review or adjust the result for your property
• The same assessment powers the "Rate My Driveway" tool on our website, which can be used without creating an account. If you use it, we process the address you enter and the property information associated with it

Device & Usage Information

• Device type, operating system, and app version
• IP address and general usage analytics
• Error and crash reports collected for stability and performance monitoring. Crash reports from the mobile app are not linked to your identity
• Session recordings on our website. If an error occurs while you are using binbuddiesapp.com, our crash reporting provider records a playback of that browsing session — the pages as they appeared on your screen and your interactions with them — so that we can reproduce and fix the problem. Recording is triggered only by an error; ordinary browsing is not recorded. Values you type into form fields, such as passwords and payment details, are masked and are not captured. Information already displayed on the page, which can include your name, email address, or service address, may appear in the recording. The mobile app does not do this — it sends error reports only

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and manage your account
• Match customers with available contractors in their area
• Process membership subscription payments (billed monthly or annually), recurring service plan payments, and one-time charges for individual jobs
• Facilitate contractor payouts for completed jobs
• Verify contractor identity, driving credentials, insurance, and background eligibility
• Provide location-based job matching and route optimization for contractors
• Show customers the live position of the contractor assigned to their active job
• Assess a service address in order to determine the price of service at that property
• Estimate the volume and price of junk removal jobs from photos customers submit
• Confirm that submitted job photos show completed work at the correct address
• Send service confirmations, completion photos, account notices, and reminders by email
• Operate contractor rankings, levels, badges, and public contractor profiles
• Detect and prevent fraud or misuse of the platform
• Improve our app, services, and customer support
• Comply with applicable laws, tax reporting obligations (including IRS 1099-NEC requirements), and regulatory requirements

3. Third-Party Service Providers

We work with trusted third-party service providers solely to operate the BinBuddies platform. These providers are contractually prohibited from using your data for any purpose other than providing services to us. Categories of providers include:

• Payment processor — Securely handles membership, service plan, and one-time job billing and stores payment card details. We never store full card numbers or CVV codes on our own servers.
• Contractor payout provider — Facilitates direct bank deposits to contractors for completed jobs and issues required tax documents.
• Identity verification provider — Verifies contractor government-issued ID and selfie during onboarding.
• Background check provider — Conducts FCRA-compliant background screening on contractor applicants. See Section 4 for your FCRA rights.
• Sign-in providers — If you choose to sign in with Apple or Google, that provider shares your name and email address with us to create or access your account.
• Email delivery provider — Sends transactional emails such as sign-in links, service confirmations, and completion photos.
• Mapping and imagery provider — Powers in-app maps, address lookup, route optimization using contractor location, and the publicly available property imagery used for assessment.
• AI analysis provider — Analyzes images submitted to or retrieved by the platform, including job completion photos, junk removal quote photos, contractor insurance cards, and property imagery. Images are sent for analysis only and are not used by the provider to train its models.
• Cloud infrastructure provider — Hosts our secure database, file storage, and authentication systems.
• Crash reporting provider — Collects error and performance reports from the app and the website, and records website browsing sessions in which an error occurred, so we can reproduce and fix problems. See Section 1 for what those recordings contain.
• Bot detection provider — Cloudflare Turnstile protects our website and forms from spam and automated abuse by distinguishing human visitors from bots. See Section 11 for details.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not use advertising networks or third-party tracking in our mobile app.

4. Background Checks (Contractors) — FCRA Notice

Contractor applicants are subject to a background check conducted by a licensed consumer reporting agency. Background check results are used solely to evaluate eligibility to provide services on the BinBuddies platform. You have rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), including the right to know if information in your report has been used against you and the right to dispute inaccurate information. To learn more about your FCRA rights, contact us at [email protected].

5. Location Data

Contractors' location is used inside the app to show nearby available jobs and to put the stops on a route into efficient driving order. While a contractor is actively running a route, their position is shared with the customers on that route so those customers can see the contractor approaching; it stops being shared as soon as the route is completed or abandoned.

Location is never collected in the background or while the app is closed. The app requests location access only when you take an action that needs it, and it remains usable if you decline — contractors can still browse and complete jobs without granting location access.

Customers' location data is limited to the coordinates of the service address provided during account setup, used to dispatch service and to assess the property for pricing.

6. Financial Data & Payments

BinBuddies sells a membership, billed monthly or annually, which unlocks access to our services. Individual services — bin valet, bin cleaning, and junk removal — are billed separately, either as a recurring service plan or as a one-time charge for a single job. You may hold more than one active subscription at a time, and each can be canceled independently.

All payment card data is collected and processed by our PCI-DSS compliant payment processor on its own secure checkout pages. BinBuddies does not store full card numbers, CVV codes, or bank account numbers on our servers. Contractor earnings are tracked for tax reporting purposes. Contractors who earn $600 or more annually through the platform will receive a 1099-NEC as required by the IRS.

7. Communications

When you create an account, you consent to receive transactional messages from BinBuddies related to your service — sign-in links, booking and completion confirmations, job photos, payout notices, and account alerts. These are sent by email and are necessary to provide the Services, so they cannot be turned off while your account is active.

We collect your phone number so that we, or the contractor assigned to your job, can reach you about scheduled service. We do not currently send automated marketing or promotional text messages. If we introduce text messaging in the future, we will obtain your consent first and provide clear opt-out instructions.

8. Information Visible to Others

Some information is shown to other users of the platform, or publicly, as part of how the Services work:

• Approved contractors appear on in-app leaderboards and may have a public profile page on our website showing their name, profile photo, city and state, experience level, number of completed jobs, and average customer rating and reviews. Contractor applications, application status, earnings, and payout details are never shown to other users.
• Customers are shown to the contractor assigned to their job — including the service address, any access instructions provided, and the job details needed to complete the work. Customer information is not shown to other customers or to contractors who are not assigned to the job.
• Job completion photos are emailed to the customer for the job they document and are retained as service records. They are not published publicly.

9. Data Retention

We retain your account information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide services. Financial transaction records and 1099 tax documents are retained for a minimum of seven years as required by law.

When you delete your account, we remove your personal information — including your name, email address, phone number, service address, and profile photo. We retain a de-identified record that contains no personal information, so that your email address can be released for future use and so that aggregate service and payout history remains accurate for accounting and tax purposes. Records held by our payment, payout, identity verification, and background check providers are retained according to their own legal obligations.

10. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures including encryption in transit (TLS), encrypted storage, and access controls to protect your information. Access to customer records is restricted so that users can see only their own data and contractors can see only the jobs assigned to them. Identity documents and sensitive financial data are handled by certified third-party providers. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11. Bot Detection & Website Security

To protect our website and certain interactive features — such as account signup and the Rate My Driveway tool — from spam, automated abuse, and bot traffic, we use Cloudflare Turnstile, a privacy-focused bot-detection service provided by Cloudflare, Inc.

When you interact with a page protected by Turnstile, Cloudflare processes a limited set of technical signals — such as your IP address, browser User-Agent, TLS fingerprint, and the site identifier (sitekey) and its associated origin — solely to distinguish human visitors from automated bots. Turnstile does not use this information to identify you personally, serve advertising, or track you across other websites, and it does not require solving image or text puzzles.

Cloudflare processes these signals on our behalf as a service provider to help secure the BinBuddies platform, and separately as an independent controller to improve its bot-detection technology. For complete details on how this data is handled, see Cloudflare's Turnstile Privacy Addendum and its Privacy Policy.

Turnstile protects our website only. It is not used in the BinBuddies mobile app.

12. Your Rights & Choices

Deleting Your Account

You can delete your BinBuddies account and personal data directly in the app at any time. Open the app, go to the Me tab, and choose Delete Account. Deletion is permanent and takes effect immediately. When you delete your account we remove your profile, name, email address, phone number, service address, profile photo, and photographs of your property; cancel any active subscriptions so you are not billed again; and refund any job you have paid for that no contractor has started yet.

Deletion is briefly unavailable in one situation: if a contractor is already on the way to your address for a job in progress. In that case the app will ask you to wait until the job finishes, so that the work you paid for is completed and the contractor is paid for it. You may also request deletion by emailing us at [email protected]. See Section 9 for what we are required to retain afterward.

Other Rights

Depending on your location, you may also have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate data, including your property's automated assessment
• Request human review of an automated assessment that affects your pricing
• Object to or restrict certain processing
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
• Receive a copy of your data in a portable format

You can revoke location, camera, and photo library access at any time in your device's settings without deleting your account, though some features will stop working.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

13. Age Requirement & Children's Privacy

BinBuddies is intended only for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, use the Services, or provide services as a contractor. The Services are not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us at [email protected] and we will delete it promptly.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. If we make material changes to how we collect or use your information, we will provide additional notice, such as by email or an in-app notice. We encourage you to review this policy periodically. Continued use of the Services after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

15. Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us:

BinBuddies LLC
Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Email: [email protected]