Privacy policy

We keep what a marketplace needs to work and little else. Nobody outside findTreas watches you here: no analytics service, no advertising pixel, nothing that follows you to other sites. We do count a few things ourselves, and the “What we count” section says exactly what and why. We keep no record of your browser or your sign-in history, and we never record where you connect from. The only place we look at that is the sign-in and sign-up forms, to count how many attempts have come from the same connection in the last few minutes, and that count is kept in memory and never stored. We never see your identity document. We do not sell your information.

The part that surprises people most: closing your account anonymizes it rather than deleting it. Your name, email, address and photo go. The record that an order happened, that somebody reviewed you, or that a complaint was made stays, with no name attached. The section on how long we keep information explains why, because you have a right to know that before you rely on it.

• An account. Email address, and a password if you did not sign in through Google, Apple or Facebook. A username, which is public.
• A ZIP code, if you give one. Used to quote shipping, to show distance, and, counted together with everybody else’s and never on its own, to work out which parts of the country findTreas is used in and where it is worth advertising. It is never shown to another member. Only the distance derived from it is.
• What you list. Titles, descriptions, photos, prices, categories. All public.
• Your shop, if you set one up: a name, a description and a logo. All public.
• A delivery address, when you buy something that is shipped.
• Messages, reviews and reports you write.
• Pickup details, if you meet people in person: a photo of yourself so a seller can recognize you, a note about when you will arrive, and, if you sell, directions for finding you.

• Stripe Identity tells us whether your check passed and the legal name on your document. That is all. We never receive the document, its number, its images or your date of birth, and our systems have nowhere to put them.
• Stripe Connect, if you take payouts, tells us whether your account can accept charges and be paid, and the name it verified.
• Google, Apple or Facebook, if you sign in through them, tell us your email address and name.
• Carriers tell us where a package is, when you or your buyer entered a tracking number. When they say it was delivered, we check their ZIP code against the address it was sent to and keep only whether the two matched.

These are commitments built into how the software works, not preferences we could quietly change:

• No third-party analytics or tracking. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, no session recorder, no third-party script watching you browse. Nothing you do here is reported to anybody else, and the site’s security rules block such a script from loading even if one were ever added by mistake. What we count, we count ourselves and keep. See below.
• No browser fingerprints and no sign-in history. Nothing records what you connect with, or that you signed in at all.
• No stored IP addresses. There is one exception, and this is all of it. When somebody uses the sign-in or sign-up form, we count the attempts coming from that connection so that a password cannot be guessed at indefinitely and accounts cannot be created in bulk. The address is scrambled with a key that exists only while the server is running, kept in the server’s memory, used only as a count, and gone within the hour. It is never written to our database, never written to a log, never attached to your account, and never sent to anyone. Once that server restarts, nothing that remains could be traced back to a connection, including by us. Our hosting provider keeps its own short-lived server logs, which we do not import or analyze.
• No identity documents. See above. A pass or fail result and a name are all we receive.
• No date of birth. As a result, we cannot tell how old anybody is, so we do not allow age-restricted categories at all rather than checking ages.
• No message content sent anywhere. Messages between members stay on findTreas and are not scanned, mined or handed to anybody for advertising.

What we do count ourselves, in the same detail, because a promise about outside companies is not worth much without it. This is the complete list:

• How many times a listing has been opened. A single number on the listing itself. It is not a list of who opened it, and no record is kept that you were one of them.
• Which categories you look at, if you are signed in. Opening a listing or adding one to your watchlist adds a point to that category. What is kept is the category, the running total and the date you last added to it: not which listing, not what you searched for, and no history of individual visits. We use it to decide the order of what you are shown. It is never shown to another member, it is never sent anywhere, and it is deleted outright when you close your account.
• Who is watching a listing. The seller sees how many members have it on their watchlist, and never who. A seller may offer those members a price below the asking price. Each of you receives it privately, and the seller learns your username only if you accept it or make a counteroffer, never if you decline it or let it expire.
• How many sales happen in each part of the country, worked out from the ZIP codes described above, to decide where findTreas is worth advertising. These are totals for an area (a state, a town, a ZIP code), and nobody appears in them individually. They are calculated from orders when somebody asks for them and are not stored, so once an account is closed, it is no longer part of them. They stay on findTreas. No figure derived from them is sent to Google or to anybody else, and none of it is ever used to aim advertising at a particular person.
• How often a seller’s sales have gone wrong in the last few months (chargebacks, disputes, packages delivered somewhere other than the buyer’s address, and scam or counterfeit reports), so that our staff can see where to look first. It is counted from those records when a member of staff opens the page, and is not stored. Nothing happens to anybody because of it. Every decision is made by a person, with a reason they write down. It is never shown to the seller or to anybody outside findTreas.

Apart from that last list, which only our staff can see, none of this is a profile of you that anybody can read. None of it survives closing your account.

Four, all set by us, none for advertising. One keeps you signed in. Three remember small choices: whether you dismissed the homepage banner, whether the category list is open, and whether you asked the Sell form to suggest details from your photo. Nothing here follows you to other sites, so there is no consent banner to click past.

• Your username, rating and shop are public. Your email address is not, and messaging never reveals it.
• Your verified legal name reaches exactly one other person, and only after something has happened: a paid order, or an introduction on an advertisement listing that the other party agreed to. Never from browsing, and never because somebody asked.
• On advertisement listings, nothing is shared until the seller says yes. A buyer asks. The seller sees a username, a rating and whether that person is verified, and decides. Only then are names and email addresses shared, and both of you receive the other’s at the same time.
• Pickup details are shared even more narrowly. Your photo is shown to a seller you are picking up from. Their directions are shown to a buyer who is coming. Each stops being shown once the pickup is over.
• One limit on the photo. We control who is told its web address, not who can fetch that address. Anybody given the link could open it. Taking the photo down removes it from our records and the file is later deleted, but a link already shared is beyond our control.

Each of these does a job for us and is not free to use your information for their own purposes. We send each one only what it needs:

• Stripe: payments, payouts and identity checks. Receives your email address and the order reference. Card details go to Stripe directly and never touch our systems.
• Cloudinary: image hosting. Photos upload from your browser straight to them, stored under your account ID.
• Shippo: shipping rates and package tracking. Receives ZIP codes and a country, and nothing else, no name and no street address, plus a tracking number when there is one.
• Resend: sends our email. Receives the address and the message.
• Google: see the next section.
• Our hosting and database providers, who store what the site runs on.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to investigate fraud, abuse or illegal activity on the site.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising as California defines that.

One disclosure is worth spelling out. Listings may be submitted to Google Merchant Center so they can appear in shopping results. That feed carries the listing (title, description, price, photos) and an ID for the seller, so a seller paying to advertise can be reported on and billed separately. It carries nothing about buyers, and no email address or legal name. Sellers who fund their own advertising are told this before they start.

We decide where we advertise using the area totals described under “What we count.” Those totals are ours. They tell us whether a city is worth advertising in, and they are used for nothing else. We do not send them to Google, we do not build audiences out of them, and there is no version of this in which an advertisement is aimed at you because of something you bought.

Some listings are ones we advertise but do not sell. There is no checkout, no order and no payment through us. We introduce two verified members and step back. What you then agree on (the price, how you pay, where you meet) is between the two of you, and we are not told any of it. The seller, not findTreas, is the retailer on those sales.

You can close your account at any time from your settings. It takes effect 30 days after you ask, and you can cancel at any point before then.

Closing anonymizes your account rather than deleting it, and we would rather tell you here than have you find out later. Erased: your name, email address, password, ZIP code (including the copies of it kept on listings you created), verified legal name, photo, shop details, pickup directions, delivery addresses on past orders, notes about meetings, and the record of which categories you looked at. Afterwards nothing in our records identifies you.

Kept, with no name attached:

• Orders. A completed sale is a tax and accounting record, and it is ours to keep as much as yours.
• Reviews, including ones you wrote. What somebody said about a seller is that person’s own words, not yours to withdraw.
• Reports: a complaint made about you, or one you made about somebody else.
• Introductions: that we put two members in touch about a listing, and when.
• Messages, since half of each conversation belongs to somebody else, with your name removed.

We also keep the reference number identifying your check at Stripe. It names nobody on its own, and we cannot use it to identify you. It exists so that if something on this site is ever the subject of a lawful investigation, there is a way to reach the company that did verify you, rather than us holding a copy of your documents against that possibility.

The law allows for this balance. The right to deletion in California is subject to exceptions, including records needed to complete a transaction, to comply with a legal obligation, and to investigate or prosecute illegal activity.

Wherever you live, you can ask us to do all of the following, and we will not treat you any worse for asking:

• Know what we hold about you and where it went.
• Correct it. Most of it you can edit yourself in your settings.
• Delete it, on the terms in the previous section.
• Take it with you. Sellers can download their listings and sales as spreadsheet files from your exports. For anything those files do not cover, write to us and we will put it together.
• Choose what we email you. Manage that in notification settings. A small number of messages cannot be switched off, because they are the only warning you would get about something happening to your account: a moderation decision, a request to close your account, or somebody being given your contact details.

Residents of North Carolina and of other states with comparable laws have these rights by statute. To exercise any of them, write to hello@findtreas.com from the address on your account, or use the settings pages above. If we cannot do what you asked, we will tell you why.

findTreas is not for people under 18, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has an account here, write to us and we will remove it.

Passwords are stored hashed and never in a readable form. Payment card details never reach us. Identity documents never reach us. The most sensitive things about you are held by companies that specialize in keeping them safe, which is a deliberate choice rather than a convenience. The less there is here, the less there is to lose.

No service can promise it will never be breached. If one happens and it affects you, we will tell you.

If we make a meaningful change to this policy, we will announce it on the site before it takes effect, rather than quietly changing the date at the top.

findTreas LLC
53 Verde Drive, Asheville, NC 28806
hello@findtreas.com