HelpHive Privacy Policy

Last Updated on May 4, 2009.

HelpHive operates an online community-powered marketplace that connects homeowners and home service providers for home repair, home improvement, yard and landscape, home maintenance and home cleaning (the “Service”). The HelpHive Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) applies to your use of the Service, including the www.helphive.com website and other websites under the helphive.com domain (collectively, the "Site"). The Privacy Policy is to help you understand how we collect and use the personal information you decide to post. By accessing or in any way using the Site or the Service, you agree to the practices described in the Privacy Policy, whether or not you are a registered user.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should contact our privacy staff at privacy@helphive.com.

Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to any third party sites that you may access via the Site (for example, by clicking on a link), or to any relationships you may have with the businesses listed on the Site.

The terms "we", "us", and "HelpHive" refer to HelpHive, Inc. The terms "you" and "your" refer to you, as a user of any of the Site. The term "personal information" means information about you that is personally identifiable such as your name, address, email address, or phone number, and that is not otherwise publicly available. The terms “Business Account” and “Personal Account” are described in the Terms of Service. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, other initially capitalized terms that we use have the same meaning as ascribed to them in the HelpHive Terms of Service.

I. Information We Collect and How We Use It

When you visit the Site, you provide us with two types of information:

• personal information that you knowingly choose to disclose, and that we collect; and
• information about your use of the Site that we collect as you interact with the Site.

Account information. If you create an account to help take advantage of the full range of services offered on the Site, we ask for and record personal information such as your name, phone number, mailing address and email address.

For both Personal and Business Accounts: We use your email address to send you notifications, updates and news, and to contact you both ourselves, and on behalf of other users (such as other users who send you messages or respond to a question you posted.) We may also use your email address to send you a message to verify your email address. If you forget your password, you can request us to send an email to your email address in order to reset your password. We use your personal mailing address to calculate and display to you the distance that a local service provider’s office is from your location. We use your personal phone number as a convenience so you don’t have to re-enter your phone number when you are using the Site to contact a business and you wish to have the business call you back.

For Business Accounts only: We use your email address and phone numbers to send you notifications and updates both ourselves, and on behalf of other users (such as other users who send you text or voice messages) and for activity relating to your Business Account (such as when users review or recommend your business or when a user posts a question related to your service expertise.) We use your business phone and mobile phone numbers to notify and deliver to you (via a phone call) text and voice messages sent to you by other users. We use your mobile phone number to notify and, in some cases, deliver to you (via SMS text message) text and voice messages sent to you by others. We use your business address to: (a) calculate and display the distance your office is from the location of users; and (b) display a map of the location of your business. We may use your phone number to call you to verify that you are the owner or authorized representative of a business.

You may choose not to receive e-mail (and for Business Accounts, SMS text messages and phone calls) of these types by accessing the "Account & Settings" link after you log on to the Site and updating your notification and email subscriptions settings (click here for details).

Business profile data. We purchase and gather business profile data from a variety of sources which enables us to prepare business profile pages, provide services to users with minimal data entry, and verify that business profile pages are validly controlled by those who claim to represent them. You can edit your business profile information at any time by clicking on the Business Profile link in the HelpHive header, including when you first “claim” your business profile. If you would like your business profile page removed from the Site, you may request to remove your business profile (click here for details.).

Submissions. We store and may publicly display your submissions in order to help provide the Service. When we display your submissions, we do so together with your account name. The term “account name” means: (a) for Personal Accounts, your first name and last initial (e.g. Dave R); and (b) for Business Accounts, your first name and last name, or your business name. The term "submissions" refers to the information that you submit or post to the Site for public display, such as business ratings, reviews, photos, recommendations, complaints, comments, responses to reviews, advice questions, advice responses and the information that you display as part of your account profile.

Feedback. If you contact us to provide feedback, register a complaint, or ask a question, we will record any personal information and other content that you provide in your communication so that we can effectively respond to your communication.

Personal messaging. In order to allow you to send and receive messages with other registered users of the Site, we record the messages that you send and receive using the Site's or the Service’s messaging features. Business Accounts may receive both text-based and voice messages from other users, including both anonymous and registered users. Some aspects of our messaging services are provided by third parties such as Twilio. When handling your personal information for purposes of the Service, we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections limiting the use of that information to the HelpHive-specified purposes. Our privacy practices apply to your messages only to the extent they are stored on HelpHive systems. For example, once the persons or businesses to whom you’ve addressed your message have obtained your messages from HelpHive, they may use the contents of your messages without regard to HelpHive’s privacy policy. We are not responsible for and do not control the transmission of information over public carrier facilities such as phone networks.

Surveys or Contests. From time-to-time, we may provide you the opportunity to participate in contests, sweepstakes or surveys on the Site. If you participate, we will request certain personal information from you. Participation in these contests, sweepstakes or surveys is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code). We use this information to notify contest winners and award prizes, to monitor Site traffic or personalize the Site (in the case of anonymous information collected in surveys) and to send participants an email newsletter. We may use third party service providers to conduct these surveys or contests. If we do use third parties, we will implement reasonable contractual and technical protections limiting the use of that information to the HelpHive-specified purposes. We will not share the personal information you provide through a contest or survey with other third parties unless we give you prior notice and choice.

Activity. We record information relating to your use of the Site, such as the searches you undertake, the pages you view, your browser type, IP address, requested URL, referring URL, and timestamp information. We use this type of information to help us administer the Site and provide Service to you. We also use this information in the aggregate (on an anonymized basis) to perform statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the Site. We may share the results of this analysis (on an aggregated, anonymized basis) with third parties to help us provide or expand the Site or the Service. If we display advertising on the Site, then we may also use information about you in or derived from your Profile and User Content to display advertising to you that we believe is tailored to you specifically. This helps us provide our service to you and, we believe, provides you a more useful experience.

Cookies. We send cookies to your computer in order to uniquely indentify your browser and improve the quality of our service. The term "cookies" refers to small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer's hard drive while you are viewing the Site. We may use both session cookies (which expire once you close your browser) and persistent cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them or they expire in accordance with their own terms). Persistent cookies can be removed by following your browser help file directions. If you choose to disable cookies, some areas of the Site may not work properly or at all.

Enforcement. We may use the information we collect in connection with your use of the Site (including your personal information) in order to investigate, enforce, and apply our Terms of Service, including this Privacy Policy.

Data Processing. By using HelpHive, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.

Children Under Age 13. HelpHive does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 years or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13 years of age, please do not attempt to register for HelpHive or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 years may provide any personal information to or on HelpHive. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 years without verification of parental consent, then we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13 years, please contact us at help@helphive.com.

Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18. While we intend that only users who are of legal age to form a binding contract (typically 18 years old) use the Site, we recommend that minors over the age of 13 years ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.

II. Transfer of Information

We may distribute your User Content to third parties to help promote or benefit the Site or the Service, as more fully described in the Terms of Service. The third parties may in turn publicly display or publish your submissions in connection with their own websites, media platforms and products or services. When we distribute your submissions to third parties, we typically include your account name (but not your personal information unless you include your personal information in your submissions).

We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the services we offer. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to host the Site at a co-location facility for servers, to send out email updates about HelpHive, to remove repetitive information from our user lists, to provide messaging systems, to process payments for products or services, to conduct quality assurance testing, facilitate creation of accounts, provide technical and customer support, or provide specific services, such as synchronization of your contacts with other software applications. In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use for a limited time in connection with these business activities. Where we utilize third parties for the processing of any personal information, we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections limiting the use of that information to the HelpHive-specified purposes.

We may share your personal information with our current or future affiliated companies, in which case we will require them to honor this Privacy Policy. If the ownership of all or substantially all of the HelpHive business, or individual business units owned by HelpHive, Inc., were to change, then your user information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue operations. In any such transfer of information, your User Content and other information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.

We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Service or using the HelpHive name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.

We may disclose information in the aggregate to third parties relating to user behavior in connection with actual or prospective business relationships with those third parties, such as advertisers and content distributors. For example, we may disclose the number of users that have been exposed to, or clicked on, advertising banners or business profiles.

Advertisements that may appear on HelpHive are sometimes delivered (or “served”) directly to users by third party advertisers. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. These third party advertisers may also download cookies to your computer, or use other technologies such as JavaScript and “web beacons” (also known as “1x1 gifs”). Doing this allows the advertising network to recognize your computer each time they send you an advertisement in order to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. In this way, they may compile information about where individuals using your computer or browser saw their advertisements and determine which advertisements are clicked. HelpHive does not have access to or control of the cookies that may be placed by the third party advertisers. Third party advertisers have no access to your contact information stored on HelpHive unless you choose to share it with them. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by HelpHive and does not cover the use of cookies or other tracking technologies by any of its advertisers.

III. Others' Information

You may choose to provide us with another person's e-mail address and name so that person may be invited to create an account on the Site and easily share reviews, ratings and other feedback on local service providers with you. We store this information in your account as part of your friend networks. You can remove this information by deactivating your friend networks (click here for details.) We use this information to: (a) contact and, if necessary, remind that person about the invitation; and (b) identify when your friend sets up an account on the Site so that you may be setup as friends. By providing us with another person's e-mail address and name, you represent to us that you have obtained the consent of the person concerned to disclose their personal information to HelpHive. We may disclose such information if required to do so in order to comply with legal process, as described above.

You may choose to connect to your Plaxo or Google Mail (gmail) accounts by providing us with your account login and password. We will use this information in order to authenticate to those services and import contact information. We will not store your Plaxo or Google login and password information after this use.

You may choose to connect to your Yahoo or Hotmail accounts. You will provide your account login and password directly to those services. Once you have authorized access to your account, we will import contact information.

You may choose to connect your account to your Facebook account through Facebook Connect so that you may: (a) invite your Facebook friends to setup an account and easily share reviews, ratings and other feedback on local service providers with you, and (b) publish your HelpHive activity on your Facebook news feed (for example, notification when you post a new review or ask for advice). When your account is connected to your Facebook account, Facebook provides us with non-personally identifiable id’s of your Facebook friends (“Facebook Ids”) which we store in your account. You can remove the Facebook Ids from your account by deactivating your Facebook friends network (click here for details.) If you have enabled automatic publishing of your activity to your Facebook news feed and you wish to disable this publishing, you will need to configure your application settings for HelpHive through your Facebook account. We store Facebook Ids to: (a) contact and, if necessary, remind your friends about the invitation through the Facebook Connect system; and (b) identify when your Facebook friends setup an account on Site so that you may be setup as friends on the Site.

IV. Links

The Site may contain links to other web sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other web sites. We encourage our users to read the privacy policies of other sites they visit when they leave the Site. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by HelpHive.

V. Controlling Your Personal Data

To the extent you include personal information in your submissions (such as a photo of yourself), third parties may be able to identify you, associate you with your user account, and contact you. For Business Accounts, third parties can also associate you with your user account using the search feature on the Site, but only if the third party already knows your business name. Please do not include information in your submissions that you expect to keep private.

Please also note that the personal messages you send or receive using the Site's personal messaging feature are only private to the extent that you and the sender/recipient keep them private. For example, we do not have any control over whether a recipient of one of your personal messages publicly posts the contents of such a message.

As a registered HelpHive user, you can modify some of your personal information and your privacy preferences by accessing the "Account & Settings" section of the Site. For example, you may choose not to receive e-mail solicitations from HelpHive by accessing the "Account & Settings" link after you log on to the Site and updating your notification settings.

You may request HelpHive to close your account (click here for details.) Business Accounts may also choose to remove their business profile from display on the Site (this will result in the business details and all reviews, recommendations, complaints and associated feedback information for this business being removed from display on the Site). After your account is closed, your personal information that you provided when registering for the Site may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time, but will not be generally available to users of the Site. Note that other User Content that you’ve posted to the Site, such as reviews, recommendations, complaints, feedback, comments, questions and answers, will generally continue to be displayed on the Site.

If you make use of the communication features of the Service to share information with other individuals on the Site (e.g., sending a message to another HelpHive user), you generally cannot remove such communications.

VI. Security

HelpHive takes appropriate precautions to protect our users’ information. Your account information is located on a secured server behind a firewall. When you enter sensitive information (such as your password), we encrypt that information. Because email, instant messaging and SMS text messages are not recognized as secure communications, we request that you not send private information to us by email, instant messaging or SMS text message services. If you have any questions about the security of the Site, please contact us at privacy@helphive.com.

VII. E-mails and Opt-out

You may opt-out of receiving notifications from us by changing your notification settings under the "Account & Settings" link after you log on to the Site. Unregistered users who receive e-mails from us may also opt-out of receiving further e-mails by following the instructions contained in our e-mails. Despite your indicated e-mail preferences, we may send you notices of any updates to our Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.

VIII. Terms of Service and Modifications to this Privacy Policy

Your use of the Site, and any disputes arising from it, are subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms of Service and all of its dispute resolution provisions, including disclaimers of warranties, limitations on damages, choice of law and forum. We reserve the right to change the provisions of this Privacy Policy at any time, but we will alert you that changes have been made by indicating on the Privacy Policy the date it was last updated. Your use of the Site following the posting of such changes or revised statement will constitute your acceptance of the changes.