1. Who we are
Hampton Roads Home Services is operated by AF Digital Native, LLC. When this policy says “we”, it means that company. We decide how the information described here is used.
2. What we collect
When you create an account: your name, email address and password (stored hashed, never in plain text). Service professionals also give a business name, phone number, business email and website.
Your listing, if you are a service professional: the description, service categories, service areas, business hours, payment methods, photographs and anything else you choose to publish.
What you post and send: jobs you post, bids you submit, messages you send through the site, and reviews you write.
What you do here: which providers you save, when you reveal a provider's contact details, whether you have read a message or an announcement, and which version of our Terms you accepted and when.
Uploads: images you upload are stored on this site's own server.
Reports: if you report a member, we keep the report, the reason, and a copy of what you reported as it read at that moment.
Your home address: the address you save, matched to the city’s address records, and with it the neighborhood and the map point the city lists for it. As you type an address, what you have typed so far is sent to Google to suggest matches (section 6).
If you are on Connect: your choices about what neighbors see, your connection requests and connections, what you post and reply on your board, and the threads you are in. The distance between your home and a neighbor’s is worked out from the two city map points when a list is shown and is not stored.
If a board added your household to an association portal: the name, address and email address the board entered for it, who entered it and when, and whether you accepted the invitation. That information comes from the board, not from you.
3. What we do not collect
We never see your card details. Subscription payments are handled by our payment processor. Your card number is entered on their systems, not ours, and is not stored here.
We do not store IP addresses in the records this site keeps, not against your acceptance of the Terms, and not against reports you make. An IP address is weak evidence of a person and strong evidence of a location, and keeping one for every member indefinitely is a cost with little to show for it. Our web host keeps its own server logs, as every host does.
We do not buy personal information from data brokers, and we do not sell yours.
4. How we use it
To run the marketplace: publishing listings, matching jobs to service areas and categories, delivering messages, calculating ratings, and ordering search results.
To communicate with you about your account, your jobs and your bids.
To enforce our rules, investigate reports, and keep the site safe.
To understand how the site is used in aggregate, so we can improve it.
We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not run advertising networks on this site.
5. What other people can see
If you are a service professional, your listing is public and appears in search engines: your business name, description, categories, service areas, hours, photographs, ratings and reviews. Your phone number and email are shown to signed-in members. Assume anything in your listing can be seen by anyone.
If you are a homeowner, your profile is not public. Service professionals see your first name and last initial, the job you posted, and its general location, not your address, unless you give it to them. Reviews you write are published with that same name format.
Messages are private between the two members in the conversation. We can read a conversation only when it is reported to us.
If you are on Connect, everyone on Connect in your neighborhood can see your first name and last initial, what you post and reply on the board, and whatever you have chosen to show from your street, your house number and your phone. Neighbors nearest your home see you in their closest-to-you list, which says you live near them; if you hide your street you are left out of every such list and appear with the neighborhood by name only. Pros see none of it unless they live in your neighborhood and are on Connect as neighbors. Your full address is never shown on Connect unless you turn your house number on.
If you are in an association portal, its admins see the household details the board entered and whether you have joined; other members see what you share on the portal’s roster, which you control from the portal. Nobody in a portal sees your marketplace activity or your private messages.
Our staff can see Connect posts and portal content when handling a report. We read a message thread only when someone in it reports it.
6. Who we share it with
We use a small number of service providers who process information on our behalf, under contract, and only to provide their service to us:
- our web host, which stores the site and its database;
- our payment processor, which handles subscription payments;
- our email delivery provider, which sends the notifications you receive;
- our analytics tool, which reports how the site is used.
- the push service that comes with your phone or browser (Apple, Google, Mozilla or Microsoft), which delivers the alerts you turn on. Each alert is encrypted so that only your device can read it.
- Google, which supplies address suggestions as you type an address, and which receives what you have typed in that box;
- the cities’ public address and parcel records, which we query with the address you give us to place it on a street and in a neighborhood;
- our file storage provider, which holds the documents an association uploads to its portal.
We also disclose information where the law requires it, in response to a lawful request, or where we need to establish or defend a legal claim, and where we reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent harm.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
7. Email and messages
Some emails are part of the service and cannot be switched off while your account is open: password resets, and notifications about your own jobs, bids and messages.
Marketing and digest emails can be switched off from your email preferences or by using the unsubscribe link in any of them.
Alerts on your phone come only after you turn them on, on each phone or computer, and you pick which ones on your Notifications page. To send them we keep, for each device, the address its push service gave it and the keys that encrypt alerts for it. Turning alerts off on a device, or signing out there, deletes them.
If we introduce text messages, we will ask for your consent separately first. We will not add you to text messaging because you gave us a phone number for another reason.
8. Cookies
We use cookies that are necessary for the site to work: keeping you signed in, remembering which persona you are using, holding a job you are part-way through writing, and security tokens that protect forms.
Our analytics tool sets its own cookie to count visits. You can block cookies in your browser, though signing in will not work without the necessary ones.
9. How long we keep it
Your account information is kept while your account exists.
Some records outlive an account. Reviews, job records and messages are the record of what happened between two members, and one party cannot erase a record that belongs to both. Reports and the evidence behind them are kept for as long as the accounts involved exist and for a reasonable period afterwards, because a report is only worth as much as what backs it up.
A job you start writing but do not finish is held for two days and then deleted automatically.
If you leave Connect, everything of yours on Connect is deleted: posts, replies, messages in threads, connections and your Connect choices. Reports you made or that were made about you are kept as described above. Your address stays with your account because your jobs carry it.
An association portal keeps its records for as long as it exists, locked or not; a portal is never deleted for lapsing. A document a board deletes is held for thirty days and then removed. When a board removes your household, the details it entered for you go with it, and you can ask a board, or us, to remove your household at any time; your own HRHS account is untouched.
10. Your choices
See and correct it. Most of what we hold is visible in your account and can be edited there.
Get a copy, or ask us to delete it. Email support@hamptonroadshomeservices.com. We will respond within a reasonable time and will tell you if anything has to be kept, and why, rather than quietly keeping it.
Close your account at any time from your account settings.
Switch off marketing email from your email preferences.
Change what neighbors see, or leave Connect, from your Connect settings at any time.
Ask a board to remove your household from its portal, or ask us and we will pass it to the board. The board decides who is on its roster; we decide what we keep, as set out in section 9.
Depending on where you live you may have additional rights over your information. Ask us and we will honor them.
11. Security
The site is served over HTTPS. Passwords are stored hashed. Access to the database is limited to people who need it to run the site.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach affects your information we will tell you.
12. Children
This site is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account. We do not knowingly collect information from children, and we delete it if we discover we have.
13. Changes, and how to contact us
We will update this policy as the site changes. Material changes will be announced through the site.
Questions, requests, or complaints: support@hamptonroadshomeservices.com, or write to Hampton Roads Home Services, 440 Monticello Ave., Ste 1802 PMB 474253, Norfolk, Virginia 23510-2670.
See also the Terms of Use and the Community and Reporting Policy.