Privacy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 16 August 2026

The short version. We collect the details you type into the sign-up form, plus your IP address and browser details. We use them to run TradeHands and to email you when your area opens. We don't sell them. You can ask to see them, fix them, or have them deleted at any time — just email us and we'll do it.

TradeHands ("we", "us") is run from Australia. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

We've written this to describe what the site actually does today, not what it might do later. When that changes, this page changes with it.

What you give us

When you put your name down, we collect exactly what the form asks for:

Your name, email address and mobile number;
Your trade, and whether you're qualified, an apprentice, or other;
The suburb you're based in and how far you'll travel for work;
Your indicative hourly rate, if you choose to give one (this field is optional);
The fact that you ticked the consent box, and the date and time you ticked it.

What we collect automatically

We're being specific here because vague wording on this point is how policies end up misleading. When you submit the sign-up form, our server also records:

Your IP address — the full address your internet connection is using at that moment;
Your browser user-agent string — the text your browser sends identifying itself, which typically names your browser, its version and your operating system;
The date and time you signed up.

We collect those three things for one reason: to defend against spam and abuse of the sign-up form. They let us spot a bot submitting the form hundreds of times. We don't use them to track you around the internet, we don't build a profile from them, and we don't pass them to advertisers. We delete them 12 months after you sign up, which is longer than any spam investigation needs and short enough that we're not sitting on them indefinitely.

Why we collect it

To hold your place and email you when your area opens;
To work out which suburbs have enough tradies to switch on — that's what your suburb and trade are for;
To list you so other tradies can find and contact you, once your area is open;
To contact you about TradeHands, your account, and anything important;
To keep the site running, working and secure.

What other people can see

Right now, nobody but us. The members' area isn't open yet, so no other tradie can see your details.

Once your area opens and you're listed, other logged-in tradies will be able to see your listing — your name, trade, whether you're qualified, your suburb, how far you'll travel, your rate and your availability. That's the entire point of the service. Your email address and mobile number are not shown on your listing; other tradies contact you through the site.

Your listing will not be visible to the general public, and we don't allow search engines to index it.

Who else we share it with

We do not sell your personal information to anyone, ever.

We share it only with the services we need to run TradeHands, and only what they need:

Our hosting provider, which stores the database your details sit in;
An email provider, to actually send you the email when your area opens (we'll name the provider here once one is chosen);
Anyone we're legally required to give it to — for example, under a court order.

Information sent overseas

Two things about this, and both are honest disclosures rather than fine print:

Our hosting is likely to be outside Australia. The hosting providers suitable for a site this size are based in the United States, and your details would be stored on their servers. We'll name the provider and the country here once it's set up.

Our fonts are served from our own site. Websites commonly load their typefaces from Google, which quietly sends every visitor's IP address to Google before they've agreed to anything. We used to do that too. We now host the fonts ourselves, so loading a TradeHands page contacts nobody but us.

How we store it, and for how long

Your details are stored in our own database. We protect it with the usual measures — the site is served over an encrypted connection, the admin area requires a password, and the database is backed up. No system is perfectly secure and we won't claim otherwise, but we take it seriously.

How long we keep things:

IP address and browser details: deleted after 12 months.
Your sign-up and listing details: kept while you're on TradeHands. If you ask us to delete them, we do it — see below.
Backups: our backups are kept for up to 14 days, so deleted information can persist in a backup for that long before it's gone for good.

What's stored on your own device

The site saves a small amount of information in your own browser, using something called local storage. This stays on your device, and we can't read it:

A copy of your own sign-up, kept as a backup in case the form fails to reach us;
Your saved searches, your own listing and your messages, once the members' area is open.

Clearing your browser's site data removes all of it. We don't use tracking or advertising cookies, and there's no third-party analytics service watching you here.

How we count visits

We do count how the site is being used, because otherwise we'd have no idea whether it works. We've built this the least intrusive way we could:

We record that a page was viewed, which page, and the date. That's the whole record.
We record when someone starts the sign-up form and when someone finishes it — so we can see where people give up. We never record what you typed.
No cookies are set for this, no third party is involved (it's counted on our own server, not Google Analytics or similar), and nothing is linked to you or to any other visit.
These counts cannot be traced back to a person. They're totals, like a tally on a clipboard — "14 people viewed the home page today", not "Chris viewed the home page".

We do this so we can tell whether the site is confusing people, and fix it. It isn't used for advertising, and it's never sold or shared.

Your rights

Under the Australian Privacy Principles you can:

Ask to see the personal information we hold about you. We'll send it to you, free, normally within 30 days.
Ask us to correct it if any of it is wrong or out of date.
Ask us to delete it. We'll remove your listing and your details, and confirm once it's done. Remember backups can hold a copy for up to 14 days afterwards.
Ask us to stop emailing you. Every email we send will have a working unsubscribe link.

To do any of these, email us — see Contact. We may need to check you're really you before we act, so we're not handing your details to someone else.

If you have a complaint

If you think we've mishandled your personal information, tell us first. Email us at the address on our Contact page with what happened, and we will:

Acknowledge it within 5 business days, so you know it's been received;
Investigate and give you a written answer within 30 days, explaining what we found and what we're doing about it;
Tell you honestly if we got it wrong, and what we've changed.

If you're not satisfied with our answer, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), the independent regulator. They can be reached at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992. You don't need our permission to go to them.

Data breaches

If your information were caught up in a data breach that's likely to cause you serious harm, we're required to tell you and the OAIC, and we will — promptly and in plain English, not buried in a notice.

Changes to this policy

As TradeHands grows, this policy will change. We'll update the date at the top whenever it does. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we'll email you about it rather than quietly editing the page.

Contact us

Questions about your privacy, or want to exercise any of the rights above? See our Contact page.

A note on where the law is heading. Businesses turning over under $3 million are currently exempt from much of the Privacy Act. The Government has agreed in principle to remove that exemption, though as of August 2026 no bill has been passed and no start date is fixed. We've chosen to write this policy as if the exemption doesn't apply to us, because we'd rather be straight with you now than scramble later.