LocalPulse Privacy Policy
LocalPulse helps customers discover nearby merchants and helps merchants manage live business updates. This policy explains how LocalPulse collects, uses, shares, and retains information when you use the LocalPulse mobile app, admin tools, and related services.
Information we collect
We may collect account information such as your user ID, email address, display name, role, authentication provider, subscription or billing status, notification tokens, trust score, account status, and timestamps.
When you use location-based features, we process approximate or precise location information to show nearby merchants, verify check-ins, suggest places, and support merchant ownership workflows. Location is used for the requested feature and is not sold.
When you submit content, we collect information such as check-ins, reports, community notes, merchant suggestions, merchant profile details, photos, claim documents, ownership dispute information, and related metadata.
For payments and subscriptions, payment processing is handled by Stripe. LocalPulse stores payment status, checkout identifiers, entitlement status, and related billing metadata. We do not store full card numbers.
We may collect technical information such as device type, app version, diagnostics, crash data, analytics events, IP-derived request metadata, and security signals used to protect the service.
How we use information
We use information to provide app features, authenticate users, display merchant listings, process check-ins and reports, calculate community freshness and trust signals, manage subscriptions, send notifications, prevent abuse, comply with legal obligations, and improve reliability and safety.
Sharing and third-party services
We use service providers to operate LocalPulse, including Firebase and Google Cloud for authentication, database, storage, hosting, cloud functions, and push-related infrastructure; Mapbox and Google Maps Platform for maps or place data; Stripe for payments; Resend or similar email providers for claim and dispute emails; and analytics or monitoring tools such as Sentry or PostHog when configured.
We share information with these providers only as needed to operate, secure, analyze, or support LocalPulse. We may disclose information when required by law, to protect users and merchants, or to investigate fraud, abuse, or security incidents.
Public and merchant-visible information
Merchant listings, merchant profile details, public photos, live status updates, and selected community signals may be visible to other users. Reports, claim evidence, dispute documents, internal moderation data, and sensitive account data are not intended to be public.
Retention
We retain account and service data while your account is active or as needed to provide LocalPulse. Some records may be kept longer for security, fraud prevention, dispute handling, financial records, legal compliance, backup recovery, and audit logs. When an account deletion request is completed, we delete or de-identify account data unless retention is required for those legitimate reasons.
Your choices
You can manage notification permissions in the app and in your device settings. You can disable location access in your device settings, although nearby discovery, check-ins, and some claim features may stop working. You can request account deletion using the process described on the Account Deletion page.
Children
LocalPulse is not intended for children under 13. If you believe a child provided personal information, contact us so we can review and remove it where appropriate.
International processing
LocalPulse and its service providers may process information in countries other than your country of residence. We use reasonable safeguards appropriate to the service and provider.
Changes
We may update this policy from time to time. We will update the effective date above when changes are made.
Contact
For privacy questions, contact localpulsenow@gmail.com.