ChooseLocal is a platform that helps you discover and support local businesses.

This policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, and how we use it. We encourage
you to contact us at privacy@chooselocal.ai if anything you see
here can be improved.

What information do we collect?

Account information — We store your email address and a securely hashed version of your
password. We never store your password in plain text and cannot read it.

Location — To show you which businesses are local to you, we use a region that you define. You
may either search for and pick a region by name, or use your device's GPS to detect the nearest one
automatically.

We treat your precise location as private. If you use GPS detection, your device's coordinates are
rounded down to roughly the nearest 1 km inside the browser, before anything is sent to our
servers. Our servers only ever receive and store this coarse coordinate — never your precise
position. If you pick a region by name instead of using GPS, we store that region's published centre
point as a fallback, which is the same for every user in that region.

We do not track or update your location unless you choose to change it.

Business lookup activity — We give local businesses insights to understand their market position
and make informed decisions. When you interact with business annotations (e.g. clicking to view
details), we record this activity to support these insights, but the data is aggregated and cannot
be used to identify individual users.

How do we use your information?

• To authenticate you and keep your account secure.
• To personalise the business directory to your location.
• To return business details and local alternatives when you click an annotation.
• To let you register and manage your own business listing.
• To send transactional emails (e.g. email verification, password reset). We do not send marketing
  emails without your consent.
• To produce anonymised analytics — such as how often a business is viewed or annotated — which are
  presented to platform administrators and to business owners who have registered their listing on
  the platform. These analytics cannot be used to identify individual users.

Do we share your data with third parties?

We do not sell your personal information. To operate the service, we work with third-party vendors
in the categories below. We share only the minimum information each vendor needs to perform their
function.

Payment processors — If you subscribe to a paid plan, your payment is handled by a third-party
payment processor. We share only what is necessary to complete the transaction: a billing email, the
amount and currency of the charge, and your IP address (which the processor uses for fraud
detection). We never see or store your card details — they are entered directly into the processor's
secure form.

Cloud infrastructure and hosting providers — We host our servers and databases with cloud
infrastructure providers. Your account data, location preferences, and business lookup activity
reside on their infrastructure, subject to our security controls.

Email delivery providers — In order to send transactional emails (e.g. email verification,
password reset), we share your email address with an email delivery provider.

Public content delivery networks — The browser extension may load small public assets (such as
country flag images or business favicons) from public CDNs. These requests contain no personal
information — only a domain name or country code.

How does the browser extension work?

The browser extension scans the text of web pages you visit to identify business names from our
database. This scanning happens entirely on your device — page text is not sent to our servers. Only
when you click an annotation do we make a network request, and then only to request additional
information to display in the tooltip.

You can pause annotation at any time by disabling the enabled toggle in the extension popup. When
paused, no scanning occurs and no requests are made.

How long do we keep your data?

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we
remove your personal information within 30 days.

What are your rights?

You have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information. To exercise these
rights, or if you have any questions about this policy, please contact us at
privacy@chooselocal.ai.