Privacy Policy

We collect information you provide directly to us when you create an account, submit a service request, or communicate through the platform. This includes your name, email address, phone number, ZIP code, and payment information. We also automatically collect certain technical information when you use FixlyDesk, including IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URLs, pages visited, and a randomly generated device identifier stored in a cookie on your browser.

IT professionals ("techs") who apply to join FixlyDesk provide additional materials so that we can verify who is joining the platform before they are approved to work with clients. This includes photographs of your driver's license (front and back), your resume, any professional certifications you choose to submit, and a photograph taken with your device's camera at the time you apply. The camera photograph must be taken live during the application — it cannot be uploaded from your device — and is used only so that a member of our staff can confirm the person applying is the person shown on the identification provided. These materials are used solely to confirm your identity and qualifications and to detect fraudulent applications. They are visible only to FixlyDesk staff carrying out application review — they are never shown to clients, never displayed on your public profile, and are never sold or shared with third parties for their own purposes. They are held in access-controlled storage that is not publicly reachable by link. We do not perform facial recognition, biometric matching, face geometry scanning, or any other automated analysis on the images you submit; the comparison is made by a person looking at them. We do not keep these materials indefinitely. Section 7 sets out exactly when each of them is deleted, including the fact that an application we do not approve has its documents deleted within 72 hours.

When you submit a service request, or set a service area on your profile, you choose a general area on a map. You can do this by sharing your device location, by typing an address, or by using the ZIP code already on your account. We do not store your exact location or your street address. Before anything is saved, the point you choose is deliberately reduced in precision — rounded to a grid roughly a third of a mile across for service requests and client accounts, and roughly a mile across for IT professionals' accounts. What is stored is that grid square, not the point inside it. A square of this size typically contains hundreds of homes and cannot identify a building, a driveway, or an address. If you type an address, that address is sent to a geocoding service to convert it into map coordinates. We use the United States Census Bureau's geocoding service, and where it cannot match an address, the OpenStreetMap Nominatim service. Your address is used only to work out the approximate area and is not stored by us, recorded in our logs, or displayed back to you. We use this approximate location to estimate distances between clients and IT professionals, to show requests to professionals working in the area, and to place approximate markers on maps. Distances shown on FixlyDesk are estimates and are displayed with a "~" to indicate this. An IT professional viewing a service request sees only the approximate area, never a street address; any exact address needed to carry out the work is something you share directly with them.

We use the information we collect to operate, maintain, and improve the FixlyDesk platform; match clients with IT professionals in their area; verify the identity and qualifications of IT professionals applying to the platform; process transactions and send related information; send service updates, security alerts, and support messages; respond to your comments and questions; monitor and analyze usage patterns to improve our service; and detect and prevent fraud and abuse of referral and promotional credit programs, including the use of the device identifier described above to identify when the same browser is being used to create multiple accounts in order to claim the same promotional credit more than once.

We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. We may share your information with IT professionals (techs) on the platform to the extent necessary to fulfill your service request. We may also share information with service providers who assist in operating our platform, subject to confidentiality agreements, and when required by law or to protect the rights and safety of our users. Identity verification materials described in Section 2 are excluded from all of the above and are seen only by FixlyDesk staff. There is one exception, and it is a legal one. If we receive a subpoena, court order or similar legal demand, or if those materials are needed to deal with a fraud investigation, an insurance claim, or a dispute involving that account, we may be required to produce them. We do not share them for any other reason, and we do not share them with anyone for their own purposes.

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. This includes SSL/TLS encryption for data in transit and secure storage practices. Identity verification materials are additionally stored in private, access-controlled storage and are served only through short-lived links issued to the account owner or to FixlyDesk staff. However, no method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active, or for as long as we need it to provide the service to you. Identity verification materials — the photographs of your driver's license and the verification photo taken with your camera, described in Section 2 — are kept on a much shorter schedule. If we do not approve your application, we delete your license photographs and your verification photo within 72 hours, and we do not keep a copy of them anywhere. The three days exist so that a decision can be questioned before the only copy of your identification is gone. Your application record itself — your name, contact details, resume and any certifications — is kept until we clear it, so that a decision can be reviewed and so the same application is not resubmitted unnoticed. If your application is approved, those materials are removed from the FixlyDesk platform and stored off it, in secure business storage that only the platform owner can reach. Your resume and any certifications move off the platform with them and are kept in that same storage as part of your application record. We delete the license photographs and the verification photo 30 days after your account is closed, or 12 months after your last activity on the platform, whichever comes first. We say "removed and stored off the platform" rather than "deleted" because that is what happens, and the difference matters. The deletion is the step that comes later, on the schedule above. You may ask us to close your account and delete your data at any time by emailing [email protected] with the subject line "Account Deletion Request." We will act on it within 30 days. We may keep limited records — such as transaction history, or the fact that an account was suspended — where the law requires it or where we need it to prevent fraud. Those records never include your license photographs or your verification photo.

You have the right to see the personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, and to have it deleted. Some of this you can do yourself. Your name, phone number and other profile details can be changed from your Settings page at any time, and your email preferences live there too. Deletion is handled by us rather than by a button in the app. Email [email protected], or [email protected] with the subject line "Account Deletion Request," and we will close the account and remove your data. We will act on it within 30 days. You may also opt out of non-essential communications at any time. Residents of certain states have additional rights under their own privacy laws, including the right to know what we have collected and the right to have it deleted. The same email addresses are how you exercise those rights, and we will not treat you differently for asking.

FixlyDesk is not directed to individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we become aware that a child under 18 has provided us with personal information, we will take steps to delete such information.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the effective date. Your continued use of FixlyDesk after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at [email protected].