Privacy Policy

Draft for review. This document is a plain-language draft and has not yet been reviewed by a lawyer. It must be reviewed by qualified counsel before HelpingBlock launches publicly.

Last updated: October 2026

HelpingBlock (“we”, “us”) helps neighbors ask for and offer everyday help. We collect as little information as we can, and we never sell it.

What we collect

Account details: your name, email and/or mobile number, and whether you want to ask for help, volunteer, or both.
Your home address and location: used to match you with nearby neighbors. Other people never see your home address. When you post a request, volunteers see only an approximate area (about a third of a mile) until one of them signs up to help you. Then that helper sees the address for that visit only.
Verification result: adult volunteers verify their identity through a third-party service (Persona or Stripe Identity). That company handles your ID photo and selfie under its own privacy policy. HelpingBlock never receives or stores your ID images. We only store whether you passed, and a reference number.
Student volunteers: school name and a parent or guardian's name and email, used to ask for and record their consent.
Activity: your requests, sign-ups, check-in and check-out times, messages in the app, ratings and reports.
Device information: if you turn on alerts, a push-notification address for your device.

How we use it

To match requests with verified volunteers nearby and send you alerts you asked for.
To keep people safe: verification, ratings, reports, and moderation.
To record volunteer hours and produce service-hour certificates.
To run and improve the service, and to comply with the law.

Who we share it with

Only the people involved in a visit see the details of that visit. We use trusted service providers to run HelpingBlock: Supabase (database and sign-in), Vercel (hosting), Persona or Stripe (identity verification), Twilio (text messages), Mapbox (address lookup) and an email delivery provider. They may only use your data to provide their service to us. We may share information if required by law or to protect someone's safety.

If you share a visit link with family, anyone with that link can see the visit time, the helper's first name and initial, their verified status and the visit status, but not your address. Links expire after 48 hours.

Children and teens

HelpingBlock is not for children under 13. Volunteers aged 13 to 17 need a parent or guardian's approval, and only see requests from neighbors who have verified their identity. A parent or guardian can ask us to review or delete their teen's information at any time.

How long we keep it

We keep your account information while your account is open. Volunteer-hour records are kept so you can download certificates. If you delete your account, we delete or anonymize your personal information within 30 days, except where we must keep it for safety investigations or legal reasons.

Your choices and rights

You can update your profile and alert settings at any time. You can ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete your account by emailing privacy@helpingblock.com. California residents have rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right to know, delete and correct personal information; we do not sell or share personal information for advertising.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit, access is restricted with database row-level security, and only a small number of trained moderators can view reports. No system is perfectly secure, so please don't share passwords, bank details or other sensitive information in messages.

Contact

Questions? Email privacy@helpingblock.com.