Privacy

• When you sign in with PayPal: your name, email, PayPal account id (payer id) and whether PayPal has verified your account. PayPal shares these only after you approve it on PayPal's own page. We never see your password.
• When you create a deal: the item, price, condition promises, an optional photo, your lowest price if you take offers, and how the item is handed over.
• When you pay: PayPal tells us the shipping address on your PayPal account and the ids of the payment, so we can check the label and move the money. Card details go to PayPal, never to us.
• When you check a deal: the text, screenshot or link you give us. Scams we catch are remembered (see below).
• Email updates: the email PayPal shares with us, or one you type in and confirm from your inbox. It's only used to tell you when your deal needs you, and every email has a link to stop them.
• Rate limits: a one-way, keyed hash of your network address, so abuse can be limited without storing the address itself.

The buyer sees the seller's first name and whether their PayPal account is verified, never their email or account id. The seller sees the buyer's shipping address only for shipped deals, never for in-person handovers. Someone holding a deal link without being part of it sees the item and its status only.

• PayPal for sign-in, holds, captures and payouts.
• OpenRouter (AI models) to read listings, chats, labels and delivery photos. We tell OpenRouter to use only providers whose published policy is not to store or train on requests, and a request no such provider can serve is refused rather than sent elsewhere. This rests on those providers' own policies, which we can't audit ourselves.
• Groq (backup AI), only when OpenRouter can't answer. Groq's terms say it doesn't train on requests; it may keep them for up to 30 days for reliability and abuse checks.
• Channel3 for store prices of the item.
• Kernel to open a listing link in a cloud browser.
• Elastic for scam memory: the wording, contact details and photo fingerprints of high-risk listings, so the next buyer can be warned.
• Render to host the site and store deals.
• Gmail or Resend to send deal emails.
• EasyPost to follow a shipped parcel with its carrier. It gets the tracking number and carrier only.

We don't sell personal data or use it for advertising.

Only the ones the site needs: your PayPal sign-in (30 days), a per-deal cookie that proves which side you are, a short-lived cookie that protects sign-in from forgery, and your light or dark theme. No tracking or advertising cookies.

Deals are kept while they're open and for a year after they close, so a dispute can still be resolved. Signing out removes your session from this browser. To delete your deals and account details, contact us through the repository below and we'll remove them within 30 days, except where a payment record must be kept.

Handshake currently runs on the PayPal sandbox. Accounts and money on it are test accounts and test money.

Questions or deletion requests: open an issue at github.com/Yashasm18/HandShake.