Privacy notice

Draft 5 · not yet in force

Draft, not yet in force. Pacta is an invite-only pilot. We will publish the final version here and ask you to accept it before your next request or listing.

This notice explains what Pacta does with information about you. Pacta is an invite-only pilot: a marketplace for home and living goods.

Pacta is run by [the operator's legal name, to be added], who decides how your information is used.

To ask anything about your information, write to [a contact address, to be added].

1. What we collect

Your email address. We have it from the moment someone at Pacta invites you, and you use it to sign in. There are no passwords.
Your name and delivery address, only if you choose to save them in your preferences. Both are optional.
Your requests: what you ask for, in your own words, and what our software understood from them, such as the kind of item, your budget, your area and the date you need it by. If you type personal details into a request, they are stored as part of your words.
Your choices on a request: the limits and permissions you give your agent, your answers to its questions, the offers you turn down and why, and short notes about your taste. You can see, edit and delete those notes in your preferences.
If you sell: your trading name, the line that describes you, your base area, how you deliver, your listings (your description, the facts our software read from it, and your photos), and your private selling limits (your lowest price, the price you accept automatically, and how far your agent may move).
Negotiation and order records: each offer, each move in a negotiation with its price and terms, each order, and what you tell us about how it went.
Technical records: when you accepted our terms and which version, and the ordinary logs our hosting company keeps of visits to the site, which include IP addresses.

We do not collect card or bank details. Pacta takes no payment during the pilot.

2. Why we use it

To run your account and the market for you: signing you in, reading your request or listing, finding and ranking offers, negotiating inside the limits you set, and recording orders.
To keep the market honest and safe: a record of what happened, limits on how much any one account can use the service, checks on photos, and fixing faults.
To remember your taste for your later requests. We learn it only from what you say and choose, we use it only for you, and you can delete it.
To email you about your account, your requests and your orders, to confirm each order with its seller, and to introduce you to the other side of an order.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising. We do not send marketing emails.

3. Who sees what, and when

Pacta is built so that each side sees as little as possible about the other.

If you are buying:

Our software turns your words into a structured request before any seller is told anything. We do not show sellers your words or your spending limit. A seller learns your email address only if you buy from them (see below).
A seller does see the prices your agent offers them. Those prices stay within your limit and can come close to it, so how far your agent goes can tell a seller roughly how much you are willing to pay.
A seller whose listing fits your request is told what kind of item you want, the general area of your request (never a full address), the date you need the item by and the quantity. For a made-to-order request they also see the specification you asked for.
If your agent asks a seller a question or negotiates with them, the seller sees the question, or the price and terms proposed, and not who you are.
Sellers can see how many open requests fit their listings, and suggestions for changing a listing's terms so that more requests would fit. A suggestion is given only when it covers three or more requests. Both are worked out from buyers' requests, including their limits, so a suggested price can come close to what one buyer is willing to pay. Neither names a buyer or shows a buyer's words.
When you buy, the seller of that order, and only that seller, is given the name you saved, if you saved one. If the item is to be delivered, they are also given your delivery address: the one you saved or, if you saved none, an address you gave in your request. If you pick up the item, no address is passed on. Your order page shows what was shared.
Pacta does not yet have a way for you and the seller to message each other in the app. When you buy, we'll email you and the seller to confirm the order and arrange a time and place, so the seller sees your email address and you see theirs.
From then on the seller is responsible for how they use your name, address and email address. Our seller terms allow them to use these only for your order.

If you are selling:

Your listing is shown to buyers whose requests fit it: your trading name, the line that describes you, your base area, your description, photos, asking price, delivery options and lead time.
Each of your listings carries a reference made from the email address your account was opened with, and so does the web address of each of its photos. Buyers' browsers receive these references when they view your listings, and so do the companies in section 4 that handle listings (see section 5).
We do not show buyers your private limits. A buyer does see the prices and terms your agent offers them, which can come close to your lowest price.
Buyers can see how reliably you have completed past orders. That figure comes from recorded outcomes, not from reviews.
When a buyer orders, we'll email you and the buyer to confirm the order and arrange a time and place, so the buyer sees your email address.

For everyone:

Every request has a trail page that lists what sellers were told about it and what stayed private.
The people who run Pacta can see all of the above when they need to, in order to operate and repair the service.
We will also disclose information when the law requires us to.

4. Companies that process your information for us

We use these companies to run Pacta. Each receives only what its job needs.

Vercel: Vercel hosts the website and runs our software. Everything you send to Pacta passes through it, and it keeps logs of visits, including IP addresses. Our software runs on Vercel's servers in London, in the United Kingdom. Vercel is a US company.
Neon: Neon provides our database, which stores everything listed in section 1. The database is in London, in the United Kingdom. Neon is a US company.
Cloudflare: Cloudflare stores sellers' photos and the illustrative pictures described below, in its European Union storage region. We remove location and camera data from every photo before it is stored. A photo's storage name includes its seller's account reference (see section 5). When you view a photo, your browser fetches it from Cloudflare, which sees your IP address. Cloudflare is a US company.
Anthropic: Anthropic provides the AI models that read requests, listings and photos, compare offers with requests, and work out which change a buyer means when they ask a seller to change an offer. It receives the words of requests, including a buyer's request to change an offer, the text and photos of listings, and the terms of offers. With each listing it receives the listing's reference, which includes its seller's account reference (see section 5). It is not sent the name or delivery address you save in your preferences. Anthropic is a US company.
Voyage AI: Voyage AI turns short pieces of text into numbers so that our software can compare meanings. It receives summaries of requests and listings and some short phrases from them. Voyage AI is a US company.
Google: Google makes the pictures marked “Illustrative — not a listing” that can appear on a comparison card. It receives a short description of a kind of item and two styles, drawn from a request. It does not receive your name or contact details. This is used only when illustrations are switched on. Our software can also use Google's AI models in place of Anthropic's to read requests and listings. We do not use it that way, and we will change this notice before we do. Google is a US company.
Resend: Resend sends our sign-in links and other emails from the website. It receives your email address and the text of each email it sends you. Resend is a US company.
Inngest: Inngest runs our scheduled background jobs. It receives only the reference of the request, listing or negotiation a job is about. A listing's reference includes its seller's account reference (see section 5). Inngest is a US company.

When we write to you ourselves, for example to confirm an order and introduce you to the other side of it, we write from our contact address. The company that provides that mailbox receives what we write and what you send us.

Your information is therefore processed in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. If we move where we store it, we will change this notice first.

5. How long we keep it

While you have an account we keep your account details, your requests, your listings and the records in section 1.
A sign-in link works once and stops working after 15 minutes.
During the pilot we have not set automatic deletion periods. If you ask us to close your account, we delete your email address from your account, your saved name and address, the stored text of your requests, your taste notes and the details passed to a seller for your orders, and we take down your listings and photos. What we cannot delete is explained below.
We may need to keep records of orders for as long as the law requires, or while a disagreement about an order is open.
Emails we write to you ourselves, and what you send us, stay in our mailbox until we delete them.

What we cannot delete:

Pacta keeps records that are built so that they cannot be changed or erased: a log of what happened in the market (that a request was made, which offers were sent, each move in a negotiation, each order, and each time a detail was shared with a seller), the record of the choices and reasons you gave on your requests, the record of changes to listings, and the records of each order. That is what lets us show you, and prove to you, what happened and what was shared about you.
These records can contain words you typed: short quotes from your requests, and the reasons you typed when you turned an offer down or chose one.
They identify accounts and listings by a reference. Today an account reference is made from the email address the account was opened with, so you should treat these records as containing that address.
They do not contain your saved name or delivery address.
We also keep the record that you accepted our terms, and which version.

6. Cookies

Pacta sets only the cookies it needs to work: one that keeps you signed in until you sign out, or until about a month after you last use Pacta, and two that make signing in work safely, which your browser removes when you close it. We use no advertising or analytics cookies and no other company's trackers.

One more cookie, set by Pacta itself and needed for Pacta to work, stores only the name of your time zone, such as America/Chicago. We use it to show you dates and times in your own time, and to read a date you give in a request, such as “by Friday”, on your own calendar: the deadline is the end of that day where you are, and that is the deadline the market matches listings against and tells sellers. It lasts a year. If your device's time zone is 12 hours or more ahead of or behind UTC at any time of year, such as in New Zealand or on some Pacific islands, Pacta uses US Eastern time instead, for dates, times and the deadline.

Your browser also remembers, for the open tab only, whether you folded part of a request page.

We do not track you across other websites, so there is nothing for a browser's “Do Not Track” setting to turn off.

7. Software that decides things

Pacta uses AI models and fixed rules to read requests and listings and to match and rank offers. When an agent negotiates, it chooses each move by fixed rules, not by an AI model, inside the limits that buyers and sellers set. A buyer's purchase always needs the buyer to press Buy. A seller's offers and replies can go out without the seller pressing anything, inside the limits the seller set.

The software can be wrong. If you think it got something wrong about you, tell us and a person will look at it.

Pictures marked “Illustrative — not a listing” are made by AI. They are not photographs of anything for sale.

8. Your choices and requests

You can change a lot yourself: your requests, your preferences, your taste notes and your saved details, and, if you sell, your shop details and listings.

You can also ask us:

for a copy of the information we have about you;
to correct information that is wrong;
to delete your information, within the limits explained in section 5;
to stop using your information in a way you object to;
to give you your information in a form you can take elsewhere.

To make a request, write to [a contact address, to be added] from the email address your account uses, so that we know it is you. We will not treat you differently for making a request.

Some states give the people who live there further rights over their information. If you live in one of them, tell us when you write.

9. Children

Pacta is for adults. Do not use it if you are under 18. Pacta is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you think a child has given us information, write to [a contact address, to be added] and we will delete it.

10. Changes to this notice

If we change this notice we will publish the new version here with a new version number, and show it to you before your next request or your next listing.

This version applies from [a date to be set].