Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

The Southern Shmooze is an Atlanta-based referral and community platform that connects homeowners with local businesses. This policy covers thesouthernshmooze.com, our directory, our forms, our email and text messages, and the member accounts we run.

It does not cover the independent businesses we list. Once you hire one of them, their privacy practices are their own.

2. What we collect

If you are a homeowner looking for a pro

• Your name, email address, and phone number.
• The project you need help with, your neighborhood or zip code, your timeline, and any details you type into the form.
• Messages you send us by email, text, or through the site.

If you are a business applying or joining

• Contact name, business name, email address, and phone number.
• Your Google Business Profile selection, which gives us your public business name, address, category, star rating, and review count.
• Years in business, service area, trade or category, website, and whether you carry licensing or insurance.
• Answers you give about lead sources, current challenges, review volume, and where you want help.
• Profile material you send us: logo, photos, description, offers, and links.
• Billing name and address, and the last four digits and expiration of your card. We never see or store your full card number.

Everyone who visits the site

• Standard technical data: IP address, browser type, device type, referring page, and pages viewed.
• Cookie and analytics data, described below.
• If you accept terms at checkout, we record the date, time, and IP address of that acceptance.

We do not collect Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, financial account numbers, health information, or precise GPS location.

3. How we collect it

Almost all of it comes directly from you, when you fill in a form, apply for a listing, sign up for a membership, email us, or reply to a text.

Some comes automatically from your browser when you load a page. Some comes from public sources, mainly Google Business Profile data for listed businesses, which we pull to keep ratings and review counts current.

4. Why we use it

• To match homeowners with businesses. When you ask for help, we pass your project details to the businesses best suited to it.
• To run the directory. Publishing member listings, badges, ratings, offers, and profile pages.
• To review applications. Checking whether an applying business meets our rating and service area standards.
• To deliver membership benefits. Sending audit reports, scheduling consultations, routing referrals, and arranging perks.
• To bill members and handle renewals, receipts, failed payments, and cancellations.
• To communicate. Replying to you, sending service messages, and sending the newsletter and community updates you asked for.
• To improve the site and understand which pages and searches are useful.
• To protect the platform from fraud, spam, scraping, and abuse, and to meet legal obligations.

We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not feed your personal information into advertising networks for retargeting across the web.

5. Who we share it with

With businesses you are matched to

When you ask us to find you a pro, we share your name, contact details, and project description with the business or businesses we refer you to. That is the entire point of the request, and it is the only reason we pass along homeowner contact information. We do not blast your details across the whole directory.

With service providers who run parts of the platform

These vendors process data on our behalf under their own privacy terms and are not permitted to use it for their own marketing.

For legal reasons

We may disclose information if the law requires it, if we receive a valid legal request, or if we need to protect the rights, safety, or property of The Southern Shmooze, our members, or the public.

If the business changes hands

If The Southern Shmooze is sold, merged, or reorganized, member and user information may transfer as part of that transaction. We would tell you before your information became subject to a different privacy policy.

6. We do not sell your data

We do not sell, rent, trade, or license your personal information to data brokers, advertisers, or list buyers, and we have not done so in the past twelve months.

7. Google ratings and reviews

Star ratings, review counts, and review excerpts on this site come from Google and are displayed live at the time you view the page. We use Google's Places service to look them up.

When you type a business name into our application form, that text is sent to Google to find matching business profiles. Google's handling of that request is governed by the Google Privacy Policy.

We do not write, edit, filter, or reorder reviews, and we do not pay for them or accept payment to change them.

8. Email and text messages

We send two kinds of messages.

Service messages relate to something you started: a referral you requested, an application you submitted, a receipt, a renewal notice, a report you are owed, or a reply to your question. Members and active requesters receive these as part of the service.

Marketing messages include our newsletter and community updates. You can unsubscribe from these at any time using the link in the footer of any email, and unsubscribing does not affect your listing or your membership.

Text messages

If you give us your mobile number and agree to receive texts, we may text you about your request, your application, or your membership. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to stop receiving texts, and HELP for help. We do not share your mobile number or your text message consent with third parties or affiliates for their own marketing purposes.

9. Cookies and tracking

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies:

• Necessary. Keeping you logged in to your member account, remembering your place in a multi-step form, and keeping the site secure. These cannot be turned off without breaking the site.
• Analytics. Understanding which pages get used and where people drop off, in aggregate.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Blocking necessary cookies will stop member login and application forms from working properly.

We honor Global Privacy Control signals where your browser sends them. Our site does not currently respond to the older Do Not Track header, which no longer has an agreed standard behind it.

10. Payments

Membership payments are processed by Stripe through our membership platform. Your full card number, expiration date, and security code go directly to Stripe and are never stored on our systems or seen by anyone at The Southern Shmooze.

We keep only what we need to service your account: the billing name, the billing address, the last four digits of the card, the plan, and the payment history.

11. What shows publicly

If you are a listed business, the following is public by design: business name, category or trade, service area, public phone number, public email address, website, logo, description, offers, membership badge, and your Google star rating and review count.

Some fields are private unless you choose otherwise, including your account email address, your mobile number, and your street address. Your member account has per-field privacy settings, and we honor them. If you have marked your listing as hidden from the directory, we honor that too.

If you are a homeowner, nothing you submit is published. Your request goes to us and to the businesses matched to it, and nowhere else.

12. How long we keep it

• Homeowner requests: kept while we work the request and for a reasonable period afterward so we can follow up on how it went, then deleted or anonymized.
• Business applications: kept for up to ninety days in our intake system, and longer in our contact records if you become a member or ask us to stay in touch.
• Member accounts: kept for as long as the membership is active, and afterward only as long as needed for tax, accounting, and legal record keeping.
• Billing records: kept as long as tax and accounting rules require.
• Email and text lists: kept until you unsubscribe, plus a suppression record so we do not accidentally message you again.

13. Security

The site runs over HTTPS. Payment details are handled by Stripe and never touch our systems. Access to member data is limited to the people who need it to run the platform, and our data services are protected by access controls and secret keys that are not shared.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise that a determined attacker will never get through. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you as required by law.

14. Your choices and rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you;
• correct anything that is wrong or out of date;
• delete your information, subject to records we are required to keep;
• send you a copy of your information in a portable format;
• stop marketing emails or texts; or
• remove your business listing from the directory.

Email [email protected] and we will respond within thirty days. We may need to confirm your identity first, and we will not charge you for a reasonable request or treat you differently for making one.

Members can also update most of their own information directly from their member account at any time.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws. The rights listed above are available to everyone who contacts us, regardless of state.

15. Children

This site is meant for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

16. Links to other sites

Our directory links out to member business websites, and our pages link to Google, Facebook, Instagram, our podcast host, and our newsletter platform. Once you leave our site, this policy no longer applies. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any site we link to, and we encourage you to read their policies.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the platform changes. When we do, we will update the "last updated" date at the top of this page. For material changes, we will give notice by email to members and active subscribers before the change takes effect.

18. Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns about privacy can be sent to [email protected].

The Southern Shmooze, Atlanta, Georgia.