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Privacy Policy

Last updated: February 18, 2026

1. Introduction

Welcome to Builders.to ("we," "our," or "us"). We are committed to protecting your privacy and personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our website and services.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide

  • Account Information: When you sign in using OAuth providers (Google, GitHub, or X/Twitter), we receive your name, email address, and profile picture from those services.
  • Profile Information: Username, display name, bio, headline, location (city, state, country, zip code), website, and social media links you choose to add to your profile.
  • Location Data: When you provide your location, we geocode it to coordinates for map display. We apply a privacy offset of approximately 10 miles to protect your exact location.
  • Project Information: Details about projects you submit including titles, descriptions, images, URLs, tags, and milestone data.
  • Company Information: Business details you provide when creating company profiles, including tech stack, traction metrics, and team information.
  • Content: Daily updates, comments, polls, and any other content you post on the platform.
  • Service Listings: Information about services you offer, including descriptions, pricing, and portfolio projects.
  • Local Listings: Classified listings you create, including contact information you choose to share.
  • Job Postings: Information about roles and positions you post for your company.
  • AI Preferences: Your interests, tone preferences, and posting style preferences when using AI content features.
  • Events: Event details you create including title, description, date, time, location, and whether events are physical, virtual, or hybrid.
  • Chat & Messages: Messages you send in community channels and direct conversations, including text content, images, GIFs, code snippets, polls, and emoji reactions.
  • Presence Data: Your online/offline status, "last seen" timestamps, and typing indicators when using the real-time chat.
  • Accountability Check-Ins: When you use the accountability partners feature, we collect check-in data including mood (e.g., Crushing It, Good, Okay, Struggling), notes, and check-in frequency preferences.
  • Builder Matching Data: Your building category (e.g., SaaS, Mobile App, AI/ML, Developer Tools), tech stack, and interests used for discovering similar builders and accountability partner matching.

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

  • Usage Data: Information about how you interact with our services, including pages visited, features used, and content viewed.
  • Device Information: Browser type, operating system, and device identifiers.
  • Log Data: IP address, access times, referring URLs, and request data.
  • Analytics: View counts, click tracking, and engagement metrics for projects, listings, and advertisements.
  • Browser Geolocation: When you use nearby features (events, users), we may request your browser location with your permission to find content within your radius.

2.3 Information from Third Parties

  • OAuth Providers: Profile information from Google, GitHub, or X/Twitter when you authenticate.
  • Giphy: When you use GIFs in posts, we interact with the Giphy API on your behalf.
  • OpenStreetMap: We use OpenStreetMap Nominatim for geocoding your location data.

2.4 Platform Connection Data

When you connect social media platforms for cross-posting, we collect:

  • OAuth Tokens: Access and refresh tokens for Twitter/X and LinkedIn, stored encrypted.
  • Platform Profiles: Your username, display name, avatar, and follower count from connected platforms.
  • Token Expiration: When your tokens expire so we can refresh them automatically.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

  • Provide, maintain, and improve our services
  • Create and manage your account
  • Display your projects, profile, and content to the community
  • Enable interactions between community members (comments, upvotes, follows, chat channels, direct messages)
  • Process token rewards for engagement, referrals, and profile completion
  • Process Pro subscription payments and rewards payouts through Stripe
  • Process payments through Stripe for services, listings, and advertisements
  • Generate AI-powered content suggestions based on your preferences and interests
  • Cross-post your content to connected social media platforms (Twitter/X, LinkedIn)
  • Send important service-related communications
  • Send optional daily and weekly digest emails (you can opt out)
  • Deliver push notifications (with your explicit consent)
  • Protect against fraud, abuse, and policy violations
  • Comply with legal obligations
  • Generate anonymized analytics and statistics
  • Facilitate event RSVPs
  • Find nearby users and events based on your location
  • Provide real-time community chat channels and private messaging between members
  • Display your online/offline presence status and typing indicators to other chat participants
  • Enforce chat moderation rules including auto-moderation filters and slow mode
  • Match you with similar builders based on tech stack, building category, and interests
  • Facilitate accountability partnerships and track check-in activity

4. Token System

Builders.to operates a virtual currency system:

  • Builder Tokens: Earned through engagement, referrals, streaks, and profile completion. Can be used to redeem advertisements, service listings, and local listings. Token transactions and balances are tracked for your account.

Tokens have no real-world monetary value and cannot be exchanged for cash. We reserve the right to modify, reset, or discontinue this system at any time.

5. Pro Subscriptions and Rewards

Builders.to offers Pro subscription plans with enhanced features:

  • Subscription Data: We store your Stripe customer ID, subscription ID, plan type (monthly/yearly), and billing dates.
  • Pro Rewards: Pro users may earn real money for quality content. We track post rewards earned, pending earnings, and lifetime earnings.
  • Payout Information: Reward payouts are processed through Stripe. We maintain records of payout amounts and dates.

Subscription payments are handled by Stripe. We do not store your credit card information directly.

6. AI Features and Content Generation

We use OpenAI's services to provide AI-powered features:

  • Content Generation: When you use AI to generate or improve content, your prompts and preferences are sent to OpenAI.
  • Content Analysis: AI analyzes your content to provide improvement suggestions and engagement predictions.
  • Image Generation: Pro users can generate images with DALL-E. Your prompts are sent to OpenAI for processing.
  • Profile-Based Suggestions: Your interests, tone preferences, and posting history may be used to personalize AI suggestions.

AI-generated content is subject to OpenAI's usage policies. We encourage you to review generated content before posting.

7. Information Sharing

We may share your information in the following circumstances:

  • Public Content: Your profile, projects, companies, updates, comments, service listings, local listings, job postings, and events are publicly visible to other users and visitors.
  • Leaderboards: Token earnings and streak data may appear on public leaderboards.
  • Service Providers: We share information with third-party vendors who assist in operating our services:
    • Stripe for payment processing
    • Resend for email delivery
    • Giphy for GIF integration
    • OpenAI for AI content generation and analysis
    • OpenStreetMap for geocoding services
    • Infrastructure providers for hosting and database services
  • Legal Requirements: We may disclose information if required by law or to protect our rights and safety.
  • Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

8. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction:

  • Two-Factor Authentication: Optional TOTP-based two-factor authentication with encrypted backup codes.
  • OAuth Security: We use industry-standard OAuth 2.0 for authentication and do not store your social media passwords.
  • Encrypted Connections: All data is transmitted over HTTPS.
  • Secure Payments: Payment processing is handled by Stripe; we do not store credit card numbers.
  • Encrypted Platform Tokens: OAuth tokens for connected platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn) are encrypted at rest.
  • Location Privacy: Your geocoded location is offset by approximately 10 miles to protect your exact address.

However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Your Rights and Choices

You have the following rights regarding your information:

  • Access and Update: You can access and update your profile information through your account settings.
  • Delete Content: You can delete your projects, companies, updates, comments, listings, events, and chat messages.
  • Account Deletion: To delete your account entirely, please contact us through our community channels.
  • Email Preferences: You can opt out of daily and weekly digest emails in your settings.
  • Push Notifications: You can disable push notifications through your browser settings or account preferences.
  • Two-Factor Authentication: You can enable or disable 2FA at any time in your security settings.
  • Platform Connections: You can disconnect Twitter/X and LinkedIn accounts at any time, which revokes our access to those platforms.
  • AI Preferences: You can update or clear your AI preferences (interests, tone, posting style) in your settings.
  • Pro Subscription: You can cancel your Pro subscription at any time through your account settings.
  • Data Portability: You may request a copy of your data by contacting us.

10. Third-Party Services

Our service integrates with third-party services. Your use of these services is governed by their respective privacy policies:

  • Authentication: Google, GitHub, X/Twitter OAuth
  • Payments: Stripe (subscriptions, services marketplace, advertisements)
  • Cross-Posting: Twitter/X API, LinkedIn API (when you connect these platforms)
  • AI Services: OpenAI (GPT-4 for content generation, DALL-E for images)
  • Media: Giphy (for GIF selection)
  • Video Embeds: YouTube, Twitch (when you link videos)
  • Geocoding: OpenStreetMap Nominatim (for location services)

We encourage you to review those policies before using them.

11. Chat & Messaging

We provide real-time community chat channels and private messaging to facilitate communication between builders:

  • Message Content: Your messages in channels and direct conversations, including text, images, GIFs, code snippets, polls, and emoji reactions, are stored to deliver them to recipients and maintain conversation history.
  • Channel Membership: When you join a chat channel, your membership, role (member, moderator, or owner), and notification preferences are stored.
  • Presence & Status: Your online/offline/away/do-not-disturb status and "last seen" timestamp are visible to other users in the chat. Typing indicators show when you are composing a message.
  • Read Receipts: We track when messages are read to provide unread count indicators and read receipt functionality.
  • Bookmarks & Pins: Messages you bookmark and messages pinned by channel moderators are tracked per user and per channel.
  • Search Indexing: Message content is indexed for full-text search to enable you to find past messages across channels.
  • Message Retention: Free accounts can access up to 90 days of message history. Pro subscribers receive unlimited history. Messages beyond the retention window may become inaccessible.
  • Moderation Data: Auto-moderation rules (word filters, spam detection) may analyze message content in real time. Moderation actions taken on your messages are logged.
  • Privacy: Messages in public channels are visible to all channel members. Direct messages are private between participants. We may access any message content to investigate reported abuse or violations of our Terms.

12. Events

When you create or participate in events:

  • Event Information: Event details including title, description, date, location, and attendee list are publicly visible.
  • RSVP Data: Your RSVP status (Going, Interested, Not Going) is visible to other users viewing the event.
  • Location Data: Physical event locations are displayed to help users find nearby gatherings. The same ~10 mile privacy offset applies.

13. Leaderboard and Karma System

We operate a public leaderboard and karma system to recognize community contributions:

  • Karma Points: We track karma points earned through your contributions (updates, comments, projects, engagement). This data is used to calculate your karma level.
  • Karma Levels: Your karma level (Seedling, Sprout, Builder, Veteran, Master, Legend) is publicly visible on your profile and the leaderboard.
  • Public Rankings: The leaderboard displays top builders ranked by karma. Your username, profile image, and karma score may appear publicly.

14. Builder Map

We display an interactive map showing the approximate locations of builders:

  • Map Display: If you provide a location, your approximate position is shown on the public builder map. The same ~10 mile privacy offset applies to protect your exact location.
  • Opt-In: Your location only appears on the map if you have added location information to your profile. You can remove your location at any time to be removed from the map.
  • Nearby Discovery: Your approximate location may be used to help other builders discover you through the "Discover" feature when they search for nearby builders.

15. Accountability Partners

We offer an accountability partners feature to help builders stay on track:

  • Partner Matching: We may use your interests, goals, and activity data to suggest accountability partners.
  • Goal Data: Goals and check-in data you share with your accountability partner are stored to maintain the partnership.
  • Privacy: Accountability partner relationships and shared goal data are private between the paired participants.

16. Discover and Similar Builder Matching

We provide discovery features to help builders find others with similar interests:

  • Building Category: Your selected building category (e.g., SaaS, Mobile App, AI/ML, eCommerce, Developer Tools, Fintech, Healthtech, Edtech, Marketplace, Agency, Content, Hardware) is used to match you with builders working on similar types of projects.
  • Tech Stack Matching: The technologies you list on your profile are used to find builders with overlapping tech stacks.
  • Interest Matching: Your declared interests help us suggest builders with shared goals and focus areas.
  • Visibility: Your building category, tech stack, and interests may be visible to other builders browsing the Discover page. You can update or remove this information at any time through your profile settings.

17. Cookies and Tracking

We use essential cookies to maintain your session and authentication state. These cookies are necessary for the proper functioning of our service. We may also use analytics tools to understand how users interact with our platform. We track views and clicks on projects, listings, and advertisements to provide analytics to content creators and advertisers.

18. Push Notifications

Our platform supports web push notifications through the Progressive Web App (PWA) functionality. Push notifications are entirely opt-in and require your explicit permission. You can manage or revoke push notification permissions at any time through your browser settings. We store push subscription data (endpoint URL and encryption keys) only for users who opt in.

19. Children's Privacy

Our services are not intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have collected information from a child under 13, please contact us immediately.

20. International Data Transfers

Your information may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your country of residence. These countries may have data protection laws that are different from your country. We take appropriate safeguards to ensure your information remains protected.

21. Data Retention

We retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide services. We may retain certain information for legitimate business purposes, legal compliance, dispute resolution, or to enforce our agreements. Token transaction history is retained for audit purposes. Pro subscription and rewards data is retained for financial records. Platform connection tokens are deleted when you disconnect a platform. Chat message accessibility depends on your subscription tier (90 days for free accounts, unlimited for Pro). Chat moderation audit logs are retained for platform integrity. Anonymized analytics data may be retained indefinitely.

22. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. Your continued use of our services after any changes indicates your acceptance of the updated policy.

23. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us through our community channels: