What Data We Collect

Last updated: August 2026

Summary: Muffin Market collects only what we need to run your local neighborhood market — orders, accounts, optional location, and (if you choose) anonymized contact data for community recommendations. We do not upload your address book, sell your data, or let bots flood ratings from far away.

This page explains what we collect, why, and your control. Our full Privacy Policy covers legal terms, retention, and your rights.

1. Data collection overview

Category	Examples	Why we collect it	Your control
Account (registered users)	Name, mobile number, verification status	Sign-in, account recovery, profile	Profile; account deletion
Business (registered)	Business name, phones, hours, catalog	Vendor operations and discovery	Business management in app
Orders & messages	Items, status, in-app chat	Fulfill orders and support	Order history; retention per policy
Location (optional)	Coarse or precise when enabled	Nearby businesses; local ratings gate	OS / in-app location permission
Contacts (optional)	Anonymous encrypted match keys; display names from your device	Local community match and recommendations — not a contact directory	Revoke OS Contacts permission; in-app sync toggle; erased on account deletion (see Account Deletion)
Recommendations	Precomputed local business scores	Friend-of-friend discovery in your market	Derived from optional contact sync
Trust & safety	Ratings/trust within ~50 km; spam/fraud reports	Real local community signal; resist bot flooding	Location; report flows; contact support
Device & diagnostics	App version, crash logs	Stability and security	OS settings; minimal collection
Website	Contact form, IP logs	Support and security	Optional form use
Vendor order payments	—	Customers pay vendors directly	See Payment Policy

2. What we do not do with your contacts

Muffin Market does not upload or store a copy of your phone’s address book on our servers.
We do not see your friends’ phone numbers in readable form on our servers.
We do not sell your personal information or contact-derived data.

3. Optional contact sync (your choice)

Contact sync runs only if you grant Contacts permission in your phone’s settings. You can revoke permission at any time in device settings.

When you allow sync, your phone exports anonymized and encrypted contact data to Muffin Market — data we cannot read back as phone numbers on our servers:

Each number is transformed on your device before it leaves your phone. We receive only anonymous match keys, not a copy of your address book.
We use that data only to match against registered Muffin Market users and businesses in your area, and to surface local community recommendations — businesses your real network may already know.
Your address book stays on your phone. We never build a public directory of your friends’ numbers.

Why we ask (community, not surveillance): Muffin Market is built for your neighborhood market — the shops and vendors people you trust already use. Contact sync helps answer: “Who in my circle is already here?” — without us seeing who is in your phone book.

4. Who has data on our servers

Only people and businesses who register on Muffin Market have account profiles on our servers (name, login phone, orders, business records, and similar data needed to run the platform).

Contacts in your phone who have not joined Muffin Market do not receive a user account on our servers. We may retain anonymous encrypted match keys and limited non-phone metadata (for example a display name you already store on your device) only as long as needed for matching, local recommendations, and safety — never as a sellable contact list.

5. Caller identification (optional)

If you enable caller identification or call screening in the Muffin Market app, we may help you recognize registered Muffin Market members and businesses when they call.

We show a member’s public profile name — the name they chose to display on the platform, not private legal or address details.
For businesses, we show the business name from their public profile in the app.
Numbers you already have saved in your phone contacts may appear using the name you stored there.
We do not publish or sell a directory of everyone’s phone numbers.

Caller features are optional. You can turn them off in the app or change Contacts permission in your device settings.

6. Local community ratings & trust

Muffin Market ratings and trust signals are designed for real local communities, not anonymous bot floods:

You can rate or trust a business only when you are within about 50 km of that business (using your profile location). That keeps feedback grounded in people who can actually visit the shop — not remote click farms.
Friend-of-friend recommendations and contact-based discovery complement those local ratings: you see businesses your network may already know, not paid placement disguised as popularity.
Spam or fraud reports use the same privacy-respecting match keys — we do not offer a public reverse phone lookup.
Trust between customers and businesses controls whether a full phone number is shown to a vendor. Until you trust a business, your number stays masked in their view.

Our promise: Your voice should count because you are part of the community — not because a script can spam five stars from another country.