Privacy Policy
Porch Court is an app for settling disputes between people who know each other. Each side gives its account and evidence, and an AI judge (or, if you choose, a human arbitrator) issues a verdict. This policy explains what we collect to make that work, who it goes to, how long we keep it, and how to delete it.
What we collect and why
Account details
- Phone number. Required to open or accept a dispute. We send it a one-time code to confirm it's yours. Once confirmed, it also lets friends who have your number in their contacts find you. Your number is never shown to other users.
- Email address and password (optional). Used to sign in and recover your account. Your password is stored only as a secure hash by our authentication provider.
- First and last name. Shown to the people you have disputes with, and on the leaderboard.
Contacts
If you choose From contacts when opening a dispute, Porch Court asks for permission to read your contacts. They are read on your device only to show you a list to pick from. Your contact list is never uploaded. When you pick someone, only that one phone number is sent to our server, to check whether it belongs to a Porch Court account. If it does not, the contact's name (or the number you typed) is saved on the dispute as the invitee's label, so you can tell your invitations apart. We use contacts for this purpose and no other, and the app never changes your contacts.
Voice and transcripts
You can speak your testimony instead of typing it. Usually your speech is turned into text by your device's speech-recognition service: Google on Android, Apple on iOS, or your browser on the web. Those services may process the audio under their own privacy terms.
Some web browsers on iPhone, other than Safari, cannot do this themselves. In those browsers the app records your speech and sends the recording to our server, which passes it to Google Vertex AI (Gemini) to be written down as text (see below). The recording is used only for that and is not stored. Porch Court does not keep audio recordings. We store only the text you review and submit: your statement and your rebuttal.
Dispute content
- The dispute's title, the winning condition, the stake, and the judging style you chose.
- Your statement and rebuttal text.
- Evidence photos you attach, with any captions. Photos are reduced in size on your device before upload and stored privately. Only the parties to the dispute, the judge, and (for human-arbitrated or appealed cases) a designated arbitrator can see them.
- The verdict, and any report you file about a verdict.
Credits
Your balance and a ledger of credit movements (stakes, payouts, weekly claims). Credits are an in-app score with no cash value, and we collect no payment details.
Notifications
If you allow notifications, we store your device's push token. We use it only to tell you about your disputes, for example that someone challenged you or that a verdict is in. Notifications are delivered by Expo's push service through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android) or Apple Push Notification service (iOS).
App usage analytics
To learn which parts of Porch Court work and where people get stuck, we record a small set of app interactions with PostHog, our analytics provider. These are steps such as opening the app or an invite link, signing up, opening or accepting a dispute, submitting a statement, viewing or reporting a verdict, and appealing. Each record can include:
- which step happened, and when;
- a few facts about it, such as the stake, the judging style, whether a statement used voice or included a photo, or the reason chosen when reporting a verdict;
- a random identifier that PostHog stores on your device or in your browser, and, once you sign in, your Porch Court user ID, which is a random code, not your name;
- basic app and device information, such as the app version, operating system, device model, screen size and language.
We never send PostHog your phone number, email, name, statements, transcripts, voice recordings, photos, contacts or the text of a dispute. We do not record your screen or your taps, and we have turned off PostHog's location lookup. Analytics are not used for advertising, and we don't combine them with data from other companies. When you delete your account, we also ask PostHog to delete your analytics record and its events.
Technical logs
Our hosting providers keep standard server logs (such as IP address, time, and request path) for security and debugging. For each AI verdict, we record the amount of AI processing it used (token counts and cost), not its content.
The AI judge: Google Vertex AI (Gemini)
When a dispute is decided by the AI judge, we send the case file to Google Vertex AI (the Gemini model) to produce the verdict. The case file includes the dispute title and winning condition, both sides' statements and rebuttals, the evidence photos with their captions, and the parties' display names. Google processes it as our service provider under Google Cloud's data-processing terms. Under those terms, Google does not use it to train its models. When enabled, the judge may also run Google Search queries derived from the case to check public facts.
Voice recordings sent for transcription (see Voice and transcripts above) go to the same service under the same terms.
AI verdicts can be wrong. You can appeal a verdict for human review, and you can use Report this verdict on any verdict that is offensive or inappropriate.
Who can see your information
- The other party to a dispute sees your name, your statement once both sides have filed, your rebuttal, your evidence, and the verdict. They never see your phone number or email.
- Designated arbitrators, who are people Porch Court trusts to rule on cases, see the full case file of a dispute only while it is waiting for a human ruling (human-judged or appealed cases), and afterwards if they ruled on it.
- Other users see your name on the leaderboard with your win/loss record, and nothing else.
- Service providers who run Porch Court for us: Supabase (database, authentication, file storage and server functions), Google Cloud (Vertex AI), our SMS provider (to deliver sign-in and verification codes), Expo (app updates and push delivery), PostHog (app usage analytics, described above), and Vercel (hosting this website). They process data only to provide their service to us.
- Authorities, if we are legally required to disclose information.
We do not sell or rent your personal information. We do not show ads, and we do not use advertising trackers. The only analytics we use are the PostHog records described above.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and disputes for as long as your account exists, so that you and the people you've had disputes with can look back at them. When you delete your account, we delete or anonymize your data straight away, as described below. Copies may remain in our providers' encrypted backups for a limited period, typically no more than 30 days, before they are overwritten. Server logs are kept for a short period by our hosting providers.
Deleting your account
In the app, go to Account → Delete account and confirm. If you can't sign in, see how to request deletion. When your account is deleted:
- Deleted: your phone number, email, password, name, push token, every evidence photo you uploaded, the text of your statements and rebuttals, any invitee name or number you typed, and your analytics record in PostHog with its events.
- Forfeited: any credits left in your wallet. Credits have no cash value.
- Closed: any dispute still in progress is cancelled and any stakes are returned. A pending appeal is closed and the earlier verdict stands; if the other party paid for it, their fee is refunded.
- Kept, anonymized: the other party keeps their own record of past disputes, including the dispute title, their own statements and photos, and the verdict, with your name removed. The verdict text may still refer to what you argued. Records of credit movements are kept, detached from your name, phone number and email, so that everyone else's balances still add up. Reports you filed about verdicts are kept so we can act on them.
Your choices and rights
- You can view and edit your name, phone number and email in the app's Account tab.
- You can refuse or withdraw contacts, microphone, photo and notification permissions in your device settings. The app still works, and you can type a number or share a link instead.
- You can delete your account at any time, as described above.
- Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete your data, or to object to how it is used. To exercise any of them, contact us below.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit. Database access is restricted per user by row-level security, so the app can only read what you are entitled to see. Evidence is kept in private storage. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information.
Children
Porch Court is not intended for anyone under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date above. For significant changes, we will also tell you in the app.
Contact
Questions or requests: support@porchcourt.com.