Privacy policy

Last updated 25 October 2026 · Tradie2U, Melbourne, Australia

Tradie2U shows customers which tradies are available near them, and lets them ask one for a job. This page says exactly what we collect to do that, what we do not, and how to get rid of it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

The short version

• We never give a customer a tradie's exact location while they browse. The map shows an area of about half a kilometre, worked out on our server before anything is sent.
• A tradie appears on the map only during their work hours. Outside those hours their phone stops sending location, unless a job is under way — it is not just hidden at our end.
• A labourer's phone never sends a location, and a labourer is seen only by tradies: never by customers, and never on the public map.
• We take no payments and store no card details.
• The Tradie2U helper uses AI from Anthropic. Nothing goes to it until you say yes, and the screen that asks says exactly what is sent.
• We do not sell anything to anyone, ever, and we run no advertising.

What we collect

Location, in detail

Customers

We use your location to centre the map and work out who is near you. If you decline, the app shows a default suburb and still works.

Tradies

When you appear depends on the work hours you set (around the clock, if you take after-hours call-outs):

• In your work hours — you appear as a circle roughly 500 m across.
• In your work hours, inside your home zone (if you set one) — you appear inside a wide area, about 5 km across, instead. Never as a point.
• In your work hours, before your phone has sent a location — if you told us the suburb you work from, you appear inside a wide area, about 5 km across, around that suburb. Never as a point.
• Outside your work hours, or on time off — you do not appear on the map. No location is sent from your phone, and none sent then is stored, unless a job is under way (see "Background location" below).

Positions are coarsened to a fixed grid on our server before they are sent to anybody, and distance and radius filtering are calculated from the coarsened point. That second part matters: it means repeated searches cannot be used to work backwards to where you actually are.

Background location

Three things use it, and they are deliberately different:

• Map coverage: the app keeps a single boundary about 500 m across around where you last were, and notices when you leave it. In your work hours that tells us your new area; outside them nothing is sent, and the boundary simply moves with you so your first move after you start is noticed. It is no more precise than what the map already shows, and it exists so a tradie who pockets their phone does not appear frozen in one spot for hours.
• Between tapping "On my way" and arriving, the app sends your position continuously so that one customer can watch you approach. This is the only time an exact position leaves your device. It is limited to that one customer on that one job, it is enforced in our database rather than in the app, and it stops automatically on arrival.
• On a supplier run, after you tap "Take me there" for a supplier, the app keeps a boundary about 150 m across around that store and notices when you leave it, so it can offer the way back to your site. The boundary and where "back" is stay on your phone, and are forgotten when you head back, after four hours, or at knock-off.

Outside your work hours, and on time off, your phone sends no location and our server stores none, unless a job is under way. We are also never the first to ask: the "Always" permission prompt only appears after a screen explaining what it is for, and only when you tap the button on it.

Labourer accounts

A labourer account is for somebody after labouring work: tradies who need a hand on site find them and ask them for a day or longer. If you have one, this is what we hold and who sees it.

What a labourer gives us

• Your first and last name, your mobile, and that you are 18 or over.
• A photo of your face, which is your pin on tradies' maps.
• Your suburb, and how far you will travel.
• The pay you ask, how much work you are after, which days, and until when.
• Whether you have your own car, PPE and tools, whether you are happy to be called in at short notice, a trade you would like an apprenticeship in, and a line or two about yourself. All of these are yours to fill in or leave out.
• Your tickets (a white card, and others such as a forklift licence), with the number, expiry date and photo of each if you add them. We do not check them.
• Up to six photos of work you have done on site, each with a short caption if you add one. Only the picture is sent: a photo's location data never leaves your phone.
• Whether you are after work today, which you set with the switch on Work.

Who sees it

• Only tradies. A labourer is never shown to customers, never on the public map, never in a count anyone else sees, and never to another labourer.
• On your card, a tradie sees your photo, your first name and the first letter of your last name, an area of about 5 km around your suburb with a rounded distance, your pay and days, what you said about a car, PPE, tools and short notice, which tickets you hold, what you wrote, the photos of your work, and your record on Tradie2U: days worked and how tradies answered the rating questions, as counts.
• Only once you say yes to a tradie's day do you both get each other's full name and mobile, you get the address of the site, and that tradie can open your ticket photos. If you say you are keen on a tradie's post, that tradie can open your ticket photos too, because you chose to put yourself forward.
• A labourer can message a tradie only about that tradie's own work: once the tradie has asked them, or about a post of the tradie's they said they are keen on. Never a tradie they have no work with.

Location

A labourer's phone never sends a location: not while you are after work, not on a job. Where you are is the suburb you typed, coarsened on our server to an area about 5 km across, and distances are worked out from that area, never from a point.

Posts for a hand on site

A tradie who is short a hand can post the work: the site's suburb, the days, the hours, the kind of work, the pay and a note. We store where the site is so we can tell which city it is in and how far it is from each labourer. Labourers in the same city see only the suburb and a rounded distance, never the site's address. The address goes only to the labourer the tradie picks. Only the tradie who posted sees who is keen, and a labourer is never told who else is.

Activity we record

• When a tradie opens your card, we record which tradie and which day, so we can tell you "A tradie looked at your card" and give you a weekly count. You are never told who. These records are deleted after 90 days.
• When a tradie's list of labourers is drawn, we record the order it showed people in, so we can make that order fairer. Deleted after 90 days.
• Ratings are yes or no questions, never stars. Neither side sees the other's answers until both have answered, or 7 days after the booking is finished, and they are shown as counts, never with a name. A no-show a tradie reports counts on your record only if you have not disputed it within 48 hours.
• Which tips you were shown, tapped or put away, so they stop once they are done.

Notifications

You hear about asks and answers straight away. "A tradie looked at your card" comes at most once a day, and like the weekly count it never arrives between 9pm and 6:30am. Pushes about new posts in your city come at most three a day. The 6am "Want work today?" reminder is off unless you turn it on, and then comes only on a day you said you work.

Tradie2U does not employ labourers, does not set or suggest pay, and pays nobody: what a day is worth is agreed between the tradie and the labourer. See the terms.

The Tradie2U helper

The helper answers questions asked in your own words. It uses AI from Anthropic, a company based in the United States, and what we send it is processed there. Nothing is sent until you have said yes on the screen that explains this, and that screen lists what is sent:

• Customers: what you type, any photo you add, your suburb, and what you have saved in My Home — your home's details and record, the tradies you have used, and your open requests.
• Tradies: what you type, your trade, your usual suppliers, your suburb, and the suburb of the job you are on.

Anthropic never receives your exact location or your street address. The search for tradies and suppliers runs on our server, with the same privacy rules as the map, and the AI is shown only what the answer needs. Anthropic uses what we send to produce the answer; under its commercial terms it does not use it to train its models. We do not keep the photos you send.

We keep your questions and the helper's answers for 90 days, so a conversation can carry on, then delete them. If you rate an answer or report one, people at Tradie2U may read that conversation to make the helper better.

The helper can be wrong, and says what is likely rather than what is certain. It never gives a customer the steps for work that needs a licence, and when something sounds dangerous it shows our reviewed safety guide instead of writing its own. In an emergency, call 000.

Reporting and blocking

You can report anyone and block anyone. A report is read by a person at Tradie2U, normally within a day; we record who reported whom, the reason, and anything you wrote.

Blocking is mutual — neither of you sees the other afterwards — and the person you block is never told. For safety we do record that a block happened, and our own staff can see it. That record is not shared with the person blocked or with anyone else.

Who else sees it

We use a small number of providers:

• Supabase — hosts our database and handles sign-in. Data is stored in their Tokyo region, in Japan.
• Anthropic — the AI behind the Tradie2U helper. See "The Tradie2U helper" above.
• Expo — delivers push notifications, and receives only the token and the text of the notification.
• Apple Maps (iOS) — draws the map on iPhone.
• Mapbox — draws the map on Android, and works out driving routes and drive times on both. Drawing a map means Mapbox receives the part of the world you are looking at, for as long as the map is open. A route or drive time means it receives the start and the end of that drive: a tradie on the way to a job, or to or back from a supplier. When you type an address, it receives what you typed and a position rounded to about a kilometre, to suggest matches.
• Sentry — receives a report when the app crashes: what went wrong and on what kind of device. Never your name, contact details or location.
• Resend — sends our emails, so it receives your email address and the message.
• Google Analytics — on this website only. The app sends nothing to Google Analytics or any other analytics company. It tells us which pages are visited and how people found them, using a cookie in your browser and a rough location worked out from your internet address. Its advertising features are switched off. It is not loaded on pages that carry a private link (confirming your email, unsubscribing, deleting your account), and the code in a referral link is removed before anything is sent. How Google uses it, and how to opt out.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to prevent a serious threat to someone's safety.

How long we keep it

• Notification records are deleted after 30 days.
• Profile opens, with who opened them, are deleted after 90 days. So are the records of which tradie opened a labourer's card, and of the order a tradie's list of labourers was drawn in.
• Questions to the Tradie2U helper, and its answers, are deleted after 90 days. Photos you send it are not stored.
• A record that a job happened outlives the job itself, so that both people keep an accurate work history. It holds who, what and when — not your messages.
• Everything else is kept while your account exists.

Deleting your account

In the app: Settings → Delete my account (Settings is the gear on My Trade for tradies, My Home for customers, or Profile for labourers). You can also ask us to delete it from the web without installing anything.

Deleting removes your profile, your location, your messages and your account. Where the law requires us to keep a record of a completed transaction, that record is kept without your contact details attached.

For a labourer, it also removes your card and the photos of your work, your tickets and their photos, and the posts you said you were keen on. For a tradie, it removes your posts and who was keen on them. The yes or no ratings you gave on a labour booking stay as counts on the other person's record, without your name, because they are part of that person's record too.

Your rights

Under the Australian Privacy Principles you can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it. Email support@tradie2u.com.au and we will answer within 30 days. If you are not happy with our answer you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Children

Tradie2U is not for under-18s and we do not knowingly collect their information.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and tell you in the app if the change is one that matters.