Privacy policy

Information you give us

• Account details: your name, email address and password. We store the password only as a one-way hash, so we can’t read it.
• Optional profile details: phone number, region and community, a short bio, and for Business accounts a business name and website.
• Listings: the text, photos, price, location and category details you post.
• Messages you send and receive through the site.
• Reports you file about listings, and anything you write to us.
• Advertising inquiries: your name, business, email, phone and message if you ask about advertising.

Information created when you use the site

• Activity on your account: listings you save, searches you save, when your listings were posted, renewed or sold, and how many times each listing was viewed (as a count, not who viewed it).
• Payment records: what you bought, when, the amount and whether it went through. Card details go straight to Stripe; we never see or store your full card number.
• Technical information: your IP address, browser type and the pages you request, which our servers log automatically. We use these logs to keep the site running and to fight spam and fraud.
• Verified seller check: if you choose to get verified, Stripe checks your photo ID and a live selfie. We never receive the ID or the selfie. We keep only whether the check passed, when, and Stripe’s reference number for it.
• Invites: who invited whom, and whether the invite earned its reward. When you sign up we keep a scrambled (salted and hashed) form of the internet connection you signed up from, not the address itself, only to stop people inviting themselves.

• To run the site: show your listings, deliver your messages, sign you in, and process what you buy.
• To send you the emails you need, like new message alerts, expiry reminders and password resets.
• To keep the site safe: spot scams, spam and banned users coming back, and review reported listings and conversations.
• To understand, in aggregate, how the site is used so we can fix what’s broken.
• To meet legal obligations, such as keeping payment records for taxes or responding to valid legal requests.

We don’t use your information to build advertising profiles, and the local ads on the site aren’t targeted at you personally. They’re placed by category and region.

Ad images are copied to our own servers, so seeing an ad doesn’t send anything to the advertiser. They only learn about you if you click the ad and visit their site. We count how many times each ad is shown and clicked, as totals, not who saw or clicked it.

Listings are public. Anyone, signed in or not, can see:

• Your listings, including photos, description, price and the region or community you chose.
• The name on your account and when you joined, on your listings and your seller page.
• For Business accounts, the business name and website on your storefront.
• Your phone number, only on listings where you choose to show it.

Listings can be indexed by search engines and copied by people who see them, so don’t put anything in a listing you wouldn’t want public. Your email address is never shown.

We share information only with companies that help us run the site, and only what they need for that job:

• Hosting and storage providers that run our servers and database and store uploaded photos.
• Our email delivery provider (currently Resend), which sends message alerts, reminders and receipts on our behalf.
• Stripe, which processes payments and, if you choose to get verified, runs the photo ID and selfie check. Stripe handles your card details, ID and selfie under its own privacy policy and keeps them for as long as that policy says.

We may also share information:

• When the law requires it, such as a valid subpoena or court order.
• To protect people from fraud or harm, for example by helping police investigate a scam or a stolen item.
• If Northern List is ever sold or merged, with the new owner, who would have to follow this policy.

We never sell or rent your personal information.

We use a few small cookies of our own, and none from anyone else:

• Sign-in: a session cookie that keeps you signed in. It holds a random token, not your password or any personal details, and lasts up to 30 days or until you sign out. It can’t be read by scripts on the page and isn’t shared with anyone.
• Invite link: opening someone’s invite link stores their invite code for 30 days, so that if you sign up, they get credit for inviting you. It can’t be read by scripts on the page.
• Reminders you dismissed: if you hide the confirm-your-email banner or choose to write a draft before confirming, a cookie remembers that for up to a day.

We don’t use advertising cookies, cross-site trackers or tracking pixels. If you block cookies you can still browse and search, but you won’t be able to sign in.

We send emails about your account and your listings: a link to verify your email address when you sign up, new messages, listings about to expire, saved search alerts you set up, password resets and receipts. You can turn off message and expiry emails in Settings, and saved search alerts from each saved search. We’ll still send emails you need for security or billing. We don’t send marketing email unless you ask for it.

• Your account is kept until you delete it.
• Listings stay on your dashboard after they expire or sell, so you can relist them, until you delete them or your account. When you delete a listing it comes off the site immediately and its photos are deleted right away. We keep the rest of it (title, description, price) out of sight for 90 days, so conversations about it still make sense and moderators can look into any report about it, then delete it for good. If a report about it is still open at that point, it’s kept until a moderator has dealt with it. Photos on listings that sold more than 90 days ago, or expired more than 120 days ago, are deleted too; the listing itself stays on your dashboard. Deleted data leaves our backups within 30 days.
• Messages are kept until either person in the conversation deletes their account. If the seller deletes the listing, the conversation stays in Messages for both people, marked as deleted, and is deleted along with the listing 90 days later.
• Payment records are kept for up to seven years because tax and accounting rules require it. If you delete your account, they’re no longer linked to your name or email.
• Reports you filed stay with the listing they’re about, without your name, after you delete your account.
• Server logs are kept for a short time, normally no more than 30 days, unless we need them to look into abuse.
• Banned accounts: we may keep the email address and enough information to stop the same person signing up again.

• See and fix your information in Settings and My listings.
• Delete your account from Settings. Your listings, photos, messages, saved listings and saved searches are deleted with it. If you can’t sign in, email us from the address on the account.
• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete something you can’t change yourself, by emailing [email protected]. We’ll answer within 30 days.

The site runs over HTTPS. Passwords are stored as one-way hashes, and sign-in sessions are stored in a form that can’t be used to sign in if our database were copied. Only the people who run the site can reach the admin tools.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach ever exposes your personal information, we’ll tell you as Alaska law requires.

Northern List is for adults. You must be 18 or older to have an account, and we don’t knowingly collect information from children. If you think a child has signed up, tell us and we’ll delete the account.

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. If the change is significant, such as a new kind of information collected or a new kind of company we share it with, we’ll email account holders before it takes effect.

Questions or requests about your privacy: [email protected].