Privacy policy

In short

Mercado Carambola connects people who need something with people who offer it in Puerto Rico. We ask for the minimum that makes that connection work.

• We do not sell your data or hand it to advertising networks.
• We do not store card numbers. Stripe processes payments.
• We do not store the audio from voice search.
• You can ask for a copy of your data, a correction, or deletion by writing to us.

Your account data

When you create an account we store your email address and a cryptographic digest of your password (salted scrypt). We never store the password in readable form, and nobody on the team can read it.

In your profile you can add — and remove whenever you like — a display name, a phone number, your municipality and your preferred language. None of those fields is required to have an account.

Requests, quotes, bookings and reviews

When you request a service we store what you wrote: the description of the need, the municipality, the urgency, how you prefer to be contacted, and your name, email and phone so the provider can answer you.

We also store quotes, bookings, messages sent inside the platform, and the reviews you write. A provider invited to your request sees what is needed to quote it; contact details open once you accept a quote.

If you join the early-access list we store your email, your name, your municipality and the interest you picked, plus the invite code you arrived with if you came from one.

Photos and files

Photos you upload are stored in Vercel Blob, our hosting provider's file storage, and stay attached to the listing, booking or profile you put them on.

The admin team can review, hide or delete an image that breaks the site rules. We only accept files you upload yourself: the platform never loads images from outside addresses.

Voice search

The microphone in the search box records for at most 15 seconds and sends that recording to OpenAI, which turns it into text and returns the transcript. The text lands in the box for you to review and correct before searching: it is never submitted on its own.

The audio is not stored. It is not written to any database, any file or any storage of ours: it exists in memory for the length of the call and is gone with it.

For each recording we keep its length in seconds, the cost, an irreversible identifier computed over the audio bytes (so repeated submissions are recognisable) and, when you are signed in, your account. The transcript is stored only if input sampling is switched on, and then at most its first 200 characters — the same rule a typed phrase follows.

When transcription is running in test mode, the note under the box says so and no recording leaves the platform.

Artificial-intelligence interpretation

To interpret what you type in the search box we send that phrase to an artificial-intelligence provider and get back a category, a municipality and suggested filters. We do not send your email, your name or your phone with the phrase.

For each query we store the interpreted category, the cost, the latency and an irreversible identifier of the phrase. The full phrase is stored only if input sampling is switched on, and then at most its first 200 characters.

The artificial intelligence never accepts a quote, never books for you, and never writes a message in your name.

Payments

Card payments are processed by Stripe on its own page. Card numbers never pass through our servers and we never store them.

For each payment we store the amount, the status, any refunds and the identifiers Stripe returns, so we can show you your receipt and resolve a problem if you report one. To pay a provider, Stripe asks them to verify their identity and keeps that documentation in its own system, not in ours.

Email

We send email through Resend: confirmations, booking and quote notices, password recovery, and the early-access welcome message. Resend receives your address and the message content in order to deliver it.

We do not send text messages or messages through third-party apps.

Measurement and errors

We use PostHog to know which pages are visited and what gets used. It is configured with no automatic click capture and no profiles for anonymous visitors, and we do not share it with advertisers. There are no ad networks or tracking pixels on the site.

We use Sentry to receive the technical detail when something breaks. An error report can include the page where it happened and technical details about the browser.

Both tools only run when their configuration is present. Without it, the platform sends nothing.

Cookies

We use one session cookie, named mc_public_session, to know that you signed in. It travels only to addresses under /app, cannot be read from page code, lasts 30 days, and is cleared when you sign out.

The admin team has its own session cookie, separate from yours. PostHog measurement, when active, stores its own cookies in your browser.

We use no advertising cookies and no third-party cookies that follow you across other sites.

Usage limits and IP addresses

To stop abuse we count how often the same action comes from the same connection. We do not store your IP address for that: we store an irreversible digest computed with a secret salt, from which the original address cannot be recovered.

The same digest limits public form submissions, password recovery and microphone use.

Your rights over your data

You can ask us for a copy of your data, for a wrong detail to be corrected, or for your account to be deleted. Write to us and we will answer.

Write to hola@mercadocarambola.com from your account's email address. If you write from another address we will have to confirm it is you before acting.

Deleting your account removes your profile and your contact details. Some information may remain where the law or a payment already made requires us to keep it, such as a transaction record; in that case it is detached from your profile.

How long we keep things

We keep your account data for as long as the account exists. Requests, bookings, payments and reviews are kept for as long as they serve a person's or a provider's history and the resolution of a claim.

Technical records of artificial-intelligence use and abuse limits are kept without contact details: length, cost, irreversible digest.

Minors

The platform is for people aged 18 or over. We do not ask for and do not want data about minors. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we close it and delete their data.

Where we operate

Mercado Carambola operates from Puerto Rico and is governed by the laws of Puerto Rico and of the United States. Data is stored on servers in the United States.

The providers named in this document process data on our behalf and only for what is described here.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we also change the date above. If a change materially affects what we do with your data, we will tell you by email before it takes effect.