Legal Center

Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Materia Market, we have a few fundamental principles:

We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information is shared publicly (or kept private).
We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

Hi there! We are the folks behind Materia Market, a public Marketplace to buy and sell specialized goods and materials.

Our mission is to change the way artists and crafters buy supplies by brining everyone together in a community that revolves around buying and selling to each other; No middlemen, no big box stores, just like minded people collaborating with each other in an open marketplace. This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:

Our website (materiamarket.com);
Our mobile application, Materia Market;
Our other Materia Market products, services, and features that are available on or through our website.

This Privacy Policy also applies to information we collect when you apply for a job at Materia Market. Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website, mobile applications, and other products and services collectively as “Services.” Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to any of our products or services, like Stripe, that have a separate privacy policy. Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up to provide an email address and password, along with your full name — and that’s it. You will have to provide us with more information — like your address and banking information to buy and sell through the Marketplace — but we don’t require that information to create a Materia Market account.
Public profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, like a photo or a "Bio" description. Your public profile information is just that — public — so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
Payment and contact information: If you buy something from the Marketplace — for example an item from a seller or you pay to promote your listings — we’ll collect information to process the payment (name and credit card information) and details for shipping (name, address and other contact information). We also keep a record of the purchases you’ve made. If you are a seller you will also provide us with financial details to set up a payments integration, so we can pay you your percentage of sales. Additionally if certain amounts of revenue are paid out to your account for sales of items, we are required by law to ask you for more personal information following the KYC (Know Your Customer) guidelines - this can include address, birth date, social security number - and if we are unable to verify your identify - documentation to verify you are who you say you are.
Communications with us (hi there!): You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our Engineers about a support question, post a question in our public forums, or sign up for a newsletter. When you communicate with us via web form, email, phone, comment or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications (including any call recordings as permitted by applicable law).
Job applicant information: If you apply for a job with us you may provide us with information like your name, contact information, resume or CV, and work authorization verification as part of the application process.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services — for example, buy, seller, or create listings in the Marketplace.
Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions you take while using the website or our mobile app — in other words, who did what and when. Our analytics services also track information like your email account information, settings, along with information about your listings, sales and purchases. We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, support document searches at materiamarket.com/support, along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better, and understand and make predictions about user retention.
Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions, or to obtain shipping estimates. We may also collect information about your precise location via our mobile apps (like when you post a photograph with location information) if you allow us to do so through your mobile device operating system’s permissions.
Stored information: We may access information stored on your mobile device via our mobile apps. We access this stored information through your device operating system’s permissions. For example, if you give us permission to access the photographs on your mobile device’s camera roll, our Services can access the photos stored on your device when you add photos of listings you post.
Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Materia Market uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services. For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you connect your account to a social media service (like Facebook or Google) we’ll receive information from that service (e.g., your username and basic profile information) via the authorization procedures for that service. The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorize and what options are available.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

To provide our Services. For example, to set up and maintain your account, support you in posting listings and sales, purchasing items, provide customer service, process payments and record order history, and verify user information.
To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Services. Or, for example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them buy and sell items more efficiently or make our Services easier to use.
To market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing. For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users (like those who interested in certail types of listings (e.g. yarn) or have been users for a certain length of time), advertising our Services, analyzing the results of our marketing campaigns (like how many people purchased items after receiving a marketing message), and understanding and forecasting user retention.
To protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Materia Market and others, which may result in us, for example, declining a transaction or terminating Services.
To fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
To customize the user experience. For example, to personalize your experience by serving you relevant notifications and advertisements for our Services, recommending content and items through our emails and Mobile App.
To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on Materia Market; If you don’t want to hear from us, you can opt out of marketing communications at any time. (If you opt out, we’ll still send you important updates relating to your account.)
To recruit and hire new Materia Market talent. For example, by evaluating job applicants and communicating with them.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy.

Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries and independent contractors who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like Stripe our payment provider that process your credit and debit card information, fraud prevention services that allow us to analyze fraudulent payment transactions, cloud storage services, postal and email delivery services that help us pick up and deliver your items and stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you, registrars, registries, data escrow services that allow us to provide domain registration services; those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g., by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns, and by placing ads to market our services); those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers); those that make tools to help us run our operations (like programs that help us with task management, scheduling, word processing, email and other communications, and collaboration among our teams); other third-party tools that help us manage operations; We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them. Other vendors are listed in our more specific policies (e.g., our Cookie Policy).
Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. For more information on how we respond to requests for information about Materia Market users, please see our Legal Guidelines.
To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Materia Market, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that items being sold have been stolen or are otherwise listed under false pretenses, we may disclose related information to the proper authorities.
Business transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Materia Market goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorize us to do so, like when you connected your site to a social media service.
Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
Published support requests: If you send us a request for assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.

We absolutely and under no circumstances sell our users' data. We are not a data broker, we do not sell your personal information to data brokers, and we don't sell your information to other companies that want to spam you with marketing emails. Under a new California law, the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA"), some personalized advertising you see online and on our services might be considered a "sale" even though we don't share information that identifies you personally, like your name or email address, as part of our advertising program. You have choices about these ads, learn more about them and our ads program.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is — of course — disclosed publicly. That means information like your public profile, listings, other content that you make public, and your “Likes” and comments on other listings are all available to others. For example, the photo that you upload to your public profile, or a default image if you haven’t uploaded one, is your Avatar. Your Avatar, along with other public profile information, displays alongside the comments and “Likes” that you make on other users’ listings while logged in to your Materia Market account. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we’re not legally required to keep it. For example, we keep the web server logs that record information actions within the Materia Market Mobile App and website, like the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to Materia Market's services and investigate issues if something goes wrong with one of these services. After the thirty days are up, the deleted content may remain on our backups and caches until purged.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible.
Limit access to information on your mobile device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the option to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you choose to limit this, you may not be able to use certain features, like geotagging for photographs.
Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
Opt out of our internal analytics program: You can do this through your user settings. By opting out, you will stop sharing information with our analytics tool about events or actions that happen after the opt-out, while you’re logged in to your Materia Market account.
Close your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services. (Here are account closure instructions for Materia Market accounts.) Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in the state of California in the United States of America, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
Commercial information (your billing information and purchase history, for example);
Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);
Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services);
Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as your profile picture, listing photos);
Professional or employment-related information (for example information you provide in a job application); and
Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

You can find more information about what we collect in the Information We Collect section above. We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section. If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
Opt out of any sale of personal information; and
Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

Contacting Us About These Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to or you’d like to contact us about one of the other rights, scroll down to “How to Reach Us” to find out how to get in touch with us. When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us through our web form or via email.

Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver ads that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Materia Market and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party advertisers or analytics providers.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Materia Market may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Materia Market encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.