Privacy

Last updated November 14, 2026

FlatFeeTech hasn’t opened to buyers yet. Right now we collect what you give us when you join the waitlist, create an account or list a phone, plus anonymous visit counts. This page explains what that is and what we do with it, and what will change when buying and selling opens.

What we collect

• Your email address.
• Whether you want to sell, buy, or both.
• The phone you mention, if you choose to.
• When you signed up.
• How you found us: the campaign tag on the link you clicked (like “reddit”) or the name of the website that sent you. Not the page you were on, and nothing about your browsing elsewhere.
• A scrambled, one-way code made from your internet connection’s address, used only to stop spam and abuse, such as too many sign-ups, sign-in attempts or uploads. We can’t turn it back into your address, and we delete it after one day.

If you create an account

Signing in creates an account. We keep your email address and when you signed in, and set a cookie that keeps you signed in. That cookie is needed for sign-in to work and isn’t used for tracking.

If you continue with Google, Google tells us your email address, name and profile picture. We don’t get your Google password or anything else from your Google account.

If you list a phone

When you start a listing we keep:

• The phone’s details: model, storage, color, carrier, condition and battery health.
• Your asking price.
• The phone’s IMEI, the number that identifies it on cell networks. We use it only to check the phone isn’t reported lost or stolen, blocked, or still being paid off. It’s never shown on your listing, and we only ever show you its last four digits.
• Your photos. Phone cameras usually save hidden details in each photo, often including where it was taken. We remove all of that before storing it. Photos are kept private until your listing is approved.
• Your listing code, and a record of each step: when you saved, changed or submitted it, and our review.
• The address you ship from and a phone number. We check the address with a shipping address service before saving it. It’s printed as the return address on your shipping labels, so your buyer sees it on the package, and UPS prints the phone number on the label in case there’s a delivery problem.

Your IMEI is entered into an outside checking website

To check a phone, we type its IMEI into a public IMEI-check website. That website then has the number. It doesn’t get your name, email address or anything else about you from us, but we don’t control what it does with the IMEI. We do this by hand until we connect an IMEI-checking service, which will receive the IMEI in the same way. If you’d rather your IMEI wasn’t checked like this, don’t submit a listing.

Who sees your listing

Every listing is checked by hand before it goes live. The two people who review listings can see everything above, including the full IMEI and your email address. If we send a listing back, the reason we give you is stored with the listing.

If we pause, warn or close an account, we keep a record of the decision: the reason, what it concerned, any message we sent you, any appeal you make and its outcome, and who decided. We use it to apply our terms and to handle appeals.

When FlatFeeTech opens to buyers, approved listings will be public: the phone’s details, price, condition and photos, but never the IMEI or your email address.

Comments on a listing are public too. We show them as from “Seller” or “Member” with a short code, never your name or email. We keep a comment you delete, or one we remove, on our records (not on the page), with who removed it and why, in case of a dispute or fraud. When someone comments on your listing, we email you.

You can delete a draft at any time, and its photos are deleted with it. Once a listing has been submitted, we keep it and its history to help stop fraud, unless you ask us to delete it.

When buying and selling opens

None of this is collected yet, because checkout isn’t open. This is what we plan to collect when it is, and we’ll update this page before then.

Payments

Payments go through PayPal. PayPal will send us a record of each sale: transaction ids, the amounts and fees, the status (such as completed, refunded or disputed), and the buyer’s shipping name and address. For sellers, we’ll keep an identifier for the PayPal account they connect and whether it can receive payments. Buyers log in with PayPal before paying, and PayPal shares with us their PayPal account id, name, email, street address and whether PayPal has verified the account; we use these to ship to that address and to check that the same PayPal account pays. We never see or store card numbers or bank details. PayPal handles your information under its own privacy statement.

Shipping addresses and tracking

The buyer’s shipping name and address are shown to the seller of that phone so they can ship it. Every sale ships on a UPS label bought through us, so the buyer’s name and address and the seller’s ship-from address and phone number are sent to our shipping label service and to UPS. We keep the tracking number, the label and the delivery status with the sale, show the tracking number to the buyer, and share it with PayPal.

Fraud prevention and device checks

We use IMEIs to check phones and to stop the same phone being listed twice, and we may keep the IMEI of a phone that caused a problem so it can’t be listed again. If there’s a problem with a sale, we keep what buyers and sellers send us about it, such as photos, video and tracking. When we look into fraud or a dispute, or when the law requires it, we may share what’s relevant with PayPal, the carrier, an IMEI-checking service or law enforcement.

How long we keep sale records

We plan to keep records of sales (the listing, amounts, PayPal transaction ids, shipping and tracking details, and anything about a dispute) for 7 years, for tax and accounting.

Deleting your account after a sale

If you ask us to delete your account after you’ve bought or sold, we’ll delete the account and any listings that didn’t sell. We’ll keep the records of your sales for the period above, and anything we need for an open dispute or fraud investigation, and then delete those too.

How we use it

• To send one confirmation when you join, then email you when FlatFeeTech opens. We may also send a short note if launch plans change.
• To understand which phones people want to sell or buy, so we launch with the right ones.
• To see which ads and posts bring people here, so we spend where it works.

We don’t sell your information, share it with advertisers, or use it to track you around the web.

Who handles it for us

We use a small number of outside companies to run FlatFeeTech. They only handle your information to provide their service to us.

• A database and sign-in provider stores the waitlist, accounts, listings and listing photos, and handles sign-in.
• A web host serves this website. Like most hosts, it keeps short-lived technical logs of visits.
• An analytics service counts visits to this site: which pages are viewed, the site that sent you, and your country, device type and browser. It uses no cookies and doesn’t identify you.
• An email service sends our emails, including sign-in codes, so it handles your email address when we write to you.
• A shipping label service checks addresses and buys UPS labels for us, so it handles sellers’ ship-from addresses and phone numbers and buyers’ shipping names and addresses.

Deleting your information

Email privacy@flatfeetech.com and we’ll delete your waitlist entry, account and listings. You can also ask us what we have about you. Once buying and selling opens, records of completed sales are kept as described above.

Children

FlatFeeTech is for adults. Please don’t sign up if you’re under 18.

Changes

We’ll publish a fuller policy before the marketplace opens and update the date above when this page changes.