Privacy Policy

1. Who this covers

This policy applies to pinchhitterpool.com, the PinchHitterPool portal and applications, and related communications (together, the “Service”). It covers everyone who uses the Service: workers and side-hustlers, volunteers, interns, employers, organizations, households, and visitors. For people in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, SoftTelRG LLC is the data controller. For Canada, SoftTelRG LLC is the organization accountable under PIPEDA. Questions and requests: support@softtelrg.com or the contact page.

2. What we collect — and only this

• Account basics via secure sign-in (SSO): your name and email address. Sign-in is handled by Microsoft’s identity platform, whether you choose Microsoft, Google, or Apple — or create an email-and-password account, in which case Microsoft stores that password. We never receive or store your password.
• Government-ID check (optional, $3, where it is offered): if you choose it, Stripe collects the images of your ID document and your selfie and performs the check under Stripe’s privacy policy. We receive only the result (verified or not) and Stripe’s reference number — never the images, and never the details printed on the document. The payment itself is a normal card payment (see below).
• Phone number (required to verify your account): the number you verify is stored encrypted together with a one-way hash (the hash lets us keep one profile per number without reading it), and the one-time code you receive is stored only as a hash until it expires. Your number is never shown to signed-out visitors or search engines: your public profile shows a “phone verified” badge; paid subscribers who open your profile can see the number so they can reach you; you see your own number masked to its last digits; and the platform administrator can see it for support. We text it only the one-time code you request (see Text messages).
• What organizations see when you sign up for hours: an organization you claim hours with (its owner and the collaborators it has given roster access) sees your display name, the hours you claimed and their status (waiting, approved, attended, verified, cancelled), your claim codes, and your history with that organization — including hours from earlier postings of theirs. Other members never see your name on a posting. On an invite-only posting, anyone signed in who holds the link can see how many people each hour still needs (coverage counts), but not who they are.
• Profile data you choose to provide: display name, skills, work preferences, weekly availability, pay-rate range, external professional links you add, and your work territory (up to five postal codes). No street address is requested or stored for workers or volunteers.
• Work activity generated by using the Service: applications, offers, placements, shift engagements, attendance check-in/out timestamps, references you request, and certificates issued to you.
• Organization and household data: organization name, type, business contact details, and the work locations you publish with a job post. Posted work locations are public-by-nature posting data.
• Billing status only: your plan, its status, and Stripe reference IDs. Card numbers and bank details live with Stripe — they never touch our systems. If you complete the optional one-time $1 card validation, or pay for the optional $3government-ID check, we record the name on the card and the billing address’s country, state/province, and postal code as your verified-identity and verified-location signals — never the card number or the street address. The Stripe event notifications that drive billing are kept as our payment audit trail with personal details removed before they are stored: customer name, email, address and phone are stripped, leaving the event id, type, amount and the reference ids we need to match a payment to an account.
• Verification outcomes only: when you connect a proof, the provider performs it and we store the outcome — for LinkedIn, your verified account name; for an organization’s Google Business Profile, the listing name and its country, state, and postal code; for an identity-document check, which runs on Stripe Identity, the status (for example “verified” and an expiry date) and Stripe’s session id — the document, the selfie and any ID number stay with Stripe. Never your documents or ID numbers. PinchHitterPool does not run background checks.
• Messages between members: messages you exchange with other members through the Service are stored so we can deliver and display them.
• Mobile app push notifications: if you install the app and allow notifications, we store your device’s push token to deliver them. Delivery runs through Apple’s and Google’s notification services; disabling notifications or signing out invalidates the token.
• Messages you send us: contact-form submissions and notification/email delivery records needed to run the inbox you see in the portal.
• Technical data: server logs (IP address, browser type, timestamps) for security and abuse prevention, and the cookies described in section 7.

3. What we deliberately do not store

• Worker or volunteer home addresses — not collected, not stored, by design.
• Passwords for regular accounts (SSO handles sign-in; an email-and-password account’s password is stored by Microsoft, never by us; platform-admin passwords are salted and hashed, never stored in readable form).
• Payment card or bank account numbers (Stripe only).
• Identity documents, government ID numbers, or background-check reports (verification providers only).
• Advertising profiles — we run no ads and build none.

4. Verification checks — who performs them, what we keep, what a badge means

PinchHitterPool asks independent providers to perform its verification checks and records only their answer. This section says exactly what happens, so that nobody reads more into a badge than it holds.

• Who performs each check. The $1 card check and the optional $3government-ID check are performed by Stripe (Stripe Payments and Stripe Identity), phone-number verification (where it is offered) by our SMS provider, Google Business Profile verification by Google, and the LinkedIn proof by LinkedIn. Each provider collects what it needs directly from you, on its own pages, under its own privacy policy, and by its own methods. For the government-ID check that means Stripe collects the images of your document and your selfie and, where it applies, compares them against its own sources; you consent to that on Stripe’s page before anything is captured, and you can read how Stripe handles it in Stripe’s privacy policy.
• What reaches us. The result (verified, not verified, or cancelled), the provider’s reference number, the date, and — when a check does not pass — a short reason category from the provider (for example “document expired”) so we can tell you why. For the card check, additionally the name on the card and the billing address’s country, state or province, and postal code (section 2). Nothing else.
• What never reaches us. Your document or its images, the numbers printed on it, your selfie, your date of birth, your card number, and Stripe’s detailed verification data. Our systems are built never to request them, and our access to Stripe is restricted to match. We therefore cannot see, correct, or re-check what a provider examined; to exercise rights over those images or data you contact the provider, and we will help you reach the right place.
• Reviewer approvals. In limited cases a PinchHitterPool reviewer records a card-level or ID-level result by hand — for example where Stripe is not available in your country, or where the reviewer personally examined a document. That record holds the reviewer’s short written note of what was checked and how, the date, and which reviewer made it; reviewers are instructed never to write a document, card, or ID number in that note. Your verification page shows that the result came from a reviewer.
• What a badge means — and does not mean. A badge reports a provider’s (or a reviewer’s) result at the moment it was given. It is not a background check, criminal-record check, credit check, or employment screen, it is not a “consumer report” under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act or any similar law, and it is not a statement by us about anyone’s character, intentions, or future conduct. We do not and cannot vouch for what any person intends to do. The full meaning of a verification, and the responsibility that stays with each user, is set out in section 4 of our Terms of Service.
• How long. The outcome record stays with your profile while your account exists and is removed with it (section 8). A withdrawn or revoked verification is marked, not erased, while the account exists, so that a badge cannot silently reappear.

5. How we use personal data

• To match people to opportunities and run shifts, applications, offers, and placements you take part in.
• To operate attendance, certificates, references, and trust features you invoke.
• To process subscriptions and credits (through Stripe) and enforce the pricing you agreed to.
• To send the notifications and emails the Service is built around — including reminders 24 hours and 2 hours before hours you have confirmed, and notices when a request is approved, declined, released, or closed — and to answer your messages.
• To keep records honest when nobody acts: a request an organization never answers is released once the hours have passed; hours you reported that the organization does not sign off within 7 days are recorded as verified with the minutes you reported (never with any amount of money); organizations are reminded when attendance is still unmarked days after a shift.
• To keep the Service secure — fraud, spam, and abuse prevention (including reCAPTCHA and rate limits).
• To comply with law and enforce our Terms.

Legal bases (GDPR/UK GDPR): performance of a contract (running your account and engagements), legitimate interests (security, service improvement, defending claims), consent (where we ask for it — for example optional profile fields), and legal obligation (tax and accounting records tied to payments). We do not use automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects without human review.

6. Who we share data with (processors and partners)

We share personal data only with the service providers needed to run the platform:

• Microsoft — sign-in (Entra ID) and Azure hosting/database (United States regions).
• Stripe — payments, subscriptions, and card verification.
• Google — reCAPTCHA (spam protection), optional analytics, email delivery for support messages, Google Maps links for posted work locations (opening a map link is governed by Google’s own privacy policy), optional Google Business Profile verification for organizations, and push-notification delivery to Android devices.
• Vercel — website hosting and delivery, and cookieless, aggregate web analytics (page views only; no personal profile).
• LinkedIn — the optional public-profile proof for individuals (LinkedIn confirms you control the account; we store the outcome and verified name — it is not an identity-document check).
• Apple — Sign in with Apple (through Microsoft’s identity platform) and push-notification delivery to Apple devices.
• Stripe Identity — the optional government-ID check, only when you start one.
• Twilio — delivers the one-time verification text when you confirm your phone number.
• Microsoft Azure AI Content Safety — automated screening of the text members type (profile text, postings, messages, notes) for threats, hate, sexual content and self-harm before it is shown to others. Only the text is sent, never who wrote it; we keep the result as a moderation record.
• Google Ads — conversion measurement only: whether a visit that started from one of our ads led to a sign-up, so we know which ads work. It loads only after you choose Accept analytics on the cookie banner (same choice as Google Analytics), never inside the mobile apps or when your browser sends Global Privacy Control, and we do not send Google your name, email or phone number for it.
• Other users, only as the product requires: your public profile appears in search when you enable it; paid subscribers who open your profile can see a phone number you verified; organizations you apply to see your application (cover note, availability, the resume link you give); organizations you claim hours with see your display name, hours, status, claim codes and your history with them; certificates you share are publicly verifiable by design.
• Authorities, only where the law requires it, and successors in a merger or acquisition (with this policy continuing to apply).

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Our sister service EventHubQ. PinchHitterPool and EventHubQ are both operated by SoftTelRG LLC and use one SoftTelRG sign-in. If an organization’s owner or admin switches on “List us on EventHubQ”, EventHubQ event hosts and planners can find that organization and add it to their events as a vendor. They see the organization’s public listing only — name, description, website, city and state, and whether its Google Business Profile is verified. We never share team members, ID documents, card details, phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses or payment amounts. The owner can stop listing at any time from My organization; events that added the organization then show it as no longer shared. This is sharing between services of the same company for a service you asked for; it is not a sale or “sharing” for advertising.

Text messages (SMS). We text your phone only when you ask us to — the one-time verification code you request on your Verify phone page. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text-messaging opt-in data and consent are never shared with any third party; Twilio receives your number only to deliver the code. Reply STOP to any message to opt out, or HELP for help. See the text message details. As proof of your consent we keep, with each code you request, the time, the IP address the request came from, and the version of the consent wording you were shown.

Tax forms. Referral gift cards are available only to members 18 and older, and only on the website (not in the mobile apps, where referral points are redeemed as PinchHitterPool credit, which needs no tax form). If your referral gift-card rewards would reach $600 in a calendar year, SoftTelRG LLC collects an IRS Form W-9 (or W-8) from you through support before arranging another card, keeps it for as long as tax law requires, and may use it to file the reports the law requires. The form and your taxpayer number are held by SoftTelRG LLC outside the PinchHitterPool platform; the platform records only that a form is on file and when.

7. Cookies

• Strictly necessary: httpOnly session cookies that keep you signed in (regular session and, for platform admins, a separate admin session). These cannot be read by page scripts.
• Security: Google reCAPTCHA sets cookies to distinguish humans from bots on our public forms.
• Functional, short-lived: the choice you made on the join screen (one hour, so setup can read it after sign-in) and a sign-in or verification state value (ten minutes).
• Analytics (optional): Google Analytics helps us understand aggregate product usage. It loads only after you choose Accept analytics on the cookie banner, and you can change your choice any time under Cookie settings in the footer. It is always off inside the mobile apps, and a browser that sends Global Privacy Control (GPC) gets no analytics script at all.
• Ad conversion measurement (optional, same choice): if you accepted analytics, the Google Ads tag may set a cookie so Google can tell that a click on one of our ads led to a sign-up. It is off under the same conditions as analytics, and we never use it to build an advertising profile of you or to show you ads elsewhere.

We use no cross-site tracking cookies for behavioral advertising.

8. How long we keep data — you decide

• Account and profile data: for as long as your account exists. Delete your account (or ask us to) and we delete or irreversibly anonymize your personal data, except the minimum we must keep for legal, tax, or dispute-resolution obligations.
• Free tier: while a retention window is in force, finished job posts may be archived after it (the window is shown on the pricing page whenever it applies); paid plans keep history for the life of the subscription.
• Certificates and reference letters issued to you are removed with your account and their public verification links stop working; the organization that issued them keeps its own record of the work.
• Security logs are kept for a short rolling window, then deleted. Application logs never contain your full email address — it is masked.
• Role-switch history: each time you switch between Service Provider and Opportunity Provider we record when, the role before and after, what the switch changed and the wording version you agreed to. It is kept while your account exists — it enforces the switching limits and helps resolve disputes — and is deleted with your account.
• Blocked members: whom you blocked and when, used only to keep the two of you apart (search, profiles, postings and contact). It is removed when you unblock them or when either account is deleted, and the other member is never told.
• Stripe event records are kept (already stripped of personal details) as the payment audit trail. When your account is deleted, the body of every event that referenced you or your organization is emptied and only the event id, type and outcome remain.
• Deleting your account also removes your quick messages and message threads, phone-verification records, member validations you gave or received, your organization’s job-fee lines, and its postings — people still signed up for hours on a live posting are told it was cancelled first.

Deleting your account is self-service. You do not need to email us and you do not need the mobile app — open pinchhitterpool.com/delete-account for the steps, or go straight to Account → Delete your account. While signed in, you type DELETE to confirm and the account is deleted right away; we then email you a short notice that it is done. If you pay for a subscription, deleting cancels it in the same step so you are not billed again.

After a deletion we keep one record of the deletion itself: the date, counts of what was removed, and a one-way hash of your email address. A hash cannot be reversed into your email; it exists so we can show an account was deleted, and so a cancelled subscription can be traced if a payment provider queries it. It does not identify you and is never used to contact you.

9. Your rights

Everyone: you can delete your account yourself at any time from Account → Delete your account. You can also access, correct, download, or delete your personal data, and object to or restrict certain processing, by emailing support@softtelrg.com. We respond within 30 days, verify requests to protect your data, and never discriminate against you for exercising rights.

• EEA/UK/Switzerland (GDPR): rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection; the right to withdraw consent at any time; and the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. Data is processed in the United States under appropriate safeguards, including Standard Contractual Clauses with our processors.
• Canada (PIPEDA and provincial laws): rights to access and correct your personal information and to withdraw consent (subject to legal or contractual restrictions). You may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
• United States (CCPA/CPRA and similar state laws): rights to know, access, correct, delete, and port your personal information, and to opt out of sale or sharing — noting that we do not sell or share personal information as those laws define it, and we do not use or disclose sensitive personal information beyond what those laws permit for service delivery.

10. Security

Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest; particularly sensitive fields are additionally encrypted at the field level. Access is role-based and least-privilege, admin sign-in requires two passwords plus a one-time email code, and privileged actions are audit-logged. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data we will notify you and regulators as the law requires.

11. Youth and children

Accounts require you to be at least 13. Members who confirm they are under 18 get youth-mode protections automatically: their profile is not publicly searchable, they can only take volunteer, side-hustle or internship postings that an organization (never a household) has opened to 13–17 year-olds — paid work only from age 14, and never salaried roles — every one of their requests waits for the organization’s approval even on open sign-up, and a parent or legal guardian validates their account before their first sign-up. A legal guardian who is a verified adult member can validate them without a card. We never collect or store a birth date — only the one age confirmation given at setup. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13; if you believe a child under 13 has provided data, contact us and we will delete it.

12. Changes and contact

Features change over time, and when a change affects what personal data we process or how, we update this policy. We post every change here with a new “Last updated” date, and if we change this policy in a material way we notify active accounts by email and/or in the app before it takes effect. Continued use after the effective date means the updated policy applies. Reach us any time at support@softtelrg.com, via the contact page, or by mail at SoftTelRG LLC, 7300 State Highway 121, Suite 300, McKinney, Texas 75070, USA.