Privacy Policy

Equimeta ("we", "our", or "us") operates an equestrian marketplace, content platform, horse management tools, and professional network. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. By using our platform, you agree to this policy.

1. Who We Are

Equimeta is an online platform connecting horse buyers, sellers, trainers, breeders, and show organizers. Authentication and identity management are delegated to Keycloak, which acts as a data processor on our behalf. When you sign in with a social provider (e.g., Google), Keycloak and that provider handle credential exchange; we receive only the identity claims they pass to us.

2. Information You Provide to Us

We collect information you give us directly when you:

• Create an account: Your name, email address, and (if you choose) a phone number and username are collected during registration or onboarding.
• Complete onboarding: We collect your equestrian disciplines (e.g., Dressage, Hunter/Jumper, Western Pleasure, Barrel Racing) and your role on the platform (e.g., Buyer, Seller, Trainer, Breeder, Show Organizer). This helps us personalise your experience.
• Create marketplace listings: If you list a horse, we collect the horse's name, breed, age, gender, color, height, disciplines, training level, registration number, and a written description, along with your asking price, location, photos, and videos. For non-horse listings (equipment, trailers, trucks, property) we collect equivalent descriptive and pricing details. Listing descriptions are processed by an AI model to extract structured data (see Section 6).
• Use the Barn: The Barn is a private horse-management tool. Records you add — including the horse's name, breed, date of birth, gender, color and markings, height, disciplines, registration number, sire (father) name, dam (mother) name, performance records, genetic test results, photos, videos, documents, and freeform notes — are stored privately and visible only to you unless you choose to create a marketplace listing.
• Communicate through deals: Messages you exchange with buyers or sellers through the deal flow (from initial inquiry through to completed transaction) are stored so both parties have a shared record of negotiations.
• Upload deal documents: During a deal, you may upload pre-purchase exam (PPE) reports, videos, insurance documents, and other files. These are stored securely and accessible only to the deal participants.
• Sign transaction documents: When you apply an electronic signature to a document (such as a purchase agreement, bill of sale, or vet-check waiver), we record your typed name, the timestamp of signing, and the signed document. This constitutes your legally binding electronic signature under the E-SIGN Act.
• Leave transaction reviews: After a deal is completed, you may submit a star rating for other parties involved (buyer, seller, veterinarian, hauler, boarding facility, etc.). These ratings are stored and aggregated on professional profiles visible to other users.
• Consent to sale price disclosure: Sellers may opt in when creating a listing, and buyers may opt in at checkout, to publicly disclose the final sale price on the horse's profile. This consent is recorded and the price is published only if both parties consent.
• Post comments on horse profiles: Comments you post on horse profile pages are public and associated with your user profile.
• Submit a Pro Profile or Insights review: If you apply to be a Pro, we collect your business name, location, specialties, expertise description, availability status, and custom insight rate. Written reviews you submit as a Pro are stored and displayed to the requesting buyer. Your transaction review ratings are aggregated and displayed on your Pro profile.
• Claim a professional profile or listing: If you submit a claim to verify ownership of a professional profile or marketplace listing, we collect the information you provide to verify your identity and association with that profile.
• Apply to the Affiliate Program: We collect the information in your application and, once approved, your referral activity and commission history.
• Apply as a writer: If you apply to write editorial content for Equimeta, we collect the information in your application.
• Subscribe to the newsletter: If you opt in to our newsletter, we collect your email address for the purpose of sending periodic updates about the platform, new features, and equestrian content.
• Submit reports: If you report a listing, comment, or other content as inappropriate, we collect your report and the reason you provided.

3. Payment and Financial Data

We use Stripe for payment processing and do not store or process card data on our servers.

• Subscription and transaction payments: When you subscribe or pay a transaction fee, Stripe Checkout collects and processes your card details. Equimeta receives a Stripe customer ID and subscription/payment status — never raw card data.
• Seller payouts — Stripe Connect: To receive marketplace payouts, sellers must complete Stripe Connect (Express) onboarding. During that process, Stripe collects your identity documents (government-issued ID), bank account details, and tax information directly. Equimeta is never shown these documents; we store only a boolean flag indicating that your Stripe Connect account is active.
• Buyer fund verification — Stripe Financial Connections: Buyers may optionally link a bank account through Stripe Financial Connections to display a "Verified Buyer" badge to sellers. Stripe reads the account balance; Equimeta stores only the threshold amount you verified against (e.g., "verified above $X"). Your account number, routing number, and actual balance are never stored or exposed to sellers.
• Affiliate payouts: Approved affiliates receive commissions via bank transfer or PayPal. We collect the payout details you provide to facilitate these transfers.

4. Automatically Collected Data

When you use Equimeta, we automatically collect:

• Log and usage data: IP address, browser type and version, operating system, pages visited, search queries entered, listing IDs viewed, and timestamps.
• Device data: Device type and screen resolution, used to serve appropriately formatted content.
• View history and interactions: We track which listings you view, how you interact with search results, and which recommendations you click. This data is used to power personalised recommendations, suggest relevant listings, and improve search relevance. Your favourite breeds and saved preferences also inform recommendations.
• Search history: Your marketplace search queries and applied filters are stored to enable search history, saved searches, and listing alerts. Pinned (saved) searches may trigger email and push notifications when new listings match your criteria.
• Performance telemetry: We use OpenTelemetry to collect browser-side performance traces (page load times, API response times, error rates) sent to an internal monitoring endpoint. This data is used solely for platform reliability and performance improvement and is not used for advertising. It fires regardless of your cookie consent choice because it is strictly operational.
• Client error reporting: If an error occurs in the browser while you are using Equimeta, diagnostic information (the error message, the page route, and HTTP method) may be automatically sent to our monitoring system. If you are logged in, your user ID and email may be included to help our support team investigate issues. This data is used exclusively for debugging and platform stability.
• In-app notifications: We generate and store in-app notifications for events such as deal updates, new messages, Pro Insight deliveries, and saved search matches. You can mark these as read or unread within the platform.
• Web Push subscriptions: If you allow push notifications, we store your browser push subscription endpoint and encryption keys server-side. These are used to send you deal-stage notifications, new message alerts, Pro Insight updates, and saved search match alerts. You can withdraw push permission at any time through your browser settings.

5. Advertising and Tracking Technologies

We use third-party advertising pixels to measure marketing effectiveness. These pixels are only loaded after you explicitly accept cookies via our cookie banner. If you decline or dismiss the banner without accepting, no advertising pixels are loaded.

• Meta (Facebook) Pixel: Tracks page views and custom events (e.g., listing views, sign-ups) to help us measure and optimise Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns.
• Google Ads / Google Tag (gtag): Tracks page views and conversion events to measure the performance of Google advertising campaigns.
• TikTok Pixel: Tracks page views to measure TikTok advertising performance.

We also use browser LocalStorage (not cookies) to remember your theme preference (light/dark mode and English/Western discipline) and your cookie consent choice between sessions. No personal data is stored in LocalStorage.

6. How We Use Your Data

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and manage your account, and authenticate you via Keycloak;
• Display your profile, listings, and public horse records to other users as appropriate;
• Facilitate marketplace transactions through the deal flow and process payments via Stripe;
• Generate and store transaction documents (purchase agreements, bills of sale, waivers) and record electronic signatures;
• Display the "Verified Buyer" badge to sellers when you have completed fund verification;
• Send deal-stage notifications via push, email, and in-app channels;
• Deliver Pro Insights requests and results between users and Pros, including PPE document attachments;
• Display and aggregate transaction review ratings on professional profiles;
• Publish sale prices on horse profiles when both buyer and seller consent to disclosure;
• Power the Equine Universe bloodline feature using the sire and dam names stored in your Barn;
• Display competition history, performance ratings, and registry information on horse profiles using data sourced from third-party providers;
• Process your search queries through AI to generate structured search filters;
• Enrich listing descriptions using AI to extract structured data (temperament, health flags, genetic test mentions, seller disclosures) and improve search relevance;
• Generate AI-powered community analysis summaries on listings;
• Personalise your experience by recommending listings based on your view history, saved searches, favourite breeds, and interaction patterns;
• Send email and push notifications for saved search matches, new messages, and platform updates;
• Process newsletter subscriptions and send periodic updates;
• Track and pay affiliate commissions to approved affiliates;
• Process writer applications and manage editorial contributions;
• Review reported content and enforce platform policies;
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and violations of our Terms of Service;
• Measure and improve platform performance using OpenTelemetry telemetry and Datadog;
• Diagnose and resolve technical issues using automatically reported client errors;
• Measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns (only with your consent, via pixels);
• Respond to your support requests and communicate service-related announcements;
• Produce aggregated and de-identified analytics — including market trends, pricing statistics, breed and discipline popularity, regional demand patterns, and platform usage metrics. Aggregated data does not identify any individual user and may be used for internal product development, published in market reports, or shared with partners. We may also use aggregated transaction, competition, and listing data to improve our search algorithms, recommendation models, AI enrichment quality, and performance rating calculations.

7. How We Share Your Data

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only as described below:

• Other Equimeta users: Your public profile (username, location, disciplines) and your active listings are visible to other users. When a deal is in progress, we share necessary contact information (name and contact email) between the buyer and seller to facilitate the transaction. Deal messages are visible to both parties in the deal. Transaction reviews you submit are displayed on the reviewee's profile. Comments you post on horse profiles are publicly visible.
• Stripe: We share transactional and identity data with Stripe to process payments, manage subscriptions, onboard sellers, verify buyer funds, and issue payouts. (Stripe Privacy Policy)
• Keycloak: We share authentication requests with Keycloak to verify your identity. (Keycloak)
• OpenAI: When you use the marketplace search bar, your search query text is sent to OpenAI for natural-language parsing. When a listing is published, its description and details are sent to OpenAI for AI enrichment (extracting structured data such as temperament, health flags, and genetic test mentions). No personal data (such as your name, email, or account ID) is included in requests to OpenAI. OpenAI processes this data under their API data usage policy, which states that API inputs are not used to train their models.
• Bunny Stream: Videos uploaded to listings and Barn records are hosted on Bunny Stream, a third-party video hosting and content delivery provider. Bunny receives the video file content for encoding and delivery. No personal data beyond the video file itself is shared. (Bunny.net Privacy Policy)
• Microsoft Azure: Photos, documents, and other uploaded files are stored in Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. Azure acts as a data processor on our behalf and stores data in accordance with our data processing agreement.
• Meta, Google, and TikTok: Only with your explicit cookie consent, page view and event data is sent to Meta, Google, and TikTok for advertising measurement purposes.
• Datadog: Application logs, error reports, and performance telemetry are sent to Datadog for operational monitoring, debugging, and alerting. Logs may include request metadata (routes, timestamps, error messages) and, in error cases, user identifiers to assist with support investigations. This data is used exclusively for platform reliability and is not shared with advertisers.
• OpenTelemetry: Browser-side and server-side performance trace data is collected via OpenTelemetry and sent to our monitoring infrastructure for reliability analysis.
• Legal and safety: We may disclose information if required by law, court order, or government request, or when we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the safety, rights, or property of Equimeta, our users, or the public.

8. Your Rights and Choices

• Account settings: You can review and update your profile information, contact email, phone number, disciplines, and roles at any time in your account settings.
• Cookie consent: You can withdraw advertising cookie consent at any time by clicking the cookie preferences link in the footer. No advertising pixels will fire after withdrawal.
• Push notifications: You can revoke push notification permission through your browser or operating system settings at any time.
• Newsletter: You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any newsletter email.
• Marketing emails: You can opt out of promotional emails by clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing message. We may still send transactional messages (e.g., deal notifications, saved search alerts, Pro Insight deliveries, receipts) related to your account activity.
• Saved searches: You can delete saved searches and disable listing alerts at any time through the marketplace search interface.
• Comments and reviews: Comments you post on horse profiles are public. Transaction reviews cannot be edited or withdrawn after submission, as they form part of the transaction record.
• Sale price disclosure: If you consent to sale price disclosure and the other party also consents, the price becomes public and cannot be withdrawn after the transaction is completed.
• Data deletion: To request deletion of your account and associated personal data, contact us at privacy@equimeta.co. We will process your request within 30 days, subject to any legal retention obligations. Deletion of your account will remove your Barn records, listings, and profile data, but transaction records, signed documents, and transaction reviews may be retained as described in Section 9.

9. Data Retention

We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active. If you close your account, we will delete or anonymise your personal data within 90 days, except where we are required to retain it for legal, regulatory, or legitimate business purposes (for example, transaction records for tax or fraud-prevention purposes, which may be retained for up to 7 years).

Deal messages, transaction records, signed documents, and transaction reviews are retained for 7 years from the date of transaction to comply with financial record-keeping obligations. Barn records are deleted with your account unless they have been converted into active marketplace listings. Uploaded PPE documents, insurance files, and other deal-related materials are retained for the same period as the associated transaction.

Disclosed sale prices remain on horse profiles indefinitely as part of the horse's public record, even if the participating accounts are later closed. Search history, view history, and recommendation data are deleted with your account.

10. Children's Privacy

Equimeta is not directed at children under the age of 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have collected data from a person under 18, we will delete that data promptly. If you believe a minor has created an account, please contact us at privacy@equimeta.co.

11. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by posting the updated policy on this page and updating the "Last Updated" date above. For significant changes, we may also send a notice to the email address associated with your account. Your continued use of Equimeta after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal data, please contact us at privacy@equimeta.co.