Privacy Policy
TRST (“we”, “us”, “the app”) connects South Africans with local service workers and provides a trust/reputation layer around that. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, and your rights under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).
Responsible Party: Daverion AI (PTY) LTD, registration number 2026/430531/07, Gauteng, South Africa.
Information Officer: privacy@daverion.com
1. The information we collect
You give us
- Account & identity: your mobile number (used to sign you in via a one-time PIN) and/or an email address, and your first and last name.
- Profile (workers): the services you offer, a short bio, your working area, travel radius, transport mode, years of experience, and an optional profile photo, verification selfie (which you provide with your consent), and voice introduction.
- Optional credentials (workers): ID or other documents you choose to upload as trust badges. We display what you choose to share; we do not run background checks on your behalf.
- Content: the job requests you post, in-app chat messages you send, and reviews you write.
- Optional contact channels: if we later offer WhatsApp notifications, we will only use a WhatsApp number you provide and after you opt in.
We collect automatically
- Location: your area and, with your permission, your approximate GPS location — used only to match nearby workers and customers and to show distance/directions. You can decline location and enter your area manually.
- Device: a push-notification token, so we can send you job alerts, and basic product-usage events (e.g. which features you use), stored in our own database to improve the app. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-app tracking SDKs.
- Trust data: derived signals such as completed-job counts, review ratings, referrals, identity verification and account tenure, which combine into a worker's public trust score.
We do not process payments and do not collect bank or card details — jobs are arranged and paid directly between customer and worker, off-platform.
Special / identity information
Some information helps confirm you're a real person, and we treat it with extra care:
- Verification selfie (workers): a live photo you take during sign-up, with your explicit consent, solely to confirm you're a real person. It's stored privately, is never shown to customers, and you can ask us to delete it.
- Voice introduction (workers, optional): a short recording you choose to add. Because it's played to customers on your public profile, you agree to that when you save it, and you can re-record or remove it at any time.
- Identity verification (optional — Smile Identity): if you choose to verify your identity, that involves processing biometric information (for example, matching your face to an ID document). This is special personal information under POPIA, and we process it only with your explicit consent and only for that verification purpose.
We do not sell this information or use it for advertising.
2. Why we process it, and our lawful basis
We process personal information to: create and secure your account; match customers and workers; enable coordination (chat, notifications, directions); calculate and display trust scores; keep the platform safe (verification, blocking, reporting, and review moderation); and improve the product. Our lawful bases under POPIA are your consent (which you may withdraw), the performance of our agreement with you (providing the service you asked for), and our legitimate interests in running a safe, functional marketplace.
3. Who can see your information
Other users see only what's needed to transact:
- A worker's public profile — name, working area, services, photo, voice introduction, trust score and published reviews — is visible to customers browsing for help.
- Once a job is arranged, the two parties see each other's first name and can chat in-app.
- Your contact details are not public. Your phone number and email are used to sign you in and to run the service; they are not shown on your public profile or handed to other users. Your verification selfie and uploaded documents are private and are never shown publicly.
4. Automated review moderation
To protect everyone from fake, abusive, or personal-information-revealing reviews, new reviews pass through an automated check (which includes AI text analysis) before they are published. A review may be held for moderation (quarantined) if it looks inauthentic, is abusive, or appears to contain personal information. This is not a decision with legal consequences, and it does not determine your access to work — but if you believe a review about you (or one you wrote) was wrongly held or published, you can ask us to review it manually by contacting the Information Officer, and a person will look at it. Trust scores are calculated from your genuine activity on the platform.
5. Who we share it with (operators)
We use the following operators (processors), who handle data strictly on our behalf under contract:
- Supabase — our database, file storage and authentication (where your data is hosted).
- SMSPortal — delivering your sign-in one-time PINs by SMS.
- Google Firebase / Expo — delivering push notifications to your device.
- OpenAI — automated analysis of review text for authenticity and safety (see §4).
- Smile Identity — only if you choose to use optional identity verification.
We may disclose information if required by law, or where necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of our users or the public.
6. Cross-border transfers
Some operators above (e.g. Supabase, Firebase, OpenAI) may store or process your information outside South Africa. Where this happens, we take reasonable steps to ensure a comparable level of protection as required by section 72 of POPIA, through those operators' contractual and technical safeguards.
7. How long we keep it
We keep your information while your account is active and for as long as needed to provide the service. If you delete your account, we delete or de-identify your personal information within a reasonable period — except where we must retain limited records to comply with the law, resolve disputes, or enforce our terms.
8. Your rights (POPIA)
Subject to POPIA, you may: access the personal information we hold about you; request correction or deletion of information that is inaccurate or no longer needed; object to certain processing; and withdraw consent (for example, turn off location or notifications, or delete your account). To exercise these rights, contact the Information Officer above.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa) — enquiries@inforegulator.org.za / inforegulator.org.za.
9. Security
We take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect your information, including: encryption in transit; access controls so that users can only reach the data they're entitled to; restricting sensitive contact details (phone, email, notification tokens) so they are not exposed to other users; private storage for sensitive files such as verification selfies and documents; and an optional device app-lock (PIN/biometric). No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information as POPIA requires, and will notify you and the Regulator of a compromise where the law requires.
10. Children
TRST is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
11. Changes
We may update this policy from time to time. We'll post the updated version here and change the “Last updated” date above; we'll communicate material changes in the app.
12. Contact
Questions or requests: privacy@daverion.com.
This policy is provided in good faith to describe TRST's data practices under POPIA. It is a starting point and does not constitute legal advice — given that TRST processes biometric/identity data and is distributed through app stores, have it reviewed by an attorney before publishing, and confirm it matches your app-store data-safety disclosures.