Connust Open app

Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: 20 August, 2026

Last Updated: 22 August, 2026

Connust APP is a peer-to-peer marketplace platform that allows users to buy, sell, communicate about, and bid on products and services.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your personal information responsibly. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, when we may share it, and the choices available to you.

By using Connust, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy.

1. Information We Collect

Depending on how you use Connust, we may collect the following categories of information.

1.1 Account and Contact Information

When you create or manage an account, we may collect:

  • Name
  • Email address
  • Phone number
  • Profile photo
  • Password or authentication credentials
  • Account creation date
  • Account preferences and settings

We use this information to create and maintain your account, authenticate you, communicate with you, and provide marketplace services.

2. Phone Number Verification

We may collect and verify your phone number when you register for an account or request phone verification.

Your phone number may be used to:

  • Verify that you are a real user
  • Confirm ownership of the phone number
  • Help prevent fake, duplicate, and fraudulent accounts
  • Protect marketplace users from abuse and scams
  • Secure your account
  • Enable account recovery or authentication
  • Provide a phone verification badge or verification status where applicable
  • Support fraud-prevention and trust features

We do not display your private phone number publicly on your profile unless you choose to make it available through a feature of the application.

3. Identity Verification Information

Connust may offer an optional identity verification process for sellers and other users who want to establish a higher level of trust on the platform.

Depending on the verification level and applicable requirements, we may collect:

  • National identity document or government-issued identification
  • Information appearing on the identity document
  • Selfie or facial image submitted for verification
  • Verification status
  • Information necessary to determine whether the submitted information is valid
  • Information about the date and result of a verification attempt

Why We Collect Identity Information

We collect identity verification information to establish that a person using a Connust account is a real and identifiable person and to reduce fraud and abuse on our marketplace.

Identity verification helps us:

  • Reduce fake seller accounts
  • Reduce impersonation and identity-related fraud
  • Prevent users from creating fraudulent or duplicate accounts
  • Protect buyers from potentially fraudulent sellers
  • Protect legitimate sellers from fraudulent buyers
  • Investigate reports of scams, abuse, or suspicious activity
  • Improve trust and safety within the marketplace
  • Support our Verified Profile and ID Verified badges
  • Maintain a more reliable seller reputation system
  • Help prevent fraudulent transactions and marketplace abuse
  • Comply with applicable legal, regulatory, security, and fraud-prevention requirements where applicable

Identity verification is therefore used as a trust and safety measure and is not collected merely for marketing purposes.

Verification Levels

Connust may provide different levels of verification.

Basic Verified

May require:

  • Verified email address
  • Verified phone number

Identity Verified

May require:

  • Government-issued identification
  • Selfie or other identity verification information

Premium Trusted Seller

May require:

  • Identity verification
  • Successful sales
  • Positive ratings and other trust-related criteria

The information collected and requirements for each verification level may change as our verification and safety systems develop.

4. How We Use Identity Verification Information

We may use identity verification information to:

  • Verify the identity of an account holder.
  • Determine eligibility for an identity verification badge.
  • Prevent fraud, scams, impersonation, and abuse.
  • Detect suspicious or potentially fraudulent accounts.
  • Investigate reports and marketplace safety incidents.
  • Protect users and the integrity of the Connust marketplace.
  • Support our trust and reputation systems.
  • Meet legal or regulatory obligations where required.
  • Maintain security and prevent unauthorized use of the platform.

We do not use government identification documents or selfie verification information for unrelated advertising purposes.

5. Public Verification Information

When a user successfully completes a verification process, Connust may display limited verification information publicly on their profile, such as:

  • Verified
  • ID Verified
  • Trusted Seller
  • Verification status
  • Trust score or other trust indicators

We do not intend to publicly display the user’s full government identification document, identification number, or private verification images on their public profile.

6. Marketplace Information

When you use Connust to buy or sell products, we may collect information including:

  • Product listings
  • Product titles and descriptions
  • Product images and videos
  • Product prices
  • Product category
  • Product condition
  • Listing location
  • Bids and bidding history
  • Transaction-related information
  • Products sold
  • Products purchased
  • Listing views and other marketplace activity

We use this information to operate the marketplace, display listings, process bids, provide seller history, improve search results, and maintain marketplace safety.

7. Location Information

Depending on the features you use and the permissions you provide, Connust may collect or process location-related information.

Location information may be used to:

  • Show products available in your area
  • Improve local marketplace searches
  • Help buyers and sellers find relevant listings
  • Display approximate listing locations
  • Improve marketplace functionality

You may be able to control location permissions through your device settings.

8. Messages and Chat Information

Connust provides communication features between buyers and sellers.

When you use our chat system, we may process:

  • Messages
  • Images or files you send
  • Conversation information
  • Message timestamps
  • Read receipts
  • User identifiers associated with conversations

We use this information to provide messaging functionality, protect users, investigate reports, and help prevent fraud or abuse.

Users should avoid sending sensitive personal information through marketplace chat unless necessary.

9. Ratings, Reviews, and Reputation

After eligible transactions, users may be able to rate and review one another.

We may collect and display:

  • Ratings
  • Reviews
  • Seller response information
  • Buyer/seller transaction history
  • Number of products listed
  • Number of products sold
  • Account age
  • Verification status
  • Trust score
  • Other reputation-related information

This information helps users evaluate the reliability of buyers and sellers and helps Connust maintain a safer marketplace.

10. Bidding Information

If you participate in auctions or bidding, we may collect:

  • Your bids
  • Bid amounts
  • Bid times
  • Auction participation
  • Winning or losing bid status
  • Notifications relating to bids

This information is required to operate the bidding system and notify users when relevant bidding events occur.

11. Payment and Transaction Information

If Connust provides paid features, subscriptions, featured listings, or marketplace payment services, payment-related information may be processed through the applicable payment provider.

Connust does not currently process payments. Buyers and sellers arrange payment between themselves, and no paid features or subscriptions are active in the app. If payment features are introduced, this section will be updated to name the provider before any payment information is collected.

Where possible, payment card and financial information is handled directly by the applicable payment provider rather than being stored directly by Connust.

We may receive limited transaction information such as:

  • Payment status
  • Transaction reference
  • Amount
  • Subscription status
  • Payment date
  • Refund status

Payment providers may have their own privacy policies and terms.

12. Device and Technical Information

When you use Connust, we may automatically receive certain technical information, such as:

  • Device type
  • Operating system
  • App version
  • IP address
  • Device identifiers
  • Network information
  • Crash information
  • Log information
  • Authentication and security information

We use technical information to operate, secure, troubleshoot, and improve the application.

13. Notifications

With your permission, Connust may send push notifications regarding:

  • New messages
  • New bids
  • Being outbid
  • Products sold
  • Reviews
  • Verification status
  • Account activity
  • Security notifications
  • Important service updates

You can manage notification permissions through your device settings where supported.

14. How We Use Your Information

We may use collected information to:

  • Create and manage user accounts
  • Authenticate users
  • Verify phone numbers
  • Verify identities
  • Provide marketplace services
  • Publish and manage listings
  • Enable bidding
  • Facilitate buyer-seller communication
  • Display ratings and reviews
  • Calculate trust and reputation indicators
  • Detect and prevent fraud
  • Investigate suspicious activity
  • Respond to reports
  • Prevent abuse and unauthorized access
  • Send service-related communications
  • Provide customer support
  • Improve application performance
  • Analyze usage and marketplace activity
  • Develop new features
  • Process subscriptions and paid services
  • Comply with applicable laws and legal obligations

15. Fraud Prevention and Security

Because Connust is a peer-to-peer marketplace, preventing fraud and abuse is an important part of our service.

We may use automated systems, including fraud-detection or AI-assisted systems, and manual review processes to identify:

  • Suspicious accounts
  • Duplicate listings
  • Spam
  • Fake or misleading listings
  • Suspicious user activity
  • Potential scams
  • Abuse of the platform
  • Attempts to manipulate ratings or bidding

Where appropriate, we may suspend, restrict, or permanently remove accounts or listings that violate our rules or present a safety risk.

16. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information for money.

We may share or disclose information when reasonably necessary to provide our services, including with:

Service Providers

We may use third-party service providers for services such as:

  • Cloud hosting
  • Database infrastructure
  • Authentication
  • File and image storage
  • Push notifications
  • Analytics
  • Payment processing
  • Fraud prevention
  • Identity verification
  • Customer support

Our current infrastructure includes Firebase (authentication, phone verification and push notifications) and a PostgreSQL database on our own server, where uploaded files including identity documents are stored on encrypted disk rather than with a third-party object-storage provider.

Legal and Safety Reasons

We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to:

  • Comply with applicable law
  • Respond to lawful requests
  • Protect users
  • Investigate fraud or abuse
  • Prevent security threats
  • Enforce our terms and policies
  • Protect our rights, property, or safety

Business Transfers

If Connust is involved in a merger, acquisition, restructuring, financing, sale of assets, or similar transaction, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to applicable law.

17. Firebase and Google Services

Connust may use Firebase and other Google services for functions such as authentication, phone verification, notifications, application infrastructure, security, and related services.

Depending on the services enabled in the application, Google may process information in accordance with its own policies and applicable contractual requirements.

For phone verification and authentication, information may be processed to verify account ownership and protect against abuse.

18. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to:

  • Provide our services
  • Maintain account and transaction records
  • Maintain security
  • Prevent fraud
  • Resolve disputes
  • Enforce our agreements
  • Meet legal or regulatory requirements

Identity verification information may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary to maintain verification status, protect the marketplace, prevent repeated fraudulent activity, investigate disputes or abuse, or satisfy applicable legal obligations.

Retention periods may vary depending on the type of information and the purpose for which it was collected.

19. Account and Data Deletion

You can delete your Connust account from inside the app, under Account → Delete account, or by writing to us using the contact details below. Full instructions are on our account deletion page.

Deletion is not immediate. For 30 days after you ask, your account is scheduled but nothing is destroyed: you are signed out and your listings stop appearing, but every piece of your data is still intact. Signing in during that window and choosing Cancel deletion restores everything exactly as it was. That period exists because a deletion request is not always made by the account holder, and somebody whose account was taken over needs time to undo it. After 30 days the deletion runs and cannot be reversed.

When it runs, your name, email address, phone number, profile photo, password, linked Google sign-in, bio, location, identity documents, the CNIC number recorded at verification, and your notifications are erased, and your listings are taken down.

Some information is deliberately kept, because it does not belong to you alone:

  • Messages you sent, because each conversation is also the other person’s record of a deal they took part in
  • Reviews you wrote and received, because a review you left forms part of another seller’s rating that other buyers rely on
  • Bids you placed, because they sit inside auctions other people took part in

These no longer carry your name and are shown as written by “Deleted user”.

We also keep a one-way code derived from your CNIC and phone number for 2 years, after which it is deleted automatically. It cannot be turned back into the number it came from. It exists so that an account removed for fraud cannot be deleted and immediately recreated with the same identity card or SIM.

Where the law or an active investigation requires us to retain records, we will keep them for as long as required and will tell you when you ask.

20. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, loss, or misuse.

However, no internet-based service can guarantee absolute security.

Users are responsible for keeping their account credentials and devices secure.

21. Children’s Privacy

Connust is not intended for children who are not legally permitted to use peer-to-peer marketplace services.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children in violation of applicable laws.

If you believe a child has provided personal information to us improperly, please contact us so that we can investigate and take appropriate action.

22. Your Privacy Choices

Depending on your location and applicable law, you may have rights regarding your personal information, including rights to:

  • Request access to certain personal information
  • Request correction of inaccurate information
  • Request deletion of information
  • Withdraw certain permissions
  • Control device permissions
  • Request information about how your data is used
  • Object to or restrict certain processing where legally applicable

Some requests may be subject to legal or security limitations.

23. Third-Party Services and Links

Connust may contain links to third-party websites, services, payment providers, or other platforms.

We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third-party services that we do not control.

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of third-party services before providing them with personal information.

24. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our services, technology, legal requirements, or privacy practices.

When we make changes, we will update the “Last Updated” date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

Where required by law, we will provide additional notice or obtain consent for material changes.

25. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, your personal information, identity verification, or a data deletion request, please contact us:

Important Notice About Identity Verification

Connust’s identity verification system exists primarily to create a safer and more trustworthy marketplace.

We collect identity verification information, such as government-issued identification and selfie verification where applicable, because a peer-to-peer marketplace can be exposed to fake accounts, impersonation, scams, fraudulent sellers, and other forms of abuse.

The purpose of identity verification is to help establish that an account belongs to a real person, reduce fraudulent activity, protect buyers and sellers, support verification badges, and improve trust in the marketplace.

We do not intend to use government identification documents or identity-verification images for unrelated advertising purposes.

By voluntarily submitting information for identity verification, you acknowledge that the information will be processed for the verification, security, fraud-prevention, and trust-and-safety purposes described in this Privacy Policy.