Privacy Policy

1Overview & Scope

This Privacy Policy explains how Fastest Freelancers (“Fastest Freelancers,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, shares, and protects information when you use our website, applications, and services (the “Platform”). It applies to Clients, Freelancers, and visitors.

Fastest Freelancers is a United States-only marketplace. We intend the Platform for use by individuals and businesses located in the United States, and we process data in the United States. By using the Platform, you agree to this Policy and to our Terms of Service.

2Information We Collect

Information you provide

• Account & profile: name, username, email, phone, password, role (Client/Freelancer), profile photo, bio, skills, portfolio, services, and rates.
• Verification & security: the one-time codes we send to confirm your email address and US mobile number, and your two-step verification settings if you turn it on (email codes by default, or an authenticator-app secret or a text-message method if you choose one instead), including the one-time sign-in codes we email you.
• Profile photo check: when you upload a profile photo, it is analyzed by an image-recognition service to confirm it shows a human face. We use the result only to accept or decline the photo.
• Identity & verification (KYC): information you or our payment processor collect to verify identity and eligibility before you withdraw funds, which may include government ID, date of birth, and business details.
• Payment & payout: bank/card and payout details, and tax information such as a Form W-9. Full financial-instrument numbers are collected and stored by our payment processor, not by us.
• Engagement content: Projects, Contests, services, proposals, deliverables, messages and dispute-chat content, reviews, files you upload, and your acknowledgment of any IP Agreement or NDA a listing requires.
• Hourly time tracking: on an hourly contract, the sessions the Freelancer tracks or enters, their memos and daily diary notes, the Client’s comments and flags, and the Freelancer’s opt-in to sharing a screen, a window or a browser tab, recorded with a timestamp when they accept the hourly terms.
• Beta feedback: if you take part in our feedback program, the notes, screenshots, and voice recordings you submit (voice recordings are transcribed to text).
• Support & correspondence: information you provide when you contact us.

Information we collect automatically

• Usage & device: pages viewed, actions taken, IP address, browser and device type, approximate location (city and region, as resolved by our hosting provider from your IP address), and timestamps. We use sign-in location and device to show you your sign-in history and active sessions and to alert you to new sign-ins.
• Phone line information: when you verify a mobile number, our SMS provider tells us its carrier and line type (for example, mobile or landline) so we can accept only eligible US mobile numbers.
• Hourly timer screenshots: while a Freelancer runs the hourly timer, their browser shares the screen, window or browser tab the Freelancer chooses, and takes a screenshot of it at each time on a schedule our server chooses: 1 minute after Start, every 15 minutes for the first hour, then every 30 minutes, each moved at random by up to 3 minutes. Each screenshot and a small thumbnail of it are uploaded to our servers, which record the time it arrived. Anything visible in the shared screen, window or tab at that moment is captured, including content unrelated to the project, so Freelancers should close private material in it before starting the timer. While the timer runs, the Freelancer may move the share to another screen, window or tab; the screenshots then show the new one. No screenshot is taken while the timer is stopped, and nothing is captured outside the timer.
• Session recordings: where enabled, a session-replay tool records how pages are used (clicks, scrolling, and page structure), with sign-up and sign-in fields (including passwords, email addresses, phone numbers, and verification codes), chat messages, dispute chats, two-step verification secrets, and payment fields masked before capture (see Section 7).
• Cookies & similar technologies: identifiers used to keep you signed in, remember preferences, secure the Platform, and measure usage (see Section 7).
• Arrivals from AI products: when you reach the Platform from a link in an AI product (for example ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini) or from a handoff link an AI agent prepared for you, the product it came from, the page you arrived on, any campaign tags in the link, and a random identifier stored in your browser. If you sign in or create an account on that browser, we connect that first visit to your account to learn which AI products lead to new accounts, Projects, Contests, and purchases.
• AI agent visits: for page requests we reasonably identify, in good faith, as coming from an AI agent (the request names a known AI agent and is either cryptographically signed by it or arrives from the IP addresses its operator publishes for it), the agent, the page it requested, its request headers other than cookies and credentials, and its IP address and approximate location. These describe the agent’s operator, not a person. This identification is reasonable but not certain: a recorded request could, rarely, have been sent by someone other than the agent it names, and we will delete a record on request if you believe it describes your own activity (see Section 22 of the Terms of Service).
• Failed AI agent claims: when a request claims to be a known AI agent but cannot be identified as one, a daily count of such requests by claimed agent, reason, and network block (the first three parts of an IPv4 address, or the first three groups of an IPv6 address), with the last page requested. We do not keep the individual address. We use these counts to detect and stop impersonation and attacks.

Information from third parties

We receive information from our payment processor (verification status, payout status, and transaction results), from our SMS provider (phone carrier and line type), and from Google or Apple if you sign in through them (your name, email address, and an account identifier, subject to what you choose to share with them).

An AI agent you use may also send us a draft Project, Contest, or service purchase for you, and, only if you agreed to share it, your email address together with the words you agreed to. We never send email to an address an agent gives us. We use it only to recognize you if you create an account and to measure whether drafts prepared by agents lead to posts and purchases.

3How We Use Information

• Provide, operate, and maintain the Platform and your account;
• Match Clients and Freelancers and facilitate engagements, messaging, and deliverables;
• Process payments, fund and release Escrow, issue payouts, calculate fees, and handle refunds;
• Verify identity and eligibility, check profile photos, secure accounts (including two-step verification and new sign-in alerts), prevent fraud, and enforce our Terms;
• Monitor AI agent traffic for patterns of abuse and cyber attacks, and protect the Platform and its users against them, and understand which AI products bring people to the Platform and what they go on to do (see Section 22 of the Terms of Service);
• Operate AI drafting and ranking features, AI Mediation, and human dispute review (see Section 5);
• Record and show the IP Agreement and NDA acknowledgments a listing requires to the Client who bought them;
• Run the hourly timer: take and store its screenshots, show them to the contract’s Client and Freelancer as proof of the hours billed, and build the work-diary download package;
• Provide customer support and respond to your requests;
• Send transactional messages (account, security, payment, and dispute notices) and, where permitted, product and marketing messages you can opt out of;
• Analyze usage to improve, secure, and develop the Platform;
• Comply with legal, tax, and regulatory obligations and enforce our rights.

4Payments & Stripe

Payment processing, Wallet funding, Escrow, KYC, and payouts are handled by our payment processor (currently Stripe). When you provide payment or payout details, that information is collected and processed by the processor under its own privacy policy and security controls; we receive limited results such as verification status, the last digits or type of an instrument, and transaction outcomes. We do not store full card or bank-account numbers.

5AI Processing & Dispute Mediation

We use automated and AI systems in these parts of the Platform:

• Drafting, at your request: when you press a generate or rewrite button, the listing, your profile (bio, skills, and track record), and what you have typed are sent to an AI model to draft a listing, proposal, contest entry, or field for you to edit. Nothing is submitted until you submit it.
• Proposal ranking: when a Client reviews proposals, freelancer profiles and proposals are processed by an AI model to suggest the best matches for that Project.
• Writing-style score: cover letters are scored by an in-house heuristic (no outside AI service) for how machine-written they read, which a Client may use as a sort order. It is a style estimate, not a finding about who wrote the text.
• AI Mediation: when a dispute is opened, the relevant engagement record (agreed scope, deliverables, messages and evidence submitted in the dispute, and Platform activity) is processed by our AI systems to summarize the dispute and recommend a resolution.
• Hourly timer screenshots: screenshots taken by the hourly timer are not sent to any AI model.
• Beta feedback: feedback you submit may be processed by an AI model to categorize it, and voice recordings are transcribed by a speech-to-text provider.

• AI recommendations are decision-support. Money moves in a dispute only by the parties’ agreement, a stated response deadline, or a decision by a human reviewer on escalation.
• We send AI providers only the information reasonably needed for the specific request, and we log usage (such as token counts and cost), not the content.
• AI processing uses service providers under contract, currently an AI model gateway (OpenRouter) that routes requests to model providers such as Anthropic and Google, and a speech-to-text provider (Groq). Those providers may not use your content to train their own general models except as permitted by our agreements.

For details on how disputes are handled, see the Terms of Service, Section 11.

6How We Share Information

We share information in these limited circumstances:

• With other users: your profile, listings, proposals, ratings, and the messages and deliverables you exchange are shared with the counterparties you engage, as needed to run the engagement and any dispute. On an hourly contract, the work diary, including the timer’s screenshots, is shared with both the Client and the Freelancer on that contract and with no other user, and either of them can download it.
• Service providers: each operates under contracts that limit their use of the data to providing services to us. We currently use:
  • Stripe: payments, Escrow funding, identity verification (KYC), payouts, and tax forms;
  • Twilio: phone-number lookup (carrier and line type) and delivery of text-message verification and sign-in codes;
  • Resend: email delivery;
  • Pusher: real-time delivery of chat messages and online status;
  • Google Cloud Vision: the profile-photo face check;
  • OpenRouter (routing to model providers such as Anthropic and Google) and Groq: AI features and speech-to-text (see Section 5);
  • Cloudflare: private storage of hourly timer screenshots and work-diary download packages;
  • Microsoft Clarity: session recording and heatmaps for signed-in users, with sensitive fields masked;
  • Google Analytics: aggregate visit and sign-up statistics, such as which pages are viewed and where visitors arrive from;
  • Netlify: website and application hosting, file storage, and approximate location from IP address;
  • PlanetScale: database hosting;
  • Google and Apple: sign-in, if you choose it, and Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when our pages load their typeface.
• Legal & safety: to comply with law, subpoenas, or lawful requests; to enforce our Terms; to protect the rights, property, and safety of Fastest Freelancers, our users, or the public; and for tax reporting.
• Business transfers: in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.
• With your direction or consent: when you ask us to share information.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising in exchange for money.

7Cookies & Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember your preferences, secure the Platform, and understand how it is used:

• Strictly necessary cookies: our own cookies hold your signed-in session, a pending two-step verification step, and the short-lived security values used while you sign in with Google or Apple. When you open a payment form, our payment processor, Stripe, sets its own cookies to prevent fraud.
• Browser storage: we keep preferences such as your current role, layout choices, and pinned or collapsed chats in your browser’s local storage. This stays on your device.
• Session recording: when you are signed in, Microsoft Clarity sets its own cookies to record page interactions and produce heatmaps, with sensitive fields masked.
• Analytics: Google Analytics sets its own cookies to measure visits, where visitors arrive from, and how many go on to sign up. We do not send it your name, email address, or the content you write.
• Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics are our only non-essential cookies.

You can opt out of non-essential cookies in Settings → Security. Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics then no longer load on any browser you sign in on, and their cookies already stored there are removed. You can also install Google’s Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

We do not use advertising cookies. You can control cookies and local storage through your browser settings, though blocking necessary cookies will prevent you from signing in. We honor recognized browser privacy signals where required by law.

8Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the Platform. After an account is deleted, we retain its personal information for up to 30 days for compliance purposes, after which we delete or de-identify it. The only exception is records we are legally required to keep for longer, such as transaction and tax records, which we retain only for the period the law requires.

Hourly timer screenshots

• Live screenshots are kept for 90 days, at full size, and then deleted. These are the screenshots shown in the work diary.
• The work-diary download package is always kept, at full size, for 1 year after the project ends, and then deleted. As each week of an hourly contract is billed, its screenshots are copied into the package, so the package holds every screenshot of the project. Neither party can turn this off.

Both periods are enforced by deletion rules on the storage itself, not by a separate job that could fail to run. Deleting an account does not shorten them. A contract’s screenshots are a shared record of both parties, so they stay available to the contract’s parties for their full periods even after either party deletes their account. The 30-day period above applies to the deleted account’s own information.

AI visitors

• Counts of failed AI agent claims are kept for 90 days.
• AI agent visits are kept for 90 days, unless a record is needed longer to investigate or respond to a specific security incident, and then only for as long as that requires.
• Drafts AI agents prepare (handoff links), including any email address an agent shared with your consent, are kept until 90 days after the link expires. Links expire 14 days after they are made.
• Your first visit from an AI product is kept for 2 years.

You can ask us to delete any of these sooner by writing to privacy@fastestfreelancers.com.

9Security

We use technical, administrative, and physical safeguards designed to protect your information, including encryption in transit, access controls, optional two-step verification (a code sent by email by default, or an authenticator app or text-message codes as alternatives), email alerts for new sign-ins, and the use of a PCI-compliant payment processor for financial data. Hourly timer screenshots are uploaded through our own servers, never directly to storage, are stored privately at random addresses, and are shown only through short-lived links tied to the signed-in Client or Freelancer on that contract. Each download of a work-diary package is logged. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Protect your account by using a strong, unique password and notifying us promptly of any suspected compromise.

10Your Privacy Rights

Depending on your state of residence (for example, under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA, and comparable laws in other U.S. states), you may have the right to:

• Know and access the personal information we hold about you;
• Request correction of inaccurate information;
• Request deletion of your information, subject to legal exceptions;
• Obtain a portable copy of certain information;
• Opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information (note: we do not sell or share for cross-context behavioral advertising); and
• Not be discriminated against for exercising your rights.

You can review and correct most profile and account information yourself in your account settings. To exercise any other right, including deleting your account, email privacy@fastestfreelancers.com. We will verify your request and respond within the timeframes required by law. You may use an authorized agent where permitted. If we deny a request, you may appeal by replying to our decision.

11Your Communication Choices & SMS

We send transactional messages necessary to operate your account, payments, and disputes; you cannot opt out of these while you have an active account. For promotional email, you can unsubscribe using the link in the message or by updating your notification preferences. You can manage in-Platform and email notification settings in your account.

SMS / text messages

We send text messages only to deliver one-time codes you ask for: the verification code sent to the US mobile number you enter during signup, and, only if you choose text-message two-step verification in your security settings instead of the default email codes, the code that confirms it is you when you turn it on or sign in. We do not send marketing or promotional texts, and we do not add your number to any recurring or automated messaging program.

• How consent is collected: during signup (Step 2 of 4, “Verify your account”) you enter your own mobile number and must actively check a consent box. The box is unchecked by default and the “Send Verification Code” button stays disabled until you check it, so no text is sent unless you ask for one. Sign-in codes are sent only after you turn on text-message two-step verification yourself.
• Opting out: replying STOP opts the number out immediately and blocks any further messages from this program; STOP is honored automatically at the messaging-service and carrier level. If you use text-message two-step verification, switch it to email or an authenticator app, or turn it off, in your security settings first, or you may be unable to receive your sign-in code.
• Why there is no recurring list: the code is the verification. Each message is a single code sent in response to your own request, and it cannot be delivered any other way.
• Help: reply HELP to learn more, or contact support@fastestfreelancers.com. Message and data rates may apply; message frequency is one message per code request.
• How the number is used: for verification, account security, and fraud prevention. We do not sell your mobile number, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing. It is shared only with the messaging carrier and our SMS provider (Twilio) as needed to look up the line and deliver the code (see Section 6).
• Removing your number: you may remove or change the mobile number on your account, or ask us to delete it, subject to the limits in Sections 8 and 10. Some records of a completed verification are retained for security and legal purposes.

A full written record of this consent flow, including the exact wording shown at signup, is published at fastestfreelancers.com/sms-opt-in.

12Children’s Privacy

The Platform is not directed to children. Minors are strictly prohibited from creating individual accounts: you must be at least 18 years old to create one. A user under 18 may use the Platform only through an account owned and managed by a parent or legal guardian, who is responsible for the account and for the information provided through it. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a minor through an individual account; if we learn that we have, we will close the account and delete that information. If you believe a minor has created an individual account or provided us information, contact privacy@fastestfreelancers.com.

13U.S.-Only Processing

The Platform is intended for users located in the United States, and we process and store information in the United States. We do not intend to offer the Platform to, or knowingly collect information from, individuals located outside the United States. If you access the Platform from outside the United States, you do so at your own risk and are responsible for compliance with local law.

14Third-Party Links & Services

The Platform may link to third-party websites or services that we do not control. This Policy does not apply to those third parties, and we are not responsible for their privacy practices. Review the privacy policies of any third-party services you use, including our payment processor.

15Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will post the updated Policy with a new “Last updated” date and, where required, provide additional notice. Your continued use of the Platform after the changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.

16Contact Us

For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact us at privacy@fastestfreelancers.com. For general support, email support@fastestfreelancers.com.