Privacy Policy

01Who we are and what this covers

DriftRoute LLC, a Michigan limited liability company (“DriftRoute”, “we”, “us”), sells on-demand snow removal visits to Michigan homeowners, performed by local snow removal providers. Anyone can create an account, and the service is offered only in Michigan, United States. Legal notices may be sent by post to DriftRoute LLC, PO Box 12, Belmont, MI 49306.

This policy explains what personal information DriftRoute collects when you use the website and the accounts it offers (homeowner, provider and operations), why we collect it, who can see it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. It applies to everyone who uses the website, whether or not they sign in, and whatever role they hold.

These companies process information on our behalf and under their own policies, which you should read alongside this one: Cloudflare (hosting, data and file storage, and the approximate area of your connection), Clerk (sign-in, sign-up and account pages), Google (only if you choose to sign in with Google), Stadia Maps (address lookups and map images), Stripe (payments, and providers’ pay through Stripe Connect) and Resend (transactional email). Where DriftRoute sends information to any of them, this policy says so.

02What we collect

DriftRoute collects only what the service needs to work. Nothing is collected in the background that you do not enter, upload or choose to share.

Sign-in identity

Sign-in is handled by Clerk, with a code sent to your email address or with your Google account, not by DriftRoute. When you sign in, DriftRoute receives a stable identifier for your Clerk account and the email address Clerk verified. We store those two values, the date your account was first seen, and the internal account key they map to. DriftRoute has no passwords and never receives one. If the verified email on your sign-in changes, the stored address is updated to match. Clerk keeps its own record of sign-in activity, such as the device and IP address used, to protect accounts. If you choose Google, Google confirms who you are to Clerk under Google’s own terms. You create your sign-in yourself, on Clerk’s sign-up page. When a business adds you as a driver and your email address has no sign-in yet, DriftRoute gives Clerk that address so that Clerk can email you a link to create one.

Homeowner profile and visits

• Profile: your name, phone number and property street address.
• Each visit you request: the property address as you typed it, the service, property size, timing, any notes you add for the provider, the quoted price, the visit’s status and timestamps, and a map coordinate for the property (see “Location and maps” below).
• After a visit: your star rating and written review, if you leave one.
• Payment records: the Stripe reference for your card hold, the amounts held, charged and refunded, what of each charge went to the provider and to DriftRoute, the link to Stripe’s receipt, the text of any problem you report within the 24-hour window, and the status of any card dispute. Card numbers never reach DriftRoute; see “Payments”.
• Payment checks: the reference of the Stripe customer record DriftRoute creates for your account; for each card hold, Stripe’s assessment of the payment’s risk, a fingerprint Stripe computes for the card (it identifies the card, not its number) and whether your bank verified the payment with 3-D Secure; any early warning of fraud your card issuer sends about a charge; and a record of each checkout that did not become a visit (declined, left unfinished or withdrawn) and of any request refused under the checkout limits.

Provider profile and documents

• Business identity: your business structure, your legal and display names, contact name, phone, email, website, description, service area, services, equipment, how your business clears snow (walk-behind equipment only, or a vehicle or ride-on equipment), staffing, base price, availability, and a logo if you upload one.
• Coverage evidence: the insurance documents you upload (general liability, auto liability for a vehicle or ride-on equipment, workers’ compensation or a Notice of Exclusion) and the details you enter with them: named insured, carrier, policy number, effective and expiry dates, limits and notes. If you make the sole proprietor declaration instead, DriftRoute records its exact words and version, your account and business, and when you made it. Don’t upload a document that shows a Social Security number: black every one out first. If DriftRoute reads one in an upload, it refuses the upload and never stores the file, keeping only a record of the refusal without the number. If a file already stored shows one, DriftRoute deletes the file, the text read from it and the details taken from it, keeps a record that it did so without the number, and asks you for a redacted copy. Backup copies expire within 30 days.
• Review state: your application status, reviewer decisions and notes, and any edits held for re-review.
• Drivers: each driver’s name and sign-in email, as the business gives them when it invites the driver; the business’s statement on the invitation that the person works for it, is covered by its insurance and, if they drive a vehicle for its work, holds a valid driver’s license; and the driver’s own statements when they accept and since: that they are at least 18, and whether they drive a vehicle for the business’s work with, for a yes, that they hold a valid driver’s license. A business may also record that a driver does not drive a vehicle for it. Each statement is kept with its date and the version of the Terms of Service it was given under. DriftRoute does not ask for a license number or a copy of a license, and does not check licenses.
• Stripe account: the identifier of your Stripe Connect account, whether Stripe reports it ready to receive transfers, and what DriftRoute has paid to it. Your bank details, tax identifiers and identity documents are collected by Stripe on Stripe’s own pages, where Stripe verifies your identity, and are never stored in DriftRoute’s own database. DriftRoute’s onboarding never asks for your taxpayer identification number; see “Payments” for the one case where DriftRoute asks for a Form W-9.

Messages, photos and reviews

Messages sent within a visit, the completion photo a provider attaches to finish a job, and homeowner reviews are stored with the visit they belong to. A completion photo is stored as the device sent it, which can include when and where it was taken and what took it, depending on the device and its settings. A business’s logo is shown publicly, so those details are removed from it before it is stored.

Records of actions

DriftRoute keeps an audit log of significant actions: an account being created, a document or application decision, a visit status change, a payment or payout event (including each time a business’s payout settings are opened), and each email notice sent, skipped or failed. Entries record who acted, on what, and when. They exist so operations can answer questions about a visit and so decisions can be checked later.

What we do not collect

There are no advertising trackers, analytics scripts or advertising cookies on DriftRoute. The only cookies DriftRoute uses are those Clerk sets to keep you signed in; when you enter a card, Stripe’s payment form also uses cookies of its own to help prevent fraud, as Stripe’s cookie policy describes. We do not buy data about you, build profiles for marketing, or collect information from your contacts, social accounts or other websites.

03Why we use it

We use the information above to:

• let homeowners find approved providers, request a single visit, follow the job and review the finished work;
• let providers publish a listing, receive and complete jobs, and be reviewed for eligibility;
• quote a price on the server from the provider’s base price and the property size, so that a quote cannot be altered in the browser;
• review provider applications and insurance evidence, and check that coverage is current before a provider is listed or advances a job;
• hold, charge and refund the card payment for a visit, and have Stripe move each provider’s share to them, and handle problem reports and card disputes;
• issue providers the Forms 1099 the law requires;
• with Stripe, check payments for fraud, review a payment the checks or your card issuer flag before the card is charged, and limit repeated unfinished checkouts;
• send you a notice when something happens to your visit that needs your attention;
• keep homeowner, provider and operations access separate and enforce it on the server;
• investigate a reported problem, a dispute or misuse, and keep records that the law, our payment processor or a dispute process requires;
• run, secure and improve DriftRoute.

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell it or share it for others to advertise to you.

04Who can see what

Access is decided by role and enforced by the server on every request. The table below is the actual rule set; if you find it does not match what you see, tell us.

“Operations” means DriftRoute staff whose accounts are each listed in the deployment’s settings, working on the deployment’s separate staff web address, with a second sign-in step confirmed within the last 48 hours. An email address alone never makes anyone operations. Their actions are logged like everyone else’s.

05Location and maps

Providers: sharing your position

A provider’s position is shared only when the provider turns sharing on, or taps “Head to job”, which starts sharing in the same tap so that the browser’s permission prompt is yours to answer. The position comes from your device’s browser and is self-reported; DriftRoute does not verify it and says so wherever it is shown. Positions with an accuracy worse than 100 meters are not published. While you are available for requests, a published position is public: it appears on DriftRoute’s map to anyone visiting the website, signed in or not, while it is less than 90 seconds old. It shows where your device is, so sharing while parked at home shows your home; turn sharing or new requests off before you head home. While you are not available for requests, only the homeowner of a job in progress and operations see it.

DriftRoute stores only the latest position per driver, each report replacing the one before, so it keeps no record of where a driver has been. Turning sharing off, or refusing the browser’s location permission, deletes the stored position immediately; a position older than 90 seconds disappears from discovery on its own, and one not updated for 15 minutes is deleted within 5 minutes after that. When a page is in the background or the screen is locked, the browser stops reporting and nothing new is stored. The audit log notes when a driver’s sharing starts and stops, not where they were. Like everything in our database, a deleted position remains in its recovery copies, kept so the database can be restored after a failure, for up to 30 days.

Where the map starts

When you open a map of providers, signed in or not, DriftRoute asks your browser for your location, to center the map near you, list the providers whose service area may cover it, and show how far each is from you. Coverage is confirmed for the service address when you request a visit. If you allow it, your position centers the map in your browser, and to find those providers it is sent to our server rounded to about half a mile; DriftRoute does not store or log it. If you do not allow it, or your browser cannot tell, the map starts around an approximate area that Cloudflare estimates from your internet connection, which can be wrong; that is not stored either. Your location only places the map: you confirm the service address when you request a visit, and the visit uses that address.

Homeowners: your property on the map

When you search an address or request a visit, DriftRoute looks the address up on its server using Stadia Maps’ geocoding service to place it on the map and to tell a provider when they are close. The lookup is made by our server, so your IP address is never sent to the geocoder. Queries are not logged by DriftRoute; Stadia Maps keeps its own request logs, which can include the address looked up, for about 7 to 14 days. A result may be kept in our server’s cache for up to a day, so that a repeated search needs no new lookup. The resulting coordinate is stored with your visit. Your typed address remains the record the provider works from. A provider’s base address is looked up the same way when it is saved. Anyone may search an address on the map without signing in; to limit abuse, searches are counted for one minute per account or, for someone who is not signed in, per internet connection (IP address), and that count is not kept.

Map tiles and directions

The map images themselves are loaded by your browser directly from Stadia Maps, which therefore sees your IP address and the area you are viewing, as with any web map. Your browser tells Stadia Maps which website the map is on, never which page. The “Directions” link a provider can use opens their own maps app with the job address as the destination; DriftRoute sends nothing to that app other than the address in the link.

06Payments

Payments are processed by Stripe. DriftRoute is the merchant of record for each visit, and Stripe, through Stripe Connect, moves the provider’s share of each charge to the provider’s Stripe account. When you request a visit, your browser sends your card details to Stripe through Stripe’s own payment form. Card numbers never pass through or rest on DriftRoute’s systems. DriftRoute stores only Stripe’s reference for the hold and the amounts held, charged and refunded, and how each charge was split.

DriftRoute sends Stripe the amount, a description that names the service and the visit reference, and your verified sign-in email so that Stripe can email you a receipt when a hold is charged or a refund is made. On your first request, DriftRoute creates a Stripe customer record for your account, holding that email and DriftRoute’s reference for your account and nothing else, so that Stripe can assess the payments made from one account together. Stripe’s use of your information is described in Stripe’s privacy policy.

From each card hold, DriftRoute keeps Stripe’s assessment of the payment’s risk, the card’s fingerprint and the 3-D Secure result, and records any early fraud warning your card issuer sends. These help prevent fraud: a hold Stripe’s checks rate at the highest risk is released and not placed as a request, and a completed visit’s charge may wait for operations to review a flagged payment before it is made. DriftRoute also compares each completion photo, by a hash of its file, with the photos of other visits, and each card’s fingerprint with the cards used on other accounts, so that a reused photo or a shared card can be reviewed before the card is charged. A request is refused while two checkouts are already open, and for 24 hours after three checkouts in 24 hours were declined, left unfinished or withdrawn by those checks.

Providers are paid through Stripe Connect. Stripe collects a provider’s identity, bank and tax information on Stripe-hosted pages and verifies the provider’s identity during onboarding. DriftRoute, not Stripe, issues the Forms 1099 the law requires for what providers receive, using the legal name, address and taxpayer identification number (TIN) Stripe collects, or, only when Stripe’s TIN is missing or invalid, the one you give DriftRoute on a Form W-9. DriftRoute’s onboarding never asks for a TIN. Either way, the TIN is kept under DriftRoute’s Social Security number privacy policy: only in Stripe and DriftRoute’s tax-reporting records, never in DriftRoute’s own database, file storage, emails or notes. DriftRoute stores only the account identifier, Stripe’s report of whether the account can receive transfers, and what was paid to it.

When a payment is disputed with a card issuer, DriftRoute may provide Stripe with the records of the visit that are relevant to the dispute: the request, the status history, messages, the completion photo and any problem report. Stripe’s test mode, used on preview deployments, moves no real money.

07Email notices

A homeowner is emailed only about their own visits: when a request is accepted, declined or expires, and when a visit is completed and charged or canceled; also when a cancellation fee applies, and when a problem they reported is received and when it is decided. A business and its drivers are emailed about new requests and cancellations and problem reports on their own jobs, and a business owner about the business’s application, documents, approval, suspension and coverage, a payout that is held, and its payout settings being opened. Messages between a homeowner and a provider are never emailed. There is no newsletter or marketing email.

Notices are sent to your verified sign-in address, never to an address typed into a profile, through Resend, our email delivery service. A queued notice records the recipient address; that record is deleted 30 days after the notice is sent or given up on. Notices to the operations team carry a reference to the visit or business and a link, never a homeowner’s address or the wording of a problem report.

Card receipts are sent by Stripe, not by DriftRoute, so you receive one receipt per charge.

08When we share information

We share personal information only in these cases:

• Publicly, on the map, as set out in “Who can see what”: an approved provider’s listing and, while a driver is available for requests and sharing, their position for 90 seconds after each report. Anyone visiting the website can see these without signing in.
• With the homeowner or the provider of a visit, as set out in “Who can see what”: a provider sees the property address and notes for a visit they are assigned; a homeowner sees the provider’s listing and, while a job is active, the provider’s shared position.
• For a claim of damage or injury, as the Terms of Service set out under “Damage or injury”: when the homeowner or the provider of a visit asks, we give them that visit’s records (the request and its property notes, the status history with times, the messages and the completion photo), and we give the same records to their insurer when either of them asks us in writing.
• With service providers that run DriftRoute: Cloudflare hosts the application, stores the database and uploaded files, and estimates the approximate area of your connection for the map; Clerk provides sign-in and sign-up, and emails sign-up links to drivers a business adds; Stripe processes payments and moves providers’ pay; Resend delivers email notices. Stadia Maps receives address lookups from our server and map image requests from your browser. Each acts under its own terms and privacy policy and only for the purpose described.
• When required by law, such as a subpoena, court order or a lawful request from a public authority, or to protect the safety or rights of a homeowner, a provider, DriftRoute or the public.
• In a change of ownership of DriftRoute, in which case this policy continues to apply to the information transferred until it is replaced with notice to you.

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

09How long we keep it

When you ask us to delete your account we remove your profile and personal details. We may keep a visit’s financial records, dispute evidence and audit entries where law, our payment processor or an open dispute requires it, and records that are needed to protect DriftRoute or another person from a claim; those are kept only for that purpose and for as long as it lasts.

10How we protect it

• Sign-in is handled by Clerk, so DriftRoute holds no passwords. Our servers verify your sign-in each time your account is used, and act only for the account that sign-in belongs to.
• Authorization is enforced on our servers for every read and write: a homeowner sees only their own visits, a business only its own jobs and a driver only the jobs assigned to them, and documents only their owner and operations. Operations is limited to listed DriftRoute staff with a recent second sign-in step, and their actions are recorded in the audit log.
• Uploaded files are kept in private storage and shown only to the people listed under “Who can see what”; an approved business’s logo is public, as part of its listing.
• Prices are calculated on our servers, so a quote cannot be altered in your browser.
• Card details are entered on Stripe’s payment form and go directly to Stripe; they never reach DriftRoute’s servers.

No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach affecting your information we will tell you without undue delay and in any case as the law requires. If you believe you have found a security problem, please report it to us at support@driftroutemi.com rather than testing it on other people’s data.

11Your choices and rights

• See and correct your information. Your profile, visits, documents and reviews are visible and editable in your account. A provider’s reviewed details are re-checked by operations before they go live; the approved listing stays up meanwhile.
• Location. Providers decide when to share their position and can stop at any time; stopping deletes the stored position. Your browser’s own location permission applies on top.
• Email. Notices are limited to your own visits and, for a business, its documents, approval and coverage, and there is no marketing email to opt out of. If you would rather receive no email at all, ask us; some notices (a charge, a refund decision) may then reach you only in the app.
• Deletion. Ask us to delete your account and we will, subject to the records described under “How long we keep it”; your Clerk sign-in account is deleted with it.
• A copy of your data. Ask and we will provide the personal information we hold about you in a readable form.

To exercise any of these, email support@driftroutemi.com from your sign-in address. We will confirm your identity through your verified sign-in before acting. Where Michigan or United States law gives you additional rights, we will honor them; we do not discriminate against anyone for exercising a privacy right.

DriftRoute is designed for adults. Providers confirm they are at least 18 years old, and a homeowner must be old enough to enter a contract. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18; if you believe a minor has an account, tell us and we will remove it.

12Changes to this policy

This policy describes DriftRoute as built. When the service changes in a way that changes what we collect or how we use it, we will update this page and its “Last updated” date first, and for a material change we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. Statements about payments and email notices appear on this page only where those features are switched on for the deployment you are using.

DriftRoute operates only in Michigan, and it is not intended for residents of the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, so the rights and transfer mechanisms of those regions are not offered here.